Meanwhile the millennium was coming, and some people thought it
was very near. And what was the millennium? Why, the time when
everybody on earth would live just as they do in heaven. Nobody
would be selfish, nobody would be unkind; no! not so much as in a
single thought. What a delightful world this would be to live in
then! Heaven itself could scarcely be much better! Perhaps people
would not die at all, but, when the right time came, would slip
quietly away into heaven, just as Enoch did.
My father had believed in the near millennium. His very last
writing, in his sick-room, was a penciled computation, from the
prophets, of the time when it would begin. The first minister
who preached in our church, long before I was born, had studied
the subject much, and had written books upon this, his favorite
theme. The thought of it was continually breaking out, like bloom
and sunshine, from the stern doctrines of the period.
One question in this connection puzzled me a good deal. Were
people going to be made good in spite of themselves, whether they
wanted to or not? And what would be done with the bad ones, if
there were any left? I did not like to think of their being
killed off, and yet everybody must be good, or it would not be a
true millennium.
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