Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/64

 By what power was the malignity removed? As Christians, we must acknowledge that the primary causes for these results were Divine interposition in the way of coming and judgment. All corrupting influences must have proceeded from wicked spirits, who, at some time, had lived as men among the people of the Church that they infested; they retained in their lives evils similar to those indulged in by their successors in the world; and from this spiritual similitude they were capable of exciting those successors into acts of apostasy and rebellion. Those spirits, like a cloud before the sun, intercepted the light which is afforded by angelic ministration; and therefore it became necessary, for the welfare of men, to remove them from the position they had usurped, in order that the blessings of heaven might be communicated. Several events of this kind took place during the history of the Israelitish Church; and therefore the Lord must have come, at least in some peculiar way, and at the same time have performed a judgment to administer relief.

We will endeavour to illustrate these considerations by referring to some particular instances. It may, however, be proper to observe that the histories we are about to cite are commonly understood to have no other reference than to the apostate members of the Church in the world. This is the natural result of not perceiving that such histories, because they are the Word of God, must be the vehicles of revelation; and, consequently, that there is within the literal narratives the record of some spiritual transactions which the Supreme Being intended us to know. Thus, our illus-