ven--"Come and gather yourselves
together, to the feast of the great God, that ye may eat the flesh of
kings, and of captains, and of mighty men; and the flesh of horses and of
them that sit on them; and the flesh of all men, both free and slave,
both small and great."

What those awful words may mean I cannot say. But this I say, that the
Apostle would never have used such words, conveying so plain and so
terrible a meaning to anyone who has ever seen or heard of a
battle-field, if he had really meant by them nothing like a battle-field
at all.

It may be that these words have fulfilled themselves many times--at the
fall of Jerusalem--at the wars which convulsed the Roman empire during
the first century after Christ--at the final fall of the Roman empire
before the lances of our German ancestors--in many another great war, and
national calamity, in many a land since then. It may be, too, that, as
learned divines have thought, they will have their complete fulfilment in
some war of all wars, some battle of all battles; in which all the powers
of evil, and all those who love a lie, shall be arrayed against all the
powers of good, and all those who fear God and keep His commandments: to
fight it out, if the controversy can be settled by no reason, no
persuasion; a battle in which the whole world shall discover that, even
in an appeal to brute force, the good are stronger than the bad; because
they have moral force also on their side; because God and the laws of His
whole universe are fighting for them, against those who transgress law,
and outrage reason.

The wisest of living Britons has said,--"Infinite Pity, yet infinite
rigour of Law. It is so that the world is made." I should add, It is so
the world must be made, because it is made by Jesus Christ our Lord, and
its laws are the likeness of His character; pitiful, because Christ is
pitiful; and rigorous, because He is rigorous. So pitiful is Christ,
that He did not hesitate to be slain for men, that mankind through Him
might be saved. But so rigorous is Christ, that He does not hesitate to
slay men, if needful, that mankind thereby may be saved. War and
bloodshed, pestilence and famine, earthquake and tempest--all of them, as
sure as there is a God, are the servants of God, doing His awful but
necessary work, for the final benefit of the whole human race.

It may be difficult to believe this: at least to believe it with the same
intense faith with which pro