Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/177

 such strong language from the prophet Joel, respecting wonders in the heavens, signs in the earth, blood and fire, and vapour of smoke; the turning of the sun into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord came; and had told the multitude to whom he was preaching, that those predictions had received a fulfilment in the events of Pentecost, could never have intended by the use of similar language, to express the occurrence of natural phenomena. The language of the Apostle is purely figurative, and those who would insist upon a literal interpretation of it, may, with equal consistency say, that the Lord is a vine and a door; and that to entcr into heaven we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. In both cases the things are expressly said, but in neither are they strictly meant. No doubt there is a sense in which those statements of the Lord are distinctly true, but that sense does not consort with physical things. Nor does Peter's description, which is supposed to refer to the dissolution of the universe. His terms are taken from the Lord's discourses; they point to those corruptions by which all the vital things of Christianity would be destroyed; and those corruptions are constantly spoken of as the occasion for that second coming by which the Church is to be restored. It would be easy to dwell upon discussions of this kind, but we cannot give more time to details: it is principles that must for the future chiefly engage our attention.

Careful readers of the Word will have noticed, as we have before remarked, that the events described as immediately preceding the Lord's first advent, are very similar to those which are described as the precursors of His second coming. In both cases we read of the darkening of the sun, the obscuring of the moon, the passing away