TRUTH NOT YET TRIUMPHANT.

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paralyzing evangelistic and missionary effort, is one of the mightiest incentives to earnestness in preaching the Gospel to every creature, until He comes."

We do not refer to these things in any spirit of excultation, nor see in these any reason to expect universal acceptance of the truth of our Lord's return and reign. No such expectation is warranted by Scripture or by facts. Truth is yet a stranger in an enemy's land, and we have no reason to suppose that the great majority will ever accept the truth as it is in Christ. Every one that is of the truth heareth His voice, and He who hath given his word, gives grace to receive it. We must also expect, from the very nature of the case, the most determined opposition to the truth, and the most subtle efforts for its corruption. Satan wastes no time fighting error; he puts forth no strength to bring false doctrine into disrepute by the mistakes and inconsistencies of its defenders, nor does he waste his energies in discrediting truths which are of minor consequence. It is only against some great, grand, fundamental principle of the doctrine of Christ, that he hurls his fiery darts and pours forth his fiercest indignation. Around such great, central truths the conflicts of ages have occurred; and everything which satanic art and malice could do to pervert, destroy, and dishonor the truth as it is in Christ, has been done. The apathy of a worldly church, the ignorance of professed teachers, the mistakes of rash and imprudent men, the perversions and misjudgments of the unwise and ungracious, the errors and false doctrines which grow beside all truth like tares in the midst of wheat, the bitterness of spirit which leads so many to reject truth in consequence of the tone and temper of its defenders, and the cool contempt of the worldly-wise, who, in their hearts, know nothing of the saving power of the gospel of Christ,

all these are instruments invoked and used by the great adversary to cast dishonor upon the truth of God, and deter people from searching the Scriptures to see for themselves if these things are so. Against such fierce and furious zealots nothing but truth can stand. Error, subjected to half the perversions and assaults that truth has borne, would be shattered in fragments, and driven like thistle-down before the whirlwind. The doctrines of men have no elements of vitality which survive alike the folly of friends and the fury of foes. After all the mistakes and absurdities which men have connected with these great truths, they still lie as foundation principles of the gospel of Christ, firm as the everlasting hills. The great facts of judgment and retribution, the glorious prospect of a reign of righteousness and peace, the gospel of the everlasting kingdom, the glorious proclamation of the reign of Him who died to save mankind, and who is henceforth expecting until his enemies be made his footstool, the grand hope of the church for which our Saviour taught us ever to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,”—these are truths and facts which no malice of Satan, no fury of foes, no foolishness or fanaticism of friends, can subvert or conceal. They stand in the faith and hope of the church, and shall yet stand in the experience of the universe as the manifest triumphs of Him who is God over all, blessed evermore.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DOOM OF ANTICHRIST.

"That day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the Son of Perdition.... And then shall that wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming."-PAUL.

IN

N the present chapter we exhibit the Voice of the Church on what is styled the great Pre-millennial argument. It is the one which the venerable Mr. Faber has admitted to

contain " apparent evidence for the Pre-millennial advent:" and which the Rev. D. Brown, of Scotland, affirms “to have more force, than all other arguments put together," and which is "the strongest of all;" and which all Pre-millennarians, with the Hon. B. Storer, pronounce to be "the unanswerable argument;" and of which they may well declare in the decisive words of Bishop M'Illvaine, "It is wholly unanswerable."

Nearly all Protestants accord with the martyred Latimer in saying, "Antichrist is now fully known throughout all the world," and with Fleming, in testifying that, "The man of sin hath come to his full height and stature," for his power is seen every where, and his millions cover the earth. But the great question at issue is, how shall the Papal power be abolished, to make way for the Millennium? With Paul we answer, by the Lord's coming." So said Luther and Melanethon, and giving our principles of interpretation, we pro

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ceed to exhibit the testimony of Jesus in the spirit of prophecy, and the Voice of the Church, on this momentous subject.

PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION.

Luther says, "You say it may be interpreted thus, it may also be understood thus, it may also be answered thus, it may be literally interpreted thus, it may be mystically interpreted thus-away with all these may be's. These, my friend Catharinus, are all refuges of lies, mere loop-holes of escape, and evidently go to confirm the truths I maintain. Speak thus: This is the meaning of the passage, and it cannot be understood otherwise.' You will thus keep to one simple and uniform sense of Scripture, as I always do, and always have done. This way of proceeding, is to be a divine; the former a sophist. For you know in every controverted subject we must adide by the literal sense, which is uniform throughout the whole Scriptures."

WHAT PAUL MEANT.

Mr. Faber says, "What St. Paul then told the Thessalonians, was this: that a tyrannical and irreligious power, which he denominates the man of sin, and the lawless one, should assuredly be revealed in its own appointed time, after there had been a great apostacy from the primitive faith, but before the arrival of the day of Christ, which they erroneously deemed close at hand: that the coercing power of the Roman Empire, effectually prevented the revelation of this oppressive tyranny; but that when the coercing law of the Roman Empire should be removed from the midst, then the man of sin, no longer restrained by the strong arm of law, but acquiring his predicted character of the lawless one, by setting himself above all law, and by having the laws and times given into his hands, should be openly revealed."+

Luther's Pope Confounded. † Sacred Calendar, vol. i., p. 100.

BARNABAS-JUSTIN MARTYR-IRENEUS.

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With these for our principles of interpretation, and with the foregoing definition of the apostle's language, we now proceed to quote from the early church her views of the great Antichrist, and the manner by which his destruction will be accomplished, to make way for the Millennium, and reign of Christ on the earth.

FIRST CENTURY.

BARNABAS, in a. D. 70, says: "The consummate trial as has been written, and as Daniel 9: 27, says, draws near,—for the Lord has cut short the times and the days, in order that his Beloved may hasten to his inheritance. Quoting Daniel on the ten kings, and little horn, he adds: "We ought to understand. . . . . . His Son shall come and abolish the wicked one, and judge the ungodly," &c.

SECOND CENTURY.

JUSTIN MARTYR wrote: "He who is about to speak blasphemous and audacious things against the Most High, is already at the doors, whose continuance Daniel signifies to be for a time, times, and half a time. He (Christ) shall come with glory from the heavens, when also, the man of apostacy speaking great words against the Highest, will dare to do wicked things against us Christians, who, since we have known the way of worshipping God by the law, and the doctrine going forth through the apostles of Jesus, from Jerusalem, fly to the God of Israel."

IRENÆUS says: The number of Antichrist's name shall be expressed by the word Lateinos. When Antichrist, reigning three years and six months, shall have laid waste all things in this world, and have sat in the Temple of Jerusalem, then shall the Lord come from heaven in the clouds, easting Antichrist and them that obey him into the lake of fire, but bringing to the just the times of the kingdom, &c.'