Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/364

 dispensation all may know Him, from the least unto the greatest. Thereby He opened out a new and living way for the salvation of mankind, and became a Saviour to the uttermost.

From these considerations we learn that those ancient Churches which have passed away, when viewed in their historical relation to each other, reveal to us those principles which are requisite to the formation of a Church in fulness. None of them were, in themselves, adequate to this purpose: they had not that necessary complete knowledge of the Lord, nor had they learned that the performance of uses in the world is the base and conservatory of celestial principles; hence they were destitute of that ulterior information which is requisite to the completeness and perpetuity of a Church. Each was a distinct existence, though they were all connected by historical reminiscences, yet neither of them was a Church in fulness, and it is only so far as we view them in their complex—each forming a part of that revelation which is presented to us as one great whole—that we are enabled to gather a true idea of that final dispensation which is to be the crown of all the rest. The Lord revealed the principles which are to be developed in Christianity in those dispensations by which it was preceded; and He purposes, by the establishment of a genuine Christian dispensation, to unite into one harmonious Church all those principles which have existed separately in its three predccessors. Thus the celestial principle of love, which prevailed in the Adamic Church; the spiritual principle of faith, which distinguished the Noetic Church; and the natural principle of obedience, which was peculiar to the Israelitish Church, are all to be revived in the final Christian Church, and be so united that natural obedience shall be enlightcned by spiritual faith,