The third period; or, The Apocalypse explained

Dedication

O the city of Savannah I dedicate this little

X volume, which is the ultimate outgrowth of aspirations nurtured years ago under her genial skies. It was not the ministry of my youth, but the youth of my ministry, that she nurtured twenty-five years ago. At that time, where the shipping lay along her busy wharves, I labored earnestly with the open-handed men who go down into the sea in great ships, and on the Sabbath days in the old Penfield Mariners* Church amused good Captain Dickinson with nautical terms that did not sit well upon a landsman's lips. In old Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church the too indulgent congregation buoyed me with their kind and earnest sympathy, while saintly Robert Corley sat by me, and Robert Walker and Emmanuel Heidt, and the princely Godfrey and ever earnest Mclntyre looked up from their wonted places, and the hospitable home of Alexander M. Winn waited to give me welcome.

Where the Independent Presbyterian Church, so gray and grave and grand, -has since then spread her ashes on the platform of her memories, and risen again, phenix-like, on the wings of her people's faith, where she then lifted her towering head and pointed heavenward, the lamented Axon, who has but as yesterday left his slippers on the threshold of

Preface

I DO assuredly know that I am writing for the ages. He who sailed straight across the sea guided by an inference, and gave to human progress another continent, was not more surely guided by the all-seeing Eye and overruling Hand than I.

He who digs the exquisite treasure of the past from under mediaeval rubbish but gives back to the world its own; yet, nevertheless, known or unknown, he is the world's benefactor till the end of time. But he who reaches forth into the future and holds the lamp that guides our feet into our heritage is thrice blest above the lot of other men : above the past — they knew it not ; above the present — for man sees only through his eyes ; blest in the future, for men will rise and call him blessed when they realize the fulfillment of his promises in the fruition of their hopes.

Yes, I am writing for the ages; yet I know r , alas! how much of opposition and contempt of truth, born of our depravity, is mingled with the better thoughts of well-intentioned men. The would-be wise men of one generation are but patent fools to the generation that comes after them, the blot of history, the laughing-stock of all. For this reason none that have written for immortality have enjoyed the commendation of their contemporaries. Nevertheless,

PREFACE.

I have written these plain truths for plain people. May the Master sanctify them to the enlargement of many a life, to the higher aspiration of many a spirit, and to the divine expansion of many a soul that shall more intelligently walk with God !

To the critic I can only say, Do your worst, and let the best come of it. You have your office and relation to the economy of things. In the country where I live we have a vulture known as the turkey buzzard ; his taste is exclusively for carrion ; therefore he picks the eyes out of the young and weakly lambs that he may reduce them to the level of his taste, and in so doing unwittingly subserves that great and easily discerned principle in the divine economy, " the survival of the fittest." Esther said, and so can I, " If I perish, I perish/'

'But whether you be critical, or infidel, or prejudiced, or dull, I pray you, reader, read it, and as you read reflect and inwardly digest and muse and burn. Verbally it is but the product of my evening hours, not infrequently wrested from labor, or refused to sleep. Nevertheless, the truth of God is in it, the wisdom that cometh from above.

Ah ! my fellow-man, if you would think more of these eternal things and less of stocks and bonds, of rents and rates of interest, with how much more of grandeur and pride of being it might replace the treadmill drudgery of your daily life !

The Author.