Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/280

 became endangered, and then, because they intercepted the light of heaven in the process of its descent into the human mind, the crisis came. Other judgments had before taken place, but this is called the last, because it terminated the dispensation with which those spiritual disasters had been connected. The sheep would be elevated into heaven, because, being separated from the goats, the good which they possessed would enable them to accept the truth. The goats would pass off to hell, because, being separated from the sheep, and having no good, they would not be enabled to retain the truth they had accepted. It was from these that the greater danger came, and it was the spread of their iniquity that brought on the judgment which consigned them to their eternal homes. By that event a way has been prepared for the renewal of spiritual life in the Church, and the promotion of its intelligence among mankind. This, consequently, is the jadgment which we believe to have transpired; but we will consider the evidences of its occurrence a little more at large.

That certain spirits are detained in the world of spirits until the period of a judgment is very clearly taught in the Word. Peter tells us of those who "sometime were disobedient, in the days of Noah," and who, from that time, had remained in that region of the departed until the resurrection of the Lord. John, also, tells us that he "saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain," that they inquired about the continuance of their condition, and were told that they had yet to rest for a little season. The Lord very clearly informs us, in His parable of the tares and the wheat, that some who are good and some who are evil, as to their interior loves, will be detained in the world of spirits until the time of the last judgment should arrive.