the dominion of the Church, is that they become themselves the objects of subterranean plottings and conspiracies, or, again, of a widespread spirit of disloyalty and disobedience, so that, where dynasties are not overthrown by revolutions, at least the whole social order is imperilled, and the authority of law is disregarded. It would take me far into the regions of contemporary and recent history to illustrate this subject as it deserves, for it may be truly said of the governments of Europe since the great upheaval of the Reformation, that not one of them is free from the guilt of having usurped the rights of the Church of God, and also that not one of them has escaped the due punishment of that usurpation, in revolution, in regicide, in the banishment of royal families or in the degradation of the royal authority, while it is also true to say that society itself is already in great danger in many kingdoms of what used to be called Christendom. These are plagues which work themselves out in history, and if the last days are to be days of signal lawlessness, according to the words of our Lord, it is not easy to see how much further lawlessness can be carried, without an absolute dissolution of society, than we have ourselves seen it carried. But this is enough to have said, for the sake of not leaving altogether untouched this other feature of the prophecies, which is certainly not likely to become less prominent on the face of human society, as the years roll on. This then is another point which belongs to the picture we are sketching, and simultaneously with this we find that in the last days there is reason for expecting that men

will be far more masters of the resources of the world, of the fruits and products of the various climates and regions of the earth, and the like, and will be able to use all these resources for the purposes of enjoyment and pleasure, in a way, and to an extent which will make an immense and nearly universal sensuality and moral corruption inevitable. Such are some, at least, of the features of the last times in traces of which our own days are certainly not lacking; and when we find them, as we do find them, not singly prominent, one more and one less, in a time like our own, but all of them prominent simultaneously and collectively, we have certainly reason to arm ourselves for the last struggle in behalf of the truth and the law of God.

II.

Now to-day I shall pass on to another and a different feature in the last times, as they are represented to us in the Sacred Scriptures interpreted to us by the Fathers of the Church. All the elements of which I have hitherto spoken are, as we may say, the human side of those evil times which will come upon the world before its renovation by the second Advent of our Lord. I do not mean to say that all these human elements are not used and set in motion by the spiritual enemies of our race, who always, it may be said, prefer to make man fight against himself, to assail the honour of God by the very gifts and benefits which He has bestowed on His creatures, and to turn in this manner His own goodness against himself. But we must never forget,

though it is quite certain that the men of the last time will forget, that the warfare which we have to wage here and now for the salvation of our souls, and in order to escape the eternal doom of him whom the Judge will condemn, is not a simply human warfare. That is, it is not waged either by human forces alone, or against human principles and powers of evil alone. We are aided in our warfare by God, by His Mother, the blessed saints and angels, and by the spiritual powers at the disposal of the Church, and, on the other hand, we are fighting against foes of far greater power than ourselves, foes of the same nature and. order with the blessed citizens of Heaven who assist us, against the deadly enemies of God and of man, Satan and the fallen angels. Our battle, as St. Paul says, "is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places." But with regard to this conflict, there are a few certain truths of which it is well to remind ourselves now that we are speaking of the latter days, and of these I shall here treat.

In the first place, it is the doctrine of Scripture, that Satan and his evil angels, who are indefinitely more powerful as well as more subtle than man against whom they are contending, are allowed to tempt us and assail us, not to the utmost of their power, but just as much and no more as God permits. If God did not hold them in, they would devour us and destroy us in a moment. In the second place, it is the universal belief of the Church that the power Ephes. vi. 12.

1

of the evil angels against man is at some times allowed to proceed to greater lengths than at others. For instance, Satan was immensely powerful in the world before the coming of our Lord, but after that coming his power in the world has been immensely diminished. This is what, as many of the Fathers tell us, our Lord meant when He described the conflict between Himself and Satan under the image of a strong armed man who kept his hall and goods in peace, until a stronger than he came upon him, and first bound him, and then despoiled him of his goods and distributed them.1 The image, then, means that Satan was in full force and dominion, in peaceable possession, so to say, of the world until our Lord came, and that then our Lord subdued him and chained him up, and took possession, through the Church, of that human world upon which Satan had exercised such a tyranny. This is what took place, first, in the lifetime of our Lord, especially at the Temptation and at the Passion, when Satan was first weakened and put to flight and then finally conquered by our Lord. And later on, as the Christian Church spread throughout the world, the same process of the weakening and dispossession of Satan went on, and at the present moment he is stronger and far more able to seduce men in regions outside the Church than within her pale.

But our Lord went on to tell the Jews another parable, as it were, how the devil once cast out comes back again with seven other devils worse than

1 St. Luke xi. 21.

himself, and how what was expressed by this image was to come to pass in that very generation.1 And certainly the whole history of the Jewish commonwealth between the date of our Lord's Death and the destruction of Jerusalem is more like the history of a nation possessed by evil spirits than any other period. Now the Fathers tell us that in the latter days something of the same sort is to take place. There is a part of the Apocalyptic vision which they interpret in this way, namely, that Satan has been bound up and chained by our Lord, and not allowed to seduce the nations as before, during a certain time, which is the time of the reign of the Church on earth, and that then Satan is to be loosed for a short time, the time of the last great seduction, apostacy, and persecution, and during that time he is to have leave to put forth his full power against the Church. Thus what their teaching leads us to, as a conclusion concerning the last days, is that in those days Satan will be more mischievous and powerful than he has hitherto been allowed to be in the presence of our Lord or the Church. "After that," says St. John, "he must be loosed for a little time."2

Thus we are to expect that, in the later days of the world's history, Satan will be allowed greater freedom than before, partly, we may suppose, to test to the uttermost the spiritual powers of the Church and her children, that the glory of our Lord may be greater in their final victory, partly because of the exceeding wickedness of that apostate world 1 St. Luke xi. 24. 2 Apoc. xx. 3.