A SINGLE sober glance at the present condition of this world; at the conduct of human rulers; at the condition of the population; at the whole course and direction of this world, should be enough to satisfy any man that Satan is the prince of the world, and rules and reigns triumphantly, and almost supremely. Facts sustain the assertion of the Bible that the devil is the prince of this world; that all the governments of the earth, and the glory of them, are his and he giveth them to whomsoever he wills: and those who know his character best know that he gives them, not to the most deserving, but to his best friends, and to those who will do his will and pleasure.

      Look at the facts written upon the history of the ages. Satan gained his first conquest over race in the garden of Eden; and his victory was signal and complete. The garden of God was made
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Preached in the First Baptist Church, Memphis, Tenn., soon after the evacuation of the city by the Federal troops, and reported by the Memphis Appeal.

      The succeeding age witnessed the continued triumph of the king of evil. God appointed a worship, an altar, and sacrifice of blood, significant of man's sinfulness, and that without remission, by the shedding of the blood of the offender or a substitute, there could be no salvation; and the sacrifice of the innocent lamb typified and pointed forward to the "seed of the woman," the true Lamb of God, who was to come and take away the sins of the world; — forward to which sacrifice the true worshipper was to look, and by faith believe on Him who was to come as his Saviour and Redeemer. But, through Cain, Satan corrupted this worship by substituting what God had not appointed for what He had; he stirred up the pride and false reason of the human heart to change God's ordinance; to substitute the dictations of man's conscience for the express command of God.

     So Cain brought the fruit of the ground instead of a lamb without spot or blemish, and thus became the father and representative of all who have, from his day, corrupted and counterfeited the worship of God by substituting human forms, human

      From the garden to the deluge, by corrupting God's worship, Satan reigned, so that when the wickedness of man became so great God could no longer endure it, and swept off the whole race with a flood, only eight persons of the living millions, at the close of the first sixteen hundred years, were found upright in the sight of God. Who will doubt that Satan was the prince of that age?

      The history of the world from the deluge until the advent of Jesus Christ, a period of three thousand years, is scarcely brighter. The sons of God — the supporters of His true worship, were soon corrupted by the fascinations of rites and pomps of human and devil-invented worships; and the world soon fell under the scepter of the enemy, and he ruled and reigned again supreme, through religions opposed to God's religion, through civil governments opposed, in principle, to the government God appointed.

      Glance your eye over the history of the ages from the deluge to the advent, and see that it is a history of universal and most fearful wickedness; a history of crime, of mighty wrong, of oppression, of corruption and vice the human mind can scarce conceive of. Tribes in deadly strife with tribes; nations dashing against nations in the terrible conflicts of the battlefield; the earth everywhere blackened by the desolations of war; its fairest islands and loveliest vales bathed in blood, while gaunt famine and pestilence have followed hard upon the footsteps of war, and death and hell have brought up the rear. Look at the picture of human corruption, human wickedness and human war; look at every civil government, corrupted in the hands of even its professed friends, and everywhere else rejected for the worship of devils — look at this, and say if Satan was not, through this long period, the prince of the world.

     Need I add more, a crowning fact, startling with terror! Christ the creator, God's own Son, the

      We cannot doubt the fact asserted by Satan to the face of Christ Himself, and not denied or questioned by the Son of God. Thus it is recorded: "The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world," and said: "All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Christ did not question his claim; and His silence

      Two thousand years have nearly passed since Christ was driven from the earth by the power of Satan; and what does the history of these twenty centuries teach us? That Satan has been dethroned and cast out, or has he maintained his cursed power? Has he yet been bound under the hatchments of the pit, or is he to-day. everywhere triumphant? Alas, alas! There is, there can be, but one answer — the devil reigns.

