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there can have been no millennium previously, surely from Christ's statement of the mixture of tares and wheat continuing in the gospel field uninterruptedly to it. *

Let us now look into this boasted argument.

1. Nothing can be clearer than that the separation of the tares from the wheat is an absolute and final separation. Indeed the extracts given express the same thing. The tract calls the present a "mixed economy from first to last," a "mixture of good and evil." The one which succeeds it is represented as precisely the opposite of this. It is "the kingdom in its PERFECT state;" it is "the reign of UNMIXED GOOD—ENTIRELY UNMIXED," where "the righteous shine out without a cloud." This being the undoubted sense of the parable, and expressed emphatically by those who adduce it, I have to ask,

2. Do you believe your own representation? You do not. It will not do to say that the glorified portion of the Church will be perfect; for that is a truism. Your whole argument is, that there cannot be any millennial state amongst mortal men before Christ's second coming, because, according to the teaching of this parable, these wax worse and worse onwards till Christ's second coming, after which the evil will be purged out, and an unmixed millennium-of men in the flesh, of course-take place. This is your argument, if it be intelligible at all. Evidently, then, you must mean that after Christ's coming there will be no tares-no imperfection, mixture, evil"-amongst mortal men, and in the Church below. The tract speaks of the "purifying of the moral atmosphere," and the establishing of "a new economy," which, of course, refers exclusively to the mortal state of mankind. Mr Elliott says, "Then the tares shall be eradicated." And Dr M'Neile, who will have no "motley concern” of a millennium, describes it in such Scripture language as

* Hor Apoc., ut supra, iv. p. 180.

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this: "From the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered." "The earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea," and so forth. No one can imagine this to be quoted as a description of the state of glory. You picture, then, a state of things upon earth which you do not yourselves believe. Even Dr M'Neile, despite the language we have found him using, had no faith, when he wrote his Lectures on the Jews at least, in the sinlessness or perfection of the millennial state. The tract above quoted, when it expatiates on the sinless perfection of the millennial state, only expresses formally, and out and out, what in substance occurs in almost every production of modern premillennialists. But such absolute and unmixed good-such perfect removal of evilhardly one of them is bold enough to say he expects to be the condition of mortal men during the millennium.

The imperfection of the millennium is not, indeed, much dwelt on. It suits better their views of a Saviour personally present, and a new heaven and a new earth already realized, to talk of the blessed millennium, without going nicely into the question what that blessedness is to be. It is far more congenial to the feelings of good men, so to mix up the state of glory with the mortal state as to lose themselves in the general halo which thus is made to surround the subject in their eyes. "Sin and misery till He comes," exclaims Dr M'Neile; "righteousness and happiness at His coming! Groanings and agony till He comes; songs of triumph at His coming! Faint glimmerings of hope amidst surrounding and prevailing darkness, and desolation, and despair, till He comes; everlasting light, and life, and joy, and love, at his coming! These are the cadences which continually fall upon the ear from the sacred harp."* Now, it is a pity to spoil so pleasing

*Serm. on the Second Advent. Serm. vi., Renovation of the whole Earth at the Second Advent, pp. 191, 192.

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a picture, but the fault lies with those who paint it. The colours are false; it is a dream; no such millennium is believed in. It is an earthly state, stripped of its earthliness. When premillennialists, however, are roused to draw a definite and clear line between the glorified and the mortal states of the Church, they describe the millennium just as other people do, and in so doing destroy their own argument. Take the following from the Presbyterian Review of Mr Scott's "Outlines." Mr Scott had gone rather too far in the direction of a perfect millennium; not so far, indeed, as to affirm that there would be absolutely no sin during the millennium, but farther than most premillennialists. And this provoked a good refutation of his peculiar opinions, from the pen of a brother premillennialist. Sin," says the reviewer, "and as a consequence, death, does exist during the millennium; and we should like some distinct scriptural evidence to the contrary. The system would require to prove that there is to be absolutely no sin upon the earth during that period. Sin and death entered the world together, and in like manner will they depart together at the end of the millennium.”* If this be a correct account of the millennium, it only proves that there will not be so many tares then as now: that is all. Mr Bickersteth also represents the millennial state as one of simply prevailing holiness-a prevalency which, while it does not exclude the presence of the ungodly and wicked upon earth, will make them conceal their real character, and "feign submission." Are such characters tares, then, or are they wheat? If they be tares, the millennium cannot be the state described by the separation of the tares from the wheat: The tares-by your own admission—are still among the wheat, and will not be separated till after the millennium.†

* Presbyterian Review, Jan. 1845, p. 470.

