Millennium

“ King, lords, and aristocrats; landholders, tithe-collectors, church and state, thank God, will soon be overthrown, and the golden age revived—the millennium—the true millennium—not what your poor mother talked about. ”

“ You will not be surprised therefore to be told that the man of the second millennium began to be perceptibly changed from the one you knew in the 19th century. But when we come to the tenth millennium the change is astonishing. ”

“ That is one lesson of history. Another is, that we should draw no horoscopes; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. Revolutions, reformations,—those vast movements into which heroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they were the dawn of the millennium,—have not borne the fruit which they looked for. Millenniums are still far away. These great convulsions leave the world changed,—perhaps improved, but not improved as the actors in them hoped it would be. ”

“ Meanwhile the millennium was coming, and some people thought it was very near. And what was the millennium? Why, the time when everybody on earth would live just as they do in heaven. Nobody would be selfish, nobody would be unkind ”

“ The millennium is a state and stage of mental advancement, going on since ever time was. Its impetus, accelerated by the advent of Christian Science, is marked, and will increase till all men shall know Him (divine Love) from the least to the greatest, and one God and the brotherhood of man shall be known and acknowledged throughout the earth. ”

“ If the people will not serve the devil another moment whilst they live, if this congregation is possessed of that spirit and resolution, here in this house is the Millennium. Let the inhabitants of this city be possessed of that spirit, let the people of the territory be possessed of that spirit, and here is the Millennium. Let the whole people of the United States be possessed of that spirit, and here is the Millennium, and so will it spread over all the world. ”

“ MILLENARIANS are those who believe, according to an ancient tradition in the church, grounded on some doubtful texts in the book of Revelation and other scriptures, that our Saviour shall reign a thousand years with the faithful upon earth after the first resurrection, before the full completion of final happiness; and their name, taken from the Latin word mille, a thousand,” has a direct allusion to the duration of this spiritual empire, which is styled the millennium. ”

“ This glorious Millennium was ushered in about six hundred years ago, and I readily learned the general particulars of its commencement. The world had been very wicked prior to the dawn of this new age. The majority of the people disregarded all spiritual truths, causing the darkness of sin to hang like a heavy pall over the nations of this planet. ”

“ Millennium, mil-len′i-um, n. a thousand years: the thousand years during which, as some believe, Christ will personally reign on the earth.—adj. Millenā′rian, lasting a thousand years: pertaining to the millennium.—n. one believing in the millennium.—ns. Millenā′rianism, Mil′lenarism, the doctrine of millenarians.—adj. ”

“ Abstractly considered, such a society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing might be realized there with no expense of friction. To such a millennial society the saint would be entirely adapted. ”

“ The length of time implied by the millennium is a period of multiple completeness which is represented by a thousand, the cube of ten, the symbol of a duration that is of great but indefinite extent, covering a long period of time, stretching to untold generations, during which the rule of Christ shall be triumphantly established upon the earth.543 The chief thought in the thousand years is doubtless that of great and enduring victory. ”

“ That every age is an improved edition of the former I am not (recollecting the splendid relics of antiquity) prepared to admit; but that the present is particularly distinguished for discoveries in science, and vast improvements in mechanical arts, every accurate observer must allow: the prodigious inventions of late years cannot fail in due time of producing that perfectibility, the great consummation denominated the Millennium. ”

“ He proves that in the history of all the peoples and empires of the Old World, the cycles marking the millenniums, the centennials as well as the minor ones of fifty and ten years' duration, are the most important, inasmuch as neither of them has ever yet failed to bring in its train some more or less marked event in the history of the nation swept over by these historical waves. ”

“ I have learned long ago that the thoughts and expressions of men are very diversified; if, indeed, their thoughts or ideas are similar, I know their words differ widely; so should I find a great many different opinions among this people, with regard to the real essence and effect of the Millennium. ”

“ The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works of the creation had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. 61 By the same analogy it was inferred, that this long period of labor and contention, which was now almost elapsed, 62 would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; ”

“ Six thousand years, according to the best idea that we have of chronology, are now about completed; we are living almost on the eve of the last of the six millenniums—a thousand years are called a millenium—and to-morrow, we may say, will be the seventh ”

“ The groundwork of the peace and safety cry is the doctrine of the temporal millennium. This teaches that the world is now entering, or about to enter upon a period of universal peace and good will, that the moral tone of the world is improving, men and nations are learning righteousness; and the gospel of Christ is about to become the controlling principle in public and private life. And, further, this happy state will continue for one thousand years, which period of time the word millennium literally signifies. ”

“ Some of these worlds sustain a low order of human creatures, while on others there are races that have reached a high degree in the scale of advancement. Of these five hundred worlds nearly one-half are barren of all life, and of those that are inhabited some twenty are sinless worlds and thirty are now passing through an intermediate period between the probationary life and the final judgment, a period toward which we are anxiously looking and which we designate as the Millennium. ”

“ Our Nation was founded by men and women who firmly believed in the power of science to transform their world for the better. Like them, we're bound together by common dreams and by the values that will drive our own vision for the future. And our commitment to carry those enduring ideals with us will renew their promise in a new century and a new millennium. ”

