1878.) . I know not whether the second advent of Christ is at hand or not. I do not know even what the meaning of it is. That there is to be a literal visit of Christ to earth again, they may believe who are wedded to physical interpretations of Scripture. I do not so read the Word of God. (The Independent.) . . . I think that you will see Christ; but you will see him on the other side. You will go to him; he will not come to you.-The Christian Union, September 5, 1887.

BEECHER-THE TREND OF THE UNIVERSE.

This (Isaiah, XI., 1-19) is the prediction of the great coming final age. It delineates the governing tendency which is guiding the universe, represented by Jesus Christ. . . . His administration shall overcome all evil proceeding from the passions of men, and the result shall be that the world and the race shall attain a glorious perfection toward which slowly but surely things are evolving. . . . Violence, cruelty and destruction shall be so changed as to mingle harmoniously with... simplicity, innocence, beauty, love. God has time enough. He dwells in eternity, and keeps no account of time-nor would you, nor I, if we were such as He, in whose presence one thousand years are as a day.-Evolution and Religion, pp. 204, 205, 388, 439.

BEECHER GOD'S DAY IS ON THE WAY.

I believe in a glorious period of development that is to make the world's history bright as noonday. What it may be I know not. (The Independent.) No darkness . . . can bury the faith that the world is on the way toward the millennium and the day of ransom of the race. . . . Gradually the light dawns, and as little by little the true method of God shall be revealed in nature, I think that we shall hear the glorious harmony unbeset by those tormenting doubts and difficulties which have afflicted good men in days gone by. It is coming. It is to be the blossom of the age that follows this age, and the fruit will come in the millennium day.-Evolution and Religion.

BEECHER WILL HEAR THE HALLELUJAH.

It is a struggle which has an inevitable termination-viz., such an exaltation of the race that all animal instincts will be purged out of it, and a better element shall reign. Glorious times are now at hand. The new heaven casts forward a twilight glow over all the earth. The world is to be redeemed, and I, far from here, shall hear the shout of victory: The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

BELLAMY LOOKING FORWARD.

All thoughtful men agree that the present aspect of society is portentous of great changes. The only question is whether they will be for the better or worse. Those who believe in man's essential nobleness lean to the former view. For my part, I hold to the former opinion. The golden age lies before us, and not behind us; and it is not far away. Our children will surely see it, and we, too, who are already men and women, if we deserve it by our faith and works.Edward Bellamy.

BICKERSTETH-THE TAMING OF THE BRUTE.

Peace reigned. Antipathies of kind were now
Things of the past. The wolf and yearling lamb
Were playmates; and the leopard and the kid
Gamboled together on one knoll; the steer
And lion grazed one herbage, and the ox
Couch'd with the bear on one luxurious sward.

Its tiny hand, toward the cockatrice,
Now seen, now hidden in its den; and babes
Play'd with the innocent asp, wreathing a coil
Of burnished gold and opal round the neck
Or as a bracelet round the dimpled arm.

-E. H. Bickersteth, Yesterday, To-day and Forever.

BOARDMAN-THE WAXING OF CHRISTIANITY.

(Condensed.) I believe that theology will become more and more Christological; the instincts of animalism will be lost in the sense of divine sonship; agnosticism will melt in the heat of personal Christian experiences; sectarianism will be swallowed in catholicity; ecclesiasticism will wane, and Christianity will wax; character rather than opinion will be the test of orthodoxy; the standard of ethics will grow higher and higher; the whole world will become one neighborhood; the Golden Rule will become more and more the law of society; and faith, hope and love will be acknowledged the human trinity. . . . Let then the pessimist take Good Friday as the symbol of his perpetual threnody; we optimists will take Easter Sunday as the symbol of our perpetual jubilate.-George Dana Boardman, April, 1898.-Copyright, The (New York) World.

BONAR-THE GRAY-HAIRED EARTH.