      The facts of history show that the first advent of Christ, and the organization of His visible kingdom on the earth, the antitype of His natural Israel, has not, after the lapse of two thousand years, offered the least check to the reign of Satan as prince of the earth; nor, judging from the past or the present, have we any grounds to believe that two thousand centuries more would do so. As in the days of Cain, so now, by his corruptions of the

I. As the god of religious worship, being the author of all manner of religions, and the persecutor of the true.

      He was not satisfied with having slain the Prince of Peace, but he instigated a murderous, unrelenting, exterminating warfare upon all His followers, if possible, to blot them from the earth. Through Saul and others, he made havoc of the Church; "he breathed out fire and slaughter"; he dragged the last apostle to martyrdom. The blood of the true witnesses of Jesus, from the blood of John the Baptist, the first Christian minister, mingled at the foot of the cross with the blood of the martyred Founder of Christianity, has flowed down, and its stream has been fed and widened and deepened by the blood of the unnumbered millions of those "who have not worshipped the beast, nor the image, neither have received his mark in their hands, or on their foreheads;" who have never symbolized with the Papacy, and are not daughters of that mother Church; so that it can be said to-day as truly as it was said in Christ's day "from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heanen suffereth violence, and the violent seek to make havoc of it."

      Therefore in the fourth century, we hear the voice of Constantine, the Caesar of the Roman empire, summoning all Christian ministers to a council for the purpose of reorganizing the churches of Christ, and shaping them so that they could support his throne. He was already the high-priest of the pagan religion, and wished to be head of the Christian Church. The ministers of the principle cities and towns throughout the empire, tempted by the proffers of power, and gold, and rich living, and state churches, yielded. The new orgainization was called the Catholic Church; but thousands throughout the country spurned with indignation this usurpation of the rights of Christ by

      This Catholic Church soon divided into two parts, or bodies: the western was called the Roman, or Latin, Church, the eastern the Greek Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic, in the sixteenth century, became the mother of numerous branches. All the Protestant churches acknowledge Rome to be the mother Church; and when you hear Protestants speak of "branches of the Church," you can understand them to mean that the trunk, or body, is the Roman Church. The Anabaptists, now called Baptists, never did belong to Rome, and never branched from that trunk, and therefore belong not to the Protestant family. Sir Isaac Newton, himself a Protestant, declared that "the Baptists are the only churches that never symbolized with Rome."

      By the multiplication of religions, and societies which claim to be true Christian churches, in the world, false doctrines and worships, Satan is increasing his influence over the minds of men. The world believes these false religions and churches to be true; and their doctrines, and their worship and rites are more pleasing to them than the true.

      Since the sixteenth century, all the Protestant organizations have been originated; and in the lifetime

      While Satan is free to deceive the nations can his power over them be neutralized by the Gospel as here administered? Can he be dethroned by present agencies?

II. But Satan Reigns to-day triumphantly over the nations through civilized governments, through which he opposes and oppresses Christianity.

      We have seen that he is a very religious devil, having hundreds of churches where Christ had one: it is also true that he is the prince of politicians.

      God gave His ancient people one form of civil government. It was a simple theocracy; all the laws emanated from divinity, and were entrusted to judges to be executed. They were, therefore, perfectly just, and perfectly adapted to man's wants: but like the government of Christ's Church, it was simple and unostentatious, without the glitter of pomp and splendour of human governments; and Satan, exciting the pride and vainglory in the people's hearts, moved them to despise the authority of God, and demand a king, as the nations of the world then had. God, by His prophet, warned them faithfully of the many and heavy evils and oppressions, and slavery to one man, they would entail upon themselves in preferring a Satanic form

      He has been a very fair devil in this. Those who have most fully sold themselves to him to do his will, and practice his arts, have generally succeeded to the chief places in earthly governments. All earthly governments have given their power and influence in favour of a false worship; have had state churches in their pay, and persecuted the churches of Christ. The state church is preminently the church of politicians and the rulers of this world. By the hands of these state churches, the blood of millions of the witnesses of Jesus has been shed, and Christianity corrupted in all lands.

      Thus, under the reign of Satan, since the days of Nimrod, the earth has groaned under the oppression of tyrants; right is crushed into the dust under the iron heel of overpowering might and wrong; poor, wronged, outraged humanity, robbed of its heaven-born rights, lies crushed beneath the throne of despotism, and the altars of priestcraft, crucified, like its Redeemer, between two thieves. The wailing groans of the world's population have been ascending up from every continent, and from every isle, for ages; and with every century, and every year, the groan deepens, and the wail loudens.

