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STUDIES IN 
 RECENT ADVENTISM 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY C. SHELDON 
 
 Professor in Boston University 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
 j^I4< 
 
<4& 
 
 
 2> 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 HENRY C. SHELDON 
 
 SEP 14 1915 
 
 DCI.A411484 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 7 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Features Commonly Included in Re- 
 cent Adventism 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Some Special Teachings of Adventist 
 Parties 45 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Cardinal Assumptions in Adventist 
 Argumentation 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Criticism of the Cardinal Assump- 
 tions 74 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Criticism of Special Teachings of 
 Adventist Parties 114 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A List of Objections to Recent 
 Adventism 138 
 
 Conclusion 153 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Communications from pastors who 
 were under pressure to deal with rad- 
 ical types of Adventist teaching sug- 
 gested the writing of this treatise. 
 We were led by the testimonies sub- 
 mitted to entertain the conviction 
 that a compact essay, combining 
 orderly exposition with well-grounded 
 criticism, would fulfill a useful office. 
 . We have aimed at simplicity, but 
 the variety of teaching which has 
 found place within the ranks of a 
 pronounced Adventism makes some 
 degree of' complexity unavoidable in 
 any comprehensive treatment of the 
 subject. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In some form the doctrine of the 
 future coming of Christ is part and 
 parcel of the common Christian creed. 
 The distinction of "Adventism," as 
 the term is here used, lies in the 
 following particulars: It treats the 
 second coming, or prospective advent, 
 of Christ as a matter of foremost 
 importance in the Christian system; it 
 insists that all Christians should con- 
 template this great event with vivid 
 expectancy, as being in all probability 
 close at hand, if not indeed certain 
 to occur at a near-by specific date; 
 it regards the looked-for coming as 
 pre-millennial, that is, antecedent to 
 the thousand-year period mentioned 
 in Rev. xx. 4, 5; it rates this coming 
 as the indispensable condition of any 
 such triumphs of the Christian re- 
 ligion as are to be associated with the 
 millennial age. 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Champions of Adventism in the 
 sense of our discussion often call 
 themselves pre-millennialists. But this 
 term, while it names one feature, is 
 an inadequate description of those 
 whom we have in mind. It is quite 
 possible to hold that the second com- 
 ing of Christ will antedate the millen- 
 nium, without either minifying the 
 possibilities of the present dispensation 
 or greatly magnifying the religious 
 efficacy of the second coming. Indeed, 
 not a few pre-millennialists in their 
 total standpoint have had no close 
 affiliation with typical Adventism, and 
 cannot with historic justice be named 
 among its advocates. 
 
 A special era as respects the vigor- 
 ous advocacy of the doctrinal particu- 
 lars included in Adventism was initi- 
 ated in the second quarter of the 
 nineteenth century. This era came to 
 a relative close near the end of the 
 century, so far as the outcropping of 
 a pronounced Adventism in the older 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 and larger communions is concerned. 
 Since that time, however, propagand- 
 ism of an Adventist scheme has been 
 vigorously carried on by certain sects 
 or parties, and has claimed, besides, 
 some earnest advocates in the larger 
 denominations. We find, therefore, 
 adequate reasons for including in our 
 review the period from the beginning 
 of the second quarter of the nineteenth 
 century to the present. 
 
 As is intimated in the above state- 
 ment, our theme has to do with Ad- 
 ventist teaching for the given period 
 — with teaching outside the ranks of 
 those currently styled "Adventists," as 
 well as with that which has issued 
 from those ranks. On the score of 
 scholarly basis Adventist teaching in 
 the former range might fairly claim 
 the larger measure of attention. The 
 number of its representatives has also 
 been appreciable. In Great Britain 
 and America it has been advocated 
 by such writers as W. Cunninghame, E. 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Bickersteth, A. Bonar, H. Bonar, J. 
 Cumming, E. B. Elliott, T. R. Birks, 
 H. G. Guinness, J. H. Frere, G. Duf- 
 field, D. T. Taylor, J. Seiss, S. Tyng, 
 N. West, G. N. EL Peters, and A. J. 
 Gordon. Many others, if not com- 
 mitted to the full Adventist scheme, 
 have given assent to some of its main 
 elements. Here belong the eminent 
 German theologians, Rothe, Delitzsch, 
 Hofmann, Kurtz, Karsten, Auberlen, 
 Beck, Thiersch, Nitzsch, Lange, Eb- 
 rard, and Luthardt, together with Van 
 Oosterzee, of the Netherlands. So 
 far as we have been able to discover, 
 very little inclination has been mani- 
 fested by the writers in the group 
 last mentioned to dabble with figures 
 for the purpose of fixing the time of 
 the second advent. 
 
 The movement which resulted in 
 the Adventist sects — of which the 
 Seventh-Day Adventists and the Ad- 
 vent Christians are the principal — 
 may be said to have had its starting 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 point in the public lectures of William 
 Miller in 1831. It was his confident 
 expectation that Christ would come 
 in 1843. After the close of that year 
 he was constrained to extend the time 
 to the autumn of 1844. At first there 
 was no thought of organizing a special 
 Adventist communion. Miller and his 
 associates addressed their message to 
 the Christian public at large, and 
 gained their following in the com- 
 munions already in the field. Un- 
 common activity was displayed in 
 spreading the exciting message. Speak- 
 ing of the summer of 1843 a historian 
 of the Advent movement says: "The 
 works of Miller, Litch, Jones, Ward, 
 Hall, Bliss, Storrs, F. G. Brown, 
 Whiting, G. F. Cox, Starkweather, 
 Fleming, Fitch, Hawley, Himes, Sa- 
 bine, and others, together with critical 
 reviews of the chief opponents, were 
 being extensively circulated through- 
 out the American continent, in Europe 
 and Asia, and to all missionary sta- 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tions of the British and American 
 missions with which communication 
 could be had. Vessels sailing from 
 Boston and New York, for all foreign 
 ports, were liberally supplied with 
 publications to distribute wherever 
 they went. Tracts were published 
 in the French and German languages, 
 bearing this message, and freely scat- 
 tered among those portions of society 
 in this country.' n 
 
 Very nearly contemporary with the 
 beginning of the Millerite movement, 
 two different parties arose in England 
 which manifested a rather vital in- 
 terest in Adventism. These were the 
 Plymouth Brethren and the Irvingites. 
 The Mormons, who began their career 
 in the United States at the same time, 
 made room for a full Adventist scheme; 
 but in reality they were much more 
 concerned about the prospective rule 
 of the Latter Day Saints in the earth 
 
 1 1. C. Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message and 
 Mission, Doctrine and People, p. 304. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 than about the events more generally 
 supposed to be connected with the 
 second advent. 
 
 In spite of the failure of the Miller- 
 ite predictions, and of other confident 
 forecasts respecting the close of the 
 dispensation, Adventism lived on with 
 a good degree of stubborn persistence. 
 Even the habit of "fixing the time" 
 was not fully vanquished. In excep- 
 tional instances it has been carried 
 over into the twentieth century. A 
 conspicuous example appears in C. T. 
 Russell, whose writings, if the figures 
 on the title pages may be trusted, 
 have been circulated to the extent of 
 several million volumes. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 FEATURES COMMONLY INCLUDED IN 
 RECENT ADVENTISM 
 
 1. Assumption of the incompetency of 
 ordinary means of evangelism to con- 
 vert the world. This assumption runs 
 through Adventist literature of the 
 type which we are considering. Re- 
 peatedly the thesis is put forward 
 that the preaching of the gospel can- 
 not be expected to effect the conver- 
 sion of the great mass of men. The 
 most that it can accomplish is to 
 gather out the comparatively small 
 number of the elect who are to serve 
 as the special agents of the reappearing 
 Christ. If the kingdom is ever to be 
 brought to anything like a world- 
 wide dominion, it will be through the 
 coming and continued personal pres- 
 ence of the Redeemer. As to the 
 
 17 
 
18 STUDIES IN 
 
 result of this extraordinary instrumen- 
 tality some difference of opinion ob- 
 tains. "Professional Adventists," as 
 the churches may be called which 
 issued from the Millerite movement, 
 commonly, not to say universally, 
 suppose the era of gracious oppor- 
 tunity to be closed at the second 
 coming, and limit the blessings of the 
 millennial age entirely to those who, 
 at its beginning, can be classified as 
 saints. A theory quite as rigorous 
 had much currency among the Ply- 
 mouth Brethren, at least in their 
 early days. 1 
 
 Other advocates of a pronounced 
 Adventism entertain very largely the 
 conviction that the personal advent 
 of Christ will impart a mighty im- 
 petus to world evangelism and will 
 result in greatly extending the area 
 of salvation. But however wide a 
 difference on this point may be in 
 evidence, there is substantial agree- 
 
 1 Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren, pp. 227, 228. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 19 
 
 ment in a pessimistic estimate of the 
 efficacy of such forms of Christian 
 enterprise as have been in use since 
 Christ's ascension. Numerous cita- 
 tions might be offered in confirmation. 
 "It is Christ's coming/' says Seiss, 
 "that is to make the millennium, and 
 not the millennium which is to prepare 
 the world for Christ's coming. . . . The 
 Holy Scriptures, so far from promising 
 to us a millennium of universal right- 
 eousness before Christ comes, univer- 
 sally represent the world as abounding, 
 if not ever growing, in wickedness, even 
 up to the very moment of his com- 
 ing. . . . People think they see signs 
 of promise in the movements of reform. 
 They think to give the Church a 
 better shape, and the State a better 
 government, and the world a freer 
 Bible, and that thus the millennium 
 will come. I have no confidence in 
 any such hopes. I see more of promise 
 in the darkest features of the times 
 than in all these pious and patriotic 
 
20 STUDIES IN 
 
 dreams." 1 "Gigantic is the misconcep- 
 tion/ ' exclaims West, "to dream that 
 God has given the Church, unable to 
 reform herself, to build the Christian 
 state up to a kingdom of Christ, or 
 to reform the world. . . • More and 
 more the Christian state is a tool of 
 Satan." 2 "While rejecting," writes 
 Peters, "the Whitbyan theory of a 
 future conversion of the world previous 
 to the second advent of Jesus as un- 
 scriptural and misleading, we at the 
 same time firmly hold to a future 
 blessed and glorious conversion of the 
 Jews and Gentiles after the second ad- 
 vent, as plainly taught in the Word." 3 
 "They are without warrant in the 
 Word," says Tyng, "who are looking 
 for the conversion of the world by 
 the preaching of the cross and the 
 extending influence of the Church. In 
 no portion of the Scripture is such 
 
 i The Last Times, pp. 40, 42, 299, 300. 
 2 The Thousand Years in Both Testaments, pp. 448, 456. 
 8 The Theocratic Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus, the Christ, III. 
 210. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 21 
 
 a hope justified. All that the gospel 
 was designed to accomplish was less 
 than this." 1 "Nowhere," claims A. 
 J. Gordon, "is universal redemption 
 predicted as the result of preaching 
 the gospel in this dispensation." First 
 through Christ's personal coming in 
 glory will the Jews be converted and 
 a great ingathering of the Gentiles be 
 effected. 2 The parable of the leaven 
 is not opposed to this conclusion, for 
 that symbolizes rather the spread of 
 an apostate and corrupt Church than 
 the transfusion of the world with a 
 regenerate life. 3 Some of the "Pre- 
 millennial Essays" presented at the 
 Prophetic Conference of 1878 greatly 
 qualify the idea that the preaching 
 of the gospel was designed to convert 
 the world. 4 In connection with the 
 
 " He Will Come, p. 144. 
 
 2 Ecce Venit. Behold He Cometh, pp. 47-57. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 69-73. This interpretation is not convincing. 
 Since it is the kingdom of heaven which is likened to leaven, the 
 reference must be to the energetic and pervasive working of leaven, 
 and not at all to its association with corruption. 
 
 4 Essays iii and vii. 
 
22 STUDIES IN 
 
 Millerite movement an editorial in 
 The Signs of the Times, in 1842, 
 characterized the notion of the world's 
 conversion as "a false notion which 
 blinds the minds of the Church and 
 the world to the speedy coming of 
 Christ"; and at the "Mutual Con- 
 ference" at Albany in 1845 one of 
 the representative statements affirmed 
 that there is no promise of the world's 
 conversion. 1 In a widely circulated 
 book W. E. Blackstone states: "This 
 wicked world, which is so radically 
 opposed to God, and under the present 
 control of his arch enemy, is not 
 growing better. On the contrary, judg- 
 ment, fire, and perdition are before it. 
 Perilous times are coming. . . . There 
 is no hope, then, for the world, but 
 in the coming of Christ the king." 2 
 "Christ's kingdom," writes F. C. Ott- 
 man, "shall be established, not as men 
 vainly imagine by the preaching of 
 
 1 Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 251, 
 417, 418. 
 
 2 Jesus is Coming, pp. 148, 149. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 23 
 
 the gospel, but by the iron rod that 
 shall smite down all opposition and 
 make the enemies of Christ like the 
 broken pieces of a potter's vessel." 1 
 
 Quite as emphatic as any of the 
 foregoing declarations are the oracular 
 utterances of C. T. Russell. "God 
 has not yet," he asserts, "by any 
 means exhausted his power for the 
 world's conversion. Nay, more: he 
 has not yet even attempted the world's 
 conversion. . . . The only hope is in 
 the intervention of supernatural power, 
 and just such a change is what God 
 has promised in and through Christ's 
 millennial kingdom." 2 At the Pro- 
 phetic Conference held in Chicago in 
 1914, the distinction was more than 
 once made between "converting the 
 world" and "evangelizing the world," 
 the latter phrase being made to de- 
 note the limited enterprise of pub- 
 lishing the gospel in all lands; "and 
 
 1 The Unfolding of the Ages in the Revelation of John, pp. 65, 66. 
 
 2 Studies in the Scriptures, I. 95, IV. 311. 
 
M STUDIES IN 
 
 that," said one of the speakers, "is 
 something that can be done easily in 
 a single generation." 1 The task of the 
 Church, it was urged, is simply to evan- 
 gelize the world, to publish the truths 
 of the gospel, to the end of making up 
 the number of the elect, and so hasten- 
 ing the second coming of Christ. 
 
 In some instances the pessimistic 
 berating of the present dispensation, 
 or that obtaining in the pre-millennial 
 age, falls little short of being whole- 
 sale. Statements are met with which 
 imply that the Lord's people are, in 
 point of numbers, a perfectly insig- 
 nificant factor in the world. Some of 
 those attached to the Millerite move- 
 ment began to denounce the Protestant 
 communions, along with the Papal 
 Church, and to include them all under 
 the category of the wicked Babylon. 
 Miller himself discountenanced this ex- 
 treme, but it had a considerable run, 2 
 
 1 Page 76 in the Report of the Conference. 
 
 2 Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 32, 33, 
 395, 396, 404. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 25 
 
 and has been substantially reproduced 
 in a very representative publication of 
 the Seventh-Day Adventists. 1 The 
 same sweeping judgment has come to 
 voluble expression in the writings of 
 C. T. Russell. According to his diag- 
 nosis, if Rome is the mother of harlots, 
 the Protestant denominations are her 
 daughters. 2 They too are included in 
 the wicked Babylon. 3 While the dragon 
 depicted in the Apocalypse symbolizes 
 the Roman empire continued in the 
 present civil powers, and the beast 
 stands for the papal system of govern- 
 ment, the false prophet or image of 
 the beast denotes the Protestant Fed- 
 eration of Churches, and the Church 
 of England is represented by the 
 two-horned beast mentioned in Rev- 
 elation xiii. II. 4 In all denominations 
 the great majority have neither part 
 nor lot in the body of Christ. 5 God 
 
 i Bible Readings for the Home Circle, 1914, pp. 257, 258, 
 « Studies in the Scriptures, IV. 35, VI. 202. 
 » Ibid., III. 154, VI. 430. 
 4 Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. iv-xvi. 
 « Ibid., VI. 446. 
 
26 STUDIES IN 
 
 is not concerned about them. He 
 leaves not merely the heathen world 
 to itself in the present age, but so- 
 called Christendom as well. 1 A writer 
 whose expressed opinion of C. T. 
 Russell is far from flattering approx- 
 imates sufficiently to his point of view 
 to remark, "To-day we witness the 
 apostasy of Gentile Christendom." 2 
 
 Not less pessimistic than the most 
 radical of the cited opinions is the 
 estimate which the early Mormon 
 writers passed upon the entire record 
 of the post-apostolic Church. Orson 
 Pratt, Orson Spencer, and others recog- 
 nized both in Catholicism and Pro- 
 testantism only fit subjects for wrath. 
 In more than one instance it was 
 designated as the salutary and pre- 
 destined office of the Latter Day 
 Saints to dash to pieces all antecedent 
 systems in Church and state, 3 thus 
 
 i Studies in the Scriptures, VI. 205. 
 
 2 A. C. Gaebelein, Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, 
 p. 197. 
 
 8 Pratt, Series of Pamphlets, No. VI, p. 85; Orson Hyde, Jour- 
 nal of Discourses, VIII. 48-53. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 27 
 
 fulfilling the function of the prophetic 
 stone cut out of the mountains. 
 
