Preaching

The spread of knowledge. Many are running to and fro, and knowledge is increasing. Nor is it knowledge of one kind, but of every kind, secular and sacred. It is, however, for the former that this age is specially distinguished. And Satan is putting forth his utmost resources of power and craft thus to lead men captive at his will. "The prince of all knowledge (as one wrote twenty years ago), where God is not known; of all power where God is not acknowledged; the bright archangel of the natural man, revealing himself in his angelic glories of natural knowledge, natural beauty, natural wisdom, and natural humanity." Thus does he play his part in this last age! Under these radiant disguises, he is bewildering the eyes of men, and persuading them that this diffusion of knowledge is the breaking of the millennial dawn. So specious are his counterfeits that it is hard to separate the real from the false, the precious from the vile; for when he thus comes forth as an angel of light, clothed in every perfection that the natural heart loves and the carnal eye admires, who shall penetrate the deception and escape the snare, save those who "know all things," by reason of "the unction from the Holy One?" Most truly (as one has remarked) has the present state of the world been described by one of the world's own poets, when picturing the gay glitter of an evening assembly, over which was thrown A dazzling mass of artificial light,  Which showed all things, but nothing as they were. So it is now upon the earth, among the heedless multitudes of the children of men. It is the world's midnight. They are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Literature, science, art, philosophy, are all their own! Yet there is an artificial colouring, an unreal brightness, over all. There is music; but it is of the Syren kind; not the deep melody of old ancestral song. There is eloquence, too, but it is "the words of man's wisdom," not that which speaks for God and "winneth souls." There is fervour, too, but it is the warmth of wild excitement, born in novelty and nursed by perpetual change. There is high thought, too, but it is often of the unhealthful cast, wrought off at the midnight lamp; not the deep musings begot in fellowship with God, and ceaseless converse with that Word which maketh wise the simple.