lings with his own flock are always the same,
from the beginning of time to the end. Likewise must the people of
God, or the Church, be always the same. This history is a portrait of
the Church in every age, representing largely its actual life--the
vital part; for it shows on what the success of the Church on earth
always depends and how it acts. The record teaches that the Church is
at all times wonderfully governed and preserved by God, without human
agency, in the midst of manifold temptations, trials, suffering and
defeat; that it does not exist as an established government regulated
according to human wisdom, with harmony of parts and logical action,
but is continually agitated, impaired and weakened in itself by much
confusion and numerous penalties; that the great and best part, who
bear the name of the Church, fall and bring about a state of things
so deplorable God can no longer spare, but is compelled to send
punishments in the nature of mutinies and similar disorders, the
terrible character of which leaves but a small proportion of the
people upright.

29. Now, if such disaster befell the nation selected of God, chosen
from the first as his people, among whom he performed works marvelous
and manifest beyond anything ever known since, what better thing may
we expect for ourselves? Indeed, how much greater the danger
threatening us; how much reason we have to take heed that the same
fate, or worse, overtake not ourselves!

With reference to the things chronicled in our text, Paul tells us:
"They were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages
are come." That is, we are now in the last and most evil of days, a
time bringing many awful dangers and severe punishments. It is
foretold in the Scriptures, predicted by Christ and the apostles,
that awful and distressing times will come, when there shall be wide
wanderings from the true faith and sad desolations of the Church.
And, alas, we see the prophecies only too painfully fulfilled in past
heresy, and later in Mohammedanism and the papacy.

30. The era constituting the "last time" began with the apostles. The
Christians living since Christ's ascension constitute the people of
the latter times, the little company left for heaven; and we
gentiles, amidst the innumerable multitude of the ungodly generation
in the wide world, must experience worse calamities than befell the
Jews, who lived under the law of Moses and the Word of God, under an
admir