 2. Affirmation of an interregnum be- 
 tween the first and the second advent 
 of Christ. The standpoint of the 
 whole series of writers referred to 
 under the preceding topic involves a 
 close approach to the idea of an 
 interregnum fpr the given period. In 
 proportion as the relative powerlessness 
 of the means employed in the present 
 dispensation is emphasized, the infer- 
 ence is enforced that the rule or king- 
 dom of Christ is for the time being 
 debarred from the world. Not all the 
 writers in question positively assert 
 this inference; but some of them make 
 the assertion with greater or less dis- 
 tinctness. "The period of the Christian 
 Church/' says Peters, "is an intercal- 
 ary one, extending through the 'times 
 of the Gentiles/ . . . The kingdom 
 being rejected by the Jews at the first 
 advent, an intercalary period inter- 
 venes, and the 'times of the Gentiles' 
 
28 STUDIES IN 
 
 are continued on to the second ad- 
 vent. . . . The design of this dispen- 
 sation, or ' times of the Gentiles/ is 
 not to establish the kingdom, but to 
 prepare the way for the final restora- 
 tion of that kingdom to the covenanted 
 people." 1 Seiss records the opinion 
 that " Satan, for the most part, is 
 yet king and master of this world, 
 and not the illustrious Son of David." 2 
 An identical conviction is expressed by 
 Guinness. 3 A. J. Gordon utters an 
 implicit warning against being seduced 
 by recent victories of the gospel "into 
 the notion that the kingdom has al- 
 ready come." 4 C. J. Scofield speaks 
 of "the interregnum between the cruci- 
 fixion and the second coming of 
 Christ." 5 The kingdom, he affirms, is 
 established first over restored and 
 converted Israel. Uriah Smith, acting 
 as spokesman for the Seventh-Day 
 
 i The Theocratic Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus, I. 158, 243, 587. 
 
 2 The Last Times, p. 132. 
 
 3 The Approaching End of the Age, p. 22. 
 * Ecce Venit, p. 94. 
 
 6 Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, p. 43. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 29 
 
 Adventists, rebukes the "bewildered 
 commentators" who hold the theory 
 "that the kingdom of God was set 
 up at the first advent of Christ." 1 
 
 3. Belief that the Jews will be re- 
 stored and invested with a certain pre- 
 eminence in the millennial kingdom. 
 This belief was not shared by William 
 Miller, and for the greater part has 
 been eschewed by those in the line 
 of succession from him. It was ad- 
 vocated, however, by some Millerites 
 as early as 1842, 2 and one small body 
 of Adventists — The Churches of God 
 in Christ Jesus — still gives it hos- 
 pitality. 3 
 
 Outside the circle of professional 
 Adventism those taking the point of 
 view of pre-millennialism have often 
 entertained the expectation of a res- 
 toration of the Jewish people and of 
 their exaltation to a headship over 
 
 1 Thoughts Critical and Practical on the Book of Daniel, 1873, 
 p. 57. 
 
 * Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 385, 386. 
 •Carroll, Religious Forces in the United States, p. 13. 
 
30 STUDIES IN 
 
 the world. E. B. Elliott gives modest 
 expression to this expectation. 1 Seiss 
 puts it forth in this emphatic sen- 
 tence: "The despised Jew shall yet 
 look forth from Zion and behold the 
 grave of every kingdom upon earth." 2 
 West includes among well-established 
 conclusions the following: "That as a 
 people Israel shall repossess their 
 fatherland; that Israel, as such, shall 
 stand with the Lamb upon the earthly 
 Mount Zion, and dwell in the 'beloved 
 city;' that not only in millennial days, 
 but in the final state, Israel shall be 
 the root and basis, the center and the 
 crown, of the glorious kingdom of 
 God." 3 According to Peters the Jews 
 are to be reinstated in Palestine, not 
 so much by colonization as by the 
 display of supernatural power, and 
 from this ancient seat they are to 
 "sustain a certain well-defined pre- 
 eminence among and over the na- 
 
 1 Horae Apocalypticae, IV. 129. 
 
 2 The Last Times, p. 169. 
 
 3 The Thousand Years in Both Testaments, p. 244. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 31 
 
 tions." 1 In the "Pre-millennial Essays" 
 of the Prophetic Conference of 1878 
 the judgment is expressed that Israel 
 is to be restored and given an exalted 
 position. 2 The like judgment pervades 
 the addresses given at the Conference 
 of 1914. A. J. Gordon contends for 
 the national restoration of Israel, and 
 forecasts for her a distinct primacy 
 in the kingdom. "Through her as 
 a redeemed nation, and through her 
 exalted city as capital of the world, 
 the Son of David will now extend 
 his blessed sway to the ends of the 
 earth." 3 Identical conclusions are set 
 forth in A. B. Simpson's summary 
 of pre-millennial tenets. 4 "During the 
 millennial age," says C. T. Russell, 
 "Israel will be the chief nation of the 
 earth, at the head of all on the earthly 
 plane of being, into oneness and har- 
 mony with which all the obedient 
 
 i The Theocratic Kingdom, II. 92. 
 
 2 Essays v and viii. 
 
 3 Ecce Venit, pp. 294-296. 
 
 * The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 17-19. 
 
32 STUDIES IN 
 
 will be gradually drawn." 1 Among 
 German writers of a comparatively 
 recent date Hofman, Auberlen, and 
 Volck are on record as ready to 
 accord to the Jews a certain pre- 
 eminence in the millennial kingdom. 2 
 Account was made of the restoration 
 of Israel by the Plymouth Brethren 
 and the Irvingites. In the creed of 
 the Mormons, as stated in one of 
 their major authorities, this article is 
 included: "We believe in the literal 
 gathering of Israel, and in the restora- 
 tion of the Ten Tribes; that Zion 
 will be built upon this continent; that 
 Christ will reign personally upon the 
 earth, and that the earth will be 
 renewed and receive its paradisaic 
 glory." 3 More specifically Mormon 
 faith locates the central seat of the 
 coming kingdom in Jackson County, 
 Missouri, where the New Jerusalem 
 will be commenced. So states the 
 
 1 Studies in the Scriptures, I. 241. 
 
 2 Article "Chiliasmus" in Herzog's Real-encyclopadie. 
 8 The Pearl of Great Price, p. 122. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 33 
 
 catechism for children by Elder John 
 Jaques. 
 
 4. The assumption that extraordinary 
 events, agreeable to a distinctly super- 
 natural regime, will signalize the intro- 
 duction and progress of the millennium. 
 That there will be a display of resist- 
 less might at the inauguration and 
 during the continuance of the millen- 
 nium is the common postulate of 
 pronounced Adventism. The display is 
 conceived to have, on the one hand, 
 an aspect of marvelous beneficence 
 and, on the other, of terrible retrib- 
 utive wrath. With the Adventist bod- 
 ies, since they commonly terminate the 
 season of grace at the second advent, 
 as was noticed above, the saints are 
 made the sole subjects of the beneficent 
 intervention of divine power. For the 
 rest of mankind the new age proffers 
 nothing but destruction. Other repre- 
 sentatives of pronounced Adventism 
 are generally minded to take a broader 
 view of the beneficent ministry which 
 
34 STUDIES IN 
 
 obtains in the millennial period. Very 
 glowing pictures find place in their 
 writings. Thus Peters remarks: "The 
 supernatural is held in abeyance as 
 to its outward manifestation until the 
 time arrives for the restoration of the 
 forfeited blessing, the personal dwell- 
 ing of God with man, which shall be 
 experienced in this kingdom. When 
 Jesus, of supernatural origin and glo- 
 rified by supernatural power, shall come 
 the second time unto salvation, his 
 supernatural might shall be exerted in 
 behalf of this kingdom in the most 
 astonishing manner." 1 The curse will 
 be taken off from physical nature, and 
 men will be refreshed inwardly by a 
 greater Pentecost. 2 A like point of 
 view is embodied in these words of 
 Seiss: "Men may scoff, and say that 
 we are degrading the blessed Saviour 
 to a level with earthly monarchs, and 
 surrounding him with the miserable 
 
 1 The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 81. 
 
 2 Ibid., II. 143, 144, III. 64. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 35 
 
 trappings of their foul courts. They 
 may ridicule us, and say that we are 
 dragging down the throne of heaven's 
 King to place it amid graves, alms- 
 houses, hospitals, penitentiaries, labor- 
 prisons, sickly cities, and worn-out 
 states. But they forget that the 
 promise is that Christ shall make all 
 things new and banish forever all these 
 evidences and emblems of depravity 
 and sin. They forget that death is 
 to be swallowed up of life, and the 
 whole sentence of the world's curse 
 rescinded." 1 "During the kingdom 
 age," writes C. T. Scofield, "when 
 Jesus Christ is reigning here, he will 
 not suffer even the beasts to tear 
 each other." 2 
 
 The opposite picture, furnished by 
 the unsparing exercise of sovereign 
 retributive might, is also sketched 
 with a bold hand. "God does not 
 delight," writes Peters, "in employing 
 
 i The Last Times, p. 135. 
 
 2 Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, p. 46. 
 
36 STUDIES IN 
 
 violence, but force terrible and destruc- 
 tive must be used. ... A theocracy 
 embracing a pure infallibility, adminis- 
 tered through righteous and glorified 
 agents, is to possess the rule over 
 the earth. Fallible imperialism, con- 
 stitutional monarchy, and republican- 
 ism must be subverted and give place 
 to this one. . . . All that oppose this 
 coming kingdom and its august ruler 
 shall be destroyed." 1 "That a period 
 of awful and destructive judgments 
 on apostate Christendom/ ' says Guin- 
 ness, "is to prepare the way for the 
 full establishment of the millennial 
 throne of Christ, and the world-wide 
 recognition of his peaceful righteous 
 sway, is abundantly clear, but the 
 precise nature, duration, and effect 
 of these judgments it is impossible to 
 define." 2 "Instead of calling the world 
 during the millennial age," declares 
 C. T. Russell, "the Lord will command 
 
 i The Theocratic Kingdom, II. 775, 780. 
 
 2 The Approaching End of the Age, pp. 487, 488. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 37 
 
 them — command obedience to the prin- 
 ciples of righteousness; and every 
 creature will be required (not requested) 
 to render obedience to the millennial 
 government, otherwise he will receive 
 stripes for his disobedience, and ulti- 
 mately will be destroyed from amongst 
 the people.' n 
 
 Those who anticipate that the mil- 
 lennium will be a period of efficient 
 evangelism find a support for their 
 expectation in the binding of Satan 
 for this period. 2 The Seventh-Day 
 Adventists recognize the fact of the 
 binding, but give it little else than 
 a spectacular significance. 3 According 
 to their scheme, there are no sinful 
 men in conscious existence during the 
 thousand years, and the saints through- 
 out the same interval are sheltered in 
 
 1 Studies in the Scriptures, VI. 93. 
 
 2 See, among others, West, The Thousand Years in Both Testa- 
 ments, p. 286; Simpson, The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 19; Guin- 
 ness, Light for the Last Days, pp. 563-569; J. F. Silver, The 
 Lord's Return, pp. 219, 257; R. McWatty Russell and B. W. 
 Riley in Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, pp. 61, 108. 
 
 8 Fundamental Principles of Seventh-Day Adventists, No. 27. 
 
38 STUDIES IN 
 
 a heavenly sphere. This party of 
 Adventists have been charged with 
 canceling the doctrine of the millennial 
 kingdom since, whatever recognition 
 they may accord to a visible advent 
 of Christ, they assign him no visible 
 reign upon earth till after the expira- 
 tion of the thousand years. It may 
 be noticed also that among the Ad- 
 vent Christians a division of opinion 
 exists as respects the fact of a future 
 millennium. 
 
 In the customary thesis of ardent 
 pre-millennialists the visibility both of 
 the advent and of the reign of Christ 
 in the millennial period are assumed. 
 It suits, however, the convenience of 
 C. T. Russell to deny both the one 
 and the other. In this way he secures 
 a species of shelter against exposure 
 of the utter failure of his chronological 
 calculations; at least he would have 
 done so if his discretion had not< 
 failed him on a capital point. 1 
 
 1 See page 42. . 
 
RECENT ADVEN.TISM 39 
 
 As respects the subjects of the first 
 resurrection, or that which takes place 
 at the opening of the millennium, a 
 large proportion of Adventist writers 
 give a very broad interpretation to the 
 words of the Revelator, and include 
 with the martyrs all the righteous 
 dead. For the most part they sup- 
 pose the resurrection of the wicked 
 to be deferred to the close of the 
 millennium. Both points are stated 
 very explicitly by A. B. Simpson as 
 follows: "The Scriptures distinctly 
 speak of two judgments — the judgment 
 of the saints, which is a time of gra- 
 cious recompense and reward for the 
 services of his people, and the judg- 
 ment of the wicked, which is entirely 
 different — a dark and dreadful day 
 when men shall be judged according 
 to their works, and not on the prin- 
 ciples of grace at all. They speak as 
 distinctly of two resurrections, namely, 
 the resurrection of the saints at Christ's 
 coming, in which the wicked shall have 
 
40 STUDIES IN 
 
 no part, and then the resurrection of 
 all the remaining dead at the end of 
 the millennium and on the morning 
 of the judgment of the Great Day." 1 
 One of the minor bodies of Advent- 
 ists — the Life and Advent Union— de- 
 nies altogether the resurrection of the 
 wicked. 
 
 5. Stress upon the nearness of the 
 second advent. This feature in recent 
 Adventism is too common to require 
 confirmatory citations. All the writers 
 in our list commend the attitude of 
 earnest expectancy, and many of them 
 are inclined to discover in the more 
 notable events of the times signs that 
 the Lord is about to return. Not 
 infrequently enthusiastic anticipation 
 has stimulated to attempts to fix the 
 date. Cunninghame attached great 
 importance to the year 1839, and 
 while he did not undertake to locate 
 
 1 The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 36, 37. Compare dimming, 
 Apocalyptic Sketches, pp. 445, 458; Guinness, The Approach- 
 ing End of the Age, pp. 57-61; Gordon, Ecce Venit, p. 268; Mun- 
 hall, The Lord's Return, pp. 95-103. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 41 
 
 precisely the end of the dispensation, 
 he felt assured that the commencement 
 of the mighty catastrophe was "at 
 the very door." 1 William Miller, as 
 has been observed, selected first 1843 
 and then 1844 as certain to witness 
 the great crisis. 2 E. B. Elliott, while 
 not naming a specific year, concluded 
 that the chronological data of the 
 Bible warrant the inference that the 
 end belongs in the neighborhood of 
 1866. 3 Cumming took a substantially 
 identical position. 4 Seiss favored the 
 supposition that the second advent 
 would occur by 1870, and was con- 
 fident that it would take place before 
 the end of the nineteenth century. 5 
 A pamphlet issued in 1866 under the 
 names of S. S. Brewer and A. Decker 
 took the ground that the second ad- 
 vent would occur not later than 1867, 
 
 1 The Scientific Chronology of the Year 1839. 
 
 2 Course of Lectures. 
 
 » Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. IV. 
 
 * The End or the Proximate Signs of the Close of the Dispensa- 
 tion, pp. 72, 73. 
 
 * The Last Times, p. 269. 
 
42 STUDIES IN 
 
 and one published anonymously in 
 1871 argued confidently for the coming 
 of Christ in 1873. One writer has 
 claimed — with what right we are not 
 able to say — that more than a hundred 
 expositions have put the crisis between 
 1866 and 1875. 1 Guinness expressed 
 the conviction that the beginning of 
 the millennial age could not well be 
 placed later than about 1923. 2 C. T. 
 Russell considered himself authorized 
 to enlighten his fellow men by the 
 publication of the following eschato- 
 logical programme: The seventh thou- 
 sand-year period began with the year 
 1873. In the following year Christ 
 made his second advent, which took 
 place invisibly. In 1878 the apostles 
 and other overcomers belonging to the 
 gospel age were raised and introduced 
 to a share in the millennial reign in 
 company with Christ. In 1914 the 
 world powers are to be overthrown 
 
 i M. Baxter, The Great Crisis at the Period of 1867 to 1875. 
 » The Approaching End of the Age, pp. 472-487. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 43 
 
 and the visible rule of Israel, now at 
 length installed over the kingdom of 
 God, is to be introduced. 1 
 
 The Mormons have not been much 
 given to calculating precise dates. 
 Joseph Smith, however, is reputed to 
 have been assured that if he lived 
 to be eighty-five years of age he 
 would see the face of the Son of man. 2 
 The Irvingites in the early period of 
 their history cherished a very strong 
 conviction of the imminence of the 
 second coming. Among the dates fa- 
 vored by them were 1835, 1838, and 
 especially 1866. 3 The Plymouth Breth- 
 ren wholly escaped the temptation to 
 specify exact dates, but in vivid ex- 
 pectancy they were not behind con- 
 temporary parties. "If anyone had 
 told the first Brethren that three 
 quarters of a century might elapse 
 and the Church be still on earth, 
 
 1 Studies in the Scriptures. For specifications on the 1914 
 crisis see III. 228, IV. 616, VI. 579. 
 
 2 Doctrine and Covenants, cxxx. 14-17. 
 
 3 E. Miller, History and Doctrines of Irvingism, II. 6-10. 
 
44 RECENT ADVENTISM 
 
 the answer would probably have been 
 a smile, partly of pity, partly of 
 disapproval, wholly of incredulity. 1 
 
 Naturally, the great European con- 
 flict, beginning in 1914, has power- 
 fully stimulated Adventist fancy, and 
 references to the gathering of the 
 nations to the battle of Armageddon 
 have been frequent. 
 
 *W. B. Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren, p. 339. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SOME SPECIAL TEACHINGS OF 
 ADVENTIST PARTIES 
 
 The reference here is to views 
 which have gained a right of way 
 in one or more of the Adventist com- 
 munions and in the party for which 
 C. T. Russell acts as spokesman. 
 Representatives of Adventism in the 
 larger communions have no sympathy 
 with them. Perhaps, however, a par- 
 tial exception should be made in case 
 of the second in the list of special 
 teachings. 
 
