Revelation 20:6

6. Our seer now specifies the nature of the life of this first resurrection. Over that high and unique vitality the second death hath no power. By the first resurrection we are raised from beneath the power of the second death to above the power of the second death. This is initiated at our earthly regeneration, but it is not completed until the glorification of our spirits. Our souls pass through as true and literal a resurrection as our bodies; and it is by that resurrection of our souls that they become a fitting unity with our resurrection bodies. We might, perhaps, more truly say that it is by the resurrection and glorification of the body that it becomes fit for unification with the resurrect soul. Or, stronger still, it is by its own first resurrection that the blessed soul brings the raised body to a fitting unity with itself. It is the soul that glorifies the body. And thus soul and body both pass through each its literal resurrection to the final glorious unification. The first resurrection is, therefore, a resurrection of souls; the second, of bodies.

A thousand years As we are here still in the land of symbol, there is ample reason for applying the symbolic interpretation to this number. We have the number of universality, ten, raised to a cube, and producing, on the year-day principle, 360,000 years. The 1260 years of antichristic rule dwindle thereby to an insignificant extent in comparison with the earthly reign of Christ. Glasgow well says, “Against the hypothesis of the contracted millennium there lies this startling objection: that it assigns to antichrist a more extended reign than to Christ. But, if the reign of Jesus be 360,000 years, and the end of antichrist or heathenism be speedily approaching, their duration is of no moment, being, at most, about 7,000 out of 360,000, or one-five-hundredth part.” We are then only in the morning dawn of human history. Progress is the law, not only in nature and in history but in the Messianic kingdom. It is not only the few that are finally saved. Entirely correct is the inference drawn from the doctrine of the millennium by Dr. Bellamy, that the number of the lost in comparison to the saved may finally be as the number of malefactors now hung to the rest of society. See our work on The Will, p. 359.

Alford, on the passage, in insisting that this resurrection of souls is a bodily resurrection, makes two points. 1. If the first resurrection is “spiritual,” so must be the second. To which we answer, If the first is not a “spiritual” resurrection, it certainly is a soul -resurrection: and a soul -resurrection is not a body-resurrection. It does not follow that if a soul -resurrection is spiritual, therefore a body-resurrection must, also, be spiritual. Professed “literalists” must render souls literally, and not figuratively, as bodies. 2. “Those who lived next to the apostles,” says Alford, “and the whole Church for 300 years understood them in the plain, literal sense;” that is, forsooth, understood souls to mean bodies! And that is a very queer “literal sense!” This argument, based on the authority of the post-apostolic Church, comes with a bad grace from Alford, who persistently maintains, in his Commentary, that the apostles themselves, even in their inspired writings, made the sad mistake of expecting the second advent to take place in their own day. And we call the attention of our readers to this special point: That this very mistake of expecting the advent in their own day is identical with the mistake of placing the advent before the millenium. Many of “those who lived next the apostles” did make this mistake. Bringing the advent into their own day, they, of course, thereby cut off the millennium, and placed it beyond the advent, and hence arose the errors of ancient Chiliasm, or pre-millennialism. This error was not held by “the whole Church for 300 years;” but, probably, by a decided majority of the post-apostolic Church. See the whole question of ancient Chiliasm discussed in our article on “Millennial Traditions,” in the Methodist Quarterly Review for July, 1843.

In his commentary on the Apocalypse, Mr. Glasgow has some ingenious methods of disproving the danger of millennial over-population. The fear of some is, that in 360,000 years of peace and prosperity the earth would be over-stocked with inhabitants. Glasgow first quotes many beautiful texts to prove the future increased fertility of the earth. “The wilderness shall be a fruitful field.” “I will plant in the wilderness the shittah-tree, and the myrtle, and the oil-tree.” “He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her deserts like the garden of the Lord.” “Break forth into joy, ye waste places.” “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

The mountains, deserts, and morasses, may be, he thinks, rendered a fertile plain, and the earth become a garden by geological changes, by a better distribution of waters, and a diffusion, truly possible, of warmth over the Arctic regions. Nay, there are supposable methods by which the orb of the earth may be enlarged and furnish a larger area of life. In all which, he professedly and carefully states what may, and, for aught science can show can, be; not what certainly will be. The latest conclusion of science seems to be that the area of land is continually gaining upon the ocean.

But the most valid solution of this difficulty lies in what are now the known laws of population. In the animal creation it is found, largely, that low life is enormously prolific, and high life chary of over-population. The fishes spawn and the insects breed in trillions while the lion and elephant are generating a score. So also among mankind the poor, ignorant, and miserable are prolific, while the higher classes, the rich, the aristocratic, and the intellectually and morally cultured classes tend to sterility. The nobility of England would die out were it not replenished from the commons. People who have few resources for enjoyment fall back upon the animal and domestic gratifications within their reach. As the higher faculties find full play in a variety of directions, these enjoyments are often deserted. As the passions of mankind become regulated, fecundity becomes moderate, and a perfectly balanced race would never over-populate the earth.