Second advent library

`-N4r.zc1'nl.l: xvui.er and gloryon Sinai. Yet the next generation B561Joshua, had become sodeeply corrupted, by ilnbelief, ingratitude, and rebellion, that they gave all the glory toworks of their own hands, and worshipped idols oi stocksand stones.This, you say, is a dark picture of man, and could nothave applied to any other people but the Jews. I willagree that no other nation were, at that time, placed inli e circumstances with them. But dark as the picture,and hideous as the detail, it is but a shadow of ourday,type of the Christian church in the times in which wepf ive."Who is thiscoming up from the wildemess, leaningupon her beloved ?" he text does not tell us she is outof the wildemess, but coming out; as though in the wilderness,and while she is coming out, she leans upon herlord. Her affections were not yet contaminated by alove for the world, nor her faith weakened by her vanityand selflesteem. Thus was it with the Jews ; and so hasit been with the church in ages past. Then let me,Ill. Make an application of our subject, by show'glint ignay be considered the present state of the gosliigurc .I believe all writers and commentators on the Apocalypseagree that the church of Christ has been in thewilderness more than twelve centuries past. Some havefixed the time ofthe church entering into her wildernessstate as earlyas A. D. 534, when the great controversybetween the orthodox and Arians, which, in the days ofJustinian, shook the religious world into two great divis-"ions,like the twowintgs of an eagle," from ie convulsionsof which manyo the true servants of God, or allof them, disgusted with the spirit shown by both of thecontending parties, who both claimed and used the civilauthority to exterminate or conquer their heterodoxbrethren, fled into the north-east part of Euro,"awayfrom the face ofthe the serpent,"- emperors otlilic east,and the morepowerful bishops of Rome- where fornumbers of centuries they lived unknowing and unknown.Other writers say that it was as late as A. D. 606, whenthe Pope, by the concessions of Phocu, Qbtained civil