 1. The unconsciousness or nonexist- 
 ence of the dead. With the exception 
 of the Evangelical Adventists, the de- 
 nominations which issued from the 
 Millerite movement deny the immor- 
 tality of the soul, maintain that the 
 dead are in a state of complete uncon- 
 sciousness, and, in so far as they 
 
 45 
 
46 STUDIES IN 
 
 assume the resurrection of the wicked, 
 assert that they are raised only to be 
 annihilated after a brief interval. Wil- 
 liam Miller himself did not accept 
 this order of belief, but it early gained 
 a foothold among his followers, and 
 before his death (1849) had come into 
 the ascendant. 1 A daughter of Miller 
 expressed the opinion that if her father 
 had lived a year longer, he would un- 
 doubtedly have embraced the doctrine 
 of the unconscious state of the dead. 2 
 
 In the development and defense of 
 the doctrine of the suspended or can- 
 celed existence of the dead, Adventist 
 teaching manifested a tendency to 
 adopt materialistic premises. A con- 
 spicuous example is afforded by Miles 
 Grant. As between matter and spirit 
 he gives a distinct primacy to matter, 
 affirming that all power primarily pro- 
 ceeds from that which is material, and 
 making spirit in itself destitute of life, 
 
 1 Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 508-518. 
 
 2 J. V. Himes, A Brief History of William Miller, p. 300. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 47 
 
 consciousness, and intelligence. 1 "All 
 personalities/ ' he says, "have bodily 
 organs. All immaterial things are but 
 properties of material bodies, and cease 
 with them. The mind of man is not 
 an entity, but the product of that 
 wonderful organ called the brain.' n 
 This point of view he applies to God 
 as well as to man, and brings out a 
 representation of a localized Deity 
 that strongly reminds of the Mormon 
 conception. 3 It is fair to add that, 
 while many of Grant's brethren among 
 the Advent \ Christians accept his 
 views, others criticize them as being 
 too materialistic. 
 
 A theory in line with that of Grant 
 as respects the interpretation of hu- 
 man personality is advocated by C. 
 T. Russell. Death, he affirms, intro- 
 duces to a period of absolute uncon- 
 sciousness — more than that, it is a 
 period of absolute nonexistence, except 
 
 1 Positive Theology, pp. 50, 51. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 302. 
 
 » Ibid., pp. 317-326. 
 
48 STUDIES IN 
 
 as men are preserved in the Father's 
 purpose and power. Hence the awak- 
 ening from death, to those restored, 
 will mean a revival of consciousness 
 from the exact moment and standpoint 
 where consciousness was lost in death. 
 "As applied to the dead, sleep is 
 merely an accommodated term, for 
 really the dead are dead, utterly 
 destroyed/ n 
 
 A recent statement puts the belief 
 of Seventh-Day Adventists in these 
 terms: "When the spirit goes back 
 to God, the dust, from which man 
 was made a 'living souF in the begin- 
 ning, goes back as it was to the earth, 
 and the individual no longer exists as 
 a living, conscious, thinking being, ex- 
 cept as he exists in the mind, plan, 
 and purpose of God, through Christ 
 and the resurrection." 2 
 
 2. The doctrine of the little flock. 
 While representatives of Adventism 
 
 1 Studies in the Scriptures, V. 329, 346. 
 
 2 Bible Readings for the Home Circle, p. 507. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 49 
 
 very commonly have emphasized the 
 office of the present dispensation as 
 being that of gathering out an elect 
 people, a special flock of Christ — and 
 some of them have put this point 
 very strongly — none of them, so far 
 as we have observed, has duplicated 
 the description of the little flock, 
 which is given by C. T. Russell. 
 According to his characterization, the 
 little flock is composed exclusively of 
 those who have been drawn from the 
 gospel dispensation. No Old Testa- 
 ment saint, whatever his spiritual rank, 
 is admitted to a place in this select 
 body. Furthermore, in point of destiny 
 the members of the little flock are 
 distinguished from all others who at- 
 tain unto salvation; they share in the 
 perfection of the divine nature, while 
 the perfection of human nature is the 
 highest goal for all the rest. "God's 
 plan of salvation for the general race 
 of Adam," it is claimed, "is to extend 
 to each member of it, during the 
 
50 STUDIES IN 
 
 millennium, the offer of eternal life 
 upon the terms of the new covenant 
 sealed for all with the precious blood 
 of the Lamb. But there is no sug- 
 gestion anywhere that immortality, the 
 divine nature, will ever be offered or 
 granted to any except the elect Church 
 of the gospel age — the little flock, 
 the bride, the Lamb's wife. For the 
 others of Adam's race the offer will 
 be 'restitution' to life and health and 
 perfection of human nature — the same 
 that Adam possessed as the earthly 
 image of God before his fall from 
 grace into sin and death." 1 
 
 3. Special theory on the cleansing of 
 the sanctuary. This theory has ref- 
 erence to the statement in Daniel 
 viii. 14, that the sanctuary should be 
 cleansed after twenty-three hundred 
 evenings and mornings. Understand- 
 ing this to mean twenty-three hundred 
 days, and the days to be symbolical 
 
 i Studies in the Scriptures, V. 402. See also I. 181, II. 202, 
 IV. 618, VI. 35, 94, 116. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 51 
 
 of so many years, Millerite chron- 
 ologers, reckoning from the decree of 
 Artaxerxes for the rebuilding of Jeru- 
 salem, found a terminus for the period 
 in 1843 or 1844, at which time Christ 
 would come, and the sanctuary, that 
 is, the earth or the land of Palestine, 
 would be cleansed. As the result 
 did not correspond with the prediction, 
 it was concluded by some that, while 
 the cleansing actually took place at 
 the specified date, it was given a 
 wrong connection by being applied to 
 the earthly sanctuary instead of the 
 heavenly. This revised interpretation 
 was accepted as authentic by the 
 Seventh-Day Adventists. In a current 
 statement of their "Fundamental Prin- 
 ciples" we read these propositions: 
 "That the sanctuary of the new 
 covenant is the tabernacle of God in 
 heaven; that this is the sanctuary 
 to be cleansed at the end of two thou- 
 sand and three hundred days, what 
 is termed its cleansing being, in this 
 
52 STUDIES IN 
 
 case, as in the type, simply the en- 
 trance of the high priest into the 
 most holy place, to finish the round 
 of service connected therewith by 
 making the atonement and removing 
 from the sanctuary the sins which 
 had been transferred to it by means 
 of the ministration in the first apart- 
 ment; and this work in the antitype, 
 beginning in 1844, consists in actually 
 blotting out the sins of believers, and 
 occupies a brief, but indefinite space 
 of time at the conclusion of which 
 the work of mercy for the world will 
 be finished, and the second advent 
 of Christ will take place." * 
 
 4. Affirmation of the perpetuity of 
 the Sabbath law. This peculiarity in 
 the scheme of the Seventh-Day Ad- 
 ventists has in itself little connection 
 with our theme. But in its treatment 
 the writers of that communion have 
 implicated it with the imagery of 
 
 1 Nos. 9, 10. Compare J. N. Andrews, The Sanctuary and 
 Twenty-three Hundred Days; Bible Readings for the Home 
 Circle, 1914, pp. 232, 237, 243. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 53 
 
 the book of Revelation, and have 
 given it such a distinct eschatological 
 association that a brief reference to it 
 is justified. Thus J. N. Andrews 
 attributes the putting of Sunday in 
 place of the seventh day to the har- 
 lot Babylon, denounces the Christian 
 world as wearing the mark of the 
 beast and virtually worshiping the 
 beast in its observance of the pagan 
 festival of Sunday, and finds in the 
 Seventh-Day people the object of the 
 predicted persecution by the beast and 
 its allies. 1 A similar strain is indulged 
 in by Uriah Smith. He sees in the 
 observance of the Lord's Sabbath that 
 which "distinguishes the servants of 
 God from those who worship the 
 beast," and discovers in Protestant 
 America the adverse power which is 
 to make war upon those who keep 
 the commandments of God and have 
 the testimony of Jesus. 2 The views 
 
 1 The Three Messages of Revelation xiv. 6-12. 
 * Thoughts on the Book of Revelation, 1865, pp. 127, 128, 
 207, 208. 
 
54 RECENT ADVENTISM 
 
 expressed by Andrews and Smith are 
 repeated in detail in a recent book. 1 
 
 Were it admissible to point a moral 
 in this connection, we should be 
 tempted to remark upon the striking 
 illustration, furnished by the matter 
 of the foregoing paragraph, of how a 
 secondary and dubious item of be- 
 lief, when once turned into a sectarian 
 postulate, can be so magnified in the 
 imagination of its advocates as to 
 govern the whole outlook and to hide 
 the very sun in the heavens. 
 
 i Bible Readings for the Home Circle, 1914, pp. 257, 272, 273, 
 277, 445, 449. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CARDINAL ASSUMPTIONS IN ADVEN- 
 TIST ARGUMENTATION 
 
 1. The need of an essentially literal 
 construction of Old Testament prophecy. 
 Pronounced millennarians have as- 
 serted this demand, especially in rela- 
 tion to the fortunes of Israel. Many 
 predictions bearing on this theme have, 
 they claim, been literally fulfilled; and 
 they infer that the remaining pre- 
 dictions await a fulfillment of the same 
 order, and are not to be disposed of 
 as accommodated, poetical, or sym- 
 bolical picturings. Most of the Ad- 
 ventist bodies, though stanch advocates 
 of literalism where it serves their 
 creed, do not find, as has been noticed, 
 a demand in prophecy for a great and 
 special career of Israel in the future. 
 But other representatives of modern 
 
 55 
 
56 STUDIES IN 
 
 Adventism commonly recognize that 
 demand, and emphasize in this rela- 
 tion the literal character of Old Tes- 
 tament forecasts. A specially strong 
 putting of this point of view is given 
 by West as follows: "A false spiritual- 
 izing, allegorizing, and idealizing inter- 
 pretation has contributed to rob the 
 predictions concerning Israel of their 
 realistic value. . . . The Church does 
 not understand the present age, nor 
 its relation to the coming age, nor 
 Israel's relation to both, and to the 
 nations, and to the Church herself. 
 And this blindness will continue until 
 the false systems of interpretation, by 
 which it has been caused, are rejected. 
 Until the glamour of this enchantment 
 has been dissolved, it is impossible to 
 understand either the organic structure 
 of prophecy, the mission of the Church, 
 the position of our present age, Israel's 
 place in history, the Antichrist, the 
 ages and the ends, the difference be- 
 tween the kingdom and the Church, 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 57 
 
 or the time of Christ's appearing.' n 
 "A large portion of the Old Tes- 
 tament/' writes Peters, "embracing 
 entire chapters and continuous proph- 
 ecies, has not yet been fulfilled, owing 
 to the postponement of the kingdom 
 and the designs of mercy, and hence 
 the period of the Christian Church is 
 an intercalary one extending through 
 the times of the Gentiles; and if we 
 desire to know its destiny, its ultimate 
 condition in the consummation, the 
 Old must be compared with the New." 2 
 The postponement of fulfillment, he 
 goes on to urge, is in no sense an 
 annulment. The literal significance of 
 the prophecies is yet to be realized, 
 dimming contends that the vivid pic- 
 tures of Israel's restoration contained 
 in Isa. xi. 9, xvi. 1, 2, lx, Jer. xxxi. 
 28, 31-34, Ezek. xxxvii, Zech. viii. 
 21-23, xii-xiv, and Rom. xi obtained 
 nothing like an adequate fulfillment in 
 
 J The Thousand Years in Both Testaments, Preface. 
 * The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 158. 
 
58 STUDIES IN 
 
 the scanty recovery of the nation from 
 the Babylonish captivity, and that 
 consequently we must look to the 
 future for the proper counterpart. 1 
 A. J. Gordon remarks: "A literal ful- 
 fillment of threatenings upon Israel 
 argues a literal fulfillment of prom- 
 ises/' 2 Like statements could be cited 
 from A. B. Simpson and others. 
 
 2. Reproduction by Christ and the 
 apostles of the literal Old Testament 
 conception of the kingdom. Those pre- 
 millennialists who subscribe to the pre- 
 ceding assumption naturally subscribe 
 to this also. A very full and em- 
 phatic expression of it is furnished in 
 the magnum opus of pre-millennialism, 
 the massive work of Peters. Having 
 asserted, as an undeniable fact, "that 
 the Jews held to a personal coming 
 of the Messiah, the literal restoration 
 of the Davidic throne and kingdom, 
 the personal reign of Messiah on Da- 
 
 J The End or the Proximate Signs of the Close of the Dispen- 
 sation, pp. 142-158. 
 * Ecce Venit, p. 274. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 59 
 
 vicTs throne, the resultant exaltation 
 of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation, 
 and the fulfillment of the millennial 
 descriptions in that reign," 1 he sub- 
 joins these statements: "John the Bap- 
 tist, Jesus, and the disciples employed 
 the phrases, 'kingdom of heaven/ 'king- 
 dom of God/ etc., in accord with the 
 usage of the Jews. . . . Neither in the 
 New Testament nor in any of the 
 patristic writings do we find the least 
 hint that the doctrine of the kingdom 
 excited any controversy with the Jews, 
 which it undoubtedly would have done 
 if antagonistic to the Jewish view. 
 This is strong corroborative evidence 
 that the doctrine was in accordance 
 with the Jewish Messianic expecta- 
 tions." 2 No sentences in the Gospels, 
 our author claims, involve an opposite 
 conclusion. Referring to the petition 
 in the Lord's Prayer for the coming 
 of the kingdom, he says: "Pre-millen- 
 
 i The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 183. 
 2 Ibid., I. 195, 467. 
 
60 STUDIES IN 
 
 narians are a unit in the application 
 of this petition to a future Messianic 
 kingdom at the second advent" 1 As 
 respects the words of Christ, "The 
 kingdom of God is within you," he 
 interprets them as meaning that the 
 proper seat of the kingdom is within 
 the limits of the covenant nation. 2 
 
 3. Continuance in the early post- 
 apostolic Church of the literal view of 
 the kingdom and of its destined in- 
 stallation at the second advent. The 
 teaching of the early Church up to 
 the middle of the third century, ac- 
 cording to the customary assumption 
 in Adventist argumentation, was of 
 identical tenor with that derived from 
 the Old Testament prophets by Christ 
 and the apostles. The literal view of 
 the kingdom was thoroughly dominant. 
 That this valid conception was sub- 
 sequently crowded out was due, on 
 the one hand, to the intrusion of 
 
 1 The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 695. 
 
 2 Ibid., II. 42. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 61 
 
 Alexandrian or Originistic allegorizing 
 and, on the other, to the bent of a 
 worldly Church to exalt itself over- 
 much by overrating the significance of 
 the present dispensation or the times 
 of the Gentiles. 1 
 
 4. The identity of the fourth empire 
 in the book of Daniel with the Roman, 
 and the persistence of this empire in 
 some form till the second advent. While 
 the first part of this assumption was 
 by no means, prior to the closing 
 decades of the nineteenth century, the 
 exclusive property of the advocates of 
 a pronounced Adventism, such advo- 
 cates had a special motive to cling 
 to it tenaciously, as well as to the 
 second part of the assumption. The 
 double premise provided them with the 
 means of citing prophecy for a future 
 introduction of the kingdom, and 
 served as a convenient basis in making 
 calculations as to the time of that 
 
 1 Seiss, The Last Times, p. 248; Peters, The Theocratic King- 
 dom, I. 39, 244, 326, 499. 
 
62 STUDIES IN 
 
 introduction; in other words, as to 
 the time of the second advent. It is 
 no cause for surprise, therefore, to find 
 the champions of Adventism, whatever 
 their differences on other points, sub- 
 stantially unanimous in holding both 
 clauses of the specified assumption. 
 
 5. The existence in the Bible, and 
 especially in the books of Daniel and 
 Revelation, of unequivocal means of 
 determining, at least approximately, the 
 time of the second advent. The same 
 vitality of interest in calculating the 
 time of the Lord's return cannot be 
 imputed to the entire fist of writers 
 cited in these pages as advocates of 
 a pronounced Adventism. It is true 
 nevertheless that most of them recog- 
 nize in the Bible important data for 
 measuring the existing dispensation and 
 concur in the judgment that its end 
 is in all probability near at hand. 
 In enumerating the biblical data they 
 find it very convenient, not to say 
 essential to their eschatological scheme, 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 63 
 
 to make certain interpretations which 
 have the common aim of giving a 
 very far-reaching scope to prophetical 
 forecasts. 
 
 One of the interpretations subserv- 
 ing this aim is that in which "days," 
 as mentioned in prophetical writings, 
 are construed to mean years. By 
 this exegetical expedient events which 
 otherwise would need to be placed 
 near to the time of the biblical writer 
 can be carried over to a recent or 
 future age. Thus the twelve hundred 
 and ninety days of Daniel xii. 11 can 
 be understood to mean as many years. 
 This year-day theory, as held by its 
 exponents, applies in various connec- 
 tions where longer divisions than days 
 are mentioned, since these divisions are 
 resolved into days and these are then 
 taken as symbolical of years. In 
 this way the "seven times" of Levit- 
 icus xxvi. 18 yield twenty-five hundred 
 and twenty years, a time being equal 
 to a year and a year being reckoned 
 
64 STUDIES IN 
 
 as containing three hundred and sixty 
 days. By a like process the three 
 and one half "times" of Daniel xii. 7 
 furnish a period of twelve hundred 
 and sixty years, and the forty-two 
 months of Revelation xiii. 5 one of 
 the same length. A free employment 
 of this plan of interpretation is uni- 
 versally characteristic of the writers 
 representing professional Adventism, 
 and has been sanctioned, either di- 
 rectly or indirectly, by not a few 
 outside their ranks. 1 
 
 A second special interpretation in 
 the interest of chronological extension 
 is that which construes the "seven 
 kings" of Revelation xvii. 10 as suc- 
 cessive forms of the government of 
 Rome. Guinness gives the following 
 list of the classes of rulers: kings, 
 consuls, dictators, decemvirs, military 
 tribunes, military emperors, and des- 
 
 1 Elliott, Horae Apocalypticae, IV. 237; Guinness, The Ap- 
 proaching End of the Age, pp. 85, 222, 223, 346; Seiss, The Last 
 Times, pp. 269-273; Gordon, Ecce Venit, pp. 203-206; Simpson, 
 The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 113, 218-247. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 65 
 
 potic emperors. 1 William Miller as- 
 signs the seventh place to "kings," 
 understanding by them the rulers of 
 the modern States of Europe. 2 Litch 
 and Simpson bring the series down 
 into the present age by putting the 
 papacy, regarded as heir to the power 
 of Rome, in the seventh place. 3 Uriah 
 Smith prefers to identify the papacy 
 with an eighth who is of the seven, 
 as mentioned in Revelation xvii. II. 4 
 A third special interpretation 
 adapted to the desire to extend 
 prophetic forecasts across a very wide 
 field consists in making the ten toes of 
 the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, 
 also the ten horns of Daniel vii. 7 and 
 of Revelation xiii. 1, xvii. 3, 7, 12, to 
 be symbolical of ten kingdoms, which 
 are to be identified with divisions of 
 the Roman empire and to be regarded 
 as still subsisting on the European 
 
 1 The Approaching End of the Age, p. 162. 
 
 2 Lectures, p. 80. 
 
 3 The Probability of the Second Coming of Christ about A. D. 
 1843; The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 116. 
 
