Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/335

 we live, it seems plain that they must be the results of His second coming, and that He is by them fulfilling His prediction of that event in the way which He intended men should understand it. He now comes into this world by the outpouring of a brighter influence upon mankind. It is a coming which is designed to affect the inner perceptions of men, and by this to improve the outer circumstances of society. This being so, it will primarily have reference to the Church, in which the Holy Word is accepted as the medium of all information concerning spiritual and eternal things. The Church, in the world, is really the centre from which the state of society is derived; every one may see this if they will only remember that it is a spiritual institution, designed to keep the mind open to the reception of those heavenly things which are contained in the Word, to spread abroad intelligence, and to lead men on to the love of what is good and wise. The state of the Church creates the condition of society. Hence it is that when the Church has perverted the knowledge of truth entrusted to its care, society has been degraded; and it is only as genuine information is restored, that mankind can be rescued and improved. The Church is as the heart and lungs, which keep up a living circulation to the extreme parts of the body. The love of goodness, as taught in the Word, is as the heart of the Church, and the knowledge of truth, as revealed in the Word, is as its lungs. As from those two fountains of natural life in the human body all its other members are enabled to subsist, so all that is orderly and intelligent in society derives its existence from the love and knowledge in the Church; and by these graces the Lord and His angels bring about all the beneficent results which men enjoy. It will therefore follow that whenever society is raised into the experi-