AUTHOR OF THE BEGINNING, ITS WHEN AND ITS HOW ETC. BODL 'Behold, I make all things new.'-REV. XXI. 5. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1873. 101. f. 892. All rights reserved. PREFACE. AN ATTEMPT is made in the following work to bring the lights of modern science to aid in explaining the emblems and metaphors employed by the sacred writers, in their endeavours to convey some faint ideas respecting the Last Judgment and the Future Life. For such an attempt the present time appears to be opportune. There is now rampant among us a dreary materialism, contending that there is no resurrection of the body, no immortality of the soul, no spirit, no angel, no God; while the only future life in reserve for man is the meagre chance of living in the remembrance of posterity-truly a cheerless creed. There is, on the other hand, raising its head in our midst, a wily spiritualism, with its necromancy, its pretensions to 'call spirits from the vasty deep,' to put them through lessons in spelling, to be answered, not by articulate sounds, but by raps-a clumsy device compared with ventriloquismits representations that these spirits, which it thus pretends to summon, are the unseen agents in playing accordions, in lifting tables, in tossing about chairs, in raising the necromancers into the air and transporting a them hither and thither, in elongating their persons and in performing many other fantastic tricks-a weird delusion by which too many are being beguiled. At such a time, it is well to recall men to common sense, by inviting their attention to what is revealed in the Bible regarding the condition of man after death and his prospects of a future and everlasting life. The subject is so important, that it ought to be interesting to all; and should this work be found useful, in helping any conscientious inquirer to a clearer understanding of the symbolization under which the information given by the sacred writers is conveyed, the author will reckon his labour as not undertaken in vain. CLIFTON, 1873. |