The meaning of the principal symbols being thus stated, we pass to the connexion which they bear to each other in the predictions of the Saviour. We have already noted that the prophecy contained in Matthew, and recorded by the other Evangelists, refers in its primary application to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies; but in its more extensive meaning it points to the state of the Christian church in her period of decline and corruption, of which Jerusalem in her last days was a fitting type. With respect to this it is declared "_the sun_ shall be darkened"--the Divine Love obscured and lost; "and the moon shall not give her light"--faith and charity shall sink in darkness; "and the stars"--the knowledge of truth "shall fall from heaven,"--no longer exist in the minds of her members; "and the powers of heaven"--the whole internal state of the church "shall be shaken"--shall be thrown into complete disorder and confusion. This meaning, to which we are led by the connexion and correspondence of the natural symbols, points to a time (not when the universe shall be destroyed, but) when true religion shall have ceased to exist in the church:--"when the love of many shall wax cold:" when true faith will no longer be found; and when knowledge--the knowledge of genuine spiritual truth--shall have passed away. The same things are described in the vision of the apostle. "There was a great earthquake"--a shaking and disorder in the state of the church; "and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell to the earth,"--the knowledge of truth which once shone in the _mind_, sunk into mere outward _creeds_ and confessions of faith; "and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together"--the whole internal state of the church was thrown into confusion, and every inward feeling of religion perished. The event immediately following is the appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, with a trumpet; and since it is confessed that a trumpet signifies "the call of the Gospel," or as I would express it, the manifestation of truth; and as the _clouds_ correspond to the _outward form_ of the Word, the appearance of the Lord in the clouds and attended by trumpets, must signify the manifestation of spiritual love and truth in the letter of Scripture: and this is supported by what is afterwards said to be the consequence; "a new heaven and a new earth,"--a new state of the church both internal and external, both as regards inward feelings and outward conduct.