THE MILLENNIUM.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—The Spectator of May 5th contains an article on Tire Millennium," which I have read with deepest interest. There
is only one sentence in it on which I venture to offer a remark, and it is as follows a-
" The faith, that is, continues to exist among a few disciples. but it is no longer in evidence among the many faiths in London. The fact is curious, for belief in a personal reign of Christ on earth has been from the first one of the most persistent of Christian illusions," &c.
As the writer of it draws attention to the preaching of Dr. Cumming on that subject in 1848, I may mention that I remember it very well indeed, as I used to attend his lectures in Exeter Hall, and I remember very well the excitement
which they produced amongst certain classes of Christians. I am not unacquainted with the extent to which, not only in London but in other cities, the belief in a personal reign of Christ is now held, as I am well acquainted with many, both preachers ordained and laymen, who preach it and teach it by pen as well as by voice, in London and elsewhere, and also with many in different social ranks, and in the provinces as well as in London, who cling to what St. Paul calls "that blessed hope," as they cling to their hope of personal salvation. It is a subject, moreover, on which I have often spoken in public, which has given me some opportunity of estimating the extent to which the public are interested in it. The result of my own observations fully confirms what others better in- formed than I am have told me, and that is that the expecta- tion of a personal reign of our Lord upon earth has never been so widely entertained in this country as it is at the present day, and that the belief in it is very steadily increasing, and in Loudon especially. We find, moreover, that it is far more widely held by the Evangelical school in the Church of England than it is proportionately amongst Nonconformists. Here in Scotland it is held by comparatively very few, but we see progress in its growth, nevertheless. You may call it a Christian illusion. If it is an illusion, as we have no better authority for it than we have for the resur- rection of the dead, that hope must be an illusion likewise ! Let me state that we find public interest in the question to have been greatly stimulated (I refer to that portion of the public which is interested in the spread of the kingdom of God) by the history of the Jews during the past twenty-five years, and by the Zionist movement. And this leads me to invite your attention to the enclosed book lately published by me, entitled "The Branches and the Branch," as in Appendix A you will find a "Historical Outline of Persecution Suffered by the Jews from Century to Century since the beginning of the Christian Era," a history so very rarely
studied that I have met none in a wide circle of acquaintance here and in London who have shown anything but a very limited acquaintance with it; the book was published a few
weeks ago.—I am, Sir, &c., R. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
43 Mardale Crescent, Edinburgh.
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