that renowned personage, that he might hear from his own lips the
words of prophecy and their interpretation.

Around the personality of Joachim there has gathered no small amount
of _mythus._ He was, it appears, the inventor of that mystical
method of Hermeneutics which has in our time received the name of
"the year-day theory," and which, though now abandoned for the most
part by sane men, has still some devout and superstitious advocates
in the school of Dr. Cumming and kindred visionaries.

Abbot Joachim proclaimed that a stupendous catastrophe was at hand.
Opening the Book of the Revelation of St. John he read, pondered, and
interpreted. A divine illumination opened out to him the dark things
that were written in the sacred pages. The unenlightened could make
nothing of "a time, times, and half a time" [Footnote: Dan. xii. 7.]
; to them the terrors of the 1,260 days [Footnote: Rev. xi .3.] were
an insoluble enigma long since given up as hopeless, whose answer
would come only at the Day of Judgment. Abbot Joachim declared that
the key to the mystery had been to him revealed. What could "a time,
times, and half a time" mean, but three years and a half? What could
a year mean in the divine economy but the _lunar_ year of 360
days? for was not the moon the symbol of the Church of God? What were
those 1,260 days but the sum of the days of three years and a half?
Moreover, as it had been with the prophet Ezekiel, to whom it was
said, "I have appointed thee a day for a year," so it must needs be
with other seers who saw the visions of God. To them the "day" was
not as our brief prosaic day--to them too had been "appointed a day
for a year." The "time, times, and half a time" were the 1,260 days,
and these were 1,260 years, and the stupendous catastrophe, the
battle of Armageddon, the reign of Antichrist, the new heavens and