The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, related by Themselves.Second Series. Edited by John Morris, S. J. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, related by Themselves.Second Series. Edited by John Morris, S. J. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Whilst our ears are deafened and our feelings shocked by the calumnies and lying vituperation heaped upon all that is most worthy of love and veneration upon earth by the Satanic societies which the Popes have smitten with repeated excommunications, it is consoling to be supplied—by limners, too, who are themselves no mean exemplars of the noble development which the Church can give to virtue when it follows her counsels—with lifelike portraits of Christian athletes in times gone by. We do not know how soon our courage, patience, and charity may be put to a similar test. Multitudes of our fellow-Catholics are already subjected to every suffering but the martyrdom of death; and this seed of the Church our enemies, more wily than the sanguinary heretics of the age of Elizabeth, seem to be unwilling to sow. But they will not long be able to restrain their passion. The word of persecution has gone forth; and so bitter is the hatred of the very name of Christ, that before very long nothing but the blood of Christians will satiate its instincts.
The persecution of the Church in England in the time of Elizabeth resembled the persecution which is now raging against it, in the political complexion given to it. But there were far stronger grounds for it then than now. The superior claims of Mary to the throne, her virtues, and her surpassing beauty, were a just subject of jealousy and uneasiness to Elizabeth, and she might very naturally suppose that her Catholic subjects were not likely to regard with any fondness the usurpation of an illegitimate daughter of her apostate and tyrannical father.
In the present persecutions there is no political pretext, but one is made under cover of which to extirpate from among mankind the religion and very name of Christ.
This volume is the second of a series which promises to supply us with a whole gallery of Christian heroes, which we of this age of worldliness, cowardice, and self-seeking will do well to study attentively. As is often the case, it is to the untiring zeal of the Society of Jesus we owe so interesting as well as edifying a work. Father Morris, formerly Secretary to Cardinal Wiseman, but who joined the Society after the death of that eminent prelate, is its author, and he appears to us to have executed his task with rare judgment. By allowing his characters to speak in great part for themselves, the biographies and relations he presents us with have a dramatic interest which is greatly increased by the quaint and nervous style of the time in which they express themselves. We feel, too, that it is the very innermost soul and mind of the individual that is being revealed to us; and certainly in most of them the revelation is so beautiful that we should possibly have ascribed something of this to the partiality of a panegyrist, or to his descriptive skill, if the picture had been sketched by the pen of any other biographer than themselves. It is, indeed, the mean opinion they evidently have of themselves, and the naïve and modest manner in which they relate incidents evoking heroic virtue, their absolute unconsciousness of aught more than the most ordinary qualities, which fascinate us. It bears an impress of genuineness impossible to any description by the most impartial of historians. They express a beauty which could no more be communicated in any other way than can the odor of the flower or the music of the streams be conveyed by any touch, how ever magic, of the painter.
The present volume of the series contains the “Life of Father William Weston, S.J.,” and “The Fall of Anthony Tyrrell,” by Father Persons; for “our wish is,” says Father Morris, “to learnnot only what was done by the strong and brave, but also by the weak and cowardly.”
We are much struck in this history with the resemblance between those times and the present in the unsparing calumny of which the purest and the holiest men were made the victims.
For confirmation of these remarks, we refer the reader to the book itself. But we cannot refrain from quoting, in spite of its length, the following incident related by Father Weston. It is a remarkable example of the salutary effect of the Sacrament of Penance:
“For there lay in a certain heretical house a Catholic who, with the consent of his keeper, had come to London for the completion of some urgent business. He had been committed to a prison in the country, a good way out of London. He was seized, however, and overpowered by a long sickness which brought him near to death. The woman who nursed him, being a Catholic, had diligently searched the whole city through to find a priest, but in vain. She then sent word to me of the peril of that person, and entreated me, if it could be contrived, to come to his assistance, as he was almost giving up the ghost. I went to him when the little piece of gold obtained for me the liberty to do so. I explained that I was a priest, for I was dressed like a layman, and that I had come to hear his confession. ‘If that is the reason why you have come, it is in vain,’ he said; ‘the time for it is passed away.’ I said to him: ‘What! are you not a Catholic? If you are, you know what you have to do. This hour, which seems to be your last, has been given you that by making a good and sincere confession you may, while there is time, wash away the stains of your past life, whatever they are.’ He answered: ‘I tell you that you have come too late: that time has gone by. The judgment is decided; the sentence has been pronounced; I am condemned, and given up to the enemy. I cannot hope for pardon.’ ‘That is false,’ I answered, ‘and it is a most fearful error to imagine that a man still in life can assert that he is already deprived of God’s goodness and abandoned by his grace, in such a way that even when he desires and implores mercy it should be denied him. Since your faith teaches you that God is infinitely merciful, you are to believe with all certitude that there is no bond so straitly fastened but the grace of God can unloose it, no obstacle but grace has power to surmount it.’ ‘But do you not see,’ he asked me, ‘how full of evil spirits this place is where we are? There is no corner or crevice in the walls where there are not more than a thousand of the most dark and frightful demons, who, with their fierce faces, horrid looks, and atrocious words threaten perpetually that they are just going to carry me into the abyss of misery. Why, even my very body and entrails are filled with these hateful guests, who are lacerating my body and torturing my soul with such dreadful cruelty and anguish that it seems as if I were not so much on the point merely of going there, as that I am already devoted and made over to the flames and agonies of hell. Wherefore, it is clear that God has abandoned me for ever, and has cast me away from all hope of pardon.’
“When I had listened in trembling to all these things, and to much more of a similar kind, and saw at the same time that death was coming fast upon him, and that he would not admit of any advice or persuasion, I began to think within myself, in silence and anxiety, what would be the wisest course to choose. There entered into my mind, through the inspiration, doubtless, of God, the following most useful plan and method of dealing with him: ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘if you are going to be lost, I do not require a confession from you; nevertheless, recollect yourself just for a moment, and, with a quiet mind, answer me, in a few words, either yes or no to the questions that I put to you; I ask for nothing else, and put upon you no other burden.’ Then I began to question him, and to follow the order of the Commandments. First, whether he had denied his faith. ‘See,’ I said, ‘do not worry yourself; say just those simple words, yes or no.’ As soon as he had finished either affirming or denying anything, I proceeded through four or five Commandments—whether he had killed any one, stolen anything, etc. When he had answered with tolerable calmness, I said to him, ‘What are the devils doing now? What do you feel or suffer from them?’ He replied: ‘They are quieter with me; they do not seem to be so furious as they were before.’ ‘Lift up your soul to God,’ I said, ‘and let us go on to the rest.’ In the same fashion and order I continued to questionhim about other things. Then I enquired again, saying, ‘How is it now?’ He replied; ‘Within I am not tormented. The devils stand at a distance; they throw stones; they make dreadful faces at me, and threaten me horribly. I do not think that I shall escape.’ Going forward as before, I allured and encouraged the man by degrees, till every moment he became more reasonable, and at last made an entire confession of all his sins, after which I gave him absolution, and asked him what he was suffering from his cruel and harassing enemies. ‘Nothing,’ he said; ‘they have all vanished. There is not a trace of them, thanks be to God.’ Then I went away, after strengthening him by a few words, and encouraging him beforehand against temptations which might return. I promised, at the same time, that I would be with him on the morrow, and meant to bring the most Sacred Body of Christ with me, and warned him to prepare himself diligently for the receiving of so excellent a banquet. The whole following night he passed without molestation from the enemy, and on the next day he received with great tranquillity of mind the most Holy Sacrament, after which, at an interval of a few hours without disturbance, he breathed forth his soul, and quietly gave it up to God. Before he died, I asked the man what cause had driven him into such desperation of mind. He answered me thus: ‘I was detained in prison many years for the Catholic faith. Nevertheless, I did not cease to sin, and to conceal my sins from my confessor, being persuaded by the devil that pardon must be sought for from God, rather by penances and severity of life, than by confession. Hence I either neglected my confessions altogether, or else made insincere ones; and so I fell into that melancholy of mind and that state of tribulation which has been my punishment.’”
