If, however, it be still maintained in opposition to this remark, that they _must_ be understood literally, I will ask one question. Since the words of the _Old_ Testament which describe the first appearance of the Redeemer, are exactly similar to those of the _New_ which predict his second coming; how is it that the former never received a literal fulfillment? If it be replied, that this was figurative language, while the latter is literal description; I again inquire, By what authority or according to what rule is this distinction made? Why is the first to be resolved into figure, while the latter is considered as literally true? Such distinction between the two cannot arise from the _language_; this is almost word for word the same. It cannot be made because the literal sense is in one case _reasonable_, while in the other it is not; for in both cases it involves numerous absurdities. It cannot be because the one is prophecy and the other narrative; for both are the language of prophetic declaration. On what authority, then, is the literal meaning of the first _rejected_, while in the other it is retained and believed? Why are not both to be understood alike, since in both the descriptions are similar? There is no rule by which a distinction can be drawn. I have now gone over the first proposition, and have proved that a literal interpretation of the passages adduced involves absurdities as great as that of transubstantiation; and that the absence of all literal fulfillment in the case of other prophecies exactly similar, affords the strongest reason to expect that in _this_ instance no literal accomplishment will take place. That the language itself is that of _correspondence_,--the representation of spiritual things by natural; and as such it will receive a spiritual and not a natural fulfillment.