rance of Christ.
First, they may be taken in a highly figurative sense, as meaning
the moral overthrow of evil and the establishment of righteousness
in the world. Similar expressions were often used thus by the
ancient Hebrew prophets, who describe the triumphs of Israel and
the destruction of their enemies, the Edomites or the Assyrians,
by the interposition of Jehovah's arm, in such phrases as these.
"The mountains melt, the valleys cleave asunder like wax before a
fire, like waters poured over a precipice." "The heavens shall be
rolled up like a scroll, all their hosts shall melt away and fall
down; for Jehovah holdeth a great slaughter in the land of Edom:
her streams shall be turned into pitch, and her dust into
brimstone, and her whole land shall become burning pitch." The
suppression of Satan's power and the setting up of the Messiah's
kingdom might, according to the prophetic idiom, be expressed in
awful images of fire and woe, the destruction of the old, and the
creation of a new, heaven and earth. But, secondly, this
phraseology, as used by the writer of the epistle before us, may
have a literal significance, may have been intended to predict
strictly that the world shall be burned and purged by fire at the
second coming of the Lord. That such a catastrophe would take
place in the last day, or occurred periodically, was notoriously
the doctrine of the Persians and of the Stoics.6 For our own part,
we are convinced that the latter is the real meaning of the
writer. This seems to be shown alike by the connection of his
argument, by the prosaic literality of detail with which he
speaks, and by the earnest exhortations he immediately bases on
the declaration he has made. He reasons that, since the world was
destroyed once by water, it may be again by fire. The deluge he
certainly regarded as literal: was not, then, in his conception,
the fire, too, literal? He says, with calm, prosaic precision,
"The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what
manner of persons ought ye to be in all holiness, looking for a
new heaven and a new earth, and striving that ye may be found by
him in peace, without spot, and blameless!" We do not suppose this
writer expected the annihilation of the physical creation, but
only that the fire would destroy all unransomed creatures from its
surface, and thoroughly purify its frame, and make it clean and
fit for a n