Page:Beauty for Ashes.djvu/102

96 portion of a system generally true, than a snow-drift could stand in a field where the corn is springing and the trees blossoming all around it. As the heat which can bring forth verdure and bloom, must necessarily dissolve the snow, so the light of a true theology, shed upon a great falsity like this, must inevitably reveal its deformity, and so help to dissipate it. And when its deformity could not be seen, as was the case when it was accepted and held for Bible truth, how great must have been the mental obscurity—how false the prevailing theology of that day! Surely, then, a new revelation was needed—a new interpretation of the divine Word—a fuller disclosure of the great facts and laws of the spiritual world—a second appearing of Him who is declared to be, and whose advent was to be "as the lightning, which, coming out of the east, shineth even unto the west."

And the fact that the Old doctrine of infant damnation is now perceived by almost every intelligent Christian to be false, and is almost universally rejected as a dead and loathsome thing, proves that new light has come into the world during the last century. For what else but light could enable people to see this doctrine as almost everybody now sees it? What else but light can make manifest the things of darkness? For "whatsoever doth make manifest," saith the apostle, "is light." And whence is all spiritual, all mental, illumination? Whence, but from Him who is declared to be