Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/345

 is providing for us some sensible evidences of His second coming. Hereby He is making an effort to widen the borders of His Church by going to all nations, through the medium of His Word. It is by His Word that He effects His advent into human minds, and spreads abroad a knowledge of Himself. It is by the teaching influences of His Word that He comes to individuals and to nations, and it is by means of this, and this alone, that "every eye can see Him." To expect to behold Him in any other way is to mistake the meaning of the promise. In our view of the circumstance, the universality of His advent, and the beneficent purposes it is intended to accomplish, can be readily apprehended. It sets aside all the alarm which "orthodoxy" would raise concerning the occurrence, and awakens, in the minds of the thoughtful, confidence in those orderly operations of the Divine mercy by which all people are to be enlightened. Every one who regards the Word as the source of information concerning spiritual things must acknowledge that the extensive circulation which has been obtained for it indicates that some distinct activity of the Divine Providence is now in the process of being displayed, and that the design of it must be to prepare new planes in the minds of all nations, by which the new influences now proceeding from the Lord's kingdom may be more readily accepted. The means which have been adopted for the spread and perpetuation of the Word among all people, have been accompanied by new developments of religious thought; and nothing can be more plain than that these are tending to remove errors and prejudices from the Church, and to raise it into a condition of intellectual vigour which it has never before attained. Of this conclusion no one can be ignorant who has noted the facts, and who is capable of reading anything of "the signs of the times."