are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good; no, not one.'

The justice of God in punishing all nations is manifest; and while the heathen nations will receive the just reward of their doings, let not the greater responsibility of Christendom be forgotten; for if the Jews had "much advantage every way" over the Gentile nations, chiefly in that unto them were committed the oracles of God (Rom. 3:1, 2), what shall we say of the nations of Christendom, with their still greater advantages of both the Law and the Gospel? Yet it is true to-day of Christendom, as it was then of the Jewish nation, that the name of God is blasphemed among the heathen through them. (Rom. 2:24.) Note, for instance, the imposition of the liquor and opium traffics upon the heathen nations, by the greed of the Christian nations for gold.

A reliable witness, who speaks from personal knowledge wrote, some time ago, to the New York Voice as follows:

"According to my own observations on the Congo and the West Coast [Africa], the statement of many missionaries and others, drink is doing more harm to the natives than the slave trade now or in past times. That carries off people, destroys villages; this not only slays by the thousands, but debauches and ruins body and soul, whole tribes, and leaves them to become the parents of degenerate creatures born in their own debauched image. All the workmen are given a big drink of rum every day at noon, and forced to take at least two bottles of gin as pay for work every Saturday night; at many of the factories, when a one, two or three year's contract expires, they are forced to take a barrel of rum or some cases or demijohns of gin to carry home with them. Native traders are forced to take casks of liquor in exchange for native produce, even when they remonstrate, and, gaining no redress, pour the liquor into the river; traders saying, 'The niggers must take rum, we cannot make money enough to satisfy the firm at home by selling them salt or cloth.' Towns are

roaring pandemoniums every Sunday from drink. There are villages where every man, woman and child is stupid drunk, and thus former religious services are broken up. Chiefs say sadly to missionaries, 'Why did not you Godmen come before the drink did? The drink has eaten out my people's heads and hardened their hearts: they cannot understand, they do not care for anything good.'"

It is even said that some of the heathen are holding up the Christians' Bible before them, and saying, "Your practices do not correspond with the teachings of your sacred book." A Brahmin is said to have written a mis

sionary, "We are finding you out. You are not as good as your Book. If your people were only as good as your Book, you would conquer India in five years.”—See Ezek. 22: 4.

Truly, if the men of Nineveh and the queen of the south shall rise up in judgment against the generation of Israel which the Lord directly addressed (Matt. 12:41, 42), then Israel and every previous generation, and the heathen nations shall rise up against this generation of Christendom; for where much has been given much will be required. -Luke 12:48.

But, dropping the morally retributive aspect of the question, we see how, in the very nature of the case, the heathen nations must suffer in the fall of Christendom, Babylon. Through the influences of the Word of God, direct and indirect, the Christian nations have made great advancements in civilization and material prosperity in every line, so that in wealth, comfort, intellectual development, education, civil government, in science, art, manufacture, commerce and every branch of human industry, they are far in advance of the heathen nations which have not been so favored with the civilizing influences of the oracles of God, but which, on the contrary, have experienced a steady decline, so that to-day they ex

hibit only the wrecks of their former prosperity. Compare, for example, the Greece of to-day with ancient Greece, which was once the seat of learning and affluence. Mark, too, the present ruins of the glory of ancient Egypt, once the chief nation of the whole earth.

In consequence of the decline of the heathen nations and the civilization and prosperity of the Christian nations, the former are all more or less indebted to the latter for many advantages received-for the benefits of commerce, of international communication and a consequent enlargement of ideas, etc. Then, too, the march of progress in recent years has linked all the nations in various common interests, which, if seriously unsettled in one or more of the nations soon affect all. Hence when Babylon, Christendom, goes down suddenly, the effects will be most serious upon all the more or less dependent nations, which, in the symbolic language of Revelation are therefore represented as greatly bewailing the fall of that great city Babylon.-Rev. 18:9-19.

But not alone in Babylon's fall will the heathen nations suffer; for the swelling waves of social and political commotion will quickly spread and involve and ingulf them all; and thus the whole earth will be swept with the besom of destruction, and the haughtiness of man will be brought low; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord." (Rom. 12:19; Deut. 32:35.) And the judgment of the Lord upon both Christendom and Heathendom will be on the strictest lines of equity.

66

THE COMING STORM.

"Oh! sad is my heart for the storm that is coming;
Like eagles the scud sweepeth in from the sea;
The gull seeketh shelter, the pine trees are sighing,
And all giveth note of the tempest to be.

"A spell hath been whispered from cave or from ocean,
The shepherds are sleeping, the sentinels dumb,
The flocks are all scattered on moorland and mountain,
And no one-believes that the Master is come.

"He has come, but whom doth he find their watch keeping? Oh! where-in his presence-is faith the world o'er?

The rich, every sense in soft luxury steeping;

The poor scarce repelling the wolf from the door.

"O man, and O maiden, drop trifling and pleasure! O hark! while I tell of the sorrows to be.

*

As well might I plead in the path of yon glacier,
Or cry out a warning to wave of the sea!"

CHAPTER IV.

BABYLON ARRAIGNED BEFORE THE GREAT COURT.

THE CIVIL, SOCIAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POWERS OF BABYLON, CHRISTENDOM, NOW BEING Weighed in the Balances.-THE ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CIVIL POWERS. THE ARRAIGNMENT OF THE PRESENT SOCIAL SYSTEM. THE ARRAIGNMENT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL POWERS.-Even Now, in the Midst of HER FESTIVITIES THE HANDWRITING OF HER DOOM IS TRACED AND MAY BE DISTINCTLY READ, Though the Trial Is Not Yet Completed.

"THE

THE mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. He shall call to the heavens from above [the high or ruling powers], and to the earth [the masses of the people], that he may judge his [professed] people [Christendom]."

....

"Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel [nominal spiritual Israel-Babylon, Christendom], and I will testify against thee. . . . Unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldst take my covenant in thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my words behind thee? When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother [the true saints, the wheat class]; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

"Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver."—Psa. 50: 1, 4, 7, 16–22.

As the logical consequence of the great increase of knowledge on every subject providentially granted in this "day of preparation" for Christ's Millennial reign, the civil and