Page 39 - Jesus is coming - Class version

36 JESUS IS COMING.

their chief source of hope and cemfort. The belief that
Jesus was coming in glory to reign with His saints on the
earth, during the Millennium, was almost universal with
them.
But in the third century there arose a school of inter-
preters, headed by Origen, who so "spiritualized" the
Scriptures that they ceased to believe in any literal Millen-
nium whatsoever. Their system of interpretation has been
severely condemned by Martin Luther, Dr. Adam Clarke
and other commentators.
When Constantino was converted and the Roman em-
pire became, nominally, Christian, it appeared to many
that the Millennium had come, and that they had the king-
dom on earth. The Church, hand in hand with the world,
plunged into the dark ages, until awakened by the great
reformers of the sixteenth century, who again began to
proclaim the comforting hope and blessed promise of the
coming of Christ; and since that time the subject so long
neglected has been studied and preached with increasing
interest. Indeed, in the last two centuries, it seems to
have risen (with the doctrine of salvation by simple faith
in a crucified Saviour) into somewhat the same promi-
nence which it occupied in the early cnurch. God be
praised for it.