 * Thoughts on the Book of Revelation, pp. 269, 270. 
 
66 STUDIES IN 
 
 continent. William Miller, using mod- 
 ern names, gave the list of the ten 
 kingdoms as follows: France, Britain, 
 Spain, Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, Aus- 
 tria, Lombardy, Rome, and Ravenna. 1 
 Seiss taught, "These ten kingdoms 
 originally embraced the Huns, the 
 Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Franks, 
 the Sueves, the Burgundians, the Her- 
 ulians and Thuringians, the Saxons and 
 the Longobards. At present they per- 
 haps embrace the three Papal States, 
 Naples, Tuscany, Austria, Great Brit- 
 ain, France, Portugal, and Spain." 2 
 Miles Grant specified the original ten 
 divisions as follows: Vandals, Gepidae, 
 Saxons, Britons, Suevi, Ostrogoths, Al- 
 lemanni, Burgundians, Visigoths and 
 Franks. 3 Litch gave this enumera- 
 tion: Huns, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, 
 Franks, Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians, 
 Heruli, Anglo-Saxons, and Lombards; 
 and the like enumeration was repeated 
 
 1 Lectures, p. 46. 
 
 2 The Last Times, p. 173. 
 
 3 Positive Theology, p. 359. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 67 
 
 by Uriah Smith. 1 Cumming wrote out 
 a list which differs in some particulars 
 from any one of the preceding. 2 Vari- 
 ous other writers, while confidently 
 asserting the reference in prophecy to 
 ten still surviving kingdoms, have pre- 
 ferred, with Peters, 3 not to attempt 
 to name them. 
 
 A further special interpretation se- 
 cures a long reach for prophetic inti- 
 mations by applying certain symbols 
 in Daniel and the apocalypse to papal 
 Rome and its predestined overthrow. 
 Here belong the little horn of Daniel 
 vii. 8, and Babylon, the mother of 
 harlots, as described in Revelation 
 xvii. So common has been the given 
 application of these symbols that one 
 would need to search narrowly to find 
 exceptions among stanch exponents of 
 the Adventist scheme. We notice, 
 however, a writer who made Napoleon 
 III a rival of the pope as respects the 
 
 1 Thoughts on the Book of Daniel, p. 62. 
 
 2 Apocalyptic Sketches, p. 281. 
 
 » The Theocratic Kingdom, II. 707. 
 
68 STUDIES IN 
 
 role of Antichrist, and who testified 
 that others entertained a like view 
 of the French emperor. 1 
 
 Still another special interpretation, 
 which serves the purpose of connecting 
 prophecy with the present and the 
 impending age, might be mentioned. 
 Out of the great storehouse of Daniel 
 and the book of Revelation various 
 writers derive intimations of the pre- 
 cise epoch, if not of the downfall of 
 the Ottoman empire, at least of the 
 decisive beginning of its fatal decline. 
 Cumming placed this crisis at 1820, 
 William Miller at 1839, and Guinness 
 said it might be placed either at 1844 
 or 1919, according to the starting- 
 point assumed in the reckoning. 
 
 In applying the biblical data de- 
 duced by the foregoing interpretations, 
 Adventist chronologers have reached 
 somewhat diverse results, inasmuch as 
 they have not been agreed as to the 
 proper starting points in the reckoning 
 
 i M. Baxter, The Great Crisis at the Period of 1867 to 1875. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 69 
 
 — a matter which the biblical state- 
 ments often leave quite indeterminate. 
 This fact may be illustrated in rela- 
 tion to the longest of the periods 
 of which note is taken, the twenty- 
 five hundred and twenty years deduced 
 from Leviticus xxvi. 18, and often 
 characterized as the "Times of the 
 Gentiles." William Miller reckoned 
 from the captivity of Manasseh — lo- 
 cated by him at B. C. 677— and so 
 found the terminus in A. D. 1843. 
 Guinness, taking the final conquest of 
 Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar in B. C. 
 598 as the latest possible date, con- 
 cluded that the terminus on the basis 
 of lunar years would be 1848, and on 
 the basis of solar years 1923. C. T. 
 Russell, placing Nebuchadnezzar's con- 
 quest of Israel at B. C. 606 and 
 reckoning from that date, concluded 
 that the twenty-five hundred and 
 twenty years would end in 1914. Bax- 
 ter, assuming that the captivity under 
 Manasseh is to be dated at B. C. 647, 
 
70 STUDIES IN 
 
 placed the end of the Times of the 
 Gentiles at 1873-75. 
 
 The element of dubiety in relation 
 to starting points may also be illus- 
 trated in connection with the period 
 assigned to the papacy. This period, 
 according to a pretty wide agreement, 
 is twelve hundred and sixty years, 
 corresponding to the number of days 
 in the "time, times, and half a time" 
 of Daniel xii. 7 and in the "forty and 
 two months" of Revelation xiii. 5. 
 But from what point the reckoning 
 should start has remained a matter 
 of considerable uncertainty. Miller 
 and his school of writers placed the 
 beginning of the papal epoch at A. D. 
 538, making this the date of an edict 
 of Justinian which was estimated to 
 be very serviceable to the supremacy 
 of the Roman bishop. 1 They accord- 
 ingly located the end of the papal 
 epoch at 1798 when Napoleon cast the 
 
 1 They did not intend to deny that the edict was issued in 533, 
 but found it convenient to fix upon 538 as the time when it be- 
 came effective. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 71 
 
 reigning pope into the dust and ef- 
 fected, if not the destruction of the 
 papacy, a great abridgment of its 
 prestige. Others, as Elliott and Cum- 
 ming, putting the decree of Justinian 
 several years earlier, locate the ter- 
 minus of the twelve hundred and 
 sixty years near the opening of the 
 French Revolution. Guinness con- 
 cludes that three possible dates for 
 the beginning of the given period 
 may be specified — the year 533, marked 
 by the decree of Justinian; the year 
 606, when the Emperor Phocas took 
 action favorable to the universal juris- 
 diction of the Roman bishop; and 
 the year 663, when Pope Vitalian 
 enjoined the services of the Church 
 to be read in Latin throughout Chris- 
 tendom. The terminal dates corre- 
 sponding to these several beginnings 
 would be 1793, 1866-70, and 1923. 
 Gordon writes that inasmuch as the 
 papacy came in by stages, it may be 
 expected to go out in the same fashion, 
 
72 STUDIES IN 
 
 and specifies the years 1790, 1848, and 
 1868 as marking important steps to- 
 ward the final overthrow. 
 
 It has been noticed that in the 
 Millerite calculations Daniel viii. 14 
 was understood to name twenty-three 
 hundred days, and these to be sym- 
 bolical of years. A question may be 
 raised as to whether the original 
 specifies twenty-three hundred days, 
 since it names "evenings and morn- 
 ings," and the sum of the two may 
 be regarded as expressed by the stated 
 number. A double ground of dubiety, 
 therefore, attaches to the construction 
 put upon this verse, since both the 
 starting point and the length of the 
 period assumed in that construction 
 can be challenged. A double ground 
 of uncertainty attaches likewise to the 
 Millerite conclusion based on the 
 twelve hundred and ninety days of 
 Daniel xii. 11. Perhaps it would be 
 better to say that the conclusion rests 
 upon an uncertainty as to the starting 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 73 
 
 point contemplated by the biblical 
 writer and upon a plain mistaking of 
 the event to which he refers, since 
 there are good reasons for identifying 
 that event with the interruption of 
 the Jewish temple service rather than 
 with the abolition of paganism in the 
 Roman empire. 1 
 
 The intelligent reader, we surmise, 
 will gain the impression, in advance 
 of any formal criticism, that the 
 chronological construction of recent 
 Adventism rests upon very uncertain 
 foundations. We hope, before the con- 
 clusion of the next chapter, to afford 
 matter adapted to strengthen that 
 impression. 
 
 1 Thus the doing away with the continual (Dan. viii. 13, 14) 
 has often been interpreted in Adventist circles. It is to be ob- 
 served, however, that a recent interpretation makes the continual 
 to refer to Christ's mediation in heaven as being thrust aside in 
 the intention of the Roman apostasy (Bible Readings for the 
 Home Circle, 1914, pp. 227-229). 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE CARDINAL 
 ASSUMPTIONS 
 
 1. Considering these assumptions 
 in the order in which they have been 
 given, we notice, in the first place, 
 the literal character claimed for the 
 Old Testament forecasts of the king- 
 dom and of Israel's destined eminence 
 in the kingdom. This is no well- 
 established postulate } and a careful 
 review of the conditions does not 
 permit that it should be rated as 
 even probable. The Old Testament 
 prophets, as sharing in the common 
 limitations of men, were compelled, to 
 a large extent, to make use of local 
 colors in picturing the unfoldments of 
 the kingdom of God in the world. 
 They could not deny their environ- 
 ment in this matter any more than 
 we can deny our environment when we 
 
 74 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 75 
 
 attempt to picture the immortal life. 
 The city with its walls and gates, the 
 trees and fountains, the harpers harp- 
 ing with their harps, the marriage 
 supper of the Lamb — what are these 
 but symbols taken from our visible 
 surroundings wherewith we attempt to 
 picture that which lies beyond the 
 range of clear knowledge? New Tes- 
 tament writers filled with the pro- 
 phetic spirit could not do better than 
 to employ such symbols. Plainly, then, 
 it would be unwarrantable to expect 
 the Hebrew prophets to escape accom- 
 modation to their surroundings in their 
 pictures of the fortunes in store for 
 the kingdom of God upon earth. In 
 those surroundings were potent factors 
 — such as the records of the national 
 history, national aspirations, convic- 
 tions and hopes wrought into the 
 religious fiber of the earnest and the 
 devout — which combined to place Is- 
 rael before the minds of the prophets 
 as occupying a central place in the 
 
76 STUDIES IN 
 
 kingdom. To ask them to paint that 
 kingdom in its full universality and 
 its transcendence of national limita- 
 tions would be asking them to deny 
 the horizon within which they stood, 
 and to place themselves within one of 
 a vastly different order. They wrote 
 as they were under practical com- 
 pulsion to write, and as might be 
 expected of them, even were it in the 
 divine plan that the Jewish dispensa- 
 tion should survive the installation of 
 the Christian dispensation only in and 
 through the great religious contribution 
 which it should make to Christianity. 
 In the higher point of view, to sur- 
 vive in this endlessly fruitful and 
 inestimable contribution can easily ap- 
 pear as more honorable and glorious 
 than to be appointed heir to any 
 sort of temporal position and distinc- 
 tion. A petty nation exercising earthly 
 jurisdiction in Palestine is a far less 
 enkindling subject to contemplate than 
 Israel made immortal in its spiritual 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 77 
 
 work and going forward in the power 
 of an universal religion to make con- 
 quest of the world. 
 
 Again a ground for qualifying the 
 literal character of many of the de- 
 scriptions penned by the Hebrew 
 prophets lies in the fact that these 
 descriptions are in the form of im- 
 passioned poetry. Many of them no 
 more need to be construed as matter- 
 of-fact statements than does the decla- 
 ration in the Psalms that the righteous 
 man is safeguarded by angelic hands 
 from dashing his foot against a stone. 
 Furthermore, we are warned against 
 taking the path of strict literalism by 
 the plainly intended application of 
 some of the most glowing of the 
 prophetical forecasts to the fortunes 
 of Israel in a future no further ahead 
 than the restoration from the Assyrian 
 and Babylonian captivities. Observe 
 how elements in the environment of 
 their epoch enter into the fervid strains 
 of Isaiah (chapters xi, xxv, xxx, xlv, 
 
78 STUDIES IN 
 
 lii), and of Jeremiah (chapter xxxii). 
 If the prophets could employ such 
 language in describing the resurrection 
 of the nation from the desolations 
 wrought by Assyrian and Babylonian 
 power, what demand is there for taking 
 their high-wrought figures as portray- 
 ing destinies not to be fulfilled till 
 thousands of years after the first 
 coming of the Messiah? Possibly in 
 one or another of these chapters pre- 
 monition vaguely transcends the era 
 with which the prophet is more di- 
 rectly concerned; but in any case his 
 glowing imagery is applied in large 
 part to the era of Israel's recovery 
 from the Assyrian and Babylonian 
 woes, and presumes upon the existence 
 in the neighborhood of Israel of polit- 
 ical factors which have long since 
 vanished. Undeniable illustration is 
 therefore given of the wide swing of 
 prophetic idealism; and we see that 
 millennarians make gratuitous demands 
 when they contend that a far-reaching 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 79 
 
 and substantially literal fulfillment of 
 the ideal pictures of the prophets is 
 still to be witnessed. A more reliable 
 plan of interpretation is that which 
 respects the point of view expressed 
 in these words of the eminent Old 
 Testament scholar, A. B. Davidson: 
 "Prophecy is what the prophet in 
 his age and circumstances and dis- 
 pensation meant; fulfillment is the 
 form in which his great religious con- 
 ceptions will gain validity in other 
 ages, in different circumstances, and 
 under another dispensation. Certain 
 elements, therefore, of the relative, 
 the circumstantial, and the dispensa- 
 tional, must be stripped away and 
 not expected to go into fulfillment." 1 
 
 The contention that the threaten- 
 ings against Israel were literally ful- 
 filled, and that accordingly a literal 
 fulfillment of promises, or a fulfillment 
 going very far beyond that effected 
 
 1 Article Prophecy and Prophets in Hastings's Dictionary of 
 the Bible. 
 
80 STUDIES IN 
 
 in the recovery from the Babylonish 
 captivity, is to be expected, finds an 
 answer in these considerations: Com- 
 plete fulfillment of promises is to be 
 regarded as dependent upon complete 
 national response to ethical and re- 
 ligious conditions. Furthermore, the 
 literal fulfillment that went on record 
 is by no means to be rated as scanty. 
 When Israel had been trodden down 
 and dispersed by the Assyrians and 
 Babylonians, according to all earthly 
 analogy the day of absolute and irre- 
 mediable doom had come. That she 
 was reinstated and enabled to become 
 the theater of the most marvelous 
 chapter in human history, was in 
 virtue of an astonishing national resur- 
 rection. The illuminated minds of the 
 prophets, foreseeing a people as good as 
 dead and buried thus coming forth and 
 entering into the great ways of Jeho- 
 vah, naturally felt justified, and were 
 justified, in sketching the anticipated 
 deliverance in fervid speech. Much 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 81 
 
 of what they wrote can be seen, if 
 we put aside a false numerical standard, 
 to have its counterpart in the mar- 
 velous historical outcome. Add now 
 due allowance for the poetical strain 
 in prophetical delineations, and the 
 reason put forward for demanding a 
 further and more distinctive fulfill- 
 ment may be regarded as substantially 
 overcome. 
 
 In writing upon this topic we realize 
 that the verdict of modern critical 
 scholarship is not likely to make much 
 impression upon the majority of those 
 devoted to an emphatic Adventist 
 creed. Higher criticism is very com- 
 monly mentioned by them in terms 
 of wholesale denunciation. This may 
 be controversially convenient, but it 
 is not judicial. Extreme views may 
 have been advocated by one and 
 another critic; but careful and thor- 
 oughly sustained inductions have also 
 been furnished in the sphere of modern 
 critical investigation of the Old Tes- 
 
82 STUDIES IN 
 
 tament. When Adventist apologists 
 dismiss or ignore these, on no better 
 ground than an indiscriminate denun- 
 ciation of the critics, they would do 
 well to inquire seriously whether their 
 motive is the desire to guard the Bible 
 from injustice, and not rather the 
 importunate wish to shield their own 
 special interpretations of the Bible 
 from disquieting attack. 
 
