Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/75

 rection. As men have strayed from His fold, He has mercifully endeavoured to arrest their dangerous progress; and when they have reached some perilous point in their bad career, the Lord has come by some providential visitation, to stop their course, and bring it to an end. This may be evident from the cases of the flood, the confusion of tongues, and some other circumstances referred to in the preceding chapter. Throughout the Word, every Divine coming is intimately associated with judgments, and with subsequent acts of beneficence. They were as storms required to clear a corrupted atmosphere, behind which there has always been a genial sunshine to fit it for the better respiration of healthy life. It is, then, the transgressions of men which have been the special causes of the Divine coming—with the innocent He is always present—and the purpose of such coming has always been to remove those causes and prepare the way for a more genial influence to descend for the acceptance of the people. Those causes were not simply the common wilfulness of men to disobey the Divine commands; in this, indeed, those causes found a plane for carrying out the purposes at which they aimed; but they lived as it were behind it, and really consisted in the secret activity of wicked spirits. That men are the subjects of such influences is plainly taught in the Word; and how few are they who have escaped such painful experiences? How frequently has it happened that some evil thought has been suddenly injected into the mind, at the enormity of which every superior sentiment has felt dismay. This has occurred to most persons, not only without any conscious effort on their part to evoke it, but at times when the mind has been voluntarily turned some other way. To what other than spiritual causes can such experiences be attributed? Such facts cannot be rea-