      I here confess I have been interested in the success of a peculiar form of government for our noble South. I believed that the conservatism of a peculiar system of labour and a separation from those who had resolved to overthrow it was the best for us, and promised a glorious future to us; and that it was the inalienable right of thirteen states and ten millions of freemen to rule themselves, and no treason to assert it. Nor will I deny that every desire of my soul and prayer of my heart and effort of my hand consistent with my profession were for it; and were I to die to-day for it, I dare to say I am not ashamed of what I have done, or not to denounce my principles as wrong. But I am a conquered and converted man. I have given my allegiance to a government that I have imperiled my life, in the

      The government, even as it now is, is the best and freest that earth can boast; and let us, as brothers and fellow-citizens, pray God to make it all that a pure government can be in greatness and glory. I have to-day no heartfelt hatred toward a fellow-citizen who chose to remain under the old flag and, during the struggle, acted the part of a pure and good man. And God forbid that I should disfellowship in my heart a Christian brother who, from principle, chose a different Caesar from me, so that he, through the strife, acted the part of a Christian, and rendered to his Caesar the things that belonged to Caesar. By our political differences we rent the mightiest nation; shall we now allow Satan, through us, to rend the body of Christ by our political grudges and divisions? Shall we not grasp the hand, aye, and moisten it with grateful tears, that administered by day and by night to the necessities of our poor wounded and sick sons, relatives and friends, fed them in prison, smoothed their pillows in the hospital, wiped the death-sweat from their brows, closed their sightless eyes, and gave them Christian burial?

      Are they not as deserving of our love, though they remained within our lines, as the one thousand

      I return from this digression. There is no hope for the nation while Satan reigns. Politics and forms of governments can promise us nothing, for Satan possesses them all. That will prove the best that is the strongest and most permanent, and the least liable to revolutions and wars. But must this hopeless state last forever? Shall "the whole creation groan and travail in pain together," and a just God heed not the lacerating cries of His suffering children? No: thank God, hallelujah and amen! Christ Himself declares, "The prince of this earth shall be cast out." This is the hope of the Christian: this is humanity's and the world's only hope.

III. A better day.

I turn from the dark and frightful picture of the

      The transfer of all the kingdoms and dominions, thrones and principalities, all earthly crowns and governments to Messiah and His saints involves the mightiest changes that the world has ever witnessed. No mild, persuasive measures can effect this. Those who cry, "Peace, peace," and the subjection of the nations to Christ by the exhortations to repentance from the lips of Christian ministers and missionaries, teach falsely, and contrary to the plain declarations of God's word, and have learned nothing from the history of the past. Did Abel's brotherly exhortation deter his brother from his wilful perversion of God's worship, or restrain the fratricidal blow? Did the fervid preaching of Enoch arrest, for a moment, the antediluvian apostasy? Did the faithful preaching and fearful warnings of Noah for one hundred and twenty years prevail against the unbelief of his age? Does the Bible report a single convert, so inveterate was the infidelity of the world?

      And was not the state of the world then declared by Christ to be a striking picture of the late prophecies of His coming? Did all the manifestations of God through Moses and Aaron, through a long line of prophets and priests, for two thousand years, prevent even the one little province of

     If the ministry of the Son of God could not effect the conversion of one of the least villages of Judea, or even a considerable fraction of it; if the lifetime preaching of the apostles, inspired to preach, and that too with demonstration of the Holy Ghost and power, with mighty miracles and wonders, even to the raising of the dead to confirm the word preached, shall we, can we, look for the world's conversion through the feeble and almost powerless ministry of men, unaided by inspiration, tongues or miracles? The thought is preposterous, and the doctrine is in contravention of the Word of God. Alas, Leviathan is not so tamed! The strong man, armed, cannot be charmed by Orphic lute or

     Let those wordy orators who preach the universal conquest of the Gospel over all nations and all men's hearts by modern preachers and the missionary enterprise before the second advent of Christ look around them here in this boasted and claimed Christianized land of ours, and be confounded. All the power that preaching, aided by genius, eloquence and learning, can exert has been put forth for the last centuries, and exhausted its influence in vain. What do we see? Universaily wherever the Gospel has been longest preached, there infidelity rears its hydra and constantly multiplying heads of scoffing unbelief. New England is but the hot and active seedbed of every form of infidelity and pestilential error and fanaticism.

