You may see, as St. John warns you, that--after her fall, mind--if men
would go on worshipping the beast, and much more his image--the phantom
and shadow of brute force, after the reality had passed away--they should
drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and be tormented for ever. For
you may see how those degenerate Romans did go on worshipping the shadow
of brute force, and how they were tormented for ever; and had no rest day
or night, because they worshipped the Beast and his image.

You may see all the fowl of the heavens flocking together to the feast of
the great God, to eat the flesh of kings and captains, horse and rider,
bond and free.--All carrion-birds, human as well as brute--All greedy
villains and adventurers, the scoundreldom of the whole world, flocking
in to get their share of the carcass of the dying empire; as the vulture
and the raven flock in to the carrion when the royal eagles have gorged
their fill.

And lastly, you may see, if God give you grace, One who is faithful and
true, with a name which no man knew, save Himself, making war in
righteousness against all evil; bringing order out of disorder, hope out
of despair, fresh health and life out of old disease and death; executing
just judgment among all the nations of the earth; and sending down from
heaven the city of God, in the light of which the nations of those who
are saved should walk, and the kings of the earth should bring their
power and their glory into it; with the tree of life in the midst of it,
whose leaves should be for the healing of the nations.

Again, I say, I am not here to interpret the Book of Revelations; but
this I say, that that book interprets those times to me.

Leaving, for the present at least, to better historians than myself the
general subject of the Teutonic immigrations; the conquest of North Gaul
by the Franks, of Britain by the Saxons and Angles, of Burgundy by the
Burgundians, of Africa by the Vandals, I shall speak rather of those
Teutonic tribes which actually entered and conquered Italy; and first, of
course, of the Goths. Especially interesting to us English should their
fortunes be, for they are said to be very near of kin to us; at least to
those Jutes who conquered Kent. As Goths, Geats, Getae, Juts,
antiquarians find them in early and altogether mythic times, in the
Scandinavian peninsula, and the isles and mainland of Denmark.

Their name, it is said, is the same as one name for the Supreme B