To derive blessing, in a practical way, from the study of prophecy, one must enter into it in a right
spirit; even the spirit of Him who wept over Jerusalem, when contemplating its fixed and settled
doom. The end of this present evil age, out of which we have been rescued by Jesus giving
Himself for our sins, according to the will of God and our Father, is fearfully portrayed in the
scripture of truth. To study this profitably, there is needed a preparation of soul. Intensive study
of the final development of evil often tends to self-complacency, harshness of judgment or legality.

The great professing body of Christendom is to be cut off because it has not continued in the
goodness of God. The safeguard of Christians, therefore, is continuance in the goodness of God.
Then they are able to exercise spiritual discernment as to the principles of evil, and to find that
there is nothing manifested in the close, the beginning of which is not marked by the Holy Ghost
as already working when there was apostolic power both to discern the evil and to provide the
safeguard. When the apostle Paul opens to Timothy the perils of the last days, he solemnly charges
him before God and the Lord Jesus Christ to "preach the word," "do the work of an evangelist."
The apostle Peter closes the exposure of the awful ungodliness of the last days, with this
safeguard:"grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." And
Jude, testifying of the fearful manifestation of evil in turning the grace of God into lasciviousness,
thus guards the saints:"But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying
in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ unto eternal life." Now, all these forms of evil are viewed by the Holy Ghost from the
place of that blessed grace in which God had set the Church; and, therefore, to see them aright
we must get into that place, and then we shall be able to detect in many more trivial evils the same
principles working, the fruit of which will fully ripen in the actual close.

The prophets of old were protesters against the corruptions of their day; but we see from the
sacred Word that they needed previous discipline of God in their own souls, lest they should
protest with any measure of self-complacency; also that they might fully justify God in His
judgment on the evil. The vision of the glory of Jesus to Isaiah made the prophet feel that he
himself was a man of unclean lips, and that he dwelt in the midst of a people of unclean lips. He
would not have been a suited instrument to go and blind his countrymen, had he felt himself better
than they were. The prophet must feel that he, himself, was simply spared by the grace of God,
and as deserving of the judgment as his countrymen. It was needed for Daniel, the "greatly
beloved," to have his comeliness turned into corruption, that he might understand what should
befall his people in the latter day. Ezekiel and Hosea had to go through most painful and revolting
discipline, in order to lead Israel into a realization of the baseness into which they had sunk in the
estimation of God.

It may, indeed, now be God’s method to discipline His servants by special circumstances, in order
to train them to study the future "aright. But the special, peculiar training is a conscience exercised
before God. It is the habit of the soul which leads it into the presence of God in order to judge
things there. "The spiritual man judgeth all things." And however fearful may be the crisis of evil,
the soul exercised before God can discern in itself principles which, if unrestrained by the grace
of God, would lead to it. Hence the soul becomes more rooted in grace; experiences more

consciously what a debtor it is to grace. And, in this manner, the firmest protest against evil
becomes linked with personal lowliness. And while there is increasing thankfulness for the
promise of being kept from the hour of temptation, which is to try all that dwell upon the earth,
there is real self-judgment of the evil principles which are to be manifested in the crisis, and
sympathy and intercession for those who are blindly helping it on.

I believe the way of God to enable us to meet the growing evil of the last day is practically to
unfold to us the deeper resources of His grace because the study of evil by itself is most injurious
to the soul. The recognition of the faithfulness of God, of the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost
in the Church, and of the untouched blessings of the Church, in Christ, notwithstanding all which
has failed here, will lead us further outside the camp to Jesus, bearing His reproach. And thus
shall we be in principle, in position, and in spirit, enabled to take our place in "the wilderness,"
and from thence to learn the "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF
HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," and at the same time to take our place
on "a great and high mountain," thence to survey the graces and glories of "the bride, the Lamb’s
wife."