________________
[ 178
)
There is a proverb in India, “A thousand years a city, and a thousand years a forest.” This change of city into forest and vice versa is going on every. where, and it makes peoples optimists or pessimists according to the side they see of it.
The next idea we take up is the idea of equality. These millennium ideas have been great motive powers to work. Many religions preach this as an element in them,--that God is coming to rule the universe, and that then there will be no difference at all in conditions. The people who preach this doctrine are mere fanatics, and fanatics are indeed the sincerest of mankind. Christianity was preached just on the basis of the fascination of this fanaticism, and that is what made it so attractive to the Greek and the Roman slaves. They believed that, under the millennial religion, there would be no more slavery, that there would be plenty to eat and drink; and therefore they Hocked round the Christian standard. Those who preached the idea first were 'of course ignorant fanatics, but very sincere. In modern times this
