3. If Christ after His resurrection was, as in Acts i. 3, "seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God," and if He could thus teach men in flesh and blood, as at Emmaus, what their blindness and ignorance could not otherwise know, and if He did eat before His disciples, as the Lord did in Abraham's tent, and if the risen ruling princes, judges, are to have bodies like His, where is the expository obliquity of the faith that believes the many prophecies that assert that Christ, as "King of all the earth" (Zech. xiv. 9), shall restore and convert the Jews, rebuke and subdue the present flesh and blood warring nations, and as the "Prince of peace," with his co-heir ruling princes, in manifestation of “grace abounding" and Satan bound, "reign on the earth" a thousand years? thus summarily accomplishing what human liberty in its diversity of trial, under patriarchal, legal, and Gospel dispensations for six thousand years had failed to do, and thus conclude by the final judgment, (Rev. xx.), the hebdomad of earth and man's probation.—Prophetic Times. Society under the Sixth Trumpet. "And the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues, repented not from the works of their hands, that they should not worship the demons, and the idols of gold, and silver, and copper, and stone, and wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk; and they repented not out of their murders, nor out of their sorceries [or use of drugs], nor out of their fornication, nor out of their thefts."-REV. xi. 20, 21: Revised Text. THE Apostle Paul assures us, that as time advances toward its conclusion, "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived" (2 Tim. iii. 13). We have also repeatedly quoted his startling description of the "perilous times" which will come "in the last days" (2 Tim. iii. 1-5). But Paul was not alone in these gloomy anticipations. Peter and Jude likewise speak of them. Nor were these statements without full warrant in the utterances of the Saviour Himself, who particularly and often admonished His disciples, that the gigantic iniquities and sensualities of the days of Noah and of Lot, would repeat themselves as the end approached, and that the judgments of the great day would be pre-eminently deserved by the generation then living. It would, hence, be strange if, in the visions of those terrible adjudications, we were to find no corresponding notices of the bad state of morals then prevailing. And when such notices are found, as in the words before us, it would be contrary to the tenor of the Scriptures on the subject, to take them as mere poetic exaggerations, or as anything other than a literal and true portraiture of the world at that time. Taking the words then, as they have been written for our learning, we here have an account of the moral state of mankind in the period of the sixth trumpet. 1. It is a period of abounding demon worship. What demons are, is to some extent an unsettled question. Justin Martyr, and some other Christian fathers, regarded them as the spirits of those giants who were born of the sons of God and the daughters of men in the days preceding the flood. John of Damascus considered them the fallen angels. According to Plutarch, Hesiod (as he himself did) held demons to be "the spirits of mortals when separated from their earthly bodies." VOL. XXIV. E Zoroaster, Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the heathen authors generally, viewed them as spiritual beings, intermediate between supreme Deity and mortals, and mostly the souls of heroes and distinguished persons who had departed this life. Lucian makes his dialogist ask, What is man? Answer: A mortal god. And what is a god? Answer: An immortal man. This gives the common heathen doctrine on the subject. Philo says, "The souls of dead men are called demons." The account which demons themselves mostly give of themselves, according to those who have most to do with them, is the same. Josephus gives it as the orthodox Jewish opinion, that demons are none other than the spirits of the wicked dead. With very few exceptions, the Christian fathers were of like opinion. Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, and the vast majority of early Christian writers, regarded demons as the souls or spirits of the unsanctified dead. And the burden of ancient opinion is to the effect, that demons are the souls of dead men, particularly the spirits of those who bore a bad character in this life. It is taken for granted in the classics that many of the "immortals" whom the heathen adored, were once men; and Paul assures us that the sacrifices of the Gentiles made to these "immortals" were sacrifices to demons, and that their sacred feasts were in honour of demons (1 Cor. x. 20, 21). This has led many to believe, or at least to conjecture, that demons are what the Jews and early Christians believed them to be. They are, at any rate, invisible spiritual beings, unholy in character, belonging to the kingdom of evil, and having a vicious and pernicious penchant to interfere in the affairs of mankind in the flesh. The Greeks often applied the name of demons to what they considered good spirits; but the Scriptures always use the word with reference to unclean and wicked spirits only. There is no such thing known in the Bible as a good demon. The Scriptures everywhere distinguish demons from the "devil" Satan; but our English translators continually called them "devils," a name which fitly describes them. Among the Jews, in the Saviour's time, these wicked spirits