When we take an extensive review of the past, we also find that there have been ages of the world previous to our own, in which mankind enjoyed a length of days, and a degree of innocence and happiness, now altogether unknown. All have, in fact, heard of the blessedness of the Paradisaical state, and all sigh for its return. The restoration of man to this state, has been the subject of promise, and the theme of prophecy and song; the sentiment has been found in all countries, and under every Dispensation; and many of the Divine appointments, both of nature and of Providence, seem to have had an express reference to the accomplishment of this glorious and benignant purpose. The Septenary division of time was impressed on the human mind from the era of creation; it was perpetuated in the Mosaic institutions; and a constant succession of Septennial changes in the frame of man himself from his birth to his death, has tended to keep alive the idea that the Great period of the Restoration of all things is measured by the number _Seven_. Hence, arose the universal opinion, corroborated by tradition, that the World was to continue for _Six_ successive ages, appointed ages of trial and probation, and that the _Seventh_ age would be a state of never-ending felicity and joy. Poets and philosophers, always the most sanguine of our race, have in every nation seized upon this idea, and by the splendid efforts of their genius, engrafted it upon the early history of their respective countries. Thus, compositions which were at first admired only as the production of superior intellect, became early incorporated with the popular creed, and were at last admitted by all as the true records of antiquity.[53]