Light leading unto Light: A Series of Sonnets and Poems. By John Charles Earle, B.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1875.
Light leading unto Light: A Series of Sonnets and Poems. By John Charles Earle, B.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1875.
Mr. Earle has undoubtedly a facility in writing sonnets; and a good sonnet has been well called “a whole poem in itself.” It is also, we think, peculiarly suitable for didactic poetry. The present sonnets are in advance, we consider, of those we first saw from Mr. Earle’s pen. But we still observe faults, both of diction and of verse, which he should have learnt to avoid. His model seems to be Wordsworth—the greatest sonneteer in our language; but, like him, he has too much of the prosaic and the artificial.
We wish we could bestow unqualified praise upon the ideas throughout these sonnets. And were there nothing for criticism but what may be called poetic subtleties—such as the German notion of an “ether body,” developed during life, and hatched at death, for our intermediate state of being—we should have no quarrel with Mr. Earle. But when we meet two sonnets (XLVIII. and XLIX.) headed “Matter Non-Existent,” and “Matter Non-Substantial,” we have a philosophical error serious in its consequences, and are not surprised to find the two following sonnets teach Pantheism. In Sonnet XLVIII. the author’s excellent intention is to refute materialism:
“‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain,And matter all that we can ever know;…“‘From it we came; to it at last we go,And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc.…“I answer: ‘Matter isa form of mind,So far as it is aught. It has no base,Save in the self-existent.’”
“‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain,And matter all that we can ever know;…“‘From it we came; to it at last we go,And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc.…“I answer: ‘Matter isa form of mind,So far as it is aught. It has no base,Save in the self-existent.’”
“‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain,And matter all that we can ever know;
“‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain,
And matter all that we can ever know;
…
…
“‘From it we came; to it at last we go,And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc.
“‘From it we came; to it at last we go,
And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc.
…
…
“I answer: ‘Matter isa form of mind,So far as it is aught. It has no base,Save in the self-existent.’”
“I answer: ‘Matter isa form of mind,
So far as it is aught. It has no base,
Save in the self-existent.’”
Sonnet L. is headed, “As the Soul in the Body, so is God in the Universe.” Surely, this is the old “Anima Mundi” theory! Then, in Sonnet LI., the poet says of nature, and addressing God:
“She cannot live detached from thee. Her heartIs beating with thy pulse.I cannot tellHow far she is or is not of thee part;How far in her thou dost or dost not dwell;Thatthou her only base and substance art,This—this at least—I know and feel full well.”
“She cannot live detached from thee. Her heartIs beating with thy pulse.I cannot tellHow far she is or is not of thee part;How far in her thou dost or dost not dwell;Thatthou her only base and substance art,This—this at least—I know and feel full well.”
“She cannot live detached from thee. Her heartIs beating with thy pulse.I cannot tellHow far she is or is not of thee part;How far in her thou dost or dost not dwell;Thatthou her only base and substance art,This—this at least—I know and feel full well.”
“She cannot live detached from thee. Her heart
Is beating with thy pulse.I cannot tell
How far she is or is not of thee part;
How far in her thou dost or dost not dwell;
Thatthou her only base and substance art,
This—this at least—I know and feel full well.”
Now, of course, Mr. Earle is unconscious that this is rank Pantheism. He has a way of explaining it to himself which makes it sound perfectly orthodox. But we do call such a blunder inexcusable in a Catholic writer of Mr. Earle’s pretensions. The title of his volume, “Light leading unto Light,” has little to do with the contents, as far as we can see; and, certainly, there are passages which would more fitly be headed “Darkness leading unto Darkness.”
We are sorry to have had to make these strictures. The great bulk of the sonnets, together with the remaining poems, are very pleasant reading, and cannot fail to do good.
First Annual Report of the Rev. Theodore Noethen, First Catholic Chaplain of the Albany Penitentiary, to the Inspectors.April 6, 1875. Albany: J. Munsell. 1875.Thirteen Sermons preached in the Albany County Penitentiary.By the Rev. Theodore Noethen. Published under the auspices of the Society of S. Vincent de Paul. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing House. 1875.
First Annual Report of the Rev. Theodore Noethen, First Catholic Chaplain of the Albany Penitentiary, to the Inspectors.April 6, 1875. Albany: J. Munsell. 1875.
Thirteen Sermons preached in the Albany County Penitentiary.By the Rev. Theodore Noethen. Published under the auspices of the Society of S. Vincent de Paul. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing House. 1875.
We are glad to see Father Noethen’s familiar hand thus charitably and characteristically engaged. These are the first documents of the kind we have observed under the improving state of things in this country, in which the priest of the Church is seen occupied in one of his most important duties—reclaiming the erring; and in doing this the means which he employs will doubtless be found more efficacious than any the state has at its command. Did the state fully appreciate its highest interest as well as duty, it would afford the Church every facility, not only in reclaiming such of her children as have fallen into the temptations by which they are surrounded, but also in the use of those preventive measures involved in parish schools, which would save multitudes from penitentiaries and houses of correction. Our over-zealous Protestant friends throw every obstacle in the way of the adequate moral and religious training of the class most exposed to the temptations arising from poverty and lack of employment, and then blame the Church for the result. We heartily welcome these signs of a better time coming.
An Exposition of the Epistles of S. Paul and of the Catholic Epistles; consisting of an Introduction to each Epistle, an Analysis of each Chapter, a Paraphrase of the Sacred Text, and a Commentary, embracing Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Dogmatical, interspersed with Moral Reflections. By the Rt. Rev. John MacEvilly, D.D., Bishop of Galway. Third edition, enlarged. Dublin: W. B. Kelly. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
An Exposition of the Epistles of S. Paul and of the Catholic Epistles; consisting of an Introduction to each Epistle, an Analysis of each Chapter, a Paraphrase of the Sacred Text, and a Commentary, embracing Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Dogmatical, interspersed with Moral Reflections. By the Rt. Rev. John MacEvilly, D.D., Bishop of Galway. Third edition, enlarged. Dublin: W. B. Kelly. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
After quoting this full, descriptive title-page, it will suffice to say that the notes which form the commentary have in the present edition been considerably enlarged. The work was originally published under the approbation of the Holy Father, the late Cardinals Barnabo and Wiseman, and the present venerable Archbishop of Tuam.
From Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York: Personal Reminiscences. By O’Keefe, Kelly, and Taylor. Edited by R. H. Stoddard (Bric-à-Brac Series, No. VIII)From the Author: An Address on Woman’s Work in the Church before the Presbytery of New Albany. By Geo. C. Heckman, D.D. Paper, 8vo, pp. 28.From Wm. Dennis, G.W.S.: Journal of Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Session of the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia. Paper, 8vo, pp. 73.From the Author: The Battle of Life: An Address. By D. S. Troy, Montgomery, Alabama. Paper, 8vo, pp. 14.From Ginn Brothers, Boston: Latin Composition: An Elementary Guide to Writing in Latin. Part I.—Constructions. By J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough. 12mo, pp. vi., 117.
From Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York: Personal Reminiscences. By O’Keefe, Kelly, and Taylor. Edited by R. H. Stoddard (Bric-à-Brac Series, No. VIII)
From the Author: An Address on Woman’s Work in the Church before the Presbytery of New Albany. By Geo. C. Heckman, D.D. Paper, 8vo, pp. 28.
From Wm. Dennis, G.W.S.: Journal of Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Session of the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia. Paper, 8vo, pp. 73.
From the Author: The Battle of Life: An Address. By D. S. Troy, Montgomery, Alabama. Paper, 8vo, pp. 14.
From Ginn Brothers, Boston: Latin Composition: An Elementary Guide to Writing in Latin. Part I.—Constructions. By J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough. 12mo, pp. vi., 117.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev.I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
The saints have all, whilst yet in the flesh, foretastes of heavenly bliss. But in these the closing days of time all the elect have a presentiment of coming judgment. And that presentiment is strong in proportion to their faith; stronger still in proportion to their charity. Let our readers be assured at the outset. We are not about to imitate the irreverence of the Scotch Presbyterian minister who, some few years ago, pretended that he had discovered in the prophetic visions of S. John the year in which will come to pass that event of stupendous awfulness, of which He, before whom all mankind will then be judged, said: “Of that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”
One fearful catastrophe, however, to befall mankind before the general judgment is insisted on so often and with such solemn emphasis by the Holy Spirit that the love of God seems to be, as it were, trembling for his redeemed creature, and longing to reveal to him more than is consistent with his own designs in the trial of his faith. For it must be remembered that faith is a merit, and the absolutely indispensable condition of our receiving the benefits of the divine atonement. Although the gift of God, it is the part we ourselves, by co-operating with the gift, contribute towards our own salvation. And what we are required to believe is so beautiful and ennobling to the moral sense, and so satisfying to the reason, that, supported as it is by the historical evidence of the divinity of Christ and of his church, no one can refuse to believe but those who deliberately choose darkness rather than light, sin rather than virtue, Satan rather than God.
Yet so formidable was to be that last trial of the faith of Christians, so crucial that conclusive test of their charity, which was to “deceive,if it were possible, even the very elect,”[15]that the Spirit of Love, yearning for the safety of his regenerate ones, and compassionating the weakness of human nature, revealed its marks and signs in the fullest and most circumstantial detail; so that, warned of the danger, and recognizing it when it arrived, they might pass through it unhurt, whilst those who succumbed to it might be without excuse before the divine justice. It is the yearning of the heart of Christ towards his children, whom he foresees will fail by thousands in that decisive trial, which prompts the ejaculation that sounds almost like a lament over his own inability to put any pressure on their free-will: “When the Son of man cometh, will he find faith on the earth?” It is his anxiety, as it were, about the fate of his elect amidst the seductions of that appalling apostasy, which urged him, after he had indicated the signs that would accompany it, to be on the perpetual, sleepless lookout for them. “Be ever on the alert. Lo! I have foretold you all.”[16]
“Be ever on the alert, watch and pray. For you do not know when the time may be.”[17]
“Watch, then, lest when he (the head of the family) shall have come on a sudden, you be found sleeping.”[18]
“Moreover, what I say to you Isay to all: Watch!”[19]
Throughout all the ages that have elapsed since those words of solemn import fell from the lips of Jesus Christ it has been the plain duty of all Christians—nay, of all to whose knowledge they were brought—to narrowly scrutinize events, to keep their attention fixed upon them, watching for the signs he foretold, lest they should appear unheeded, and they be seduced from the faith; or be the cause, through their indifference, of others being carried away in the great misleading.
But who now can be insensible to the predicted portents? So notorious are they, and so exactly do they answer to the description of them handed down to us from the beginning, that they rudely arouse us from sleep; that they force our attention, however indifferent to them we may be, however dull our faith or cold our charity. And when we see a vast organization advancing its forces in one united movement throughout the entire globe in an avowed attack, as insidious as it is formidable, upon altars, thrones, social order, Christianity, Christ, and God himself, where is the heart that can be insensible to the touching evidence of loving solicitude which urged Him whom surging multitudes of his false creatures were deliberately to reject in favor of a fouler being than Barabbas, to iterate so often the warning admonition, “Be ever on the watch”?
To study, therefore, the signs of the times, cannot be without profit to all, but especially to us who have but scant respect for the spirit of the age, who are not sufficiently enlightened by it to look upon Christ as nothing more than a remarkable man, the sublime morality he taught and set an example of as a nuisance, and his church as the enemy of mankind, to be extirpated from their midst, because it forbids their enjoying the illumination ofthe dagger-guarded secrets of the craft of Freemasonry.
To fix the date of theDies iræis completely out of our power. It is irreverent, if not blasphemous, to attempt it. It is of the counsels of God that it should come with the swiftness of “lightning” and the unexpectedness of “a thief in the night”; and that expressly that we may be ever on the watch. But the signs of its approach are given to us in order to help those who do not abandon “watching” in indifference, to escape the great delusion—the imposition of Antichrist—which is to immediately precede it. It is these signs we propose to study in the following pages.
The predictions of Christ himself on this subject are far more obscure than those subsequently given to us by his apostles. But this has always been God’s way of revelation to his creature. To Moses alone, in the mount, he revealed the moral law and that wondrous theocratic polity which remained even after the perversity of his people had given it a monarchical form; and Moses communicated it to the people. To the people Christ spoke in parables, “and without a parable spake he not unto them. But when he was alone with them, he explained all to his disciples.”[20]“To you,” he said, “it is given to have known the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those without everything is a parable.”[21]The apostles themselves, who were to declare the revelation, in order to increase the merit of their faith, were not fully illuminated before the coming down of the Holy Spirit. “You do not know this parable?” he said; “and how are you going to understand all parables?”[22]To their utterances, therefore, it is we shall confine ourselves, as shedding as much light as it has seemed good to the Holy Ghost to disclose to us upon the profounder and more oracular predictions of God himself in the flesh.
