Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/261

 sense of prophecy is scarcely ever discoverable until the time of its fulfilment. The reality lightens up the obscurity of the letter in which it is expressed, and causes its real significance to appear. The terms are then seen to tally with the facts, and each illustrates the other. Yet it is distinctly written that "the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not." The event will transpire at a period when men are least expecting it. This is a characteristic of the fulfilment of all prophecy. Still society has generally experienced some premonitions of those changes which that fuifilment is intended to effect. These, however, have very seldom been carefully observed. In all times of a perverted Church, men have evinced an unwillingness to believe that they were living in an age when prophecy was being fulfilled. The signs of danger which prevailed in the days of Noah were unheeded by the people; "they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Men of the professing Church may hear murmurs of dissatisfaction proceeding from various quarters; they may participate in the common sentiment that some errors are extant, and that much selfishness prevails; they may feel something of the obscurity which infests religious thought, and amidst the turmoil resulting from the banishment of charity from the Church, they may yearn for some relief; yet no relief will be accepted by them, but that which they themselves invent, and suppose to be the remedy. How should it be otherwise? How can a corrupted Church be capable of perceiving its own failings? As well may we expect a blind man to see the irregularity of his own gropings. It has always been a characteristic of a fallen Church to de-