Page:The New Church - What, How, Why .djvu/48

44 obliteration of the sun and moon, but the destruction of love and faith, which did occur.

Apply the same law of interpretation to Revelation where the same words occur, "A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." We have no difficulty in interpreting man's picture of the state of the church or of the world. He pictures it as a woman half clad, clinging to a cross, looking up in agony to a heaven of black, lightning-riven clouds, with a few rays of light breaking through, and at her feet is the storm-beaten, threatening sea. We know that in this picture the woman clinging to the cross and gazing upward is temptation. The clouds are our obscurity, the little light is our hope, the threatening sea is the world of sin. The picture is man's own representation of the Church as it is. Can we not likewise read the Lord's picture of the Church or state of faith that is to be?