jected God's mercy and trampled upon His law.
Dark are the records of human misery that earth has witnessed during its
long centuries of crime. The heart sickens and the mind grows faint in
contemplation. Terrible have been the results of rejecting the authority
of Heaven. But a scene yet darker is presented in the revelations of the
future. The records of the past,--the long procession of tumults,
conflicts, and revolutions, the "battle of the warrior, with confused
noise, and garments rolled in blood,"(49)--what are these, in contrast with
the terrors of that day when the restraining Spirit of God shall be wholly
withdrawn from the wicked, no longer to hold in check the outburst of
human passion and satanic wrath! The world will then behold, as never
before, the results of Satan's rule.

But in that day, as in the time of Jerusalem's destruction, God's people
will be delivered, "every one that shall be found written among the
living." Christ has declared that He will come the second time, to gather
His faithful ones to Himself: "Then shall all the tribes of the earth
mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four
winds, from one end of heaven to the other."(50) Then shall they that obey
not the gospel be consumed with the spirit of His mouth, and be destroyed
with the brightness of His coming.(51) Like Israel of old, the wicked
destroy themselves; they fall by their iniquity. By a life of sin, they
have placed themselves so out of harmony with God, their natures have
become so debased with evil, that the manifestation of His glory is to
them a consuming fire.

Let men beware lest they neglect the lesson conveyed to them in the words
of Christ. As He warned His disciples of Jerusalem's destruction, giving
them a sign of the approaching ruin, that they might make their escape; so
He has warned the world of the day of final destruction, and has given
them tokens of its approach, that all who will may flee from the wrath to
come. Jesus declares, "There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon,
and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations."(52) Those who
behold these harbingers of His coming are to "know that it is near, even
at the doors."(53) "Watch ye therefore,"(54) are His words of admonition.
They that heed the warning shall not be left