Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/361

 A Criticism of Millennial Hopes

Examined.

��"This Millennial doctrine encounters a very serious difficulty. If the world's population had doubled each, century for the past sixty which seems a very reasonable estimate the present population of the earth would be two and one-third quintillions of people. That would cover over the fifty millions of square miles- of land surface on this globe with people as thickly as they could stand, four thous- and feet deep. If each were five feet high they would reach up into the sky nearly four miles. No doubt people enough have been born to make that number" ,

The above remarks were addressed by Reverend E. L. Eaton, D.D., to the M. E. ministers of Pittsburg at a meet- ing held April 27, 1903, The address was favorably received by the learned gentlemen present and thought so highly of that it was printed for circulation.

Six months later, on Oct. 29, 1903, the same Reverend E. L. Eaton, D. D., in debate with Pastor C, T. Russell, the author of this volume, repeated so much of the above as applied to his method of calculation, but revised his figures as to the total of humanity for the past six thousand years. As illus- trating the large concession, we place his figures side by side:

Lot us hope that a man of so liberal a mind and RO easy fa, pencil may yet get to see the question he was discussing in

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