Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/211

 is, when fully brought to light, overwhelming and irresistible, except to those who will not see it,—showing that the long-expected judgment has been already accomplished, and that the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, is now descending from God out of Heaven. The New Churchman has at least as much evidence of these facts, and can present to those who are prepared to receive them, as strong reasons for believing them, as can be given for believing in the personal manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the first establishment of the Christian Dispensation. But this evidence will be received only by those whose hearts are filled with a deep and earnest love for the truth, and who are willing to lose, if necessary, the good opinion of men, in order to retain the testimony of a good conscience towards God.

In the preceding pages the reader has found a brief statement of the New Church doctrine in regard to the Last Judgment. This doctrine, with those collateral doctrines which are immediately connected with it, the writer has endeavored to unfold and explain as fully as he could, within the limits that he was obliged to observe. In the first place it was shown that the final judgment must take place in the spiritual world, because those who are to be the subjects of it, enter that world and remain there forever. Their connection with the natural world terminates, when death divests them of their material bodies; neither reason nor the Word of the Lord affording the least reason for believing that the material particles of those dissolved and dissipated bodies will ever be again re-constructed into human forms, and given back to the spirits to which they once belonged.

In the next place, it was argued on scientific, rational and scriptural grounds, that the natural world is destined for permanent continuance, and hence that the Judgment