out a significant meaning-" Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet, and none of them cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian."

The history of the Church furnishes abundant instances when God's own ordinances have been dried up and withered; and, if the interpreters of prophecy are consistent with their own declarations of the condition of the Church immediately preceding the appearing of the Lord, we must believe that such a state is precisely that in which she shall be found when He suddenly appears in the spiritual temple. "Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith upon the earth?" If the ordinary and authorized channels in the Church are now found the means by which their own condemnation is declared, it would appear to be a deviation from the rule taught us in her history. But the understanding is a legitimate channel through which the illumination of the Holy Ghost may be expected as to the future purposes of God, inasmuch as interpretation is prophecy brought into the region of the understanding; and, if it be not, then it is not inter