Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/302

 rendered them partakers of the advantages derived from it. Of this idea the prophet has furnished us with a remarkable illustration. It is written, "My people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: but the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness." Here it is declared that the corruptions of the Church had brought it into desolation; knowledge had gone, honour had perished, and the result was that hell, that is hades, became enlarged; thereupon a judgment was to be executed; and the exaltation of the Lord would follow. This is the order of such events, as presented to us both by the Scriptures and history.

The Lord distinctly taught that His second coming would take place as a thief in the night, thus that it would not be a phenomenon among men, having the publicity of daylight, yet it would be one that would cause itself to be acknowledged by results which would follow. So that the accomplishment of this event implies a twofold purpose in the Divine coming; first, His manifestation in the world of spirits by the judgment which occurred; and second, His manifestation in the world of men by the improved condition of society. Thus, personally in the one, but influentially in the other.

Among the earliest evidences which the world had of this judgment—evidences indicating the desperation of the