Besides SS. Peter, Paul, and John, S. Jude is the only other apostle, we believe, who has bequeathed to the church predictions of the terrible apostasy of Antichrist which is to consummate the trial of the faith of the saints under the very shadow of the coming judgment. We will take them in the order in which they occur. The first is in a letter of S. Paul to the church at Thessalonica, where, exhorting them not to “be terrified as if the day of the Lord were at hand,” he assures them that it will not come “before there shall have first happened an apostasy, and the man of sin shall have been revealed, the son of perdition—he who opposes himself to, and raises himself above, all that is called God, or that is held in honor, so that he may sit in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God.… And you know what now is hindering his being revealed in his own time. For the mystery of iniquity is already working; only so that he who is now keeping it in check will keep it in check until he be moved out of its way. And then will the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth, and destroy with the illumination of his coming; whose coming is after themanner of working of Satan, with all strength and symbols, and lying absurdities, and in every enticement of iniquity in those who perish; for the reason that they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. So God will send them the working of error, that they may believe falsehood; that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity.”[23]
In a letter to Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, S. Paul writes: “Now, the Spirit says expressly that, in the last times, some shall apostatize from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and to doctrines of demons, speaking falsehood in hypocrisy, and having their own conscience seared.”[24]
In a second letter to the same bishop he writes: “Know this, moreover: that in the last days there will be a pressure of perilous times; men will be self-lovers, covetous, lifted up, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, malicious, without affection, discontented, calumniators, incontinent, hard, unamiable, traitors, froward, fearful, and lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having indeed a form of piety, but denying its power.”[25]S. Peter writes that “there will come in the last days mockers in deception, walking according to their own lusts.”[26]
S. Jude describes them as “mockers, walking in impieties according to their own desires. These are they who separate themselves—animals, not having the Spirit.”[27]
It would seem from the expressions of S. John-who of all the apostles appears to have had most pre-eminently the gift of prophecy—as well as from the manner in which the last days of Jerusalem and the last days of the world appear to be mingled together in the fore-announcement of Christ, that powerful manifestations of Antichrist were to precede both events; although the apostasy was to be far more extensive and destructive before the latter. “Little children,” writes the favorite apostle, “it is the last time; and as you have heard that Antichrist comes, so now many have become Antichrists; whence we know that it is the last time.… He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.”[28]
“Every spirit who abolishes Jesus is not of God. And he is Antichrist about whom we have heardthat he is coming, and is even now in the world.”[29]
We believe that these are the only passages wherein the Holy Ghost has vouchsafed to give us distinct and definite information as to the marks and evidences by which we are to know that there is amongst us that Antichrist whose disastrous although short-lived triumph is to precede by only a short space the end of time and the eternal enfranchisement of good from evil.
The prophetic utterances on this subject in the revelations of S. John are veiled in such exceedingly obscure imagery that we do not propose to attempt any investigation of their meaning in this article. It is our object to influence the minds of such Protestants as believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and of Catholics whose faith is so dull and whose charity is so cold that they can listen to the blasphemies of Antichrist without emotion.
We may remark here, however, that if we succeed in supplying solid reasons for believing that Antichrist is already amongst us, and that his dismal career of desolating victory has already begun, the duty of studying those utterances of the Holy Ghost, so darkly veiled that the faith of those who stand firm may have more merit in the trial of that great tribulation, will have assumed a position of importance impossible to be overrated. That they are to be understood, the Holy Ghost himself implies. He intimates that their meaning is accessible to the spiritually minded, and would even seem to make dulness of apprehension of it a reproach, a lack of spiritual discernment. “If any one has the ear, let him hear,”[30]he writes. And again: “This is wisdom. Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast.”[31]
It is not necessary to the object we have in view that we should identify “the beast” of the Apocalypse, seven-headed and having ten horns crowned with diadems, with Antichrist. The question we propose to answer is simply, “Are there under our eyes at this moment evidences of a present Antichrist, or of his being close at hand?” In other words, “Is what is called ‘the spirit of the age’ the spirit of Antichrist?”
For us, that we may be on our guard against his wiles, and armed to the teeth to fight against him to the death, it is comparatively unimportant whether we decide him to be actually amongst us or only just about to appear. His marks and characteristics, his badges or decorations—these are all we require.
If the Antichrist of the prophecies is a single, separate impersonation of the demoniac attributes described by the Holy Ghost—if, in short, he is an individual man, then he has not yet been revealed. In that case, our identification of Antichrist will only have exposed that temper and spirit with which “the red dragon”—“the devil”—“Satan”—“the ancient serpent”—has possessed such vast multitudes of the human race throughout the entire globe as to afford ground for calling it “the spirit of the age,” and which is to culminate in some terrible personal embodiment—a typical personage, as men speak. But if the prophecies do not designate an individual man, but only theimpersonation of a multitude of individuals organized into a unity and animated with the same spirit, then we think we shall be able to point the finger of horror and loathing at the very Antichrist at present amongst us, and in the midst of victory, as decisively and as clearly as the prophet of penance pointed the finger of adoring love towards the Lamb of God.
We incline, and strongly, to the latter view. We must withhold our reasons, partly because, as we have said, our object is equally subserved by either view; but more because to do so would leave us too little space for treating the main subject. We will content ourselves with stating that those reasons are founded on the internal evidence supplied by the several predictions; and also on our aversion to admit the possibility of a more depravedindividualimpersonation of evil than that unhappy man whom God in human flesh pronounced a devil!
Whether, however, Antichrist be or not an individual man, one thing is certain: that if we can point out an immense army of men, co-extensive with the globe, highly organized, animated with the same spirit, and acting with as much unity of purpose as if their movements were directed by one head, who exhibit precisely those marks and characteristics described in the predictions of Antichrist, we may expect even on the supposition that they are to have a visible head, an individual leader, who has yet to make his appearance; and that they are his hosts, who have already achieved a great part of his victories.
What is first noticeable is that the stigma which is to be deeply branded on the front of the Antichristian manifestation which is to precede the close of time is “Apostasy”.
The day of the Lord will not come, “nisi venerit discessio primum; Spiritus dicit quia in novissimis temporibus quidam a fide discedunt.”
