All such unforeseen accidents, occurring daily, are but the devil's thumps and strokes which he inflicts upon us from sheerest malice."[7] Still more: the demon is able to take possession so thoroughly of the human body that he becomes, as it were, its second soul, moves its limbs, utters blasphemies with its tongue at which even their fiendish author can not but tremble. But though the God-fearing man, like pious Job, is benefited by such afflictions, and although prayer is a powerful refuge, still there is a continually growing number of those who, driven by cowardly dread of the might of the Prince of Evil, seek their safety in a league with him; so much the more as he lends them a partial control of the elements, and thus a means of employment and of doing harm to others. Thus the dire pestilence of sorcery multiplies its victims; and in the black hours of midnight hundreds of thousands who bear the name of Christian, on mountains and in deserts perform clandestine rites in honor of their Satanic master. Time ripens for the advent of Antichrist, for the Day of Judgment and the final conflagration. In the flames of this last day the revolving heavens and the earth are destroyed. Motion, activity, strife, history,--all are at an end. The Empyrean and Hell alone remain, as the antipodal extremes of the former universe. This conflagration is not a universal purifier, annihilating what has no existence in itself.[8] It only separates forever the gold from the dross. The kingdom of the devil continues to exist, and its prey is its own for evermore. But it exists thus only because an eternal existence means an eternal punishment for its ruler as well as for his subjects. From the new heavens and the new earth which the fiat of God has created to be the dwelling-place of those who have escaped destruction, these ransomed spirits perceive the gnashing of teeth and lamentation of their doomed brethren, and look down upon their tortures and misery, not with compassion but with joy, because they recognize in their punishment the vindication of divine justice; not with pain but delight, because the sight of their wretchedness doubles their own felicity. From the depths of that gulf of misery ascend without ceasing, to the Empyrean, cries of despair, blasphemies of defiance, and curses of rage, yet do they not disturb the hymns which saints and angels sing ever around the throne of God and of the Lamb; they only intensify the solemnity of the worship.[9] * * * * *