Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/354

 shall be made new. To what does the word all specifically refer? We think there cannot be any reasonable doubt that it refers only to those things in which the voluntary and intellectual character of man is concerned. Not to the sun, the moon, and stars: not to the movements of the planetary bodies; not to the causes which keep them in their motions, and preserve them in their orbits. Not to the generation and growth of plants and trees and herbs, the production of their blossoms, fruits, and seeds: not to the generation of animated nature, nor to the laws which operate in the mineral kingdom. All these things are what they are by the fiat of Omnipotence; they were made as wisely and completely perfect as they could be, nor have they transgressed the laws which are proper to their being; therefore, it is plain that these are not the things which are to experience a new creation. The things of which this renovation is predicted belong to the principles of man's faith and life. All those things which in the preceding Church have no heavenly vitality are to pass away; and in the succeeding dispensation all its principles will be new.

When Christianity was established, all the spiritual and intellectual things of the former Church were made new. This is involved in the prediction, "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." The reason is because a new centre had been formed which was sure, sooner or later, to influcnce the state of the circumference. That centre was the wonderful fact of God having become manifest in the flesh. The revelation of that event instilled new thoughts about Divine things, and gave existence to new loves respecting them; so that in process of time a