 2. The next cardinal assumption, or 
 that which affirms the reproduction by 
 Christ and the apostles of the literal 
 conception of the kingdom, as normally 
 extracted from the Old Testament, is 
 subject to challenge on account of its 
 radical one-sidedness. It is true that 
 a literal notion of the kingdom of 
 God as an earthly dominion, in which 
 the Jewish nation should have the 
 primacy, was quite firmly intrenched 
 in the minds of the Jews at the com- 
 ing of Christ. It is true also that 
 there are some indications that this 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 83 
 
 notion had gained such a lodgment in 
 the minds of the primitive disciples 
 that it was difficult to dislodge it, 
 or to force it into the background, 
 all at once. But, on the other hand, 
 it is to be observed, that a contrasted 
 view came within the circle of New 
 Testament thought, a view accordant 
 with the placing of the major em- 
 phasis on the spiritual nature of the 
 kingdom. An ample basis for this 
 improved conception was supplied in 
 the discourses of Christ. The Master, 
 it may be granted, gave a place to a 
 certain outward aspect of the kingdom, 
 in presenting it betimes as something 
 future and destined to be brought 
 to manifestation by a glorious dis- 
 play of divine power. But he pro- 
 vided nevertheless an offset to Jewish 
 narrowness and externalism on the 
 theme of the kingdom, and that in 
 a twofold way. On the one hand he 
 lifted the notion of the kingdom above 
 the Jewish plane in substantially dis- 
 
84 STUDIES IN 
 
 carding the national connections by 
 which it was bound in contemporary 
 thought. He contrasted the new order 
 of things which he came to establish 
 with the ancient Old Testament order 
 (Matt. ix. 17). He declared that 
 many shall come from the east and 
 the west and occupy a place in the 
 kingdom which Israelites shall be found 
 unworthy to occupy (Matt. viii. 11, 
 12), and that as a people they shall 
 be dispossessed of the Lord's vineyard 
 and see it let out to other husbandmen 
 (Matt. xxi. 33-45). In harmony with 
 this recession of the national point 
 of view he gave injunction for the 
 preaching of the gospel, not simply 
 within Jewish boundaries, but to all 
 nations (Matt, xxviii. 19). On the 
 other hand, in numerous instances he 
 spiritualized the notion of the king- 
 dom by using words which obviously 
 imply that it is a present and interior 
 reality. Such an implication lies in 
 the words which Christ addressed to 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 85 
 
 the Pharisees: "The publicans and 
 harlots go into the kingdom of God 
 before you." "Ye shut the kingdom 
 of heaven against men; for ye enter 
 not in yourselves, neither suffer ye 
 them that are entering in to enter" 
 (Matt. xxi. 31, xxiii. 13). The same 
 view is embraced in Christ's approving 
 response to the scribe, "Thou art not 
 far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 
 xii. 34). The kingdom is also de- 
 scribed as here and now in the words 
 with which Christ replied to Pharisaic 
 calumny. "If I by the Spirit of God 
 cast out devils, then is the kingdom 
 of God come unto you" (Matt. xii. 28). 
 The same may be said of the whole 
 list of parables in which the kingdom 
 is likened to the sprouting and growth 
 of grain, to the development of a 
 mustard seed, to the working of leaven, 
 to the finding of a treasure hid in 
 the field, and to the obtaining at large 
 cost of the goodly pearl. Further, the 
 collocation of petitions in the Lord's 
 
86 STUDIES IN 
 
 Prayer contains a plain suggestion 
 that the coming of the kingdom is 
 identical with the doing of God's 
 will on earth as it is done in heaven. 
 Very clearly the present subsistence 
 and the spiritual character of the 
 kingdom are declared in this sentence: 
 "The kingdom of God cometh not 
 with observation, neither shall men 
 say, Lo, here, or there! for lo, the 
 kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 
 xvii. 20, 21). * In short, it is quite 
 evident that advocates of pronounced 
 Adventism have, in numerous in- 
 stances, constructed a much too nar- 
 row mold for Christ's teaching. The 
 import of that teaching is not to be 
 judged by reference to a few phrases 
 which he may have used in accom- 
 modation to contemporary modes of 
 speech. Intrinsically so comprehensive 
 
 1 The possible, but less eligible reading, "The kingdom of God 
 is in the midst of you," does not contradict the spiritual character 
 of the kingdom, for if present, and still hidden from observers, 
 it must be in the invisible order. G. N. H. Peters's interpreta- 
 tion, as noticed in a previous connection, is incongruous with the 
 whole gist of the passage- 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 87 
 
 a theme as that of the kingdom is 
 adapted to give rise to a variety of 
 representations. Viewed as to its 
 source and central principle the king- 
 dom is the realized moral rule of 
 God; viewed as to the relations of 
 its subjects, it is an ideal society. 
 Regarded as a sum of spiritual goods 
 which accompany or result from the 
 realized rule of God, the kingdom can 
 be spoken of as a treasure to be 
 received; regarded as the domain where 
 a divine and heavenly regime obtains, 
 it can be described as a province or 
 sphere to be entered. As already 
 inaugurated and in process of de- 
 velopment, the kingdom is here and 
 now; as awaiting a great consum- 
 mating stage, it is yet to come. All 
 these aspects are represented explic- 
 itly or implicitly in the teachings of 
 Christ. 1 
 
 In respect of the apostles, as indi- 
 cated above, it can hardly be affirmed 
 
 1 Compare the author's New Testament Theology, pp. 73-79. 
 
88 STUDIES IN 
 
 that in the first stage they came up 
 to the broad spiritual view of the 
 Master. The statement at the open- 
 ing of the book of Acts rather implies 
 that they did not. But as they went 
 forward, and especially as they dis- 
 covered that the Gentile world was 
 the great field of promise for the 
 gospel, the Jewish restrictions attached 
 to their thought of the kingdom fell 
 away- Nowhere in the epistles is 
 there a note of the idea that the 
 kingdom is a specially Jewish affair. 1 
 Paul, on the contrary, declared the 
 middle wall of partition to have been 
 broken down, and repudiated distinc- 
 tions between Jew and Greek as for- 
 eign to the gospel dispensation (Eph. 
 ii. 13, 14; Rom. ii. 28; Gal. ill. 28, 
 29). He expressed, indeed, a generous 
 hope as to the ultimate conversion 
 of his kinsmen (Rom. xi), but forecast 
 for them no sort of temporal or spir- 
 
 1 Compare Samuel Waldegrave, New Testament Millennarian- 
 ism, p. 109. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 89 
 
 itual primacy. Furthermore, he dem- 
 onstrated that Christ's view of the 
 kingdom, as being in a prominent 
 aspect a present and interior reality, 
 claimed recognition in his thought, for 
 he described it as "righteousness and 
 peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" 
 (Rom. xvi. 17). So apostolic thinking 
 went on to transcend the Jewish stand- 
 point which has been so largely repro- 
 duced in modern Adventism. The 
 idea of a future advent remained, 
 indeed, in the mind of the apostles; 
 but the general idea of an advent 
 is one thing; the notion of a visible, 
 and especially of a Judaic, kingdom 
 on earth is quite another thing. 
 
 3. The assumption relative to the 
 prevalence, in the first patristic age, 
 of the millennarian creed, or the doc- 
 trine of the imminence of the visible 
 kingdom of Christ, has an appreciable 
 element of truth. But two qualifying 
 considerations are entitled to notice. 
 
90 STUDIES IN 
 
 The first of these applies to the alleged 
 fact. While it is true that a consider- 
 able proportion of the early fathers 
 were rather pronounced millennarians, 
 it is not true that the whole body 
 can be so classed. Papias, Justin 
 Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Commo- 
 dianus, and Lactantius undoubtedly 
 taught the genuine creed of millen- 
 narianism. But that creed is not 
 found in the writings of Clement of 
 Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Tatian, 
 Athenagoras and Theophilus. Neither 
 is it found in the pretty full collection 
 of the writings of Cyprian or in that 
 of Clement of Alexandria. It was 
 resolutely opposed by Origen, Diony- 
 sius, and others of the Alexandrian 
 school from the middle of the third 
 century onward. We conclude, there- 
 fore, that the broad statement about 
 the prevalence in the first Christian 
 age of the notion of the visible earthly 
 reign of Christ, which modern millen- 
 narians are accustomed to cite from 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 91 
 
 Gieseler, needs to be cut down appre- 
 ciably. The second of the qualifying 
 considerations applies to the exegetical 
 competency of the first advocates of 
 millennarianism. Their modern suc- 
 cessors tell us that the Alexandrians 
 who took up the role of opposition 
 were given to an ultra-idealistic inter- 
 pretation. But cannot literalism be 
 as extravagant as idealism? Are the 
 crude representations in which Papias 
 and Irenseus indulged respecting the 
 fruitfulness to be exhibited by the 
 earth in the millennial age to be 
 preferred to Alexandrian allegorizing? 
 Was Tertullian an exegete to be 
 specially trusted? — the man who in 
 his crass literalism supposed that re- 
 generating efficacy was made an in- 
 separable attachment of the baptismal 
 water, so as necessarily to work the 
 new birth in the candidate whom it 
 might touch. In truth, may we not 
 say that some of these early fathers 
 were too nearly akin to the Jews 
 
92 STUDIES IN 
 
 who were so imprisoned in the letter 
 that they could not do justice to the 
 spiritual character of Christ's kingdom? 
 Origen and Augustine may have been 
 faulty interpreters, but no good reason 
 is apparent why Papias, Tertullian, 
 and others of the early millennarians 
 should be rated at a higher figure 
 as exegetes. 
 
 4. There are good reasons for chal- 
 lenging both parts of the fourth as- 
 sumption. The traditional view that 
 the fourth kingdom depicted in the 
 book of Daniel is to be identified with 
 the Roman has to a very large extent 
 been relinquished by recent scholar- 
 ship. Among learned commentaries of 
 a recent date that of H. H. Wright 
 supports it; but it is resolutely rejected 
 in those of Bevan, Behrmann, Driver, 
 Prince, Farrar, and Charles, as also 
 in Porter's Messages of the Apocalyptic 
 Writers. It is the conviction of these 
 scholars that the book of Daniel means, 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 93 
 
 in its representation of four successive 
 kingdoms (chapters ii and vii), to 
 interpose the Median Kingdom be- 
 tween the Babylonian and the Per- 
 sian, and so to assign the fourth place 
 to the Greek kingdom or empire of 
 Alexander and his successors, which, 
 they claim, impressed Orientals as be- 
 ing peculiarly characterized by crush- 
 ing force. They note that, while the 
 Medes can scarcely be reckoned as 
 possessing a world-empire, they came 
 to prominence in advance of the Per- 
 sians, being the chief instrument in 
 the destruction of Nineveh in B. C. 
 607. It is admitted by them that in 
 some passages of the book of Daniel 
 the Medes and the Persians are spoken 
 of as united into one power (v. 28, 
 vi. 8, 12, 15); but this is explained, 
 they assert, by the fact that in this 
 book the Medes are viewed at two 
 different stages. At the first stage 
 they are regarded as constituting the 
 second in the succession of empires, 
 
91 STUDIES IN 
 
 while at the second stage they are 
 regarded as being under the leader- 
 ship of the Persians and consolidated 
 with them. That they really are 
 assigned a place in the list of em- 
 pires is quite distinctly evidenced. The 
 statement that the second kingdom 
 was to be inferior to the first, or 
 Babylonian (Dan. ii. 39), is far better 
 suited to the Median than to the 
 Persian dominion. More decisive still, 
 we have the fact that Darius the Mede 
 is mentioned as taking the kingdom, 
 and is located immediately after a 
 Babylonian ruler and before Cyrus, 
 who is formally characterized as a 
 Persian. As further supporting the 
 theory of the interposition of a Median 
 empire reference can be made to the 
 tenor of the book. Most unmistakably 
 it shows a dominating interest in the 
 Greek empire, awarding to it by far 
 the larger space. The conviction is 
 scarcely to be avoided that for the 
 apocalyptic writer this was the em- 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 95 
 
 pire fraught with the most fateful 
 consequences to Israel. To all ap- 
 pearance he was conscious of no occa- 
 sion to forecast historical details beyond 
 its limits. The book has thus a unity 
 and consistency, on the supposition 
 that the second empire was the Median 
 and the fourth the Greek, which can- 
 not be secured on the competing sup- 
 position that the Roman empire was 
 designed to occupy the fourth place. 
 A hint that for the author the Roman 
 power stood off on the horizon of the 
 theater which he was surveying, in- 
 stead of playing a principal part on 
 that theater, is contained in the refer- 
 ence to "the ships of Chittim" (xi. 30). 
 "This must be an allusion to the 
 Roman fleet which was sent to Egypt 
 under Caius Popilius Laena, in order 
 to force Antiochus to evacuate the 
 country." 1 The description of iron 
 strength as characteristic of the fourth 
 kingdom is doubtless suitable to Rome; 
 
 1 Prince, A Critical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, p. 182. 
 
96 STUDIES IN 
 
 but it is also a true reflex of the im- 
 pressiofi made upon the Oriental world 
 by the amazing conquests of Alexander, 
 while the representation that the iron 
 was mixed with clay is peculiarly 
 appropriate to the weakness which 
 speedily befell Alexander's empire by 
 reason of division. On the whole, the 
 evidence for identifying the fourth 
 empire in Daniel with the Greek is 
 fairly decisive. 
 
 The second part of the assumption 
 under consideration, namely, the per- 
 sistence of the Roman empire under 
 the form of ten kingdoms or states, 
 falls away of course with the disposal 
 of the first part, so far as any pro- 
 phetic forecast in the book of Daniel 
 is concerned. And even if the first 
 part were left standing, the basis for 
 the second part would be utterly 
 equivocal. The book of Daniel, under 
 the symbol of ten horns (vii. 7, 24), 
 speaks of ten kings, not of ten king- 
 doms, and it savors of exegetical rash- 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 97 
 
 ness to transmute the one into the 
 other. The context advises against 
 such an expedient. An individual 
 king, Antiochus Epiphanes — the "little 
 horn" of Chapters vii and viii and 
 the wicked prince of Chapters ix-xi — 
 follows after the ten kings, and it is 
 not to be supposed that the writer 
 used the term "king" in different 
 senses in closely connected clauses. 
 
 The book of Daniel, then, affords 
 no basis for postulating ten kingdoms, 
 successive to the Roman empire, and 
 capable, by any stretch of the imag- 
 ination, of being identified with states 
 in modern Europe. How is it with 
 the book of Revelation? Adventist 
 chronologers no doubt have a much 
 better opportunity to discover here a 
 foundation for their favorite theory 
 respecting ten surviving kingdoms. 
 There is no need to foist into the 
 text a reference to the Roman empire. 
 In its colossal might it stands at the 
 front. As the writer of the book of 
 
98 STUDIES IN 
 
 Daniel had a most vivid impression 
 of the Greek empire, especially in 
 relation to the Maccabean crisis, so 
 the author of the book of Revelation 
 was penetrated through and through 
 with a sense of imperial Rome as a 
 ruthless persecuting power, the re- 
 morseless assailant of the Christian 
 Church. Using imagery analogous to 
 that of Daniel he describes this power 
 as a monster with seven heads and 
 ten horns (xvii. 3, 12). It is from these 
 ten horns that Adventist chronologers 
 are minded to get their ten kingdoms 
 successive to the Roman empire. But 
 the undertaking is bound to be abor- 
 tive. The Revelator says nothing 
 about ten distinct long-existing king- 
 doms. What he mentions is ten kings 
 acting as allies of one or more of the 
 seven kings symbolized by the seven 
 heads of the beast. His words are, 
 "The ten horns that thou sawest are 
 ten kings, which have received no 
 kingdom as yet; but they receive 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 99 
 
 authority as kings, with the beast, for 
 one hour. These have one mind, and 
 they give their power and authority 
 unto the beast" (xvii. 12, 13). This 
 is plainly not a picture of kingdoms 
 successive to Rome, but of kings con- 
 temporary with one or another of the 
 Roman emperors, probably with Nero 
 redivims, characterized as an eighth 
 who is of the seven. Just who they 
 were is not clearly determined. They 
 may have been Scythian satraps, and 
 they may have been governors of 
 Roman provinces. They cannot de- 
 note rulers in modern Europe, for 
 these are no contemporaries of Roman 
 emperors. Modern rulers cannot even 
 be counted successors of the em- 
 perors in any strict sense. The Roman 
 empire was never parceled out into 
 ten kingdoms. The simple facts are 
 that barbarian tribes came into one 
 of its main divisions and used some 
 of its materials for building up their 
 several states — facts of an order with 
 
100 STUDIES IN 
 
 which no descriptions in the book of 
 Revelation correspond. 
 
 5. It was noticed in connection with 
 the assumption of the existence in the 
 Bible of unequivocal means of de- 
 termining, at least approximately, the 
 time of the second advent, that Ad- 
 ventist chronologers were under con- 
 straint to resort to several special 
 interpretations. The first of these, 
 which makes the day of prophetical 
 discourse to equal a year, has a very 
 slender foundation in the Bible. Num- 
 bers xiv. 34 and Ezekiel iv. 4-6 are 
 cited in its behalf. But in the first 
 of these passages no symbolical im- 
 port is attached to the "days," the 
 statement being that the rebellious 
 Israelites should be punished as many 
 years as it took days to spy out the 
 land of Canaan; and in the second 
 passage it is formally stated that the 
 days employed by the prophet in pass- 
 ing through a certain role should be 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 101 
 
 typical of years of national experience. 
 In neither passage is there a hint 
 that it was a habit of biblical writers 
 to use days, without note or explana- 
 tion, as symbolical of years. This 
 Adventist principle of interpretation is 
 therefore destitute of all positive bib- 
 lical warrant. Furthermore, the vari- 
 ous instances of its application can be 
 characterized as gratuitous and ar- 
 bitrary. Take the "seven times' ' of 
 Leviticus xxvi. 18; why should it be 
 imagined that this phrase incorporates 
 a reference to a period of twenty-five 
 hundred and twenty years? That it 
 was meant to denote any specific 
 interval of time is not at all probable. 
 To say that the Israelites should be 
 punished "seven times" was equivalent 
 to saying that they should be pun- 
 ished with unsparing severity, or up 
 to the full limit of their deserts. When 
 it is said in the book of Proverbs 
 (xxiv. 16) that "the righteous man 
 falls, seven times/' it is not meant 
 
102 STUDIES IN 
 
 that he keeps up the process for 
 twenty-five hundred and twenty years; 
 neither does the text in Matthew's 
 Gospel (xviii. 21, 22), which directs 
 to forgive seventy times seven rather 
 than seven, prescribe one hundred and 
 seventy-six thousand and four hundred 
 years as the period through which 
 one's forgiveness of his brother should 
 run. As a perfect number, seven sig- 
 nified to the Hebrews completeness, 
 and was often used for emphasis apart 
 from definite chronological significance, 
 as in the reference to silver being 
 purified seven times (Psa. xii. 6). 
 There is no reason to suppose that it 
 was used otherwise in the given pas- 
 sage in Leviticus. 
 
