THE MILLENNIAL REST;

OR,

THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE.

LECTURE I.

THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS.

GOD gives his people notice of each successive stage of that grand work in which he has been engaged from the beginning.

"For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;

and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind."-ISAIAH lxv. 17.

It

THE new heavens and the new earth succeed the great conflagration described by Peter, where he says, "the heavens and the earth that now are shall be burnt up, and all the elements shall melt with fervent heat." is therefore the reconsecration and reconstitution of that visible and material economy which is around us now; so truly so that Christians look forward justly to this very earth as destined to be the loveliest porch of heaven, the most beautiful island on the bosom of the infinite main; on which shall dwell righteousness, no more in patches, but everywhere, and over which shall shine the glory that dwelt between the cherubim, and out of which shall be eliminated all the elements of sin, and sorrow, and evil; as these were sown broadcast by Satan, and have grown up into bitter and disastrous harvests in every age and on every acre of the earth. After

B

this conflagration we read that there shall be a new heavens and a new earth.

During the last six thousand years-nearly exhausted -of the history of our globe, there have been at least six distinct and independent dispensations, to be succeeded by a seventh, the glory and the perfection of all that have passed away. Just as there seem to have been six days spent in the creation of the globe, or rather in the arrangement of it, crowned by a seventh, its coronal and its glory; so there seem to have been six successive dispensations or economies, each closing with judgment, and each giving birth to another, a brighter and a better. It is according to the very same analogy that students of prophecy have argued that the six days consumed in the arrangement of the world are the types of the six thousand years that mete out the time during which this economy is to last, and that the seventh day in which the six of creation culminated is the type of the thousand years commonly known by the name of the rest that remaineth for the people of God, or the millennial age, which ends and crowns the world that now is.

Let us enumerate these six different dispensations, each ending in specific judgments. First, there was the Adamitic age, the age of Adam and Eve in Paradise, in which God's voice was heard at early morn and at dewy eve, and his footprints were visible upon every portion of the garden of Eden; all flowers beauty, all sounds music, all air perfume, and all sensations bliss; the two hearts that beat there happy beyond the reach of all disturbing or intrusive element. Adam and Eve sinned, and then the age ended in retribution. They were expelled from Paradise, and the fiery cherubim guarded the gates of glory, lest the unfit criminals and exiles should seek to enter again into that holy and happy abode. Secondly, we have the antediluvian, patriarchal age, marked by the martyrdom of Abel, the crimes of Cain, and terminating also in judgment, when God opened the fountains of the great deep, withdrew their shutters from the windows of heaven, and let forth a depopulating and dismantling flood that baptized the