In the fifth place, the passage under consideration teaches that this earth will be renovated by the final conflagration, and become the abode of the righteous. After describing the day of God, _wherein the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat_, Peter adds, _Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness._ Now, the apostle does not here, in so many words, declare that the new heavens and earth will be the present world and its atmosphere, purified and renovated by fire. But it is certainly a natural inference that such was his meaning. For if he intended some other remote and quite different place, why should he call it _earth_, and, especially, why should he surround it with an atmosphere? The natural and most obvious meaning of the passage surely is, that the future residence of the righteous will be this present terraqueous globe, after its entire organic and combustible matter shall have been destroyed, and its whole mass reduced by heat to a liquid state, and then a new economy reared up on its surface, not adapted to sinful, but to sinless beings, and, therefore, quite different from its present condition--probably more perfect, but still the same earth and surrounding heavens. There are, indeed, some difficulties in the way of such a meaning to this passage, and objections to a material heaven; and these I shall notice in the proper place. But I have given what seems to me the natural and obvious meaning of the passage. Such, as I conceive, are the fair inferences from the apostle's description of the end of the world. Let us now inquire whether any other passages of Scripture require us to modify this meaning.