and good works, " What if I will that he tarry till I come?" though Peter, the apostle of faith in Him, should have grown old and been carried where he would not, even unto the death?[1]
The story of the good seed sown by many in many lands, notably by Spener and Zinzendorf in Germany, Wesley and Whitefield[2] in England and America, is too long for us here to tell. Suffice it that the sowing seems to have been that of John the Baptist, rather than that of the Son of Man, calling forth indeed fruit meet for repentance, but fruit still partaking too much of the old root and of human weakness.
Neither can we tell of the terrible devastation that followed in France, whence the good soil of Protestantism had been expelled, when infidelity came to cope with the failing power of Romanism; and it was as if seven devils had been brought back more wicked than the first. What we have to do is to inquire whether our good Bengel's judgment—the judgment foretold by our Lord in Matthew, and foreshadowed to John in vision—has really taken place, or whether we are to look for another such time of desolation, and worse. God forbid the latter conclusion! Possibly it would be like the Jews' awaiting their Messiah. We have seen strong indications of a crisis, of the turning of the fever, soon after the middle of the last century. At that very time, culminating in 1757,[3] Swedenborg tells us that the vision of the judgment, described in the Apocalypse, was fulfilled in all particulars, not in this world, but in the world of spirits, on those who had been collecting there through the long centuries of Christian misrule.
- ↑ According to Schelling: "The periods of the Church are typified by the three principal Apostles, Peter, Paul, and John. Of these periods the first two, Catholicism and Protestantism, have passed; while the third. Johannine Christianity, is approaching."—Schwegler: History of Philosophy, p. 390.
- ↑ We are not unmindful that both the Pietism of Spener and the Moravianism of Zinzendorf contained elements of weakness, and lost in time their power for good; and that the religion of Wesley, and still more that of Whitefield, contained a leaven of Calvinism which has to die. Yet they all incited an active faith and desire for new life. See Appendix VI.
- ↑ The year when began the "Seven Years' War;" and, according to Hume, "in 1758 the war raged in all quarters of the world."
