Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/372

 12 A Criticism of Millennial Hopes Examine**.

Comparing these figures with the above reckoning as to population we find that at the close, of the first thousand years there would be two hundred and eighteen people for each acre of the habitable earth. At the close of the second for each square foot of the habitable earth, or in other words they would be standing on each other's heads about twenty thousand persons high; or, if we include the polar regions and waste portions of the earth, they would be about ten thousand persons high on each other's heads ; or, if we include the water surface as well as all the land surface, there would be seventeen hundred persons for each square foot. Allow- ing two square feet for each individual, the population would need to stand in piles thirty-four hundred deep, closely packed together all over the surface of land and sea.

What would the figures be at the end of fifty thousand years if each of the succeeding forty-eight were estimated on the reasonable basis of the two already calculated?

THE MILLENNIUM INDISPENSABLE SOOF,

Is it not time that those who do not believe in a coining Millennium should begin to pray that God would arrange for one? Is it not evident that if Christ's Kingdom were delayed even three hundred years the world would be in terrible straits. The population at the present rate of increase would then be over 16,OOQ,000,CK)0~-with less than one habitable acre apiece, and only by very "intensive fanning'* could they subsist at all.

Ah! says some one, You are neglecting to count that death will keep things balanced, about as they now are, always. No, we are not over-looking death, but averaging it as at present. We are merely reckoning the increase of popula- tion on the basis of the last census reports.

Very evidently the facts, as we look backward and forward, all indicate that we are Just at the right time for the estab- lishment of "the Kingdom of God's dear Son." The declara- tion of the Lord at the beginning was, that the earth should be filled, and according to our eoaaptttations we have now

�� �