to you, "Come out of her, that ye be not partakers of her plagues." Have no connection with her-no sympathy with her. Taste not her cup, wear not her garments, stand aloof from her, lest, touching her, sympathizing with her, trying to form diplomatic intercourse with her, apologizing for her, seeking to endow her, as if the money of kings and states could avert God's judgments-lest you be sucked into the terrible vortex, and, being partakers of her sins, be plunged into the fire of her ruin. But, my dear friends, come what may, let us rejoice that Christ is our King, not Antichrist; that the Bible of Christ, not the Breviary, is our law; that the gospel, not another gospel, is our hope; and come life, come death, come signs, come wonders, come miracles, come things present, things past, things to come-nothing, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

455

LECTURE XXXIII.

1848; OR, PROPHECY FULFILLED.

"He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."—Revelation xxii. 20.

"And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.”— Revelation xvi. 17.

LAST Sabbath evening I showed you that the reign of Antichrist was to endure from that moment when the mystery of iniquity began, in St. Paul's day, until that moment when the Lord shall come again. I showed you on a previous evening that in Matt. xxiv. there was the earliest intimation that Christ's advent should take the world by surprise, and should come upon them like the lightning that gleams from the east and spreads its coruscations in the west, and should find them as the flood found them in the days of Noah, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. On a previous evening, I showed you by a multitude of texts that the great hope, as it seems to me, held out in every passage of the New Testament, is that of Christ's second advent; and just as the devout Jew continually looked for his first, so the devout Christian, leaning on the first as the foundation of this hope, anticipates with joy the second as the substance and realization of it. I drew fairly the inference, that no Millennium is to precede the advent of Christ, but, on the contrary, to succeed it; that he comes first to a world unprepared for his advent, though to his church as to a bride waiting for the bridegroom; and that the Millennium will not be the dawn that precedes it, but the noon that streams from that risen and meridian Sun of Righteousness.

I now proceed to lay before you some proofs of the truth of what I stated in my last lectures in Exeter Hall, announced as

prophecy in 1847, but in 1849 performance. I believe that the events which I then described and classified, as you may see by referring to the lecture on the Seventh Vial, the fulfilment of which I did not expect to be so instant, is at this moment poured out from the angel's hand; and the nations, like drunken men, are reeling and staggering beneath its intoxicating power. The statement of these things is not to gratify a vain curiosity; on the contrary, if I make good the points I have alleged, and show history giving its comment on prophecy, and the God that wrote the one acting in the other, I conceive that I am stating what is fitted to solemnize, to stir up the energy that remains, and to make us feel that if ever there was a crisis when men ought to be sure what they are, and whither they are going, it is the crisis, the strange and startling crisis, in which our lot is now cast.

Now just before the seventh vial was poured out, you recollect what I stated in my former lectures upon this subject to be the prelude to all the judgments that were to follow-that three unclean spirits were to go forth under the sixth vial and deceive the nations. These three unclean spirits have been identified by Mr. Elliott, and I perfectly concur with him on the evidence adduced: he identifies them by showing that each proceeds from a source which he had previously determined. Other commentators have guessed what they are, but he has proved what they must be, by referring to their origin: one from the mouth of the dragon, another from the mouth of the beast, i. e. the wild beast of the Apocalypse-the pope; the other from the mouth of the false prophet, which last I have identified with that Popery that exists without a pope, but not the less Popery on that account. Well, if this be so, the three unclean spirits are the spirit of infidelity which I exemplified, and the action of which I pointed out; the spirit of Popery, the spread, the power, and the pretensions of which I also analyzed; and, lastly, the spirit of hierarchism, known in more popular phrascology as Tractarianism, or, if I do not use an offensive term, Puseyism, which is just Popery without its head, not the less real and mischievous on that account. These three unclean spirits, you observe, are termed "the spirits of devils"—whether that word ought to be rendered strictly devils or

demons, is a question which this is not the place to discuss"the spirits of devils working miracles."

I showed you last Sunday evening that miracles are not necessarily evidence of truth. If Satan has an archangel's wisdom, he may also have an archangel's power. It is probable there may not only be pretended, but real miracles-i. e. exertions of power above what man can reach-but no miracle on earth can prove to me that God's word is false; and if a miracle were to be wrought equal to raising the dead, and then the performer were to say that it was to show that transubstantiation is true, I should despise the miracle-worker, as I would reject the doctrine. Thus "the spirits of devils working miracles . go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them together to battle to the great day of God Almighty." And recollect the cry that closes the sixth vial-"Behold, I come as a thief," i. e. whatever comes next will come with startling effect, unexpectedly come-will be the footfall, as it were, of the approaching Lord, the rushing and the sound of his chariot-wheels. as they approach from afar. "Behold, I come as a thief: blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked." "And He gathered them together unto a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon;" on which last I do not now enter. These three unclean spirits were to prepare the way for the action of the seventh vial; and whatever takes place under the seventh vial is to be the explosion of the elements with which those spirits have impregnated the social system: and I conceive that what has taken place in Europe during that remarkable year which is now drawn to its tomb, is the result of the action of these unclean spirits as the pioneers, and the immediate effect of the pouring out of the seventh vial as the great primary cause.

The period that immediately preceded 1848, was a period full of new discoveries. We heard continually ringing in our ears the most golden promises. The world, we are told, was to be happy without Christianity, nations to flourish without wars; and Christians, echoing the sentiment, thought mankind had too much good sense ever again to go to war. There never was a calm so deep, so still, as that which preceded 1848; but in that calm,

during that peace, the unclean spirits were acting, working, leavening, undermining deep below the foundations of society. Prior to 1848, kings actually slept and nodded on their thrones, swords were beginning to grow rusty in their scabbards, iron was withdrawn from manufacturing cannon, and was turned to the manufacture of rails. The soldier was beginning to be regarded as a being with an antique aspect, and as the last fading remnant of a regime that had passed away. The navy was rotting in its harbours; the cry was heard from every quarter of the land, "Reduce the navy, disband the army;" and new improvements in our laws about trade were to pacify, to civilize, and almost to Christianize the world. Were not these the very sentiments that were uttered? the cries that intimated the anticipations of mankind? And religion itself was remarkably quiet. Professing Christians quarrelled with each other apparently because they had nothing better to do, and phantom grievances took the place of real ones, and great hopes were introduced of the spread of religion, prophecies of the approaching Millennium were heard; in short, no language that I can employ is adequate to describe the deep and auspicious quiet, the complete calm, that reigned for many years over all the world for years prior to 1848. During this, however, as I have shown you, the unclean spirits were silently at work-Popery, and Puseyism, and Infidelity, each with its respective retinue of minor parties and subdivisions Sometimes, it is true, they quarrelled with each other, as Michelet and Quinet, personations of the spirit of infidelity; and Eugene Sue quarrelled with the Jesuits and archbishops and priests of France-but though rivals in renown, they were brethren in arms: they were kindred spirits from different sources, tending to the same great result-namely, sapping the foundations of society, nourishing intellectual pride and sensual indulgence, and endeavouring to create a happiness without Christianity, and a religion without God.

Let me just give one or two extracts from the writings of one of the master-spirits of the present movement in France, as evidence above ground what was working under. He is one of the most popular writers upon Socialism; his talents have made him formidable, and his sentiments have made him terrible: I mean