† Mr Elliott's and Mr Wood's replies to these observations, only show how impossible it is to overthrow them. "Mr Brown," says Mr Elliott, 'argues strongly that the millennial state is one of imperfection, and so

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Thus, this argument proves most satisfactorily the reverse of what it is brought to establish. But here it may naturally be asked, how such a strange confusion of thought is to

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still of tares and wheat. But does prophecy so depict it? We read, that then the people shall be all righteous—all individually knowing the Lord, from the least to the greatest, as well as with the knowledge of God outwardly covering the earth as the waters cover the sea; also, that there will be then no avoue (' iniquity'), the avoμos ('that wicked'), and the mystery of avoue (' iniquity'), have been destroyed with Antichrist; nor any scandals, for 'they shall not hurt in all my holy mountain.' Can this suit the state of the intermixed tares and wheat, with and σκανδαλα ever continued onward (Matt. xiii. 41) till the fire purges them out? Admit that with earth's inhabitants, from the continued Adamic taint, holiness will in one sense not be absolutely perfect. That will not constitute them tares. (Mr Brown seems to me to be mistaken in supposing the wheat and tares of the parable to signify the good and evil that there may be in the same person; not the godly, as a class, and the ungodly). Christ's true servants now, though imperfect, and with the taint of na tural corruption remaining in them, are yet wheat, not tares. And so, I conceive, only with much less of imperfection, there will be only wheat then, according to the prophetic word, and no tares. How, indeed, could there well grow that which is the produce of the Wicked One's sowing, at a time when the Wicked One is shut up and sealed, as in Apoc. xx 3, from deceiving and tempting men any more."—(Hora, fourth edit., pp. 180,181). Mr Wood argues to the same effect, as to the mixture of sin with grace in believers not making them tares, and the design of the parable being to announce the separation of the good and evil classes at Christ's coming, not the separation of good and evil qualities in the same class. But lest this should not be deemed sufficient to meet my argument, he further says, that as to the saints who, at Christ's coming, are to be glorified, they at least will be untainted; and as to the unglorified, who after that are to people the earth in the flesh, "there will be no false professors in the visible church during the millennium," and any tares then found on the field of the world will not belong to the visible church at all.-(Last Things, pp. 304–307.)

The fallacy of all this is transparent. Doubtless, the object of the parable is to announce the separation of the two great classes-godly and ungodly. But that the purging out or eradicating of the corrupt element from the church of God, when Christ comes, is intended to be conveyed, even they themselves express as strongly as I do. The extracts I have given say all that I have said, and say truly. And interpreters generally give this as the truth taught by the parable. "THE SEPARATION OF GOOD AND EVIL SHALL THEN BE ABSOLUTE," says BENGEL, for example.-(See

be accounted for? How, it may be said, can so many sensible and excellent men confound the state of mortality with that of glory, and not only apply to the one what even themselves admit to be applicable only to the other, but on this vicious transference build one of their strongest arguments—if their own estimate of its value is to be taken? The question is an interesting one; and the answer to it is, that the system almost inevitably engenders such confusion. The fundamental principle of the system-the contemporaneousness and coexistence of the state of grace and the state of glory--of mortality and immortality-of an upper and a lower—a celestial and a terrestrial department of one and the same kingdom-this principle destroys the real nature of both the things which it places in juxtaposition. The state of grace, on this principle, ceases to be the state of grace which it is represented to be in God's Word; and the state of glory is in like manner perverted. It is not that each is raised and lowered to the measure of the other. But it is that we have, instead of them, something more or less different from both.

Before leaving this parable of the tares, I cannot refrain from noticing the light thrown upon it by the other parables in the same chapter.-(Matt. xiii.) Various features of his kingdom are there taught by the Saviour in seven parables. The parable of the Sower (v. 3-23) teaches who are the genuine subjects of the kingdom: The parables of the Treasure and of the Pearl (v. 44-46) teach the priceless value of the blessings of the kingdom: The parables of the Mustard Seed and of the Leaven (v. 31-33) teach its progressive advancement in the world; while the parables of the Tares

note †, p. 286). Mr Wood's assertion, that all the unregenerate will be outside the visible church, not in the field of the parable, is utterly gratuitous, at variance with express Scripture, and contradicted by most writers on his own side,-Mr Bickersteth, for example, who speaks of their "feigned subjection to Christ" in that day.