Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/190

 world in which we live, but the Lord's Church among mankind; and this natural heaven and natural earth cannot cease unless He were pleased to thrust away His footstool, and so destroy that lowest plane of responsible life to which His government descends. This passage reveals some of the grandest truths of the Word: it informs us that the Church is the basis of heaven; that heaven rests upon it as a house upon its foundation; and, consequently, if the foundation were to give way, the house would be destroyed. The earth is the seminary in which mankind are to be educated and prepared for heaven; the Lord's Word is as it were the school-book out of which they are to be taught, and all the inhabitants of the kingdom of heaven are from the regenerated of the human race: those who dwell in the opposite kingdom are from the faithless and disobedient portion of mankind.

It is well known that the common belief concerning the origin of angels, is, that they were created such at once; and that the devil, with his crew, arose out of a rebellion in heaven, from which they were expelled, and who then founded the kingdom of darkness. But these are fictions of the poets, not the teachings of revelation. We are aware that there are some passages to which persons resort in order to support those imaginations; but all who will examine them with any discrimination may know that they were never written to propagate such a view; and that so to apply them is either to mistake their meaning or to pervert their sense.

The Scriptures represent to us that man is not only the first but the highest object of responsible creation. They record nothing about angels or devils until after man had been brought upon the scene of existence; and the angels who are mentioned present no other characteristics