Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/268

 new dispensation of spiritual truth, of which His word should be the fountain. Judgment upon a fallen church is requisite to prepare the way for, and give efficacy to those excellences by which it is to be succeeded. If a judgment had not been executed upon the Jewish economy, Christianity would have had in that which constituted the spiritual life of Judaism, a most formidable hindrance to its progress. It could not have pursued its purpose in light or freedom; but a Divine judgment removed those hindrances from the spiritual world, where they were principally active, and so provided a way for the security of both. Judgment upon the past dispensation, and the providing of light and liberty for that which is to follow, are those things to which the Lord referred when treating of the occasion and purpose of His second coming. What they involve will appear in another chapter. The points to which we have arrived enable us to see that when the light and purity of the Church, which the Lord founded while He was in the world, have been corrupted by the perversities of men. He will come to execute a last judgment upon it, and then, also, that He will open out a new dispensation of spiritual truth for the acceptance of the world.

Now we hold that this corruption has come upon the professing Christian Church, that the purity and light by which it was originally characterised have been extinguished, and consequently that it has come to its end; not, indeed, as to its external form and appearance, but as to that intellectual and spiritual life which is proper to its being. That the present state of the Church is not what it was in apostolic times is commonly admitted. Its simplicity has most certainly departed; the spiritual charity in which it was founded, and the sentiments of enlightened faith by which it was influenced, are now no longer apparent. Its truths