A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse Part 28

Thy days of grief are numbered all, Their sum will soon be told: The joy of youth, the smile of G.o.d, Shall bless thee as of old; Shall shed a purer, holier light Upon thy peaceful brow, Than beamed upon thy morning hour Six thousand years ago!

Thy chosen ones shall live again, A countless, tearless throng, To wake creation's voice anew, And swell the choral song.

Go, Earth! go wipe thy falling tears, Forget thy heavy woe: Hope died not with thy first-born sons, Six thousand years ago!

KNICKERBOCKER.

FOOTNOTES

1 The first Advent was, according to the best-settled chronological data, about four thousand one hundred and twenty years from creation.

2 See margin of Whiting's Testament. Lord has it, "when he can be ready to sound."

3 The const.i.tutional language was, "By the authority of the senate, and consent of the soldiers."-_Gibbon_, vol. I., p. 44.

4 This is given on the authority of the London Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, for 1852, p. 330, which states that the edict will be found in the "Theodosian Code, XVII. to XX."

5 "Ubi cogniti fuerint illius haeresis sectatores, ne receptaculum iis quisquam in terra sua praebere praesumat: sed nec in venditione aut emptione aliqua c.u.m iis omnino commercium habeatur."-_Hard._, vi.

ii. 1597.

6 The following philological law or canon of criticism is universally admitted, and all dictionaries, grammars, and translations, are formed in accordance with it:

"Every word not specially explained or defined in a particular sense, by any standard writer of any particular age and country, is to be taken and applied in the current or commonly received signification of that country and age in which the writer lived and wrote."-_Campbell._

7 This possession by demons is similar to the mode by which pretended spirits claim that they communicate through mediums. One of them, purporting to be the spirit of a departed son of Adin Ballou, in answer to the question, by his father, "Can you describe how you are able to write through a medium?" says, "I feel as though I enter into her for the time being, or as if my spirit entered into her. I am disenc.u.mbered of my spiritual form, and take hers. More than one spirit can enter the medium at once. The mediums all go into the trance by means of several spirits entering the body at one time."-_Spiritual Telegraph, May 8, 1852._

8 The word is _demon_ or _demons_ in all the instances referred to.

9 Necromancy is derived from the Greek words _nekros_, dead, and _mantis_, a diviner. The Greek, _Necromantia_, is defined: "The revealing future events by communication with the dead; necromancy."

And Nekromantis: "One who reveals future events by communication with the dead; a necromancer."

10 This is in the Syriac, "Until the fulness of the time of all things." Irenaeus says, "Till the time of the exhibition or disposal of all things;" and c.u.menius, "Till the time of all things does come to an end;" and we have the suffrage of Thesychius and Phavorinus, that "?p??at?stas?? is te?e??s??, 'the consummation' of a thing."-_Whitby._