The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[421] predicted in the Scriptures, but that the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly prophesies of others to come. The old poet prophets, all the world over, have sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted the contemplations of Plato. It is seen in the half-inspired speculations of the old Indian mystics. The Cumaean sibyl saw it in her trances. The apostles and martyrs of our faith looked for it anxiously and hopefully. Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming. It inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers. In every age since the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded ‘upper chambers’ of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ down to the present time, and from this Derry camp-ground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its fulfilment.

How this great idea manifests itself in the lives of the enthusiasts of the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the fore-shadowings of the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords and loaded