dividuals, and then to them alone;
and it cannot be handed on to another. "As it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be," such is the general history of man's moral
discipline, running parallel to the unchanging glory of that
All-Perfect God, who is its Author and Finisher.

Practical religious knowledge, then, is a personal gift, and, further,
a gift from God; and, therefore, as experience has hitherto shown, more
likely to be obscured than advanced by the lapse of time. But further,
we know of the existence of an evil principle in the world, corrupting
and resisting the truth in its measure, according to the truth's
clearness and purity. Whether it be from the sinfulness of our nature,
or from the malignity of Satan, striving with peculiar enmity against
Divine truth, certain it is that the best gifts of God have been the
most woefully corrupted. It was prophesied from the beginning, that
the serpent should bruise the heel of Him who was ultimately to triumph
over him; and so it has ever been. Our Saviour, who was the Truth
itself, was the most spitefully entreated of all by the world. It has
been the case with His followers too. He was crucified with thieves;
they have been united and blended against their will with the worst and
basest of mankind. The purer and more precious the gift which God
bestows on us, far from this being a security for its abiding and
increasing, rather the more grievously has that gift been abused. St.
John even seems to make the greater wickedness in the world the clear
consequence and evidence of our Lord's having made His appearing.
"Little children, it is the last time" (i. e. the time of the Christian
Dispensation): "and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even
now are there many Antichrists, _whereby we know_ that it is the last
time[3]." St. Paul drew the same picture. So far from anticipating
brighter times in store for the Church before the end, he portends evil
only. "This know" (he says to Timothy), "that in the last days
perilous times will come. . . . . Evil men and seducers shall wax
worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived[4]." In these and other
passages surely there is no encouragement to look out for a more
enlightened, peaceful, and pure state of the Church than it enjoys at
present: rather, there is a call on us to consider the old and original
way as the best, and all deviations from it, though they seem to
promise an easier, safer, a