 As respects the periods of days in 
 the book of Daniel, the elimination 
 of the supposition that the fourth 
 empire was the Roman cancels the 
 occasion and the possibility of con- 
 struing them as periods of years. 
 They find ready interpretation as spec- 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 103 
 
 ifying brief intervals viewed as ante- 
 cedent to, or connected with, the 
 deadly assault of Antiochus Epiphanes 
 against the Jewish nation and religion. 
 
 This conclusion respecting chrono- 
 logical usage in Daniel gives support to 
 the supposition of a like usage in the 
 book of Revelation, as being a writing 
 which found in no small degree its 
 stylistic model in the earlier apocalypse. 
 Furthermore, recent scholarship is as 
 disinclined to read long periods into 
 the Christian as into the Hebrew book. 
 
 In one connection, doubtless, the 
 book of Daniel uses a chronological 
 term in the extended sense. The 
 seventy weeks of ix. 24-27, by the 
 common verdict of commentators, de- 
 note seventy weeks of years, or four 
 hundred and ninety years. By the 
 extension of the seventy years specified 
 by Jeremiah as the period of the 
 Babylonish captivity, the writer was 
 able to accommodate the prophecy of 
 his predecessor to a later ordeal in 
 
104 STUDIES IN 
 
 the history of the Jewish people, an 
 ordeal bearing as fearful an aspect as 
 the carrying away to Babylon. In 
 thus applying the forecast of Jeremiah 
 he was using a liberty, often illus- 
 trated in later Judaism, of finding a 
 secondary meaning in the biblical text. 
 It would appear also that he followed 
 a current Jewish chronology which, as 
 is seen in the writings of Josephus and 
 Demetrius, made the interval between 
 the fall of Jerusalem (B. C. 586) and 
 the reign of Antiochus considerably 
 too long. But it is not necessary for 
 our purpose to pass upon these points. 
 It is enough to observe that the use 
 in Daniel of the term "week" in the 
 larger sense, in a single case, where 
 the motive for the special use is 
 quite intelligible, affords no substan- 
 tial ground for magnifying his periods 
 of days into periods of years. 1 
 
 1 As illustrating the possible singularity of Adventist chronol- 
 ogy, we notice the theory that sixty-nine of the seventy weeks 
 of Daniel cover the history of Israel down to the crucifixion of 
 Christ, and from that point Israel's history is suspended, so that 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 105 
 
 The second special interpretation 
 which we noticed identifies the seven 
 kings of Revelation xvii. 10 with seven 
 successive forms of Roman govern- 
 ment. The advocates of this inter- 
 pretation have a difficult task to de- 
 fend it from the charge of being 
 farfetched and groundless. Some of 
 the forms enumerated by them could 
 hardly have stood out with any dis- 
 tinctness in the field of vision of 
 either the writer or the contemplated 
 readers of the Apocalypse. Simcox 
 makes a sober statement when he 
 writes: "Considering that the dicta- 
 torship, the decemvirate, and even 
 the tribunate were transitory episodes 
 in the Roman government — the first 
 avowedly exceptional and ephemeral, 
 the second both exceptional and ephem- 
 eral, and all three as well as the 
 primitive monarchy probably unknown 
 
 the seventieth week will not begin till the period of the Jewish 
 restoration at the second advent. The theory appears in The 
 Unfolding of the Ages in the Revelation of John by F. C. Ott- 
 man, and indications of it are also contained in the Report of 
 the Prophetic Conference of 1914. 
 
106 STUDIES IN 
 
 to Saint John's original readers — this 
 view does not appear even plausible. "* 
 No one in truth but a grubbing anti- 
 quarian could ever have felt the least 
 incentive to refer to seven forms of 
 Roman government under the name of 
 seven kings. What the phrase refers 
 to is seven emperors, the count prob- 
 ably beginning with Augustus Caesar. 
 
 The gratuitous nature of the third 
 special interpretation has already been 
 exhibited in the remarks on the sym- 
 bolic import of the ten horns of 
 Daniel vii. 7, 24 and Revelation xvii. 
 3, 12. 2 An implicit criticism has also 
 been passed on the next special inter- 
 pretation. The absence of any at- 
 tempt in Daniel to depict the Roman 
 empire, as also of any reliable sign 
 that the periods of days which are 
 mentioned were meant to be construed 
 as periods of years, cancels all positive 
 ground for imputing to the book any 
 
 1 The Revelation of St. John the Divine, pp. 104, 105. 
 * Pages 96-100. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 107 
 
 reference to papal Rome. To discover 
 a subject for the character and deeds 
 assigned to the "little horn" there is 
 no need to look beyond the typical 
 enemy of Israel, Antiochus Epiphanes. 
 As regards the Apocalypse the grounds 
 for excluding a reference to papal 
 Rome are not perhaps quite so de- 
 cisive; but they are not insufficient. 
 Judicial scholarship finds in the beast 
 of Chapter xvii imperial pagan Rome, 
 and in the Babylon of the same chap- 
 ter the city of Rome. In the second 
 beast of Chapter xiii there is very 
 likely a reference to a power in the 
 spiritual or ecclesiastical order; but the 
 power denoted is the pagan priesthood 
 viewed especially as fostering the cur- 
 rent emperor-worship. The practical 
 homage rendered by the second beast 
 to the first affords decisive evidence 
 that the reference cannot be to papal 
 Rome. The popes never were imbued 
 with any noticeable ambition to make 
 all the world to worship secular rulers. 
 
108 STUDIES IN 
 
 In so far as papal Rome has acted 
 the part of an autocratic, ungodly, and 
 persecuting power, some of the sym- 
 bolic representations in the Apocalypse 
 may be suited to her record, but 
 their primitive application belongs to 
 a field much nearer to the Revelator's 
 experience and observation. They can- 
 not with sobriety be utilized for framing 
 a chronological succession reaching into 
 the modern era. The like remark 
 applies obviously to Paul's reference in 
 Second Thessalonians to the "man of 
 sin." This phrase probably refers to 
 an outburst of wickedness having its 
 source in spiritual society; but the apos- 
 tle may have thought of that order 
 of society as being represented by a 
 fanatical and desperately wrought-up 
 Judaism rather than by an apostate 
 form of Christianity. In any case, 
 his description affords no basis of 
 time measures. 
 
 If the eyesight which discovers papal 
 Rome in Daniel and the Apocalypse 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 109 
 
 overpasses the range of prophetic in- 
 timations, quite as emphatically does 
 the vision run to excess which finds 
 in these writings references to Moham- 
 medanism and the signs of its doom. 
 The alleged references — claimed to exist 
 in the Apocalypse in one or another 
 of the pictorial narratives respecting 
 seals, trumpets, or bowls (Chapters vi, 
 viii, ix, xi, xvi) — are too vague to 
 elicit any faith in one who is not 
 already more than willing to believe. 
 Adventist discourse on this theme is 
 such a play of the imagination as 
 might be expended with equal effect 
 upon almost any collection of sym- 
 bolic representations. 
 
 With all its other grounds of in- 
 security Adventist chronological con- 
 struction is undermined by the con- 
 jectural elements in its starting points. 
 A preceding page has given illustration 
 of this conspicuous weakness. It is 
 really a cause for amazement that 
 anyone should repose confidence in 
 
110 STUDIES IN 
 
 time measures so utterly destitute of 
 authenticated starting points as are 
 many of those with which Adventist 
 chronologers have been occupied. Take 
 the period of twelve hundred and sixty 
 years which they have concluded to 
 be the period allotted to the papacy. 
 We are told that the beginning of the 
 period may be placed at the date of 
 Justinian's decree (A. D. 533), or at 
 the time of the decree of Phocas 
 (606), or, as one writer informs us, 
 at the year when Pope Vitalian pre- 
 scribed the use of the Latin language 
 in the services of the Church (663). 
 Evidently, close reckoning is impossible 
 where the starting point is as indeter- 
 minate as it is made by these differing 
 dates. But the case for Adventist 
 chronology is much worse than it 
 appears in this statement. To pjace 
 the origin of the papacy at any one 
 of the given dates is arbitrary well- 
 nigh to the point of absurdity. The 
 decree of Justinian marked no im- 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 111 
 
 portant era in the history of the 
 papacy. In its terms it is descriptive 
 rather of a patriarchal than a monar- 
 chical type of a church government, 
 and simply awards an honorary pri- 
 macy to the Roman bishop as the 
 episcopal head of Old Rome, to whom 
 the bishop of Constantinople stands in 
 close conjunction as episcopal head of 
 New Rome. Practically, too, Justinian 
 rendered a very doubtful service to 
 the Roman bishop. While, through 
 victories over the Goths in Italy, he 
 relieved that ecclesiastic of some local 
 embarrassments, he prepared for him 
 more serious difficulties in the degree 
 to which he brought him under im- 
 perial domination . ' ' With the conquest 
 of Italy/ ' writes Schaff, "the popes 
 fell into a perilous and unworthy de- 
 pendence on the emperor at Con- 
 stantinople, who reverenced, indeed, 
 the Roman chair, but not less that 
 of Constantinople, and in reality sought 
 to use both as tools of his state-church 
 
112 STUDIES IN 
 
 despotism/ n No more is it in evidence 
 that any substantial service was ren- 
 dered to the pope by the usurper 
 Phocas. He gave, to be sure, a flat- 
 tering title which Boniface III was 
 greedy enough to accept; but the 
 title amounted to little else than a 
 form of words. There is the scantiest 
 occasion to refer to the decree of 
 either of these emperors, to the exclu- 
 sion of that of Valentinian III issued 
 nearly a century before the time of 
 Justinian in behalf of Leo the Great. 
 No one of the three fulfilled any 
 noteworthy office in founding the pa- 
 pacy, or marked any significant era 
 in its growth. The order of Pope 
 Vitalian respecting the use of the 
 Latin language may have had an 
 appreciable significance, but no reputa- 
 ble church historian would care to 
 refer to it as fixing the date of the 
 origin of the papacy. 2 
 
 1 History of the Christian Church, revised edition, III. 326. 
 Compare Milman, History of Latin Christianity, I. 461. 
 
 2 We do not find eminent church historians — Neander, Schaff, 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 113 
 
 Further illustration of the elements 
 of insecurity in Adventist chronology 
 is scarcely necessary. We wish to 
 pass judgment with sobriety. We re- 
 spect and even admire the earnest 
 piety of some of those who have 
 entered into these chronological ven- 
 tures. But in all candor we can but 
 pronounce the ventures manifest fail- 
 ures. Adventist chronological con- 
 struction, in view of its imposition of 
 a thoroughly doubtful sense upon 
 chronological terms in the Bible, its 
 rash and gratuitous application of 
 apocalyptic symbols and its arbitrary 
 assumption of starting points, is unre- 
 liable, fanciful, and groundless. 
 
 Moeller, and others — so much as mentioning either the decree 
 of Justiniao or the order of Pope Vitalian. The tenor of Justin- 
 ian's decree we have judged by the text given by Litch (The 
 Probability of the Second Coming of Christ about A. D. 1843, 
 p. 88). 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CRITICISM OF SPECIAL TEACHINGS 
 OF ADVENTIST PARTIES 
 
 1. Recurring to the list of these 
 teachings, as given in a previous chap- 
 ter, we begin with the assumption 
 characteristic of the great majority of 
 Adventist communions respecting the 
 unconsciousness or nonexistence of the 
 dead in the interval between death 
 and the resurrection. Whatever verbal 
 support may be claimed for this 
 assumption in the Bible, it is dis- 
 tinctly in conflict with the conclusion 
 which a balanced and comprehensive 
 exegesis must derive from the total 
 biblical data. Even if it could justly 
 be imputed to certain portions of the 
 Old Testament, it could not forthwith 
 be assigned a place in the biblical 
 revelation, since eschatology is a quite 
 
 114 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 115 
 
 secondary theme in the Old Testament, 
 and it is perfectly conceivable that 
 on various points authoritative in- 
 struction, as opposed to an incidental 
 appropriation of contemporary modes 
 of thinking, may have been reserved 
 to the New Testament revelation. It 
 is in that revelation that immortality 
 is distinctly brought to light. As 
 compared with the Hebrew oracles it 
 speaks with superior authority on the 
 future condition of men. 
 
 It is not necessary, however, to 
 press this consideration. The Old 
 Testament, if less clear and positive 
 than the New in this relation, is to 
 be credited with the conviction that 
 men remain conscious subjects after 
 death. A probable evidence in favor 
 of its incorporation of this conviction 
 may be found in the fact that the 
 Semitic kindred of the Israelites in 
 Babylon indulged in descriptions of 
 the place and state of the dead very 
 nearly parallel to those contained in 
 
116 STUDIES IN 
 
 the Old Testament, and at the same 
 time made evident their intention not 
 to deny the continued existence of 
 the dead, but rather to emphasize 
 the woful poverty and emptiness of 
 the subterranean life to which they 
 have descended. So many are the 
 points of correspondence between the 
 Sheol of the Israelites and the Aralu 
 of the Babylonians that it would take 
 very distinct data to overcome the 
 presumption that they were both alike 
 regarded as abodes of men endowed 
 with a species of consciousness, though 
 condemned to an inferior shadelike 
 existence. 
 
 Another probable evidence is met 
 in the characteristic belief of later 
 Judaism. This undoubtedly included 
 the conscious existence of the dead. 
 To whatever point Sadducean nega- 
 tions may have run, the great body 
 of the Jewish people in New Testa- 
 ment times were fully persuaded that 
 the dead live on in spite of bodily 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 117 
 
 dissolution. 1 The parable of the rich 
 man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31) 
 clearly assumes this persuasion in the 
 minds of those addressed, for it could 
 not be expected that they would be 
 influenced by an appeal to conditions 
 acknowledged to be purely fictitious. 
 It is demonstrated, then, that the 
 Jews were not held by the Old Tes- 
 tament books to a belief in the uncon- 
 sciousness or nonexistence of the dead. 
 As a body they came definitely to 
 entertain an opposite belief. One can 
 indeed accuse them of being faulty 
 interpreters; but there is a certain 
 presumption on the side of the con- 
 clusion that their oracles did not ex- 
 clude the ultimate and dominant belief. 
 A third probable evidence, so weighty 
 as well-nigh to pass over from the 
 sphere of probability into that of 
 decisive proof, lies in the consensus 
 of recent biblical scholarship. This is 
 
 1 See Schurer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter 
 Jesu Christi, 1886, Vol. II. pp. 460, 461; Bousset, Die Religion 
 des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, pp. 281ff. 
 
118 STUDIES IN 
 
 unequivocally on the side of the prop- 
 osition that Old Testament thought, 
 like that of all ancient peoples, ac- 
 knowledges the continued existence of 
 the dead, though in a state contrasted 
 with the virile activity of the present 
 life, and capable of being described 
 in rhetorical phrase as a sinking into 
 forgetfulness and inaction. So decide 
 the authors of standard textbooks on 
 the biblical theology of the Old Tes- 
 tament, like Oehler, Riehm, Dillmann, 
 Schultz, and Piepenbring. Indeed, we 
 fail to discover a single recent writer 
 of acknowledged prominence in the 
 field of Old Testament theology who 
 takes a different ground. A like state- 
 ment is admissible respecting eminent 
 expositors of biblical eschatology in 
 our time, such as R. H. Charles, S. D. 
 F. Salmond, and L. Atzberger. 
 
 In the line of direct evidence two 
 conspicuous facts of the Old Testa- 
 ment may be cited. In the first place 
 the practice of necromancy, or the 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 119 
 
 habit of invoking the dead, prevalent 
 in Israel from an early to a late period, 
 indicates that belief in the survival of 
 the dead was deeply imbedded in the 
 minds of the Hebrews, and carries 
 the implication that when they spoke 
 of death as destruction they were 
 using a strong figure to describe pre- 
 cipitation into the comparatively emp- 
 ty existence of Sheol. The second 
 significant fact is the description of 
 the death of distinguished persons as 
 a being gathered to their people or 
 their fathers — a description applied "in 
 cases like those of Abraham, Jacob 
 Aaron, Moses, and others, 1 where the 
 temporary or permanent resting place 
 was far removed from the ancestral 
 graves/' 2 The usage shows that for 
 Hebrew thought Sheol was not identi- 
 cal with the grave, but was regarded 
 as providing for a certain community 
 of existence after death. Doubtless it 
 
 iGen. xv. 15, xxv. 8, 17, xlix. 33; Num. xx. 24, 28, xxxi, 2; 
 Deut. xxxii. 50, xxxiv. 5. 
 
 2 Salmond, The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 199. 
 
120 STUDIES IN 
 
 was felt that Sheol bore a close anal- 
 ogy to the grave, being pictured as 
 an underground receptacle for the dead. 
 This explains how in a number of 
 passages it seems not to offend against 
 the sense to translate Sheol as the 
 "grave." That the two were con- 
 founded in the Hebrew mind is far 
 from being indicated by their capacity 
 to fulfill, within limits, a common 
 function in imaginative discourse. 
 
