02-02-2021, 11:02 PM
Now, I do not say that there may not be far more stupendous and preternatural phenomena about the manifestation and person of Antichrist. All history would lead us to expect it; all the prophecies seem to predict it; the great periods of divine action in the world foreshadow it. My object has not been to divest the future of the supernatural, but to show how the supernatural mingles itself in the ordinary course of the world, and steals upon us, so to speak, unawares. “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” but is in the midst of us, in full presence and power, under aspects which seem to us common and unmarked, in the currents of human action, in national movements, in the policy of governments, and the diplomacy of the world. As Christ at His coming was believed to be the carpenter, so Antichrist may be visibly no more than a successful adventurer. Even his preternatural character, true or false, may pass either as scintillations of insanity, or as the absurdities of his partisans, or the delusions of his flatterers. So the world blinds its own eyes by the fumes of its own intellectual pride. There is no thing out of the context or proportion, or nDos, as we are wont to say of the nineteenth century, that a person should arise of Jewish blood, naturalised in some of the peoples of Europe, a protector of the Jews, the purse-bearers, and journalists, and telegraphic wires, of the revolutions of Europe, hailed by them as their saviour from the social and political dominion of the Christians, surrounded by the phenomena of antichristian and anticatholic spiritualism, an arch-medium himself, and professing to be more than either Moses or Mahommet, that is, more than of human stature and proportions.
To those who have never discerned the ultimate unity in principle and action of truth, on the one side, and of falsehood, on the other, and likewise respectively of good and evil, it may appear strange to attach much importance to any event the sphere of which seems to be the Jewish race. But to those who believe that the world may be divided into Christian and Antichristian, or Catholic and Anticatholic, - or, in other words, into the natural order, based upon the mere human will and action, and the super natural, based on the Divine will and the Incarnation of God, - it will at once be seen to be the question most vital and decisive of all. I shall hope to show hereafter that the antagonism between two persons is an antagonism also between two societies, and that as our Divine Lord is the Head and Representative of all the truth and justice of the world from the beginning, so Antichrist, be he who or what he may, will be the head and representative of all the falsehood and wrong, which has been accumulating for these 1800 years, in the heresies, schisms, spiritual seditions, intellectual infidelities, social disorders, and political revolutions of the anti catholic movement of the world.
Such is the great deep upon which the Christian society of the world is resting. From time to time it has lifted itself up with a preternatural power, and has made the Christian order of Europe vibrate and reel. Then again it has seemed to subside into a calm. But no one with any discernment can fail to see that it is deeper, mightier, and more widely spread now than ever. That this antichristian power will one day find its head, and for a time prevail in this world, is certain from prophecy. But this cannot be until “he who holdeth” shall be taken out of the way. This, however, is the next subject in our order, and I must not anticipate it here.
To those who have never discerned the ultimate unity in principle and action of truth, on the one side, and of falsehood, on the other, and likewise respectively of good and evil, it may appear strange to attach much importance to any event the sphere of which seems to be the Jewish race. But to those who believe that the world may be divided into Christian and Antichristian, or Catholic and Anticatholic, - or, in other words, into the natural order, based upon the mere human will and action, and the super natural, based on the Divine will and the Incarnation of God, - it will at once be seen to be the question most vital and decisive of all. I shall hope to show hereafter that the antagonism between two persons is an antagonism also between two societies, and that as our Divine Lord is the Head and Representative of all the truth and justice of the world from the beginning, so Antichrist, be he who or what he may, will be the head and representative of all the falsehood and wrong, which has been accumulating for these 1800 years, in the heresies, schisms, spiritual seditions, intellectual infidelities, social disorders, and political revolutions of the anti catholic movement of the world.
Such is the great deep upon which the Christian society of the world is resting. From time to time it has lifted itself up with a preternatural power, and has made the Christian order of Europe vibrate and reel. Then again it has seemed to subside into a calm. But no one with any discernment can fail to see that it is deeper, mightier, and more widely spread now than ever. That this antichristian power will one day find its head, and for a time prevail in this world, is certain from prophecy. But this cannot be until “he who holdeth” shall be taken out of the way. This, however, is the next subject in our order, and I must not anticipate it here.