There can be no need of dwelling on this. It is sufficiently obvious that the great apostasy inaugurated by Luther was the first outbreak of Antichristian victory. The success of that movement assured the spirit of error of a career of victory. He was lurking in the fold, watching for his opportunity, and snatching away stray souls, as S. John tells us, in the time of the apostles. For a millennium and a half has he been preparing his manifestation. He inspired Julian, he inspired the Arians, he inspired all the heresies against which the definitions of the faith were decreed. But when he had seduced men away from the church, whole nations at a time, “dominationem contemnentes” (2 S. Peter ii. 10), and captivated them to the irrational opinion that there is no higher authority for the obligatory dogmas of the Christian Church than the conviction of every individual,solvere Jesum, and then God, was merely a matter of time. What human passion had begun human reason would complete. The life of faith could not be annihilated at a blow. It has taken three centuries for the sap of charity to wither away in the cut-off branches. But sooner or later the green wood could not but become dry; and reason, void of charity, would be forced to acknowledge that if the Bible has no definite meaning other than what appears to be its meaning to every individual, practically it has no definite meaning at all; that Godcannot have revealed any truth at all, if we have no means of ascertaining what it is beyond our own private opinions; that a book the text of which admits of as many interpretations as there are sects cannot, without an authoritative living expositor, reveal truths which it is necessary to believe in order to escape eternal punishment. The claim of the Catholic Church to this authority having been pronounced an usurpation, the progress, although slow, was sure and easy towards pronouncing Christianity itself an usurpation. God himself cannot survive Christianity. And we have now literally “progressed” to so triumphant a manifestation of Antichrist that the work of persecution of God’s Church has set in with a vengeance, and men hear on all sides of them the existence of God denied without horror, even without surprise.
The first mark of a present Antichrist we propose to signalize is that distinctly assigned to him by S. Paul—ὁ ἄνομος. This epithet is but feebly rendered by the Latinille iniquus, or the English “that wicked one.” “The lawless one” better conveys the force of the Greek. For the root νόμος includes in its meaning not only enacted law of all kinds, but whatever has become, as it were, a law by custom; or a law of nature, as it were, by the universal observance of mankind.
The first marked sequel of the apostasy, the first outbreak of success of Antichrist in the political order, was the first French Revolution, during which a harlot was placed for worship upon the altar of Notre Dame.
That fearful outbreak may have sat for its portrait to S. Peter in the following description of the members of the Antichrist of the “last times”: “Who walk after the flesh in the lust of concupiscence, and despise authority; … irrational beasts, following only their own brute impulses, made only to be caught and slain; … having eyes full of adultery and of ceaseless sin; … speaking proud things of vanity, enticing, through the desires of the luxury of the flesh, those who by degrees go away from the truth, who become habituated to error; promising them liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption” (2 Pet. ii. 10, 12, 14, 18, 19).
That saturnalia of lawlessness, which Freemason writers have ever since dared to approve, was the work of the “craft” of Freemasonry, to whose organization and plan of action does indeed, in an especial sense, apply S. Paul’s designation of τὸ μυστήριον τῆς ανομίας “the mystery of lawlessness.” Mirabeau, Sieyès, Grégoire, Robespierre, Condorcet, Fauchet, Guillotine, Bonneville, Volney, “Philippe Egalité,” etc., had all been initiated into the higher grades.
Louis Blanc, himself a Freemason, writes thus: “It is necessary to conduct the reader to the opening of the subterranean mine laid at that time beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, differing greatly, both in their theory and their practice, from the Encyclopedists. An association had been formed of men of every land, every religion, and every class, bound together by mysterious signs agreed upon amongst themselves, pledged by a solemn oath to observe inviolable secrecy as to the existence of this hidden bond, and tested by proofs of a terrible description.… Thus we find Freemasonry to have been widely diffused immediatelybefore the outbreak of the Revolution. Spreading over the whole face of Europe, it poisoned the thinking minds of Germany, and secretly stirred up rebellion in France, showing itself everywhere in the light of an association resting upon principles diametrically opposed to those which govern civil society.… The ordinances of Freemasonry did indeed make great outward display of obedience to law, of respect to the outward forms and usages of profane society, and of reverence towards rulers; at their banquets the Masons did indeed drink the health of kings in the days of monarchy, and of presidents in the time of republics, such prudent circumspection being indispensable on the part of an association which threatened the existence of the very governments under whose eyes it was compelled to work, and whose suspicion it had already aroused. This, nevertheless, did not suffice to counteract the radically revolutionary influence continually exercised by the craft, even while it professed nothing but peaceful intentions.”[32]
In the work from which the above and the greater part of our materials in this article are borrowed, we read as follows: “It was precisely these revolutionary designs of the secret society which induced its Provincial Grand Master, the Prussian Minister Count von Haugwitz, to leave it. In the memorial presented by him to the Congress of Monarchs at Verona, in 1830, he bids the rulers of Europe to be on their guard against the hydra. ‘I feel at this moment firmly persuaded,’ writes the ex-grand master, ‘that the French Revolution, which had its first commencement in 1788, and broke out soon after, attended with all the horrors of regicide, existed heaven knows how long before, having been planned, and having had the way prepared for it, by associations and secret oaths.’”[33]
And the following:
“After the events of February, 1848, the ‘craft’ sang songs of triumph at the open success of its secret endeavors. A Belgian brother, Van der Heym, spoke thus: ‘On the day following the revolution of February a whole nation rose as one man, overturned the throne, and wrote over the frontal of the royal palace the words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, all the citizens having adopted as their own this fundamental principle of Freemasonry. The combatants had not to battle long before the victory over their oppressors was gained—that freedom won which for centuries had formed the theme of Masonic discourses. We, the apostles of fraternity, aid the foundation-stone of the Republic.’”[34]
And another master of the Freemasons, one Peigné, said about the same time: “In our glorious Revolution of 1792 the Lodge of the Nine Sisters gave to the world such men as Garat, Brissot, Bailly, Camille Desmoulins, Condorcet, Champfort, Petion; the Lodge of the Iron Mouth gave to it Fauchet, Goupil de Prefeln, Sieyès; the Lodge of Candor, Custine, the two Lameths, and Lafayette.”
The horrors of that Revolution occasioned a temporary reaction and checked the triumphs of the Freemasons. But well they know how to repair their broken fortunes, bide their time, and reappear with renewed force.
Barruel, who was an eye-witness of the events of the period, and also himself intimately acquainted with many Freemasons in Paris, relates that the brethren, considering that the time had come when they were free to publish the secret they had sworn to keep, shouted aloud: “At last our goal is reached; from this day France will be one vast lodge, and all Frenchmen Freemasons.”
A strong reaction of disgust and terror at the satanic orgies of Freemasonry in the ascendant, moderated for a while this shout of triumph. But in the disasters inflicted on France by the conquering Germans, the “craft” thought to find a recurring opportunity. If the Communist attempt at Paris in 1871 was not originally planned by the Freemasons, they openly and officially joined it. “A procession composed of at least five thousand persons, in which members of all the grades took part, wearing their insignia, and in which one hundred and fifty lodges of France were represented, wended its way to the town hall of Paris. Maillet, bearing the red flag as a token of universal peace, headed the band, and openly proclaimed, in a speech which met with the approval of all present, that the new Commune was the antitype of Solomon’s temple and the corner-stone of the social fabric about to be raised by the efforts of the craft. The negotiations carried on with the government of Versailles on behalf of the socialists, and the way in which they planted the banners of the craft on the walls of the capital, accompanying this action with a threat of instantly joining the ranks of the combatants if a single shot were fired at one of those banners (of which a graphic account appeared in theFigaroat the time), was all of a piece with the sentiments they expressed” (The Secret Warfare of Freemasonry, p. 172).
