Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/204

 world, gives no account of the creation of angels before the existence of man; he does not furnish the slightest hint respecting the apostasy supposed, nor is anything of the kind related in any other portion of the Scriptures. This conceit, then, affords no answer to our question. Besides, it forces its abettors into the most difficult conclusions. It implies that the creation of man was not originally the design of the Omnipotent, but that it was planned and executed in consequence of pride and disobedience having grown up among an order of beings superior to man; so that, according to this view, mankind are indebted for their existence to an incident in heaven, to rebellion among its inhabitants, and to an after-thought on the part of the Almighty, by which He intended to avenge the wickedness of certain angels, and to repair the numbers of which His kingdom had been deprived by their expulsion. It also supposes that men, who are acknowledged to be less perfect in their constitution than the angels, are, by that imperfection, more capable of carrying out the Divine purpose, and that the places of the angels are to be supplied by a race of beings totally different both in their nature and their origin. All this, of course, is sufficiently perplexing, and need not occupy our time with a view to its refutation. It certainly furnishes no reasonable answer to the inquiry we have before us.

If all mankind are to be swept from the earth, there must be some reason for it, and this must have its ground in some Divine purpose, concerning which it is natural to expect something would be said in the Word; but we find that the Word is silent upon the subject. What it does say leads to a directly opposite conclusion. Righteousness is to dwell in the new earth which is to be created; and as that earth is to remain for ever, the inference is clear that mankind