Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/263

 Christianity became corrupt, there were Luther and others who beheld the abominations which were put forth under that sacred name; they broke down many of the inventions which had been set up, and opened a pathway for the transmission of some freer thought. When Protestantism became selfish in its aims, and dilatory in the performance of its duties; when courts and the nobility became sensual and voluptuous in their practices, and the common people deeply sunk in vice and degradation, there were Wesley and others who were gifted with the penetration to notice some of the evils which had been permitted to grow up with so much luxuriance and danger; and they became the instruments of bringing into society a superior influence by which to prepare the mind for nobler ends. God has never left His Church without a witness to His excellence. But all those premonitions of danger, and experiences of change in the Christian Church, are only so many fluctuations attending its decline. Error, with its kindred evils, had been the source of its difficulties, and the revivals which had been effected were little else than the occasional flickers of an expiring lamp. The reason was because those reformations left the fundamental principles of ancient heresy untouched. The doctrines which the Church accepts concerning God and the means of salvation, are held to be mysteries which cannot enter into rational thought; and so long as such doctrines remain, darkness and danger will always be imminent. True doctrines about God and the means of salvation are essential things of His Church. Doctrines which cannot be reasonably understood cannot edify. With such doctrines men are no wiser with a revelation than they would be without it. The Word is light, and its purpose is to make men the children of light; therefore any darkness in the Church must come from