Figaroclosed its account of these strange events with the following reflections: “But when posterity shall be informed that in the middle of the XIXth century, in the midst of an unbelieving generation, which openly denied God and his Christ, under the very guns of an enemy in possession of all the French fortresses, hostilities were all at once suspended, and the course of a portentous and calamitous civil war interrupted because, forsooth, Brother Thirifoque, accompanied by two Knights Kadosch, went to offer to M. Thiers’ acceptance the golden mallet of supreme command (in the craft)—when, I say, this story is told to those who come after us, it will sound in their ears as a nursery tale, utterly unworthy of credence.”[35]
InRévélations d’un Franc-maçonau lit de mort, pièce authentique, publicé, parM. de Hallet (Courtrai, 1826, p. 10), we find the following: “We must restore man to his primeval rights, no longer recognizing rank and dignity—two things the mere sight of which offends the eye of man and wounds his self-love. Obedience is a mere chimera, and has no place in the wise plans of Providence.”
In theAstræa, Taschenbuch für Freimaurer, von Bruder Sydow (1845), an orator thus speaks: “That which is destined to destruction must in the course of things be destroyed; and if human powers resist this law, at the behest of fate, a stronger power will appear upon the scene to carry out the eternal decrees of Providence. The Reformation of the church, as well as the French Revolution, proves the existence of this law.… Revolution is a crisis necessary to development.”
TheRévélationssays: “The poison must be neutralized by means of its antidote, revolution must succeed to obedience, vengeance follow upon effeminacy, power must grapple with power, and the reign of superstition yield before that of the one true natural religion.”
Barruel, who had been a master Mason, states that the oath administered to him was: “My brother, are you prepared to execute every command you may receive from the Grand Master, even should contrary orders be laid on you by king or emperor, or any other ruler whatever?”
“The grade of Kadosch”—the thirtieth grade—writes Barruel (p. 222), “is the soul of Freemasonry, and the final object of its plots is the reintroduction of absolute liberty and equality through the destruction of all royalty and the abrogation of all religious worship.”
“Socialism, Freemasonry, and communism have, after all, a common origin” (TheLatomia—an organ of the craft—vol. xii. p. 237).
Le Libertaire, a Masonic journal published in this city, had the following in 1858: “TheLibertaireknows no country but that which is common to all. He is a sworn foe to restraints of every kind. He hates the boundaries of countries; he hates the boundaries of fields, houses, workshops; he hates the boundaries of family.”
Is it within the power of the human mind to conceive of any possible individual or spiritual incarnation more deeply, vividly, and distinctly branded with the note-mark or sign of Antichrist, given to us by the Holy Spirit some two thousand years ago, by which we might recognize him when he appeared—“the lawless one,” “spurning authority”—ὁ ἄνομος, qui contemnunt dominationem?
And when we add to this, the one special and most wicked and lawless characteristic of the “craft”—its portentous mystery—to our thinking, they must willingly, and of set purpose, close their eyes who fail to detect in it the very Antichrist whom the apostle declares shall be manifested in the last days, after the apostasy, and whom he designates by the epithet τὸ μυστήριον τῆς ἀνομίας—“the mystery of lawlessness”—which he tells us had even then, at the very cradle of the church, begun to put in movement its long conspiracy against the salvation of mankind: τὸ γὰρ μυστηριον ἢδη ενεργεῖται τῆς ἀνομίας—“for the mystery of lawlessness is even now already working.”
No sooner was Christ born thanhis infant life was sought; no sooner did he begin to teach than “the ancient serpent” sought his ruin; just before the triumph of his resurrection the enemy of mankind seemed to have finally and completely triumphed in his crucifixion; no sooner had his church, brought to life by his resurrection, begun her work of saving mankind than the devil was at work with his “mystery of lawlessness” for her destruction. All along it is Antichrist dogging the steps of Christ; before the second coming of Christ there is to be the second coming of Antichrist; before the final triumph over evil and revelation of the sons of God, Antichrist is to have that his last open and avowed manifestation—ἀποκάλυψις—and success, which the craft of Freemasonry is already so far on the road to compassing.
Whether or no he is to receive a serious check before that terrific triumph over all but the few remaining elect we know not. But so unmistakable is his present manifestation that it is woe to those who blink their eyes and follow in his wake! Woe to those whose judicial blindness causes them to “believe a lie”! Woe to those who are caught napping!
The next of the indications given us by the Holy Spirit of the Antichrist is hismodus operandi—his method—the way in which he will effect his purposes, “whose coming is according to the way of working of Satan”—cujus est adventus secundum operationem Satanæ.
The beast with seven heads and ten horns crowned with diadems described in the Apocalypse is, we are there told, fully commissioned with his own power by the red dragon, whom we are distinctly informed is the old serpent, who is called the devil (διάβολος, or slanderer), “Satan, who deceives the whole world.”
Now, Satan is designated as “the prince of darkness” in opposition to Christ, “who is the true light, enlightening every one that cometh into the world”; he is the father of those who “hate the light because their deeds are evil.” When he would destroy Christ, “night was his hour and the power of darkness.” But in taking a survey of the craft of Freemasonry, what first seizes our attention? Is it not the profound darkness in which all its operations are veiled? Those terrible oaths of secrecy, made under the assured menace of assassination, attended with all that sanguinary gibberish, the lie involved in which is not known until the “seared conscience” is already in the chains of hell—surely, if anything is, these are “secundum operationem Satanæ.”
In theVienna Freemason’s Journal, MSS. for circulation in the craft, second year of issue, No. 1, p. 66, is the following: “We wander amidst our adversaries, shrouded in threefold darkness. Their passions serve as wires, whereby, unknown to themselves, we set them in motion and compel them unwittingly to work in union with us.”
In a work written in High-German, the authorship of which is ascribed to a Prof. Hoffman of Vienna, the contents of which are supported by documentary evidence, and of which a Dutch translation was published in Amsterdam in 1792, which was reprinted at the Hague in 1826, the method of working of this “mystery of lawlessness” is thus summed up:
“2. To effect this, a literary associationmust be formed to promote the circulation of our writings, and suppress, as far as possible, those of our opponents.
“3. For this end we must contrive to have in our pay the publishers of the leading literary journals of the day, in order that they may turn into ridicule and heap contempt on everything written in a contrary interest to our own.
“4. ‘He that is not with us is against us.’ Therefore we may persecute, calumniate, and tread down such an one without scruple; individuals like this are noxious insects which one shakes from the blossoming tree and crushes beneath one’s foot.
