bondage. The service of Jesus Christ is true liberty. Remember His own words: Come to Me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; because I am meek, and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is sweet, and My burden light." This alone is the way of liberty. Liberty is in the heart. True liberty is in the service of Him who must 'reign until He hath put all His enemies under His feet.'13

12 St. Matt. xi. 28-30.

13 1 Cor. xv. 25.

LECTURE IV.

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST.

'If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, there

fore the world hateth you.' St. John xv. 18, 19.

MASK it as we may, there is an irreconcilable enmity between God and the world. The Christian world may put on the vestments and bear the name of Christianity, but it is the world, after all. Not that there is enmity on God's part against the world; for God so loved the world as to give His only - begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting." But 'the friendship of this world

1 St. John iii. 16.

is an enemy against God,' as we have already seen, because it is not subject to the law of God, nor can be.

This then is the meaning of our Lord's words when He said to the Apostles, who were becoming daily conscious of the hatred of men against them: If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you." If you had been of the world servants, friends, flatterers of the world-the world would have loved its own, it would have recognised its own reflection, its own mind, its own livery; but because you are not of the world, but I, by grace and special election, have chosen you out of the world, therefore, for that very reason, because you have My mark, because you bear My name, because, in some degree, you share My likeness; therefore the world hateth you. This enmity is perpetual: it exists at this day, it will exist to the end. Between God and the world there may be an apparent truce; there never can be peace. God is immutable; His perfections cannot change. The world is malicious, and from its malice it will not change; and therefore, as the Apostle says, 'What participation

2 St. John xv. 18.

hath justice with injustice? what concord hath Christ with Belial ?" God, then, when manifest in the flesh, in the person of the eternal Son, was the object of the world's chief hatred; and the world, after wreaking upon Him all that scorn, derision, insults could effect, nailed Him upon the cross. The shame and the passion of the Incarnate Son of God has been the inheritance of His Church. For what is the Church of Christ but the body of Christ? Or, in other words, it is Christ mystical, the mystical person made up, as St. Augustine says, of the divine Head in heaven and of the body spread throughout the world; 'one man, one collective person.' The enmity and the hatred which the world bore to Him has descended from generation to generation, as the heirloom of His body. This, then, is Christ. Now what is Antichrist?

In the beginning I disclaimed all intention of entering into the exposition of unfulfilled prophecies. I am speaking of patent facts under our eyes. They are sufficient, because they give us principles and warnings to govern our conduct. Nevertheless, I must say, in passing, that if there

8 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.

his

be anything evident in the plain words of Holy Scripture, if there be anything explicitly declared by the Christian Fathers, and anything distinctly taught by the theologians of the Church, it is this; that Antichrist, though taken to express a diffused spirit which pervades systems and incorporates itself in various forms in all ages, nevertheless will be, towards the latter days, impersonated in one who shall be the head and the chief of that Antichristian spirit and system, and shall use all power against the Name and the Church of Jesus Christ. This I now set aside, as being beyond my purpose. I am speaking of the Antichristian spirit which manifests itself either in individuals or in whole systems, sometimes in whole nations. Just as the electricity which is suspended in the air is breathed unconsciously, so the Antichristian spirit exists in what is called the Christian world in its present fragmentary and divided state. And this is the subject with which to-night I must conclude that which I have endeavoured, but very imperfectly, to say.

I have already drawn out before you the distinction between the world as it was before it had faith in Christ, and as it became when the Christian