which shall deserve as its immediate chastisement to be handed over to all the seductions of the powers of evil. This is implied in the great prophecy of St. Paul as to the partial success of Antichrist. His coming, says the Apostle, is "according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and lying wonders, and in all the seduction of iniquity to those who are lost, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send upon them the operation of error, to believe lying, that all may be judged who have not believed the truth but have consented unto

iniquity."1 The two great features of this prophecy are, first, the truth that Antichrist is to be supported and recommended to mankind by all the power of the devil, "in all power, and signs, and lying wonders," and secondly, that this permission of God to Satan is judicial. Because men have not loved the truth, they shall be allowed to believe lies, and because they have consented to iniquity and have not believed the truth, they shall be judged.

III.

Now, my dear brethren, what may be the particular and special inventions of Satan for the seduction of men, which he will be allowed to palm off on the men of the last days, we do not know. But we may be sure of certain things concerning him which it may be well to consider in reference to this point. I speak to those who believe in Satan. For certainly, it is possible to imagine persons persuading them

1 2 Thess. ii. 9-11.

selves, as is commonly said, that there is no God, no devil, no spiritual world, nothing beyond what we see and feel and touch. That is a very childish, unreasonable, degrading belief. But it is intelligible. And it is far more intelligible than the belief of those persons who grant that there is a devil, but who practically believe also that he lets us alone and is no longer active in the seduction of mankind. It is more reasonable to believe that there is no evil one at all, than to believe that, being what he is, he may be considered as asleep or as dead as far as concerns all attempts to impose on and to ruin mankind. In the next place, I say this—that there are many phenomena in the present state of the world which are more or less seen in our generation, and which are most reasonably to be explained on the supposition that Satan has been allowed a greater freedom and a more open power of action than he has been allowed in earlier ages of the Christian Church. There are some who would place among these phenomena what I have just been speaking of, namely the extraordinary fanaticism of the conspirators against social order, when those conspirators are allowed by the condition of public affairs to come, as it were, to the surface and have their way for a short time in some diseased polity or country. And surely we cannot call this conclusion unreasonable, when we remember the perfectly fiendish hatred against religion, against God, and everything dedicated to His service, which characterized the short reign of the secret societies in a country not far from our own shores, during the

interval which followed on the late great humiliation of that noble country at the hands of the Germans. The furies that were then let loose were surely more than human, and no one can tell how soon they may be let loose once more-no one can tell how soon the instinct of the Church in denouncing these societies, may be again fearfully justified by the discovery of their true character in some still greater convulsion.

But to-day I am going to dwell on another and a very different manifestation of the power of Satan to delude mankind. I find this sufficiently illustrated in a false belief, which numbers among those of our own race adherents enough to furnish the whole male population of many an European country. It is said that there are now in the world, and, I grieve to say, chiefly in the AngloSaxon world, in the English-speaking races of Europe and America, as many as ten or eleven millions of persons who believe in what goes by the name of Spiritualism. I give that as an instance, for there are several phases of the same kind of belief, and not all would class themselves under that single name. For the purposes of our argument, it is only necessary that there should be a number of forms of delusion prevalent in the world, of which the simplest account is that they are invented, supported, and propagated by the agency of evil spirits. The characteristic of all these sects, for that is the proper name to give them, and the whole system of what they practise, comes from a false creed, which like others, has in

it some one or two elements of truth. The characteristic of them all is this-that certain persons are said to have communication with the unseen world, and especially with the souls of the departed, by means of which they are able to find out what is going on at a distance, and to produce certain marvellous effects which have a miraculous appearance, and of which no one is able to give a natural explanation.

For surely it is reasonable to say that this delusion of Spiritualism is far too widespread, and is practised by far too large a multitude of persons, for us to be satisfied with the hypothesis that it is a mere conjuring trick, an affair of sleight of hand. It is a different thing to say that there is not such an element here and there, but the thing itself, when we look the phenomena in the face, is far too well attested to be set aside on that plea. As to the phenomena in general, and without speaking of particular instances, I do not think that any natural explanation ever has been given of them, or ever will be, and I think, moreover, that Christians have no right to, and cannot without danger, pass the whole system over as a mere human trick. I think this for the plain reason-that the evidence for the Christian religion, the evidence on which it first made the conquest of the minds of men, and by virtue of which it still retains its hold, rests logically, in great part at least, on human testimony. It is true that the testimony on which the Christian faith rests is of the highest kind, and such as cannot be found in favour of the wonders which are alleged

to have taken place under the system of which I speak. The system moreover itself, the séances which take place, the effect produced, the messages communicated and the like, are mixed up with a triviality, a frivolity, an emptiness, a childishness, which are enough to render the system contemptible, even if its moral and religious aspects did not, at best, make it far worse than contemptible. But still, it is never safe or right for Christians to refuse all authority to a large mass of independent human testimony. And this is especially the case, when there is a simple rational explanation of the whole phenomena, an explanation recommended by the very strongest internal evidence. What I mean is this. There is nothing in the phenomena of Spiritualism which cannot be far more rationally accounted for by the agency of souls under the influence of evil spirits, or of evil spirits representing souls, than by any other hypothesis. This is the most rational explanation to those who believe in such agencies, whereas no other explanation fits into the facts with even reasonable success. I add that this conclusion is recommended to us by the strongest internal evidence, and for the following reasons. Put aside all questions whatsoever as to the particular phenomena of which we hear so much. Let us grant that there is a great deal of delusion, let us grant that there is a great deal of imposition, and attribute as much as you like to unknown natural causes. Say that the effects are trivial and foolish, or say, what is not less true, that they are constantly mixed up with moral turpitude,