affords abundant testimony to the fact of such connection.[1]
This was "the fulness of time." It was the point beyond which the malign influence of the hells could not be permitted to go;—beyond which they could not go without imperiling the welfare and even the existence of the human race. What, then, was to be done to avert this peril? Revelations had been vouchsafed, but these had been misunderstood and perverted. God had spoken, but the race had become deaf to his warnings and counsels. He had sent prophets and wise men, but their words were not heeded. Through the overmastering influence of the hells, the love and even the knowledge of righteousness had been lost, and the race was on the point of losing also its properly human faculties—its power to distinguish and its ability to choose between right and wrong.
At such a juncture, what should an infinitely wise and loving Father have done? What, but the very thing that He did do? The work to be accomplished was something more than suppressing the insurrection of a single wicked community, state or nation. It was nothing less than restoring the disturbed equilibrium of the moral universe; resisting and restraining within due bounds the
- ↑ For some of this testimony, see "The World Beyond," by Rev. John Doughty (forming No. 1 of the present series), Chap. V., on Heaven.