“ See article on Millenarianism, by G. P. Fisher, in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopædia; also by Semisch, in Schaff-Herzog, Cyclopædia; cf. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 1:840.
4. Relation of Christ's second coming to the millennium. The Scripture foretells a period, called in the language of prophecy “a thousand years,” when Satan shall be restrained and the saints shall reign [pg 1011] with Christ on the earth. A comparison of the passages bearing on this subject leads us to the conclusion that this millennial blessedness and dominion is prior to the second advent. ”

“ TRUTH.
“A century is a formula; an epoch is an expressed thought. One such thought-expressed civilization passes to another. The centuries are the phrases of civilization; what she says here she does not repeat there. But these mysterious phrases are linked together: logic—the logos—is within them, and their series constitutes progress. In all these, phrase expressions of a single thought, the divine thought, we are slowly deciphering the word fraternity.
“All light is at some point condensed into a flame; likewise every epoch is condensed in a man. ”

“ If we could affix to each century as characteristic a presentment as those portraits do of the steel-clad hero of Towton, or the be-wigged, be-buckled courtier of George the Second, our object would be gained. We should see a whole history in a glance at a century’s face. If it were peculiarly marked by nature or accident, so much the more easy would it be to recognise the likeness. If the century was a warlike, quarrelsome century, and had scars across its brow ”

“ I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums. ”

“ Clearly each mediaeval century will offer manifold of disparity and irrelationship, not to be brought to unity, any more than can be followed to the breast of one mighty wind-god the blasts that blow from every quarter over the waters of our own time. Nevertheless, each mediaeval century, and if one will, the entire Middle Ages, seen in distant perspective, presents a consistent picture, in which dominant mediaeval traits, retaining their due preeminence, may afford a just conception of the mediaeval genius. ”

“ It is surely worth while, therefore, to make an attempt to individualize the centuries, not by affixing to them any arbitrary marks of one’s own, but by taking notice of the distinguishing quality they possess, and grouping round that, as a centre, the incidents which either produce this characteristic or are produced by it. What should we call the present century, for instance? We should at once name it the Century of Invention. ”

“ I want to deepen and make clear to you this consciousness that the world has had essentially a Trinity of ages—the Classical Age, the Middle Age, the Modern Age; each of these embracing races and individuals of apparently enormous separation in kind, but united in the spirit of their age,—the Classical Age having its Egyptians and Ninevites, Greeks and Romans,—the Middle Age having its Goths and Franks, Lombards and Italians,—the Modern Age having its French and English, Spaniards and Germans ”

“ Let us talk of our college days, of our travels, of war, of soldiers, and of Italy!
XII.
We old classmates will many of us doubtless live to see the twentieth century. Strange thought! I know, of course, that the transition from nineteen hundred to nineteen hundred and one will seem as natural as that from ninety-nine to a hundred, or from this year to next. And yet it seems to me that to see the first dawn of the new century will be like reaching the summit of some high mountain, and looking out over new countries and new horizons. ”

“ On the supposition that it is to be literally a period of one thousand years, this is in itself long, and will give, especially under the circumstances, opportunity for a vast progress in human affairs. To form some idea of the length of the period, we need only place ourselves in imagination back for a thousand years—say in the middle of the ninth century—and look at the condition of the world then, and think of the vast changes in human affairs that have occurred during that period. ”

“ I have said in a previous article that the general unity of character prevailing throughout these three divisions, so that, taken from the broadest point of view, each one seems a unit in time, justifies the application to them of that term, Age, by which we distinguish in human history those periods marked throughout by one prevailing tendency;—as we say the age of Egyptian or Greek or Roman civilization,—the age of stone or iron or bronze. ”

“ When the history of the Nineteenth Century—'the Wonderful Century,' as it has, not inaptly, been called—comes to be written, a foremost place must be assigned to that great movement by which evolution has become the dominant factor in scientific progress, while its influence has been felt in every sphere of human speculation and effort. ”

“ This century, which some have called an age of iron, has been also an age of ideas, an era of seeking and finding the like of which was never known before. It is an epoch the grandeur of which dwarfs all others that can be named since the beginning of the historic period, if not since Man first became distinctively human. ”

“ Beneath the mouldering forms of the old world a new world was bursting into life; if the fifteenth century was an age of death it was an age of birth as well, of that new birth, that Renascence, from which the after life of Europe was to flow. ”

“ My darlings, this morning we will glance at some of the relics of what was once called the 'Christian Era,' subsequently designated by historians as 'The Age of Blood and Malevolence,' but which is, nevertheless, always of importance in the world's library from its having been the first link in the long unbroken chain of eras of civilization. If time will permit we will take from the twenty-first century to the fifteenth. ”

“ Measuring epochs, or eras, by spaces of a hundred years each, that which embraces the nineteenth century stands out in sublime and encouraging contrast with any that has preceded it. As the legatee of all prior centuries, it has enlarged and ennobled its bequest to an extent unparalleled in history; while it has at the same time, through a genius and energy peculiar to itself, created an original endowment for its own enjoyment and for the future richer by far than any heretofore recorded. ”

“ Standing here amid the sacred memories of the first, on the golden threshold of the second, I ask, Will the second century be as grand as the first? I believe it will, because we are growing more and more humane. ”

“ The progeny from heaven now descends. Be thou propitious to the Infant Boy by whom first the Iron Age shall expire, and the Golden Age over the whole world shall commence. Whilst thou, O Pollio, art consul, this glory of our age shall be made manifest, and the celestial months begin their revolutions. ”