 If the strong phrases in which the 
 Old Testament describes the disap- 
 pearance of men from the obtrusive 
 realities of the present embodied life 
 are found not to negate their con- 
 tinued existence, still less do any kin- 
 dred phrases in the New Testament 
 serve to negate such existence. The 
 offset here is abundant and decisive. 
 Jesus vetoed the postulate of pro- 
 fessional Adventism, that the destruc- 
 tion of the body is the destruction of 
 the individual, by the antithesis which 
 he drew between ability to destroy 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 121 
 
 the body and ability to destroy the 
 soul (Matt. x. 28; Luke xii. 4, 5). 
 Again in the parable of the rich man 
 and Lazarus he gave a distinct picture 
 of a conscious life after death, and 
 while some features in the picture may 
 have involved accommodation to cur- 
 rent belief, it savors of violence to 
 construe his underlying assumption of 
 continued conscious existence as mere 
 accommodation, since the lesson en- 
 forced by the parable is vitally de- 
 pendent upon that assumption. Once 
 more his gracious promise to the dying 
 thief is accordant with the natural 
 sense of the given parable, as implying 
 that death may involve an immediate 
 transference from a distressful to a 
 blessed estate. The Adventist exegete 
 will evade this meaning by joining 
 "to-day" with "I say," rather than 
 with the clause, "Thou shalt be with 
 me in paradise." But this interpreta- 
 tion imputes a comparatively pithless 
 use of words to Christ, and is credible 
 
122 STUDIES IN 
 
 only to him who wishes to give it 
 his credence. 
 
 In the Pauline writings belief in 
 continued conscious existence crops out 
 distinctly at various points. The apos- 
 tle as good as affirms his belief that 
 such existence is not tied to the body. 
 In dealing with the Corinthian offender 
 he makes a formal contrast between 
 the destruction of the body and the 
 saving of the spirit. He expresses a 
 longing to be clothed upon with his 
 house from heaven, lest he should be 
 found naked, thereby distinctly ad- 
 mitting the possibility of passing into 
 the condition of a disembodied spirit. 
 He says in relation to an ecstatic 
 experience that he could not tell 
 whether during its continuance he was 
 in the body or out of the body — a 
 form of words that can mean nothing 
 less than the possibility of an extra- 
 bodily existence. In addressing his 
 Philippian brethren he sets forth as 
 alternatives "abiding in the flesh' ' and 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 123 
 
 "departing and being with Christ," and 
 declares that he finds it difficult to 
 make choice between them. In short, 
 the unstudied and incidental state- 
 ments of Paul make as forceful a 
 testimony to belief in the possible 
 existence of the soul apart from the 
 body as would the most formal and 
 explicit declaration. 
 
 Other portions of the New Testa- 
 ment witness to the same belief. It is 
 attested by the prayer of the dying 
 Stephen to the Lord Jesus to receive 
 his spirit; by the Petrine passage on 
 the preaching of Christ to the spirits 
 in prison, these spirits being identified 
 as disembodied men who had trans- 
 gressed in the days of Noah (1 Peter 
 iii. 18-20, iv. 6); and by the crying 
 of the souls of those who had been 
 slain for the word of God (Rev. vi. 
 9, 10). Passages like the above dis- 
 close unmistakably the standpoint of 
 the biblical writers, and the exegesis 
 which attempts to explain them away 
 
124 STUDIES IN 
 
 is too obviously overtaxed to gain 
 any wide currency in scholarly circles. 
 Apologists for the dogma of the un- 
 consciousness or nonexistence of the 
 dead have the misfortune to be re- 
 futed by the Bible in both of its 
 main divisions. 
 
 2. The next special theory which 
 invites our criticism — namely the doc- 
 trine of the little flock — has received, 
 as was observed, a peculiar version 
 from the hand of C. T. Russell. He 
 holds not only that the object of the 
 Christian dispensation is to gather 
 out from the mass of men a select 
 company, but that the members of 
 this company alone of all the race 
 are lifted above the plane of human 
 perfection and made partakers of the 
 divine nature. They are as distinctly 
 a privileged set as were the "pneu- 
 matics" of the old Gnostic speculation. 
 In fact, the theory of Russell makes 
 as arbitrary divisions of men as were 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 125 
 
 ever depicted by Gnostic fancy. It 
 represents God as fundamentally con- 
 ditioning the possibilities of human 
 destiny on the accident of birth within 
 a given temporal interval, and as 
 limiting to a selected few an inher- 
 itance which there is no natural ground 
 for denying to any of the saved. It 
 is difficult to see how a God who 
 adopts such a plan of administration 
 can be respected even by the man 
 who feels certain that he himself is 
 numbered among the favored few. By 
 its very terms it shadows divine benev- 
 olence and debases divine sovereignty 
 to the ranks of arbitrary rulership. 
 
 The doctrine of the little flock, even 
 apart from Russell's peculiar supple- 
 ment, calls for very scanty apprecia- 
 tion. To represent the whole aim of 
 the Christian dispensation to be the 
 calling out of a predetermined number 
 is to set the Author of that dispensation 
 in a very unenviable light, as also to 
 render very poor justice to the uni- 
 
126 STUDIES IN 
 
 versality of the grace proclaimed in 
 the gospel. Election is doubtless a 
 great truth; but election is to special 
 responsibilities and ministries, to the 
 end that the area of salvation may be 
 extended as widely as possible. Men 
 are called to be the light of the world 
 and the salt of the earth, not to 
 felicitate themselves on belonging to 
 an exclusive circle of God's favorites. 
 
 3. The curious doctrine of the cleans- 
 ing of the sanctuary, which was men- 
 tioned as a phase of teaching current 
 among the Seventh-Day Adventists, 
 had no better basis than a desire to 
 preserve credit to a chronological spec- 
 ulation, namely, that which found in 
 Daniel viii. 14 evidence that a great 
 crisis, preparatory to the advent, would 
 occur in 1844. Since the precarious 
 and improbable elements which enter 
 into the given speculation have been 
 exposed/ an effective criticism of the 
 
 1 See Chapter iv, topic 5. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 127 
 
 doctrine dependent upon it has already 
 been given. We make room, however, 
 for a couple of comments. In the first 
 place, we remark on the strangeness 
 of the fancy that Daniel in his age 
 should have been led to measure off 
 the time which would elapse before an 
 event, belonging entirely in the in- 
 visible order and utterly incapable of 
 verification by any natural means, 
 should occur. Let anyone, who can, 
 believe that prophetical inspiration 
 functioned in such an eccentric fashion. 
 The second comment respects the ultra 
 and mechanical ceremonialism involved 
 in the theory of a formal cleansing 
 of the heavenly sanctuary at a special 
 point in the nineteenth century. The 
 only intelligible cleansing which can be 
 figured for that sanctuary is the putting 
 away of obstacles to cordial fellowship 
 between the pardoned sinner and the 
 God whom he has offended, and that 
 occurred when Christ, bearing the 
 tokens of his accomplished sacrifice for 
 
128 STUDIES IN 
 
 sin, ascended into heaven. His presence 
 in the nature in which he suffered af- 
 forded the needful basis for drawing 
 near to God with boldness; in other 
 words, the needful cleansing of the 
 upper sanctuary. 
 
 4. The last of the special tenets 
 claiming our attention is also the 
 property of the Seventh-Day Advent- 
 ists, being the one which has given 
 them their name by its assertion of 
 the perpetual obligation of Christians 
 to keep sacred the seventh day of 
 the week. Were this tenet in any- 
 wise representative of primitive or 
 apostolic Christianity, we should ex- 
 pect to find traces of it in the early 
 postapostolic Church. But no such 
 traces are found. Doubtless there were 
 Christians of Jewish lineage who kept 
 the Jewish Sabbath in addition to 
 paying special respect to the first day 
 of the week — the day honored as com- 
 memorative of the resurrection of 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 129 
 
 Christ. But in the Gentile world, 
 where the constituency of Christianity 
 greatly outnumbered its Jewish con- 
 tingent before the close of the apos- 
 tolic age, recognition of an obligation to 
 keep the Jewish day is far from being 
 in evidence. On the contrary, such 
 obligation was formally disowned, and 
 the first day of the week was marked for 
 special commemoration, as we learn 
 from the writings of the fathers distrib- 
 uted through the whole extent of the 
 second century. Ignatius of Antioch, in 
 that version of his epistles accepted as 
 genuine by the foremost scholars, 
 plainly indicates his conviction that to 
 keep the Jewish Sabbath is to live 
 according to Judaism rather than ac- 
 cording to Christ, and is contrary to 
 the Christian calling. 1 The Epistle of 
 Barnabas speaks of the eighth day, 
 that is, the first day of the week, as 
 significant of the beginning of another 
 world, and adds: " Wherefore also we 
 
 1 Epist. ad Magnes., chapters viii, ix. 
 
130 STUDIES IN 
 
 keep the eighth day with joyfulness, 
 the day also on which Jesus rose from 
 the dead." 1 In the so-called Teaching 
 of the Twelve Apostles Christians are 
 enjoined to come together, and break 
 bread, and give thanks on the "Lord's 
 day" (xiv. 1) — a phrase which, as the 
 usage of Ignatius indicates, could have 
 designated no other than the first day 
 of the week. 2 Justin Martyr testifies: 
 "On the day called Sunday all who 
 live in the cities or in the country 
 gather together to one place." 3 Re- 
 specting the observance of the Sabbath, 
 he remarks that, as it was not in force 
 before Moses, so it is no longer needed 
 after the coming of Christ. 4 Irenseus 
 classes the Jewish Sabbath with cir- 
 cumcision as being rather symbolical of 
 truth that applies under the Christian 
 dispensation than as remaining in its 
 
 1 Chapter xv. 
 
 2 See Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, ii. 128; Schaff, The 
 Teaching of the twelve Apostles, p. 208. 
 
 3 1 Apol., lxvii. 
 
 4 Dial, cum Tryph., xxiii. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 131 
 
 literal character. 1 Tertullian speaks of 
 Jewish Sabbaths, new moons, and festi- 
 vals as strange to Christians, and puts 
 in their place the Lord's Day and Pente- 
 cost. 2 The Sabbath precept of Moses he 
 distinctly characterizes as temporary. 3 
 Such a line of testimonies leaves no 
 room for reasonable doubt as to the 
 position of the early postapostolic 
 Church. It shows that those who 
 followed the apostles as leaders and 
 teachers knew nothing of any author- 
 itative injunction to keep the Jewish 
 Sabbath, and, furthermore, were fully 
 convinced that the first day of the 
 week was to be set apart as preem- 
 inently the sacred day for Christians. 
 This fact amounts to a strong pre- 
 sumptive evidence that no apostolic 
 precept in behalf of the observance of 
 the seventh day, beyond what is 
 recorded in the New Testament, was 
 ever issued. Reference can indeed be 
 
 iCont. Haer., iv. 16. 
 2 De Idol., chapter xiv. 
 8 Adv. Judaeos, chapter iv. 
 
132 STUDIES IN 
 
 made to a custom still largely prevalent 
 in the East in the fifth century to 
 hold religious assemblies on Saturday 
 as well as on Sunday. So the his- 
 torians Socrates and Sozomen report, 1 
 and this custom they place in contrast 
 with that of Rome and Alexandria. 
 It is to be noticed, however, that 
 neither of these historians refers to 
 any felt obligation to treat Saturday 
 as a Sabbatic or rest day, and that the 
 first named declared it incompatible 
 with the Christian faith and contrary to 
 apostolic injunction to practice Jewish 
 rites. Furthermore, the custom to 
 which they refer as obtaining in the 
 East stands in such contrast with the 
 explicit testimonies cited from the 
 second century that the fair conclusion 
 is that it reveals a relatively late, 
 rather than a primitive point of view, 
 the tradition governing the practice 
 of Rome and Alexandria being the 
 more ancient. 
 
 i Socrates, Hist. Eccl., v. 22; Sozomen, Hist. EccL, vii. 19. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 133 
 
 As for the New Testament, who 
 by searching can find any apostolic 
 precept for seventh-day observance? 
 Mention, it is true, is made in several 
 instances of Paul's election of a Sab- 
 bath day as the time for preaching 
 in Jewish synagogues. But how else 
 could he find a Jewish audience and 
 carry out his purpose to first offer 
 the gospel message to his own kindred? 
 His practice herein contains no hint 
 that he commended Sabbath observ- 
 ance to the Gentiles or made it the 
 law of any church which he ever 
 founded. On the contrary, there are 
 indications that the first day of the 
 week was made the day of assemblies 
 for his congregations (Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. 
 xvi. 1, 2). Furthermore, in giving 
 this instruction to the Colossians, "Let 
 no man judge you in respect of a 
 feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath 
 day" (ii. 16), he explicitly excluded 
 the imposition of the Jewish Sabbath 
 law upon Christians as a matter of 
 
134 STUDIES IN 
 
 obligation. That the other apostles 
 were agreed with Paul, at least as 
 respects the freedom of Gentile Chris- 
 tians from that law, may be argued 
 from the action of the apostolic council 
 at Jerusalem. In its specification of 
 things from which Gentile Christians 
 might be advised to abstain out of 
 respect for Jewish points of view, the 
 council made no reference to conduct 
 conflicting with the Jewish idea of the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 We see, then, that the bearing of 
 the New Testament on the question 
 before us is conspicuously accordant 
 with the standpoint of the postapos- 
 tolic Church. In their agreement the 
 two sources of evidence powerfully 
 confirm the conclusion that the Gen- 
 tile world, with full apostolic consent, 
 was exempted from the Jewish Sabbath 
 law. The attempt of the Seventh-Day 
 Adventists to reinstate the Old Tes- 
 tament law must be rated as a lapse 
 into Judaizing, which in some other 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 135 
 
 relations they have been more success- 
 ful in avoiding than many of the 
 modern advocates of a pronounced 
 Adventist creed. 
 
 The historic proof may properly end 
 the discussion. Should anyone, how- 
 ever, be inclined to improve upon 
 apostolic Christianity, and to urge 
 that the fourth commandment, as be- 
 ing part of a moral code, is perpetually 
 binding, we shall be prompt to answer 
 by a denial of his premise. The fourth 
 commandment may be auxiliary to 
 moral ends, but it is not a moral law 
 proper, since it is not an unequivocal 
 dictate of man's relations to God or 
 to his fellows. It is simply a salutary 
 disciplinary provision for man at a 
 particular stage of his development. 
 No one knows that it applies literally 
 to the saints in heaven. No one knows 
 that the keeping of each recurring 
 seventh day is the imperative demand 
 for the physical or religious well-being 
 of every man. So widely do men differ 
 
136 STUDIES IN 
 
 in constitution that one man might 
 find one tenth of time devoted to 
 rest and worship as adequate for his 
 needs as one fifth would be for another 
 person. The selection of one seventh 
 may best meet the average needs of 
 men; but averages are a matter of 
 expediency and not of morality. The 
 content of the fourth commandment — 
 which is, of course, a hundred times 
 more decisive than mere location — 
 plainly excludes it from the category 
 of a proper moral law. Sufficient 
 credit is given to it when it is ac- 
 counted, in its relation to the Chris- 
 tian dispensation, simply as a great 
 historical precedent providentially de- 
 signed to supply the general model of 
 the Christian week, and to teach 
 impressively the need of a recurring 
 day of rest and worship. 
 
 To disparage the observance of the 
 first day of the week on the score of 
 the character of Constantine, who 
 issued the first Sunday law of the 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 137 
 
 empire, or on account of a clause 
 which he diplomatically inserted for 
 the purpose of conciliating the heathen 
 majority under his scepter, is just 
 about as judicial as to contemn the 
 Protestant Reformation by reference 
 to the character of Henry VIII or to 
 some point in his legislation. On the 
 same plane is the berating of Sunday 
 observance as involving obeisance to 
 Rome and the papacy. What had 
 Rome to do with Paul's instruction 
 to the Colossians or with the point 
 of view represented by such writers 
 as Ignatius and Justin Martyr? As 
 well put the mark of the beast on the 
 doctrines of incarnation and atone- 
 ment, because these held a place in 
 the faith of the Latin Church, as to 
 put it upon Sunday observance because 
 forsooth that Church gave its sanction 
 to such observance. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A LIST OF OBJECTIONS TO RECENT 
 ADVENTISM 
 
 The treatment awarded to the car- 
 dinal assumptions of Adventism gave 
 occasion for a rather full statement 
 of several leading objections, such as 
 those holding against its narrow inter- 
 pretation of the "kingdom," and its 
 artificial manipulation of time meas- 
 ures. In the present chapter we take 
 note of some further objections, which 
 apply to teachings that have had 
 wide currency, being represented more 
 largely outside of professional Advent- 
 ism than inside that domain. 
 
 1. Among these objections the lack 
 of perspective shown in dealing with 
 the subject of the millennium may be 
 emphasized with entire justice. The 
 biblical basis for affirming so much as 
 the idea of the thousand-years reign 
 
 138 
 
< RECENT ADVENTISM 139 
 
 is exceedingly scanty. Only the book 
 most prodigal of poetical symbolism in 
 the whole canon of Scripture broaches 
 the idea, and this one book contains 
 only a single brief passage that carries 
 any suggestions of a millennium (Rev. 
 xx). The claim, indeed, is not in- 
 frequently made that Paul in First 
 Corinthians xv. 23, 24 provides for an 
 interval between the resurrection of 
 those who are Christ's and the resur- 
 rection of the rest of mankind, since, 
 after referring to the former, he adds: 
 "Then cometh the end." But to 
 make the word "end" refer here to 
 a completing stage of the resurrection 
 is quite gratuitous. The fact that 
 Paul nowhere else in his epistles refers 
 to the resurrection of the wicked lends 
 countenance to the supposition that he 
 intends no such reference here. More- 
 over, it is distinctly more natural to 
 make "the end" refer to the closing 
 up of the age or dispensation than to 
 make it stand for a final stage of 
 
140 STUDIES IN 
 
 resurrection. 1 It is not to be over- 
 looked also that, even if the latter 
 sense be given to the expression, there 
 is no certification that the traditional 
 conception of the millennium was in 
 Paul's mind, since he says nothing 
 about a special reign, or extraordinary 
 era, or, indeed, any measurable period 
 at all being interposed between the 
 resurrection of those who are Christ's 
 and the end. We are thus directed 
 to a few verses in the book of Revela- 
 tion as the one passage which, with any 
 degree of explicitness, gives expression 
 to the notion of the millennium. 
 Doubtless, as has been contended, an 
 authoritative disclosure of some phase 
 of the divine plan might be left to a 
 single passage in the sacred volume. 
 But does it savor of doctrinal propor- 
 tion to take the conception contained 
 in the single passage, bring it to the 
 front, and make its validity vital to 
 
 1 Compare Kennedy, St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things, 
 pp. 322-324; Findlay in the Expositor's Greek Testament; Beet, 
 Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 141 
 
 faith in the possible success of the 
 Christian dispensation? It is one thing 
 to admit that a specially distinguished 
 era is to antedate the great consumma- 
 tion. It is another thing, in face of 
 the silence of substantially the whole 
 line of biblical writers, to magnify the 
 importance of that era and to con- 
 centrate hope upon it as including in 
 itself the means which alone can bring 
 Christianity to a real triumph in the 
 world. In proceeding to this extreme^ 
 apologists of Adventism exceed the 
 warrant of the one millennial passage 
 in the Bible. They assume that all 
 the righteous dead are subjects of the 
 first resurrection. The given passage 
 makes no certain reference to any but 
 a company of martyrs. They assume 
 that the binding of Satan implies the 
 signal triumph of gospel agencies. 1 
 The given passage does not certify 
 that it involves anything more than 
 
 1 Exceptions to this and the following assumption have been 
 duly noticed in previous connections. 
 
142 STUDIES IN 
 
 abstinence from persecuting violence 
 on the part of the nations. They 
 assume that the reign of Christ is to 
 be a visible earthly reign. The given 
 passage contains no explicit word about 
 the location of the reign or about the 
 means by which it is made effective. 1 
 In short, typical advocates of Advent- 
 ism in recent times rear a superstruc- 
 ture much too broad for the biblical 
 basis. They fail of perspective in deal- 
 ing with the contents of Scripture. 
 
