Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/244

238 penetrate the dark corners of the earth, and compel the creatures of the night to retire to their hiding-places? Yes: It is. plain to the most superficial observer, that we are living at the commencement of a —an Age of general and rational enlightenment. The things of the Old Age are gradually passing away, and all things are being made new, agreeable to Divine promise (see Rev. xxi. 5). It is the time of the second appearing of Him whose advent was foretold, and which it was promised should be "as the lightning which cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west." It is the dawn of that great day when, as the prophet says, "a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty " (Isa. ii. 20, 21). And as the light of this New Dispensation becomes more and more diffused, it needs not the gift of prophecy to foresee that the time is not distant when it must fare with some other doctrines—still held by multitudes in good repute—as it has already fared with the old doctrine of the damnation of infants.

Listen, now, to the revealed doctrine of the New Church on this subject. According to this