(Paragraph 2)
Is it not evident, therefore, that imperfection belongs to the present dispensation of God’s grace, and that under it the human family cannot attain to that state of exalted glory and perfect enjoyment which is declared in the scripture to belong to the millennial period, when the savage nature of the beasts of prey shall be destroyed, and the poisonous fangs of the serpent be rendered harmless; for the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the child shall put his hand upon the cockatrice‘s den: when the inhabitant shall not say I am sick: when there shall be no more curse, either of barrenness or toil, contention or war, ignorance or idolatry, sorrow or sighing, sickness or death; in fine, nothing to hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain. Is not such a state of things utterly unattainable by the greatest efiieiency that can be given to the present means of grace.