“5. Very few can bear to be made to look ridiculous; let ridicule, therefore, be the weapon employed against persons who, though by no means devoid of sense, show themselves hostile to our schemes.
“6. In order the more quickly to attain our end, the middle classes of society must be thoroughly imbued with our principles; the lower orders and the mass of the population are of little importance, as they may easily be moulded to our will. The middle classes are the principal supporters of the government; to gain them we must work on their passions, and, above all, bring up the rising generation in our ideas, as in a few years they will be in their turn masters of the situation.
“7. License in morals will be the best means of enabling us to provide ourselves with patrons at court—persons who are nevertheless totally ignorant of the importance of our cause. It will suffice for our purpose if we make them absolutely indifferent to the Christian religion. They are for the most part careless enough without us.
“8. If our aims are to be pursued with vigor, it is of absolute necessity to regard as enemies of enlightenment and of philosophy all those who cling in any way to religious or civil prejudices, and exhibit this attachment in their writings. They must be viewed as beings whose influence is highly prejudicial to the human race, and a great obstacle to its well-being and progress. On this account it becomes the duty of each one of us to impede their action in all matters of consequence, and to seize the first suitable opportunity which may present itself of putting them entirelyhors du combat.
“9. We must ever be on the watch to make all changes in the state serve our own ends; political parties, cabals, brotherhoods, and unions—in short, everything that affords an opportunity of creating disturbances must be an instrument in our hands. For it is only on the ruins of society as it exists at present that we can hope to erect a solid structure on the natural system, and ensure to the worshippers of nature the free exercise of their rights.”
If this method of working,operatio, is notsecundum adventum Satanæ, we should be glad to know what is. Herein we find every feature of Antichrist and his hosts which the Holy Ghost has drawn for our warning. They are heaped together in such hideous combination throughout this summary as scarcely to need particularizing. Our readers may not, however, be unwilling that we should single them out one by one as they appear more or less prominently in the several paragraphs; premising that throughout one characteristic reigns and prevails, and, indeed, lends its color to all the rest, that special attributeof “the father of lies”—falsehood!
We will take the paragraphs in order, and photograph their most prominent Antichristian features.
The first.—Spurning authority. Giving ear to spirits of error and doctrines of demons.
Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having a conscience seared.
Blasphemers.
Mockers, walking according to their own desires; animals, not having the Spirit.
Mockers in deception, walking according to their own lusts.
The second and third.—Lovers of themselves, lawless, proud, malicious, traitors, froward, discourteous, fearful, mockers in deception.
The fourth.—Calumniators, cruel, traitors.
The fifth.—Mockers in deception.
The sixth.—Traitors, without affection, without peace.
The seventh.—Traitors, walking in impieties, walking according to their own lusts, incontinent.
The eighth.—Having their conscience seared, without peace, cruel.
The ninth.—Spurning authority, traitors, lawless, without peace.
It must be borne in mind, moreover, that these are not merely repulsive infirmities of individuals, but the essential and inevitable characteristics deliberately adopted by the craft of Freemasons, and which it cannot be without, if they are the brand which the finger of God has marked upon the loathsome brow of the Antichrist of “the last time.”[36]
In illustration of the former of these we quote the words of Brother Gotthold Salomon, D.Ph., preacher at the new Synagogue at Hamburg, member of the lodge entitled “The Dawn in the East,” in Frankfort-on-Main, who thus writes in hisStimmen aus Osten, MSS. for the brethren: “Why is there not a trace of anything appertaining to the Christian Church to be found in the whole ritual of Freemasonry? Why is not the name of Jesus once mentioned, either in the oath administered, or in the prayers on the opening of the lodges, or at the Masonic banquets? Why do Masons reckon time, not from the birth of Christ, but from the creationof the world, as do the Jews? Why does not Freemasonry make use of a single Christian symbol? Why have we the compasses, the triangle, the hydrometer, instead of the cross and other emblems of the Passion? Why have wisdom, beauty, and strength superseded the Christian triad of faith, hope, and charity?”[37]
Brother Jochmus Müller, president of the late German-Catholic Church at Berlin, says in hisKirchenreform(vol. iii. p. 228): “We have more in common with a free-thinking, honest paganism than with a narrow-minded Christianity.”[38]
In the Waarscherwing (vol. xi. Nos. 2 and 8) we find the following:
“The laws of the Mosaic and Christian religions are the contemptible inventions of petty minds bent on deceiving others; they are the most extravagant aberrations of the human intellect.
“The selfishness of priests and the despotism of the great have for centuries upheld this system (Christianity), since it enabled them to rule mankind with a rod of iron by meansof its rigid code of morality, and to confirm their power over weak minds by means of certain oracular utterances, in reality the product of their own invention, but palmed off on the world as the words of revelation.”[39]
In a review of Kirchenlehre and Ketzerglaube by Dr. A. Drechsler in vol. iv. of theLatomia, we find: “The last efforts made to uphold ecclesiastical Christianity occasioned its complete expulsion from the realm of reason; for they proved but too plainly that all negotiations for peace must result in failure. Human reason became aware of the irreconcilable enmity existing between its own teachings and the dogmas of the church.”
At a congress of Masons held at a villa near Locarno, in the district of Novara, preparatory to a socialistic demonstration to be held in the Colosseum at Rome, in answer to the sapient question, “What new form of worship is to supersede Catholicism?” the equally sapient answer was returned, “Communist principles with a new religious ideal.”
From a document published, the author ofSecret Warfare of Freemasonrytells us,[40]by the Orient of Brussels, “to the greater glory of the Supreme Architect of the world, in the year oftrue light5838” (1838), we quote the following:
“1. That at the head of every document issued by the brethren, in an individual or corporate capacity, should stand a profession of faith in our lawgiver Jesus, the son of Mary Amram (the Josue of the Old Testament), the invariable formula to be employed being, ‘To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe,’ … to expose and oppose the errors of pope and priest, who commence everything in the name of their Trinity.
…
“3. That in remembrance of the Last Supper or Christian love-feast of Jesus, the Son of Mary Amram, an account of which is given in the Arabic traditions and in the Koran, a solemn festival should be held, accompanied by a distribution of bread, in commemoration of an ancient custom observed by the slaves of eating bread together, and of their deliverance by means of the liberator (Josue). The distribution is to be accompanied by these memorable words: ‘This is the bread of misery and oppressionwhich our fathers were forced to eat under the Pharaos, the priests of Juda; whosoever hungers, let him come and eat; this is the Paschal sacrifice; come unto us, all you who are oppressed; yet this one year more in Babylon, and the next year shall see us free men!’ This instructive, and at the same time commemorative, supper of the Rosicrucians is the counterpart of the Supper of the Papists.”
Dr. Dupuy, indeed, informs us of the corrupt portion of the Order of Templars, that “Receptores dicebant illis quos recipiebant, Christum non esse verum Deum, et ipsum fuisse falsum, non fuisse passum pro redemptione humani generis, sed pro sceleribus suis”—“They who received said to those whom they received that Christ was not really God; that he was himself false, and did not suffer for the redemption of the human race, but for his own crimes.”
