I doubt not, of the Trades' Unions; a fearful engine of mischief, ready to riot or to assassinate; and I see no counteracting power."
On the whole, his view of the condition of England was a gloomy one. He recommended a correspondent to read "Isaiah iii., v., xxii.; Jeremiah v., xxii., xxx.; Amos iv.; and Habakkuk ii.," adding, "you will be struck, I think, with the close resemblance of our own state with that of the Jews before the second destruction of Jerusalem." When he was told that the gift of tongues had descended on the Irvingites at Glasgow, he was not surprised. "I should take it," he said, "merely as a sign of the coming of the day of the Lord." And he was convinced that the day of the Lord was coming—"the termination of one of the great αἰῶνες of the human race." Of that he had no doubt whatever; wherever he looked he saw "calamities, wars, tumults, pestilences, earthquakes, etc., all marking the time of one of God's peculiar seasons of visitation." His only uncertainty was whether this termination of an αἰών would turn out to be the absolutely final one; but that he believed "no created being knows or can know." In any case he had "not the slightest expectation of what is commonly meant by the Millennium." And his only consolation was that he preferred the present ministry, inefficient as it was, to the Tories.
He had planned a great work on Church and State, in which he intended to lay bare the causes and to point out the remedies of the evils which afflicted society. Its theme was to be, not the alliance or union, but the absolute identity of the Church and the State; and he felt sure that if only this fundamental truth were fully realised by the public, a general reformation would follow. Unfortunately, however, as time went on, the public seemed to realise it less and less. In spite of his protests, not only were Jews admitted to Parliament, but a Jew was actually appointed a governor of Christ's Hospital; and