It travels onward-this old earth of ours,
Bending beneath the weight of years and hours;
Mark its gray hairs and note its failing powers!
Its infancy, and youth, and prime are gone ;
Leaning upon its staff, it totters on,

As one whose weary course is nearly done.

BOOTH-THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

He ("General" Booth) spoke of the song of the poets about the brotherhood of man, and peace on earth, and was asked whether the world is drifting toward the materialization of that poetry or whether it is preaching and singing one way and going and practicing another. "Alas! alas!" he exclaimed, "there are multiplying signs of discontent and increasing armaments."-Interview, April, 1898.

BRIGGS VERSUS PREMILLENARIANS.

It depends entirely upon themselves what the future is to bring forth. If they abandon their organization, disband their committee, stop their Bible and Prophetic Conferences, we doubt not that there will soon be a calm again, and they will remain undisturbed in their ecclesiastical relations; but if they are determined to go on in their aggressive movement, they will have only themselves to blame if the storm should become a whirlwind that will constrain them to depart from the orthodox churches and form another heretical sect. Quoted in Peters's The Theocratic Kingdom, published in 1884. See Vol. I., p. 481.

BROOKS (BISHOP)—DEVELOPMENT OF DEVILMENT.

I have no patience with the foolish talk which would make sin nothing but imperfection, and would preach that man needs nothing but to have his deficiencies supplied, to have his native goodness educated and brought out, in order to be all that God would have him be. The horrible incompetency of that doctrine must be manifest enough to any man who knows his own heart, or who listens to the tumult of wickedness which arises from all the dark places of the earth. Sin is a dreadful, positive, malignant thing. What the world in its worst part needs is not to be developed, but to be destroyed. Any other talk about it is shallow and mischievous folly. The only question is about the best method and means of destruction. Let the surgeon's sharp knife do its terrible work-let it cut deep and separate as well and thoroughly as it can the false from the true, the corrupt from the uncorrupt-it can never dissect away the very principle of corruption which is in the substance of the blood itself. Nothing but a new reinforcement of health can accomplish that.Sermons, Vol. IV., pp. 217, 218.

BROOKS (BISHOP)-GOD'S HAND IN HISTORY.

One year God lifted the curtain from a hidden continent, and gave to his children a whole new world in which to carry

out his purposes. Another year he revealed to them a strange, simple little invention, which made the treasured knowledge of the few to be the free heritage of all. . . . Another year he sent the message of liberty to a nation of bondmen, and the fetters fell off from their limbs. We call these events of history. They have a right to be called the coming of the Lord. They all are echoes and illustrations of that great coming of the Lord from which they who have known of it agree by instinctive consent to date their history :-the birth of the Child of Bethlehem, the Man of Nazareth and Calvary, into the world.-Sermons, Vol. IV., pp. 363, 364.

BROOKS (BISHOP) CONVERSION OF THE WORLD.

All that has been done yet in all the Christian centuries is only the sketch and prelude of what is yet to be done. . . The noblest souls always have believed that humanity is capable of containing, and is sure sooner or later to receive, a larger and deeper infusion of divinity. . . . Surely this of all times is not the time to disbelieve in foreign missions. . . . Distance has ceased to be a hindrance. Language no longer makes men total strangers. A universal commerce is creating common bases and forms of thought. For the first time in the history of the world there is a manifest-almost an immediate possibility of a universal religion. . . . Surely he who despairs of the power of the Gospel to convert the world to-day despairs of the noontide just when the sun is breaking out of the twilight on the earth.-Sermons, Vol. IV., pp. 169, 190, 354 ff.

BROWN THE MISERABLE VIEW.

Judging from the prophecies to which Premillenarians commonly refer, and the literal sense which they insist upon giving to them, they appear to expect one vast carnageslaughter in a literal battle or battles-"the land soaked with blood," and "all the fowls filled with flesh." And this is what they term the judgment of the quick, or at least the principal part of it-miserable view.-See Christ's Second