In harmony with all this was the offensively blasphemous utterance of Mr. Frothingham at the Masonic hall in this city some weeks ago, at which the New YorkTabletexpressed a just indignation—an indignation which must have been shared by all who believe, in any way or form, in Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the world: “Tom Paine has keyed my moral being up to a higher note than the Jesus of Nazareth.”
The argument we have advanced seems to us to be convincing enough as it stands. Could we have taken a historical survey of the μυστήριον τῆς ανομίας in the two hemispheres from the “apostasy” up to the present time, but especially during the last fifteen years, it would have acquired the force of a logical demonstration. The limits to which we are necessarily restrained in a monthly periodical put this completely out of our power. Whoever he may be who has intelligently appreciated the political events of the latter period will be able to supply the deficiency for himself. Merely hinting, therefore, at the impossibility of getting anti-Freemason appreciations of contemporary events before the public—well known to all whose position has invited them to that duty—as an illustration of the plan of action laid down in the second clause of the above summary; at the recent unconcealed advocacy of the “craft” by the New YorkHerald, and the more cautious conversion of the London Times,[41]of that in the third; at the ribaldry of the press under Freemason influence directed against the bishops, clergy, and prominent laymen, as well as against the Pope; the nicknames they are for ever coining, such as “clericals,” “ultramontanes,” “retrogrades,” “reactionists”; their blasphemous travesties of the solemnities of religion in theatres and places of public resort, and so on, of that in the fourth and fifth; at the world-wide effort to induce states to exclude religious influences from the education of youth, of that of the sixth; at Victor Emanuel, the Prince of Wales, etc., of that of the seventh; at the assassination of Count Rossi at the beginning of the present Pope’s reign, the quite recent assassination of the President of Ecuador, the repeated attempts at assassination of Napoleon III., the deposition of so many sovereigns, even of the Pope himself—so far as it was in their power to depose him—of thatof the eighth; and at the whole area of Europe strewn with the wreck of revolution, of that of the ninth; we pass on to the last two marks of Antichrist with which we brand the Freemason confraternity—Qui solvit Jesum(Who abolishes Christ) andQui adversatur et extollitur supra omne quod dicitur Deus, aut quod colitur, ita ut in templo Dei sedeat ostendens se tanquam sit Deus(Who opposes himself to, and raises himself above, all that is called God, or is worshipped, so that he may sit in the temple of God, making himself out to be, as it were, God).
Barruel, who was completely versed in Freemasonry, and who had been himself a Mason, states (p. 222) that “the grade of Kadosch is the soul of Freemasonry, and the final object of its plots is the reintroduction of absolute liberty and equality through the destruction of all royalty and the abrogation of all religious worship.” And he backs this statement by a tragic incident in the history of a friend of his, who, because he was a Rosicrucian, fancied himself to be “in possession of the entire secret of Freemasonry.” It is too long to admit of our quoting it. The reader anxious for information we refer toThe Secret Warfare of Freemasonry(pp. 142-144).
Le Libertaire, a New York paper, in the interests of Freemasonry, about the year 1858 had the following: “As far as religion is concerned, theLibertairehas none at all; he protests against every creed; he is an atheist and materialist, openly denying the existence of God and of the soul.”
In 1793 belief in God was a crime prohibited in France under pain of death.
Those of our readers who have some acquaintance with modern philosophy we need here only remind of thenatura naturansandnatura naturataof Spinoza, born a Jew, but expelled from the synagogue for his advocacy of these principles of Freemasonry: “The desire to find truth is a noble impulse, the search after it a sacred avocation; and ample field for this is offered by both the mysterious rites peculiar to the craft and those of the Goddess Isis, adored in our temples as the wisest and fairest of deities.”—Vienna Freemason’s Journal(3d year, No. 4, p. 78 et seq.)
In theRappel, a French organ of Freemasonry, was the following passage a few weeks ago: “God is nothing but a creation of the human mind. In a word, God is the ideal. If I am accused of being an atheist, I should reply I prefer to be an atheist, and have of God an idea worthy of him, to being a spiritualist and make of God a being impossible and absurd.”
In short, the craft is so far advanced in its course of triumph as to have at length succeeded in familiarizing the public ear with the denial of the existence of a God; so that it is now admitted as one amongst the “open questions” of philosophy.
Our illustration of the crowning indications of the satanic mark of Antichrist afforded by the Freemasons—the sitting in the temple of God, so as to make himself out to be, as it were, God—will be short but decisive.
The well-known passage in the last work of the late Dr. Strauss, to the effect that any worship paid to a supposed divine being is an outrage onthe dignity of human nature, goes far enough, we should have thought, in this direction; but they go beyond even this.
A Dutch Mason, N. J. Mouthan, in a work entitledNaa een werknur in’t Middenvertrek Losse Bladzijde; Zaarboekje voor Nederlandsche Vrijmetselaren(5872, p. 187 et seq.), says: “The spirit which animates us is an eternal spirit; it knows no division of time or individual existence. A sacred unity pervades the wide firmament of heaven; it is our one calling, our one duty, our one God. Yes, we are God! We ourselves are God!”
In the Freemasons’ periodical “for circulation amongst the brethren” (Altenberg, 1823, vol. i., No. 1) is the following: “The idea of religion indirectly includes all men as men; but in order to comprehend this aright, a certain degree of education is necessary, and unfortunately the overweening egoism of the educated classes prevents their taking in so sublime a conception of mankind. For this reason our temples consecrated to theworship of humanitycan as yet be opened only to a few.[42]We should, indeed, expose ourselves to a charge of idolatry, were we to attempt to personify the moral idea of humanity in the way in which divinity is usually personified.… On this account, therefore, it is advisable not to reveal the cultus of humanity to the eyes of the uninitiated, until at length the time shall come when, from east to west, this lofty conception of humanity shall find a place in every breast, this worship shall alone prevail, and all mankind shall be gathered into one fold and one family.”
The principles of this united family, “seated in the temple of God,” the Masonic philosopher Helvetius expounds to us; from whom we learn that “whatever is beneficial to all in general may be called virtue; what is prejudicial, vice and sin. Here the voice of interest has alone to speak.… Passions are only the intensified expression of self-interest in the individual; witness the Dutch people, who, when hatred and revenge urged them to action, achieved great triumphs, and made their country a powerful and glorious name. And as sensual love is universally acknowledged to afford happiness, purity must be condemned as pernicious, the marriage bond done away with, and children declared to be the property of the state.”[43]The father of such a “one fold and one family” no one not himself signed with the “mark of the beast” could hesitate to point out. The consummation above anticipated we are bid to expect. Nor is it now far off. They who are not “deceived” have, however, the consoling assurance thatourLord will “slay him with the spirit of his mouth, and destroy him with the illumination of his coming.”