Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/262

 clare itself to be the true one: it will not strip itself of the pretensions under which its depravity has grown, and it will be vain to expect from it any declaration of its own apostasy. It will not accept the signs occurring within itself as the inauguration of a new era; and it will treat as heresy any explanations which may be presented from without. Hence it is to be expected that the second coming of the Lord will be denied by the declining Church, whensoever it may occur, just as the Jews denied His coming at the first. It will not see when the good cometh; that must be declared to it by some other means: and in time some will be enabled to acknowledge the prevalence of its errors.

There may be, there always have been, some in the Church in whom a spiritual apprehension has been quickened to perceive, in the surrounding events of extraordinary times, some portents of a coming change. When the Adamic dispensation fell, Noah and his family were enabled to see something of the evils which prevailed, to make provision against the catastrophe that was impending, and to become the instruments for the introduction of another era of religious life to men. When the Noetic Church became corrupt. Abraham and his descendants were enabled to discern somewhat of the enormities around them, to guard against the perils which were threatened, and to become the depositories of information for a superior age. When the Jewish economy rendered the Word of God of none effect by the traditions of the elders, there were wise men in the east, Zacharias in the temple, and some pious among the people, who not only knew something of the perversity of the times, but were gifted with a perception that a deliverance was at hand; they also became the instrnments for bringing to the notice of the world the commencement of a new condition of spiritual existence. When ancient