idolaters, in spite of everything that the torture

or the bribe could renounce their faith.

accomplish to make them

What a monument! And

who can say how much the very sight of it has wrought in the earth?

Many a nation has been blest because they favoured Zion; but who has ever prospered that injured her? He who has touched her has touched the apple of God's eye. Egypt was scourged because she oppressed her. Edom was cursed and plagued because he remembered not the brotherly covenant. Assyria was broken because she overflowed Immanuel's land. Babylon was brought low because she held her in captivity. And soon, too, shall mystic Babylon receive her awful recompense for the blood and torture of the persecuted race. It was an Infidel king of the last century that said, "Meddle not with these Jews; no man ever touched them and prospered." Jerusalem has truly been "a cup of trembling to all people round about, a burdensome stone for all people; and all that burdened themselves with her have been cut to pieces."

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These are things which the Church of Christ ought especially to remember, whether she considers the duty of favouring those whom God favours, or the blessings which he promises to those who seek their peace, or the curses with

which he has cursed those who have trodden them down. Whether, then, we call to mind the blessings which have flowed from them to us, and see how their fall has been our rising, or observe the manner in which the prophets represent the future destiny of the world as hanging upon the fortunes of Israel; whether we remember their once high dignity, as those to whom belonged the glory and the covenants, the giving of the law and the promises, or their long misery and degradation and dismemberment; whether we honour them as the kinsmen of Christ, or pity them as the murderers of the Lord of glory; let us look on Israel as God looks on her; let us understand the deep meaning of her history, and learn to sing her songs.

CHAPTER XIV.

ANTICHRIST.

THERE are strong reasons for concluding that Popery, in its present form, is not, in strict prophetic speech, the last Antichrist. It has many of the features of the Man of Sin, but it has not all ; it is lacking in some; and it is this partial unlikeness that leads us to anticipate something worse, something more terrible, something which will manifest more vividly what the combined energy of human and Satanic wickedness can effect, when fully expanded and matured.

There

Still, there is a distinct and observable oneness of feature between these two forms of evil. are some clear points of difference, but there are more of resemblance. There is a striking family likeness, distinct traces of a common paternity and an undoubted brotherhood. There is more than enough to identify them as belonging to one genus, one plant, one stem. That the fruit and the blossom are very unlike each other in many things, in colour and in shape, for instance, is no proof

that the one is not the produce of the other, and that both are not the produce of the same tree. Pagan Rome might be but the branch, Papal Rome the blossom, and the last Antichrist the fruit; but does this disprove their true personal identity? Does it not much rather confirm and display it?

The last apostasy will, in all likelihood, manifest more of the Infidel or the Atheist than Popery has done; but still it is an "apostasy," a "falling away." It originates in, springs out of, and is in some way connected with the professing Church of Christ, just as the fruit is connected with the branch, though but by a slender stalk. Its name, ANTICHRIST, shows that it professes to be Christ, which it could not do were it openly and utterly Infidel. It is an apostasy which has taken ages to ripen, and which, though perhaps shooting up suddenly into unexpected strength, does not rise from some separate root of its own, but is the matured offspring of previous apostasies, their consummation and unfolding, towards which every one of them has been pointing, and which every one of them contained in the bud from the beginning.

But, though I believe all this, I do not the less surely believe that Popery is the present Antichrist, out of which, how suddenly I know not, the

coming Antichrist is to spring. Popery is the apostasy of the day, and, as such, ought to be dealt with by the Church of Christ. There are many symptoms about it of a change of form and aspect; but whatever aspect it assumes, it is still the representative of the serpent's seed, the personification of the wicked one in our day, the enemy of the saints. It is right, indeed, that we should fully understand what God has revealed concerning the darker and more hateful form which it is to assume; but it is wrong to overlook its present aspect, as if that which was to come concerned us more immediately than that which is in the midst of us. This would truly be as absurd and perilous as for an army to stand idly on the field, and allow itself to be cut to pieces by a near enemy, because it sees in the rear a more terrible assailant pressing on. I do not mean that the present ought to shut out or supplant the future. But certainly the future ought not to supersede the present, nor blind us to our immediate danger and pressing duty.

I regret most deeply the conduct of some writers on prophecy, who seem so engrossed with a future Antichrist as to forget, nay, to deny, the present. They have let loose the whole gloom of their dark imaginations upon the future, and make light of all that is passing around them. They are so