Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/290

 the people; whilst an era of prosperity and intelligence is as certainly to be ascribed to the operation of some beneficent guidance descending from on high. Hence it may be clear that the affliction by which the Church has been darkened, upon the one hand, and the prosperities by which it has been blessed, on the other, indicate the existence of corresponding spiritual influences from the spiritual world; and, therefore, the abatement of an evil by which it has been distressed, and the display of mercies by which it has been encouraged, may be viewed as evidences of a judgment and a coming of the Lord;—a coming of the Lord personally into the world of spirits, in the first place, to execute the judgment, and then spiritually into the natural world to effect the blessings for which that judgment has prepared the way. We cannot tell how far these views may commend themselves to the ordinary reader; but to us they seem to be full of reason, full of truth, to have the testimony of history in their favour, as well as the sanction of revelation. To doubt them, appears to us like questioning the reality of experience, and the depositions of the Word. However, these facts and considerations point to the kind of evidence by which we purpose to show that the last judgment, of which the Scriptures treat, has really been accomplished. But before proceeding more directly to that evidence, there is one circumstance, important to our argument, which should be carefully observed.

Although the occasion for a judgment in the world of spirits may be strongly indicated by the decline of religious intelligence and virtue among mankind, and although the execution of it will certainly be followed by a resuscitation of spiritual intelligence in the Church, yet the first result of such judgment, with the generation in whose lifetime it occurs, will not be their recognition of the fact, nor