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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
even in professedly Christian households. There is envy, evil surmis-
ing, hypocrisy, estrangement, emulation, strife, betrayal of sacred
trusts, indulgence of lust. The whole system of religious principles
and doctrines, which should form the foundation and frame-work
of social life, seems to be a tottering mass, ready to fall to ruin.
The vilest of criminals, when thrown into prison for their offenses,
are often made the recipients of gifts and attentions, as if they had
attained an enviable distinction. The greatest publicity is given to
their character and crimes. The press publish the revolting details of
vice, thus initiating others into the practice of fraud, robbery, and
murder; and Satan exults in the success of his hellish schemes. The
infatuation of vice, the wanton taking of life, the terrible increase of
intemperance and iniquity of every order and degree, should arouse
all who fear God, to inquire what can be done to stay the tide of evil.
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Courts of justice are corrupt. Rulers are actuated by desire for
gain, and love of sensual pleasure. Intemperance has beclouded the
faculties of many, so that Satan has almost complete control of them.
Jurists are perverted, bribed, deluded. Drunkenness and revelry,
passion, envy, dishonesty of every sort, are represented among those
who administer the laws. “Justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen
in the street, and equity cannot enter.”
The iniquity and spiritual darkness that prevailed under the
supremacy of Rome were the inevitable result of her suppression of
the Scriptures; but where is to be found the cause of the wide-spread
infidelity, the rejection of the law of God, and the consequent cor-
ruption, under the full blaze of gospel light in an age of religious
freedom? Now that Satan can no longer keep the world under his
control by withholding the Scriptures, he resorts to other means to
accomplish the same object. To destroy faith in the Bible serves his
purpose as well as to destroy the Bible itself. By introducing the
belief that God’s law is not binding, he as effectually leads men to
transgress as if they were wholly ignorant of its precepts. And now,
as in former ages, he has worked through the church to further his
designs. As the religious organizations of the day have refused to
listen to unpopular truths plainly brought to view in the Scriptures,
they have sown broadcast the seeds of skepticism. Clinging to the
papal error of natural immortality and man’s consciousness in death,
they reject the only defense against the delusions of Spiritualism.