Thus, in the hands of one of the most learned advocates of the doctrine, does one of its principal proofs vanish into air. According to his showing, there is nothing in the whole passage referring at all either to the material earth, or the visible heavens; and the whole is a figurative account of the overthrow of the religion and government of the Jews,--"the _sun_ and _moon_ of the _Jewish heaven_." We might follow the doctor through the whole chapter, and show that in almost every point he confirms what has been formerly advanced. "The sign of the Son of Man was, (he says,) the signal manifestation of Christ's power and glory," in the destruction of Jerusalem. The "angels sent forth to gather the elect, the apostles and their successors in the Christian ministry." The sound of a trumpet, "the earnest affectionate call of the Gospel:" and "_the elect_," "the Gentiles who were now chosen or elected, in place of the rebellious obstinate Jews." In the same manner he explains the whole of this and the following chapter; and in the latter declares that the whole of the accounts up to the thirty-first verse, may be properly applied to the destruction of Jerusalem. And here we may leave him; for if there is nothing from the first verse of the twenty-fourth chapter, to the thirty-first verse of the twenty-fifth, which relates to the destruction of the world, surely nothing respecting it will be found in the remainder. Thus does this passage, so often brought forward to add to the terror of the world's dissolution, which has been sounded forth from pulpits and re-echoed from the press, when calmly examined, prove to have no connexion with the subject: but to refer to an event as different from the general conflagration, as light from darkness.