of the
fruit growing on the trees beside the former stream, he burst into
a flood of tears and wept till he died. But if he partook of that
hanging on the shore of the latter, his bliss was so great that he
forgot all desires; and, strangest of all, he returned over the
track of life to youth and infancy, and then gently expired. He
turned

"Into his yesterdays, and wander'd back To distant childhood, and
went out to God By the gate of birth, not death."

Mohammed, during his night journey, saw, in the lower heaven,
Adam, the father of mankind, a majestic old man, with all his
posterity who were destined for paradise on one side, and all who
were destined for hell on the other. When he looked on the right
he smiled and rejoiced, but as often as he looked on the left he
mourned and wept. How finely this reveals the stupendous pathos
there is in the theological conception of a Federal Head of
humanity!

The idea of a great terminal crisis is met with so often in
reviewing the history of human efforts to grasp and solve the
problem of the world's destiny, that we must consider it a normal
concomitant of such theorizings. The mind reels and loses itself
in trying to conceive of the everlasting continuance of the
present order, or of any one fixed course of things, but finds
relief in the notion of a revolution, an end, and a fresh start.
The Mexican Cataclysm or universal crash, the close of the Hindu
Calpa, the Persian Resurrection, the Stoic Conflagration, the
Scandinavian Ragnarokur, the Christian Day of Judgment, all embody
this one thought. The Drama of Humanity is played out, the curtain
falls, and when it rises again

20 Abbe Domenech's Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of
North America; Vol. I. ch. viii.

21 Stuart, Commentary on the Apocalypse: Excursus upon ch. xiii.
v. 18.

22 Lib. iii. cap. 18.

all is commenced afresh. The clock of creation runs down and has
to be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenth
avatar of Vishnu. The Parsees look for Sosiosch to come, to
consummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon a
renewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, who
is tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until the time of his advent
upon earth. The Jews are praying for the appearance of the
Messiah. And many Christians affirm that the second advent of
Jesus draws nigh.

One more fact, even in a hasty survey of some of the most peculiar
opinions curr