with the basest of impulses. This
nation, as we have seen, is to exist to the coming of Christ; and the
Bible very fully sets forth the moral condition of the people in the
days that immediately precede that event. Iniquity is to abound, and the
love of many to wax cold. Evil men and seducers are to wax worse and
worse. Scoffers are to arise, saying, Where is the promise of his
coming? The whole land is to be full of violence as it was in the days
of Noah, and full of licentiousness as in the city of Sodom in the days
of Lot. And when the Lord appears, faith will scarcely be found upon the
earth, and those who are ready for his coming will be but a "little
flock." Can the people of God expect to go through this period, and not
suffer persecution? No. This would be contrary to the lessons taught by
all past experience, and just the reverse of what we are warranted by
the word of God to expect. "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus
shall suffer persecution." If ever this was true in the history of the
church, we may expect it to be emphatically so when, in the last days,
the world is in its aphelion as related to God, and the wicked touch
their lowest depths of iniquity and sin.

Let, then, a general spirit of persecution arise in this country, and
what is more probable than that it should assume an organized form? Here
the will of the people is law. And let there be a general desire on the
part of the people for certain oppressive enactments against believers
in unpopular doctrines, and what would be more easy and natural than
that such desire should immediately crystallize into systematic action,
and their oppressive measures take the form of law? Then we have just
what the prophecy indicates. Then is heard the voice of the dragon.

And there are elements already in existence which furnish a luxuriant
soil for a baleful crop of future evil. But a few years ago three and a
half millions of human beings were held in our country in a state of
abject bondage, deprived of every vestige of freedom and every trace of
manhood. But why refer to slavery, it may be asked, since it has already
become a thing of the past? Slavery, to be sure, on the ground of
political expediency, has been abolished. For the time being, the
ballots and bayonets of its opponents have outnumbered those of its
partisans. But has this changed the disposition by which it has
heretofore been fostered? Has it converted the South? Have they been
brough