The greater part of the Greek philosophers held the universe to be eternal both with respect to commencement and duration. But as to this petty portion of the world or universe, this globe of stone and earth and water, of minerals and vapors, which we inhabit, it was somewhat difficult to form an opinion; it was, however, deemed very destructible. It was even said that it had been destroyed more than once, and would be destroyed again. Every one judged of the whole world from his own particular country, as an old woman judges of all mankind from those in her own nook and neighborhood.

This idea of the end of our little world and its renovation strongly possessed the imagination of the nations under subjection to the Roman Empire, amidst the horrors of the civil wars between C?sar and Pompey. Virgil, in his “Georgics” (i., 468), alludes to the general apprehension which filled the minds of the common people from this cause: “Impiaque eternam timuerunt secula noctem.” —“And impious men now dread eternal night.”

Lucan, in the following lines, expresses himself much more explicitly:

Hos C?sar populos, si nunc non usserit ignis

Uret cum terris, uret cum gurgite ponti.

Communis mundo superest rogus . . . .

— Phars. vii. v. 812, 14.

Though now thy cruelty denies a grave,

These and the world one common lot shall have;

One last appointed flame, by fate’s decree,

Shall waste yon azure heavens, the earth, and sea.

— Rowe.

And Ovid, following up the observations of Lucan, says:

Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus,

Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia c?li,

Ardent et mundi moles operosa laboret.

— Met. i. v. 256, 58.

For thus the stern, unyielding fates decree,

That earth, air, heaven, with the capacious sea,

All shall fall victims to consuming fire,

And in fierce flames the blazing world expire.

Consult Cicero himself, the philosophic Cicero. He tells us, in his book concerning the “Nature of the Gods,” the best work perhaps of all antiquity, unless we make an exception in favor of his treatise on human duties, called “The Offices”; in that book, I say, he remarks:

“Ex quo eventurum nostri putant id, de quo Pan?tium addubitare dicebant; ut ad extremum omnis mundus ignosceret, cum, humore consumpto, neque terra ali posset, neque remearet, aer cujus ortus, aqua omni exhausta, esse non posset; ita relinqui nihil pr?ter ignem, a quo rursum animante ac Deo renovatio mundi fieret; atque idem ornatus oriretur.”

“According to the Stoics, the whole world will eventually consist only of fire; the water being then exhausted, will leave no nourishment for the earth; and the air, which derives its existence from water, can of course no longer be supplied. Thus fire alone will remain, and this fire, reanimating everything with, as it were, god-like power and energy, will restore the world with improved beauty.”

This natural philosophy of the Stoics, like that indeed of all antiquity, is not a little absurd; it shows, however, that the expectation of a general conflagration was universal.

Prepare, however, for greater astonishment than the errors of antiquity can excite. The great Newton held the same opinion as Cicero. Deceived by an incorrect experiment of Boyle, he thought that the moisture of the globe would at length be dried up, and that it would be necessary for God to apply His reforming hand “manum emendatricem.” Thus we have the two greatest men of ancient Rome and modern England precisely of the same opinion, that at some future period fire will completely prevail over water.

This idea of a perishing and subsequently to be renewed world was deeply rooted in the minds of the inhabitants of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, from the time of the civil wars of the successors of Alexander. Those of the Romans augmented the terror, upon this subject, of the various nations which became the victims of them. They expected the destruction of the world and hoped for a new one. The Jews, who are slaves in Syria and scattered through every other land, partook of this universal terror.

Accordingly, it does not appear that the Jews were at all astonished when Jesus said to them, according to St. Matthew and St. Luke: &ldq............