incorporated themselves in the bodies of living men, intruding themselves between the soul and the nervous organism, getting possession of men's physical powers, measurably superseding the wills of those affected, so as to speak and act by means of human organs. Among the Gentiles, many of the persons thus affected were accepted as inspired prophets and prophetesses; and it had become a regular science to know how to induce such connections with demoniac powers, and how, at option, to bring their influence to bear, whether for religious or for secular purposes. There always have been ways of coming into communication with these unclean spirits, of consulting them, and securing their aid. Hence the Scriptural allusions to those who have familiar spirits, enchanters, wizards, witches, magicians, soothsayers, diviners, necromancers, and the like. Long before the time of Moses we read of consultations of the spirits of the dead, and the veneration of demons as helpers and guides, to whom it was the custom to resort. Special statutes were given against it in the laws of Moses, as great unfaithfulness and sin against God. The assumption all the way through is, that there was reality in what was pretended in these instances, and a very dangerous iniquity. The lying prophets whom Ahab followed to his ruin were really inspired by wicked spirits. Paul encountered a girl at Philippi, whose keepers got great gain from her extraordinary powers, resulting from being possessed of an evil spirit. He cast out the demon, and her peculiar power was gone, and Paul was thrust into prison for interfering with the men's business. This case explains the whole system of heathen oracles and mantology, as the heathen writers themselves explained it. It is Modern spiritism, or so-called spiritualism, is but a revival of the same thing—a branch of the same iniquity. There doubtless is some reality in it; and it is confessedly a system of intercourse with the dead, whose spirits are invoked in various forms and methods, to teach wisdom; to dictate faith, religion, and life; to comfort and help in trouble and necessity; and to serve as saviours and as gods. It is demon-worship brought to life again. It claims to have vast multitudes of adherents, even amongst professed Christians. influencing whole communities of men and women, who are prepared to commit themselves body and soul, for time and eternity, into the care of these lying demon guides. It has made inroads upon people of all classes, and is received by many as a distinct and the only true religion. Its oracles are loud and hopeful in the prediction that it will soon enlist to itself the governments and reigning classes of the whole world. The Word of God also forewarns that it will be vastly successful. "The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats" (1 Tim. iv. 1-3). Instead of fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things, people will bestow their loving confidence upon unclean spirits, invoking them for guidance, and placing religious dependence in their impious falsities. Having no relish for the saving Gospel of Christ, God will send them strong delusion that they may believe a lie, and be visited with the damnation their perverseness deserves. And at the time this sixth trumpet sounds the prevailing religion of the world will be this self-same worship of demons, and following of demons' doctrines. 2. In connection with this demon-worship, will be the revival of idolatry. It is itself idolatry; but with it, idols of gold, and silver, and copper, and stone, and wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk, will again command the genius of men for their construction, and be set up to please their demon-lords, to facilitate spiritual intercourse, and to help out the foul devotions of the infatuated people. It may appear too disparaging to the understanding of this enlightened age to entertain the possibility of a return to the ancient worship of images. People may feel insulted at the thought. But the way for it is opening, and the process to effect it is already going on. The minds of anti-Christian religionists everywhere are fast relapsing into the old heathenish philosophies, and I know not what is to hinder their acceptance of the religions with which those philosophies are conjoined. Modifications of them may be made to conform them somewhat to the requirements of an altered condition of the public mind and taste; but idol-worship will again become, as it is even now becoming, the religion of some who claim to be among the most enlightened, and the very illuminators of mankind. Socrates had his demon-guide, and Socrates approved idolatry; and if men accept the Socratic philosophy in preference to the religion of the Bible, and submit to be taught by demons as their most trustworthy oracles, what is to prevent them from becoming philosophic idol-worshippers, especially if their spirit-friends should so dictate, and accompany those dictations with the power of working wonders. A little further on in this book we read of a "false prophet" who teaches dwellers upon earth to make an image, to which he gives the power of utterance, so that it both speaks and causes all who refuse to worship it to be put to death (Rev. xiii. 14-16). All this is simply the culmination of the system already in vogue, showing a base, persecuting, and murderous idolatry, also the source and manner of its introduction. The symptoms and tendencies are even now strongly in this very direction. What is Planchette but a household god to many