Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/30

 removing that morbid misanthropy which such "destructive" speculations always produce.

That supposed source of danger to which most importance has been attached, remains to be noticed. The opinion has extensively prevailed that the geological formation of the earth is such as to indicate its approaching dissolution. The awful convulsions which it has sustained during its formation, and before the creation of man, are supposed to afford ground for believing that similar overturnings are in reserve for it; which will at least entirely destroy the present race of its inhabitants. It would be worth something to know what connection such a catastrophe could have with the literal resurrection of the dead; or with a general judgment in this natural world. But I will probably be told that these events will have no logical or natural connection—they will simply be contemporaneous—that the resurrection of the dead will depend solely on the supreme and arbitrary power of the Almighty, and that it will be simultaneous with the destruction of the earth, only because that will be the most suitable time to bring the affairs of this world to a close. I have a very high esteem for the piety and sincerity of some persons who reason in this way, but I cannot avoid the belief that they have very erroneous ideas in regard to the way in which the divine power is manifested. Can any man rationally believe that in carrying forward the operations of the universe, the Almighty will ever find it necessary to act in direct opposition to those natural laws which his own wisdom has established? In the preceding section, I have, however, endeavored to show, that the doctrine of a literal resurrection, not only involves the idea of a direct violation of the laws of nature, but that it is absurd and contradictory, and directly opposed to that view of the resurrection which is taught in the word of our Lord. But the point on which my eye is now fixed, is the idea which is somewhat extensively entertained, that this earth is to be again over turned, convulsed and destroyed, because we learn from