 2. Another objection to recent Ad- 
 ventism is the poor respect which it 
 pays to the universalism of Christianity 
 or its transcendence of national dis- 
 tinctions. The New Testament, as 
 has already been shown, 2 rises above 
 national distinctions, and establishes an 
 ideal incongruous with the conserva- 
 tion of any temporal or religious pre- 
 eminence to Israel. Its teaching 
 
 1 Compare Geisinger, Heart Problems and World Issues. A 
 Study in the Book of Revelation, pp. 178-180. 
 
 2 Chapter iv, topic 3. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 143 
 
 implies that as the law was a school- 
 master to bring men to Christ, so 
 Israel fulfilled its divine calling as a 
 forerunner to the all-embracing system 
 or dispensation inaugurated in Christ. 
 Who can read such a description of 
 the centrality of Christ to the spiritual 
 universe as is contained in the first 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Colos- 
 sians, and then think of his reign as 
 conditioned upon, or specially allied 
 with, a perpetuated Jewish national- 
 ism? The New Testament ascends to 
 an outlook wherein the metes and 
 bounds of Jewish nationality seem 
 thoroughly out of place. Rationally, 
 too, to put the stamp of a perpetual 
 preference upon a single nation is hard 
 to justify. Even the temporary posi- 
 tion of Israel as an elect nation in- 
 volved serious hazards. There was a 
 danger that, after having fulfilled the 
 office of a forerunner of Christ, it 
 should become lacking in humility, and 
 refuse to accept that true maxim of 
 
144 STUDIES IN 
 
 a forerunner so nobly uttered by John 
 the Baptist in the words, "He must 
 increase, but I must decrease' ' (John 
 iii. 30). History shows that the danger 
 was far from being evaded, A Christ, 
 not thoroughly subordinated to its 
 own distinction and preeminence, Israel 
 would not deign to own. It came to 
 entertain such a stubborn conviction 
 that it had a special hen on the divine 
 favor that it was no longer pliable to 
 the divine will. If this result could 
 not be avoided in connection with a 
 temporary national distinction, what is 
 to be said of the natural effect of a 
 scheme which sets Israel above the 
 nations in the final disposition of 
 earthly forces? What is to guarantee 
 that the stamp of aristocratic superi- 
 ority will not effect a sense of self- 
 importance perilous to the religious 
 character of those to whom it has 
 been affixed on the ground of national- 
 ity? Plainly, something approaching 
 to omnipotence would be needed to 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 145 
 
 counteract the inherent tendencies of 
 the scheme, and to prevent its working 
 toward the religious undoing of Israel. 
 Rather, we should say omnipotence 
 might well be baffled in the attempt 
 to overcome the force of the artificial 
 conditions. 
 
 The rational objection to a per- 
 petual exaltation of a single nation 
 reenforces the interpretation which, on 
 other grounds, has been given to the 
 Old Testament prophecies respecting 
 Israel's future. 1 We have an added 
 ground for declining to construe those 
 prophecies literally; and that means a 
 ground for declining to find in them 
 forecasts of a millennium proper. 
 
 3. A further objection may properly 
 be urged against recent Adventism on 
 the score of the virtue which, in its 
 doctrine of the millennium, it assigns 
 to physical instrumentalities. The 
 preaching of the gospel, it is alleged, 
 
 1 Chapter iv, topic 1. 
 
146 STUDIES IN 
 
 cannot be expected to convert the 
 world. Only with the reappearance of 
 the Lord, and the inauguration of his 
 visible reign, will evangelism succeed 
 on any great scale. This point of 
 view, we contend, puts a premium on 
 physical instrumentalities, and is out 
 of harmony with the New Testament 
 estimate of spiritual agencies. His- 
 tory has not shown that mere phys- 
 ical might and display are potent to 
 effect spiritual transformations. Christ 
 taught his disciples to expect that the 
 efficient working of the Holy Spirit in 
 and through them would far more 
 than compensate for his physical ab- 
 sence. In the parable of the rich 
 man and Lazarus he expressly asserted 
 that those who believe not Moses and 
 the prophets would not be convinced 
 though one should rise from the dead. 
 In the apostolic teaching not a little 
 is said about the efficacy of the gospel 
 message and about the sanctifying 
 power of truth. But vivid as was the 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 147 
 
 expectation, in the primitive Christian 
 community, of the reappearance of 
 Christ, no apostolic word associates 
 that reappearance with a prospect of 
 world evangelism. We conclude, then, 
 that the faith which so many zealous 
 millennarians have reposed in the re- 
 ligious efficacy of the visible advent 
 is very poorly founded. 
 
 4. Once more it can be objected to 
 recent Adventism that a tendency to 
 abridge missionary incentive lies in its 
 characteristic points of view. This is 
 not equivalent to saying that up to 
 date the champions of a pronounced 
 Adventism have exhibited a special 
 lack of missionary zeal. An appre- 
 ciable number of them have been men 
 of admirable religious earnestness, so 
 that their books are able to minister 
 edification to one who thoroughly dis- 
 sents from their ruling conceptions. 
 What we maintain is that, in the long 
 run, a scheme of doctrine which dis- 
 
148 STUDIES IN 
 
 parages the efficacy of the ordinary 
 means of evangelism, or places the 
 main emphasis on a hastening of the 
 coming of Christ by a fugitive proc- 
 lamation of the gospel to the nations, 
 has a tendency to weaken missionary 
 incentive. In a community thoroughly 
 leavened with a faith in the power of 
 gospel agencies to work successfully 
 for the redemption of mankind, those 
 tendencies may be held in check for 
 a considerable period. Nevertheless, 
 they are logically inwrought with the 
 given system, and in the absence of 
 powerful offsetting influences would be 
 quite certain to come to manifestation 
 sooner or later. 
 
 5. Finally, recent Adventism is in 
 some degree exposed to the objection 
 that it harbors an over-technical bib- 
 licism, to a relative neglect of historical 
 and scientific considerations. History 
 doubtless has no authoritative message 
 to offer on the nearness or the re- 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 149 
 
 moteness of the second advent. But 
 it does illustrate very strikingly how 
 all attempts to fix the time of that 
 event have utterly miscarried, and 
 thoroughly justifies the induction that 
 an attitude of calm waiting rather 
 than one of anxious expectation be- 
 comes the Christian. If it be said 
 that the example of the apostles makes 
 for a different conclusion, it is to be 
 replied that the apostles took lessons 
 from the historical evolution on other 
 themes, and in all probability on this 
 theme also, and we should be put 
 to shame by them if we could not 
 derive from the prolonged tuition of 
 the centuries wholesome suggestions 
 regarding the proper attitude toward 
 the prospective advent of the Lord. 
 As respects natural science, obviously 
 it has no distinct pronunciamento on 
 the nearness or the remoteness of the 
 end of the dispensation. What it 
 does testify is that, so far as natural 
 causation is concerned, there is no 
 
150 STUDIES IN 
 
 substantial reason apparent why the 
 earth should not abide and afford 
 adequate sustenance to the human race 
 for long ages to come. This is not 
 saying very much, but to the extent 
 that science is able to validate the 
 conviction that a law of economy is 
 operative in world-management it af- 
 fords a ground for surmising that the 
 present type of human existence will 
 not speedily reach its goal. On the 
 ability of science to substantiate the 
 given conviction we do not care to 
 pronounce. For us the main emphasis 
 falls upon the lessons of history. These 
 veto, as a piece of egregious folly, the 
 attempt to fix the time of the advent. 
 Consequently, they advise against mak- 
 ing any anxious account of its immi- 
 nence. Mental sobriety allows no 
 other attitude toward an event that 
 lies in an indeterminate future, and 
 may be distant by the breadth of 
 long ages. From the viewpoint of 
 eternity the long ages may indeed 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 151 
 
 appear as only a narrow interval; but 
 for beings with our time consciousness 
 it is psychologically impossible to re- 
 duce them to insignificance in our 
 customary outlook upon the earthly 
 drama. 
 
 Following the suggestions of the 
 supplementary sources of evidence, not 
 a few in our time are disposed to 
 interpret the doctrine of Christ's com- 
 ing as properly denoting only the 
 progressive triumph of his spirit in 
 the world. He comes, they affirm, in 
 every notable advance of the type 
 of truth and life represented in him 
 toward ascendency over the minds of 
 men and the institutions of society. 
 This interpretation, we cordially ad- 
 mit, includes one great aspect of the 
 truth of Christ's advent; but we are 
 far from being persuaded that it con- 
 tains the whole truth. In the New 
 Testament revelation the advent stands 
 as the great initial event in introducing 
 a most extraordinary and ideal con- 
 
152 RECENT ADVENTISM 
 
 summation, even the completion of the 
 judicial process running through his- 
 tory, and the instatement of a redeemed 
 humanity in an incorruptible inher- 
 itance. Its import lies in its relation 
 to this marvelous consummation, to 
 which it serves in the pictorial repre- 
 sentations of the Bible as the preface. 
 The coming Christ means the one who 
 is to open the door to the transcendent 
 and eternal dispensation. Anything 
 circumstantial in his coming is of very 
 slight consequence, and it is no part 
 of religious discretion to award it any 
 higher character than that of admissible 
 figure. Christian contemplation should 
 be directed toward what he comes to 
 inaugurate. That is great, glorious, 
 overwhelming, something to which the 
 best phases of the present temporal 
 order make only a distant approach. 
 It places a light upon the horizon out 
 of whose living glow the faithful toilers 
 in the earthly vineyard should derive 
 perpetual cheer and inspiration. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 Our task is historical and critical 
 rather than constructive. Its execu- 
 tion nevertheless has suggested a num- 
 ber of inferences on the theme of the 
 second advent, and a few words may 
 appropriately be added by way of 
 summarizing these. 
 
 1. Attempts to determine the time of 
 the second coming have no longer any 
 credible basis. History has clearly 
 demonstrated their utter futility, 
 thereby affixing its sanction to the 
 old-time declaration, "Of that day and 
 hour knoweth no one" (Matt. xxiv. 36). 
 
 2. There is no good warrant for 
 associating the second coming with a 
 visible earthly reign of Christ. Old 
 Testament prophecy can be made to 
 support the idea of such a reign only 
 by imputing to it a literalism which 
 there are sufficient exegetical grounds 
 
 153 
 
154 STUDIES IN 
 
 for challenging. As for the New Tes- 
 tament, it affords not a single text 
 which is clearly in favor of a visible 
 earthly reign. Some commentators, it 
 is true, conceive that in the thought 
 of the Revelator (xx. 4-7) this earth 
 was to be the theater of the millen- 
 nial rule of Christ and of the martyrs 
 who were to be granted a part in the 
 first resurrection. But other commen- 
 tators favor an opposite conclusion. 
 The words of the Revelator are quite 
 indecisive. They have no efficacy to 
 authenticate the notion of an earthly 
 reign in face of the fact that the 
 general body of relevant texts in the 
 New Testament contemplates the sec- 
 ond coming as the immediate ante- 
 cedent of the final judgment, and not 
 one of these texts represents the 
 returning Christ as setting foot upon 
 the earth. 
 
 3. As there is no suitable warrant 
 for the assumption of a visible earthly 
 reign, so there is no adequate ground 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 155 
 
 for making great account of the vis- 
 ibility of the second advent. Were the 
 disciples of Christ confined to a single 
 limited province, it might be of some 
 concern to them to be able to antic- 
 ipate that the coming of their Master 
 will be in the field of the natural 
 vision. But, since they are scattered 
 over the globe, there seems to be no 
 possibility that he could be disclosed 
 to the natural eyesight of more than 
 a paltry fraction of them, in any direct 
 approach to the earthly theater. This 
 is not asserting that it is necessary 
 to dispute the visibility of the advent, 
 but only that it is not prudent to 
 place upon it any appreciable emphasis. 
 In the scriptural references the stress 
 may be regarded as falling not so 
 much on the precise form of the future 
 manifestation as on the certainty that 
 the Christ who had disappeared would 
 reappear in a way that would enforce 
 recognition. This is the important 
 point, and in view of the unimagined 
 
156 STUDIES IN 
 
 scope of divine resources it shows 
 poor discretion to attempt to inclose 
 the subject in a narrow literalism. 
 
 4. A kindred remark applies to the 
 idea of the millennium. While not 
 rejecting that idea, we may be advised 
 not to put too large a meaning into 
 the single expression of it contained 
 in the Bible. It is to be remembered 
 that the Revelator looked out upon a 
 world in which a gigantic power held 
 sway, a power which gave mortal 
 offense to his inherited Jewish belief 
 by setting itself up as an object of 
 worship, and to his Christian faith and 
 zeal by threatening destruction to the 
 flock of Christ. He could but regard 
 this power — which plainly was none 
 other than imperial Rome — as an agent 
 of Satan, and he emphatically declared 
 as much in his representation that the 
 dragon with seven heads and ten 
 horns gives to the beast with seven 
 heads and ten horns "his power, and 
 his throne, and great authority" (xiii. 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 157 
 
 2). From his standpoint the rescuing 
 of the Christian Church from this 
 monstrous foe was of incalculable mo- 
 ment. It seemed to him equivalent 
 to the binding of Satan and the 
 securing to Christianity an era for 
 peaceful advance in the world. As 
 compared with contemporary condi- 
 tions such an era would have a charm- 
 ing aspect, and would present a scene 
 upon which the martyrs might look 
 down with feelings of triumph. It is 
 from this point of view that we may 
 reasonably construe the millennial pe- 
 riod. Noting that it is placed in 
 contrast with the period of Satanic 
 assault through a persecuting and idol- 
 atrous power, we shall find no com- 
 pelling occasion to regard it as a period 
 in all respects ideal. We shall be at 
 liberty to rate it as merely a period 
 of free opportunity and marked ad- 
 vance for the cause of Christ in the 
 world. Ascribing to it this character 
 we cannot expect to be able to dis- 
 
158 STUDIES IN 
 
 criminate its limits with any sort of 
 exactness. At least this is the neces- 
 sary assumption in so far as we are 
 destitute of any proper warrant for 
 interpreting the reign of Christ with 
 the risen saints as a visible earthly 
 reign. For us the millennium denotes 
 simply an era of special ascendency 
 of Christ's kingdom in the world, an 
 era very likely introduced without any 
 marked tokens of its arrival. To put 
 more into the language of the Revelator 
 is to indulge in gratuitous fancy. 
 
 5. In the point of view of the New 
 Testament the kingdom of God is 
 most closely associated with the person 
 of Christ, so that the attitude toward 
 the one essentially defines the attitude 
 toward the other. Now, in the rounded 
 idea of the kingdom there is a union 
 of process and consummation. The 
 kingdom is both present and future — 
 present in its primary stages, future in 
 the glorious fulfillment of its ideal. 
 Similarly, we may think of the coming 
 
RECENT ADVENTISM 159 
 
 of Christ as a union of process and 
 consummation. He comes in every 
 great crisis of the kingdom, such as 
 the outpouring of the Spirit at Pente- 
 cost, or the definitive overthrow of 
 the middle wall of partition between 
 Jew and Gentile through the downfall 
 of the Jewish State. But beyond all 
 these preliminary advents he is to 
 come in that transcendent visitation 
 which is to signalize the ushering in 
 of the perfected kingdom, the ideal 
 order of eternity. Thus regarded 
 Christ's coming is seen to be both 
 premillennial and postmillennial. As 
 coinciding with crucial epochs of the 
 advancing kingdom it is premillennial. 
 Since, however, the millennium, what- 
 ever may be its character in other 
 respects, is included in the temporal 
 order, it is to be followed by the 
 glorious consummating advent which 
 heralds the arrival of the perfected 
 kingdom, the complete installation of 
 the realm of the incorruptible life, the 
 
160 RECENT ADVENTISM 
 
 ultimate or eternal order. Naturally 
 it was the coming of the Lord Christ 
 in this preeminent sense which specially 
 appealed to the hope and aspiration 
 of prophetic spirits. It is right still 
 to accord it a lofty primacy in Chris- 
 tian contemplation, though history may 
 properly teach us to assign no little 
 value to the advents intervening be- 
 tween the ascension and the great 
 final disclosure of Him in whom we 
 have the assurance of eternal life. 
 
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