Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/353

 thing still new. There is no final stopping place in this upward advancement, because there is no end to the progress of any grace which the Lord communicates, if men be willing to advance with it, for all in Him is infinite. To stop is to recede; and in recession there are decrepitude and age and end.

The Church, of which the New Jerusalem is the symbol, is said to be new, not because its teachings are less old than Revelation, but because, being founded on the Divine truth of the Word, they will be continually producing new perceptions of their excellence. This Church will have for its centre a more full and comprehensible idea of God than that which has previously existed in the world; and this will necessarily be attended by new things in the circumference. Hence its progressions through the remotest ages of posterity will not interfere with its title of a New Church. Advancement in duration will but serve to illustrate and confirm that title. Every age of its existence will be attended with the evolution of some new intelligence and virtue, and thence will be displayed some new and imperishable excellence. It cannot be otherwise, since it has the Divine Word for its teacher. A church, therefore, which comes down from God out of heaven, in whom all things are infinite, must be admissive of new developments of truth and goodness from age to age. Advancement in years is simply the means of passing, by the aid of new experiences, into new principles of life. Such principles must distinguish the progress of the New Jerusalem, and therefore she will be a New Church in the remotest ages of her existence.

Seeing, then, what we are to understand by the terms old and new in reference to the Church, we proceed to inquire what is meant by the promise that "all things"