Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/179

 tions, yet the manner of it is different. John, in one place describes the heavens as being rolled away like a scroll; and in another, as the stars of heaven falling to the earth. Peter, in one place, says they are to "pass away with a great noise;" and, in another, that "being on fire they shall be dissolved." Now if the heavens are to be on fire, how can they be rolled away like a scroll? If they are to be rolled away like a scroll, how can the stars be said to fall from heaven to the earth? and if they so fall, how can they be said to pass away? These difficulties necessarily arise from the literal interpretation of terms employed only in a figurative sense, and which terms really point to different parts of that general judgment to which they all refer.

It is no uncommon thing for those who believe in the destruction of the earth, to seek in the book of Revelation for evidence to support it; but how inconsistent is this. It is very true that there are phenomena therein described which seem to involve the universe in ruin; but then it is equally true that visible nature is not described to be the scene of them. That book, from its commencement to its end, is occupied, for the most part, with the relation of events which transpired in the spiritual world; and these are all written in language singularly figurative. This fact can hardly have escaped the most cursory reader; how futile, then, must be the efforts to find evidences for the destruction of nature in those narratives which were written only with the view of revealing occurrences in the other life. They cannot be explained or understood of the visible world; and they become intelligible only so far as they are understood of the interior things of the Church, of the judgments executed upon those by whom its holy teachings have been perverted, and of the restoration of heavenly light and life to the souls of men.