who resort to it as a means of spiritual communion, and speak to it, interrogate it, and reverently seek unto it for light, consolation, and guidance? What are the numerous and various inventions constructed and constructing to please the spirits, and meant to serve as material forms and instruments through which the demon-gods are to manifest themselves, and hold communion with their devotees? Is not much of the best science and mechanical skill of spiritualists now employed in answer to spiritbidding, fashioning implements for closer and easier commerce with these invisible powers? Do not such machines and images of gold, and silver, and copper, and stone, and wood, already exist? And are they not kept in devoted places as holy things, made the centres of circles of people gathered around them for intercourse with devils, as with the world of hope and blessedness, consulted with pious affection, and guarded and revered with all the awe, and sometimes tearful devotion, with which the ancient heathen approached the oracles and images of their gods? Only let all this grow and mature in the line in which it has begun and is growing, and bald image-worship will soon live again in what claims to be the enlightened society of modern times, and men and women of boasted intelligence will everywhere be found paying their adorations at the shrines of devils, as to gods. And just this is one of the leading features of the time when the sixth trumpet sounds. 3. And corresponding with the heathen character of the dominant religion, will then be a heathen state of morals also. Murder will be among the commonest of crimes. Sensual and selfish passion will make sad havoc of human life, with no serious thought about it on the part of the leaders of public sentiment. Foticide, infanticide, homicide, and all forms of sin against human life, will characterise society, and be tolerated and passed as if no great harm were done. And well would it be for us, if such were not largely the state of things even now. Sorceries, impure practices with evil agencies, and particularly with poisonous drugs, is also given as one of the dominant forms of vice and sin in those days. The word specially includes tampering with one's own or another's health, by means of drugs, potions, intoxications, and often with magical arts and incantations, the invocation of spiritual agencies, the putting under influences promotive of sins of impurity both bodily and spiritual. We have only to think of the use of alcoholic stimulants-of opium, of tobacco—of the rage for cosmetics and medicaments to increase love attractions of resorts to the pharmacopoeia in connection with sensuality of the magical agents and treatments alleged to come from the spirit-world for the benefit of people in this-of the thousand impositions in the way of medicines and remedial agents, encouraging mankind to recklessness in trans gression, with the hope of easily repairing the damages of nature's penalties of the growing prevalence of crime induced by these things, setting loose and stimulating to activity the vilest passions, which are eating out the moral sense of society-for the beginnings of that moral degeneracy to which the seer here alludes as characteristic of the period when the sixth trumpet is sounded. And interlinked with these sorceries, and reacting the one on the other, will also be the general subversion of marriage and its laws, and the deluging of society with the sins of fornication and adultery. The Apostle uses the word "fornication" alone, as embracing all forms of lewdness, but as if to intimate that marriage will then be hardly recognised any more. And already we hear the institution of legal wedlock denounced and condemned as tyrannical, and all rules, but those of affinity and desire, repudiated as unjust. Already, in some circles, we find the doctrines of free love put forth and defended in the name of right, a better religion, and a higher law. And it would be strange indeed, if the revival of the old heathen philosophies and religions, which justified, sanctioned, and sanctified promiscuous concubinage, did not also bring with it a revival of all these old heathen abominations. So also has the holy apostle written, that "in the last days. men shall be . . . incontinent." And here the seer enumerates "fornication" as one of the outstanding features in the social character of those times. And last in the catalogue stands the statement of general and abounding dishonesty, the obliteration of moral distinctions, the disregard of other's rights, and the practice of fraud, theft, and deceit wherever it is possible. Pollok makes his ancient bard of earth tell of a time when "Blood trod upon the heels of Blood; Mined under Treachery, and Perjury Swore back to Perjury, and Blasphemy Arose with hideous Blasphemy, and Curse Loud answered Curse; and drunkard stumbling fell And that time, with just this condition of things, will have come, when this sixth trumpet sounds. We need not wonder, therefore, that it brings a plague of horror and judgment upon mankind, exceeding all that yet have been known. "This day is worse than the times of the flood. Then the earth was corrupt before God, and filled with violence. Here corruption of every kind, both between man and man, and man and the Most High, prevails; and murders, the highest of the crimes of violence, are numerous. Besides this, there are idolatry and demon-worship, which are not named as existing before the flood. "Of the men of Sodom, we read that they were 'wicked, and sinners |