     The fearful fact is that the enmity of man's heart to God is so deep-seated, so malignant, so universal that no law has availed to restrain, no love or tenderness to check, it. Streams of pollution burst hot from it, and roll their scorching tide over the world like lava from a volcano. The streams of human guilt are filling darker than ever, and flowing on with a still broader current. Can gentle persuasions of man or angels or the infinite God Himself deter man from his opposition to his Maker? Man sinned in Eden, when the companion of God and angels, sinned knowingly and wilfully; he continued to sin after the penalty

     He has been sinning with the same awful, desperate deliberation during the nineteen centuries past, with the Gospel of salvation sounding in his ears; he is now sinning, with all these facts and fearful warnings, with all the influences of Christianity constantly exerted upon him, and the influence of pious parents; still he goes on sinning with a stiffened neck and outstretched arm, and is seeking new ways and inventing new forms of insulting and dishonouring God, as though his hatred of Jehovah could not be slaked. Tell me not this rebellious race — tell me not that all the "principalities, and the powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world" will yet be subdued to Christ by the ordinary ministrations of the spirit of the Gospel, and that no greater are promised. Never — never — NEVER — NEVER!

     But by the sword, by pestilence, by blood and slaughter such as this world has never witnessed,

      This idea originated in the self-sufficiency and importance of the human heart; it is the popular doctrine of the schools and doctors of our modern divinity, and tickles and lulls to repose a guilty world. It will prove a failure, and the world will be made skeptical thereby, and reject it as false. Theirs is the dangerous theory; for they teach the world that the Gospel was designed to do this, and should it fail to accomplish it, as it will, universal unbelief will sweep over the land, or to the extent of the influence of their teaching. But the Gospel was not sent to convert the whole world, but only

     Let us appeal to the teachings of God's word. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, preached the day of Christ's second advent thus: "Behold the Lord cometh with myriads of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all that are ungodly among men of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

     Paul says: "When the Son, Jesus, shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels in flaming fire, to take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Saviour, Jesus Christ."

      Isaiah, in prophetic vision, saw and held converse with the Messiah returning from the slaughter of the armies of Gog and Magog — the beast and the false prophet. The prophet, astonished at his bloody appearance, inquires: "Who is this that cometh up from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah; this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength?

     "I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.

     "I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there were none with me; for I will tread them in my anger, and trample them in my fury: and their blood shall be sprinkled upon all my garments, and I will stain all my raiment; for the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my Redeemer is come. And I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them drunk in my fury; and I will bring down their strength to the ground."

     The judgment and reign of this world the Father has committed to His Son. David, in Psalm 2, thus speaks: "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." Is it that Christ may subdue them by the soothing sounds of the Gospel? No. "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise, therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth; serve the Lord with fear; rejoice before him with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little."

     Christ Himself taught that Satan, as a strong man, would reign in peaceful possession of his house and palace until the stronger than he

     The vision of the second coming of Christ to judge and punish the wicked rulers of earth, and to subdue the nations under Him by sword and slaughter, and the binding of Satan is described by John, in Revelation 19:20.

      The nations subdued to Christ's authority, and Satan dethroned and chained; then succeeds the reign of Christ and His saints on the earth for a thousand years, during which time every curse but death will be removed; the fertility of the earth restored; the ferocity of animals tamed; the nations learn war no more; and all thrones and all offices, from the highest to the lowest, be filled, and all governments of earth be administered, by the saints of Christ in equity and peace. Then will truth spring out of the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven; Christ, the once crucified, now earth's victorious and glorious King of kings and Lord of lords, take the throne of His father David, and reign from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.

     The child of God longs for Christ to come and reign: the promises He sends down to earth, they echo back to heaven in yearning prayer:

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