New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-09-12
EMS.

There is nothing, at least during the Chris
tan era, which the world has more resolutely
insisted upon than it's own predestinate wreck.
While the faith which now rules mankind
was yet young and feeble, its followers were
in the habit of concentrating their contempt
for the things of time and sense in that article
of their belief which declared the millennium
10 be at hand and ever since, the doctrine OF
destruction has had its learned or Ignorant,
its logical or its emotional disciples. We
do not know that any reason can be as
signed for the fact, but just now the Destruc-
tionists are uncOmmOnly loud and lively. we
hear of them in different parts OF the country
holding meetings more or less numerous ana
noisy, advancing the most absurd theories,
and defending them in way which 1t would
be mad misnomencIature to call argumenta-
tive, frightening old women whose end, indeed,
is close at hand. leading the weak-mlnded
into a ruinous disposition of their temporal at
fairs, and belittling the whole idea of future
life by making it merely a revised and
g,orifed projection of the present. All deiu-
sion is degrading; but delusion like this IS
more than all others to be deprecated, because
it deprives the best spiritual intuitiOns of
dignity and drags the most comfortable OF
human aspirations into a slough of superstl-
TONS making repentance an affair OF the
nerves and salvation a matter of gymnastics.
Between this hallucination and rational and
sober hope of future happiness, there is the
same difference which exists between the lively
but coarse imaginatons of the lunatic asylum
and the tempered sublimity of the poets
dream.
There is a great similarity in these Millennial
Encampments, and an account OF one lately
held near Springfield, Mass, would serve for
an account of all. The whole thing is made
to depend upon numerical Interpretation of
the Book of Daniel, and upon forced con-
struction Of the remains of the Hebrew
Prophets. The special delusion of the Massa-
chusetts meeting was that 1874 would be Annus
Domini the Last. To prove this recourse
was had to addition, multiplication, and
division, and, it may be, to the
rule of three. Again the Four Great
Beasts were exhibited, the Winged Lion
and the Winged Leopard, the Bear with
" three ribs between the teeth of it," and the
Fourth Beast whose teeth were of iron and
"whose nails of brass" Upon ignorant minds
it is natural that this prophetic zoology should
make great impression, even though it may
be expounded by mind equally ignorant.
But there was nothing in the preaching at
Springfield which was not sheer gable and
nonsense, and nothing in the praying except
the mOuthings of blasphemOus hypocrisy and
the nervous screams of the affrighted. The
louder the howls of the preacher, the louder
were the cries of "glory! gloryw from the
congregation. We do not care to dwell
upon the particulars of such scene, nor is it
necessary, since many of our readers are
doubtless familiar with them. Ignorance and
credulity are always painful, and religious de-
fusion is the saddest of human infrmites.
Even if q wise man were sure, upon the
authority of the Book of Daniel, that the
world was to be destroyed day after to-mOr-
row, ut h. As IN. D. IN. sharp, the very mag
nitude of the coming catastrophe would keep
him quiet, and it would make but little differ
ence to his friends whether he mentioned the
news to them or not. But the professional
prophets, in any just sense of the word, do
not believe at all. The truth or the falsehood
of their preaching is to them of much less
consequence than the conversion of their
hearers; and protesting to be upon the very
threshold of eternity and Judgment, they
make us mildly wonder what. kind of heaven
that must be for which they are fitted or
what kind of judgment that which should
accord to them the brightest crowns of glory.