I.                   The largest class is composed of men who have never been transformed by the everlasting truth of God, who have no fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, and have not come under the power of his resurrection. They trust that commerce, unchained from the degradation of protective laws, will carry affluent measures of civilisation from shore to shore, and twine a golden chain around the brotherhood of nations. They trust that science and polite literature will advance in communion, until the tribes and kindreds of the earth are enlightened, strengthened, and purified. Mental and moral philosophy, no longer cloistered in universities and upper circles, with all its humanising and refining power, become the common heritage of the people. Thus the evil passions of our nature will be strangled or hushed into repose, and the earth delivered from the storms of lust, ambition, and revenge. We call this the SATANIC MILLENNIUM: not that science and philosophy are evil in themselves, for they are in reality elevating; but the scheme is without God. It proposes, as its object, the regeneration of society, and leaves out of the field of calculation the adequate instrumentality. Its ground-plan is utterly infidel. There is no mercy-seat, no risen Saviour, no great High Priest and Mediator, no translation from death to life, no pardon, happiness, or immortality.

II.                 A second class have the conviction that Sunday-schools, Missionary Societies, —in short, all the agencies in operation for the diffusion of truth as it is in Jesus—will be extended on a grand scale, and accompanied with opulent manifestations of the Divine Spirit; so that, rapidly, all nations and languages will become Christian, both in name and power. All evil spirits will be cast out of humanity, and a spiritual millennium encompass, with radiant wings, the converted millions of our race. We call this the HUMAN MILLENNIUM. Not that all the agencies are human, for the gospel certainly is not so: but because the scheme, as a whole, is human: there is neither divine authority nor natural probability to justify the project. That the result in contemplation will not be accomplished by the means relied upon, may be rendered clear, both from revelation and the induction of reason. Benevolent as the dream appears, it is so discordant to prophecy and the manifest tendencies of our humanity, that we must pronounce it delusion. Nor is it harmless, for delusion must always operate according to its own nature.

III.              There is a third, and a smaller, but an increasing class, looking for the personal advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are convinced by analogies collected from the past, by prophecy, and by the field of present experience, that while society is advancing in mental power, it is wandering farther from God. From the testimony of seers, in connection with the signs of the times, they can foresee the gathering eclipse of the last midnight, which shall heavily brood over the world while the tragedies of hell are acting. They can discern no morning light till that unclouded day breaks in the east, by personal illumination of God the Redeemer, coming with his saints and angels to smite with one mighty blow the infernal image, and establish his own eternal dominion. We call this the DIVINE MILLENNIUM—the period and condition of latter-day glory and holiness, predicted by all the prophets, and confirmed by all the apostles. —Greenwell.