ith his character, his mind, or
his mission.

This interpretation is so important that it may need to be
illustrated and confirmed by further instances: "When the Son of
Man sits on the throne of his glory, and all nations are gathered
before him, his angels shall sever the wicked from among the just,
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth." A few such picturesque phrases have led to
the general belief in a great world judgment at the end of the

2 Norton, Statement of Reasons, Appendix.

appointed time, after which the condemned are to be thrown into
the tortures of an unquenchable world of flame. How arbitrary and
violent a conclusion this is, how unwarranted and gross a
perversion of the language of Christ it is, we may easily see. The
fact that the old prophets often described fearful misfortunes and
woes in images of clouds and flame and falling stars, and other
portentous symbols, and that this style was therefore familiar to
the Jews, would make it very natural for Jesus, in foretelling
such an event as the coming destruction of Jerusalem, in
conflagration and massacre, with the irretrievable subversion of
the old dispensation, to picture it forth in a similar way. Fire
was to the Jews a common emblem of calamity and devastation; and
judgments incomparably less momentous than those gathered about
the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the self boasted
favorites of Jehovah were often described by the prophets in
appalling images of darkened planets, shaking heavens, clouds,
fire, and blackness. Joel, speaking of a "day of the Lord," when
there should be famine and drought, and a horrid army of
destroying insects, "before whom a fire devoureth, and behind them
a flame burneth," draws the scene in these terrific colors: "The
earth shall quake before them; the sun and moon shall be dark, and
the stars shall withdraw their shining; and the Lord shall utter
his voice before his terrible army of locusts, caterpillars, and
destroying worms:" Ezekiel represents God as saying, "The house of
Israel is to me become dross: therefore I will gather you into the
midst of Jerusalem: as they gather silver, brass, iron, tin, and
lead into the midst of the furnace to blow the fire upon it, so
will I gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and
ye shall be melted in the midst thereof." We read in Isaiah, "The
Assyrian shall flee, and his princes shall be afra