Very many persons are reluctant to admit the right to enter upon such investigations as we now propose. In their view whatever is generally accepted by the church as true and as taught in Scripture, and to which she has given formal sanction in her public standards, should be regarded as settled. And he who would reopen such questions is looked upon as a troubler in Israel. Such persons, however, need to be reminded that, in ll that pertains to The Last Things, there is very wide diversity in the beliefs and the teachings of the best and most enlightened Christians. Every church is compelled to allow great liberty here, because of the obscurity of the subject and the confessed inability of even her wisest teachers to grasp it. Moreover, we have no right to assume that any interpretation of these subjects is, of necessity, correct, because it has been long and widely received. The whole history of the professed people of God proves that they have long and repeatedly acquiesced in the gravest errors, and enforced as orthodox the most meagre and mistaken opinions. The generation of Jews in our Lord's time had been carefully instructed in the Old Testament Scriptures. And yet all the orthodox conceptions of the Messiah's office were painfully wrong. The whole synagogue were blind to the most important features of His redeeming work, and especially failed to see how the Scriptures taught that He must needs |