. If those who cleave to Thee amid this awful time must
seal their witness with death, must face martyrdom, then let me be
counted worthy to die for Thee. In the old days, before yesterday's
great event, all prayer had to be offered to Thee through Jesus Christ.
I know no other way, please then hear my prayer, and accept it, for
Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

Rising from his knees, with a sense of solemn calm pervading all his
soul, he presently took his pen and began to write rapidly, his mind
seeming, to him, to be consciously under the domination of the divine.

Embodying the various items over which he had so recently mused, as to
the awfulness of the development of evil that would increasingly mark
the near coming days, now that all restraints were taken away, he went
on to show that now that the Devil, who had, for ages, been the Prince
of the Power of the air, with all his foul following of demons, had
been cast down out of that upper realm, where Christ and his translated
saints had taken up their abode, the forces of evil upon the earth
would be magnified and multiplied a million-fold.

"Christ and the Devil," he went on, "never can dwell in the same realm,
hence the coming of Christ into the air meant the descent to earth, of
the Devil and, with him all the invisible hosts of evil. The wildest,
weirdest imagination could not conceive all the horrors that must come
upon those who presently will refuse to wear the 'Mark of the Beast'
and bow to worship him."

Suddenly, at this point in his writing, a curious sense of some
presence, other than his own, came over him, and slowly, almost
reluctantly he looked up.

He started visibly, for, seated in the chair on the opposite side of
his desk, was a visitor. The man was the most magnificent specimen of
the human race he had ever seen, a giant, almost, in stature, handsome
to a degree, and with a certain regal air about him.

Bastin had involuntarily leaped to his feet, and now stammered:

"I--er--beg pardon, but I did not hear you come in."

Even as he spoke two things happened. His mind swept backward over the
years to the day of that wonderful Judas sermon he had heard, and with
this recalled memory there came the recollection of his turning to look
into the face of that magnificent looking young man who had been the
cynosure of all eyes as he left the church with his mother. He was
conscious also of a strange uncanny sense that this smiling handsome