Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/251

 rupted state of the Church which is contemplated as the occasion for the second coming of the Lord; and, therefore, He closed His description by speaking of it as a carcase, as a thing spiritually dead, around which the eagles—the sharp-sighted, the selfish, and those who feed on—corruption—will be gathered together. If, under those circumstances, the Divine Providence did not interfere to arrest the progress of such perversions, the result would be the entire rejection of the Word, and, as a consequence, the denial of all revealed religion. This we believe to have been the state to which religion was reduced a little more than a century ago; and that, therefore, the second coming of the Lord could not be delayed without danger to the existence of Christianity. Every one who knows anything about the history of Christianity at that period, is aware of the infidelity which prevailed in our own country and throughout the European continent. In France, the government declared the Word to be a fraud, Christianity a superstition, and the Sabbath to be abolished. But those results did not spring out of the study of the Word, or of Christianity, considered, in themselves, but out of those perversions which the Church have taught concerning them. But we will again refer to this point. It will be useful to our present purpose to note the beginnings and progressions of those events which had conduced to such disasters.

The early Christians were so called because they worshipped Christ as God. This was the light in which the Apostles regarded Him, and in which they spoke of Him. They knew that He is, for He has all power in heaven and in earth: that He is , for He knew all things : that He is , for He said, Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. They spoke of