The aspect of things, accordingly, is much like that in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing; as if Satan were already bound, and no deluge of wrath or terrors of retribution were impending; and as if with science and art, ancient relics and now inventions, gold mines and traffic, steam and electricity, as pioneers, the Ethiopian were about to change his skin, and the leopard his spots, the wolf to lie down with the lamb, and the lion to eat straw like the ox. The more startling the events of Providence, the shattering of political fabrics, the excision and restoration of dynasties, the revival of Popish arrogations and intolerance, the pitched battle of despotism against liberty, the more sure they are to be construed as immediate signals of the universal prevalence and triumph of human hopes. The purple and scarlet robes of the Babylonish Sorceress are seemingly changed to vestal whiteness, as gazed at through the spectrum of discolored glass, or seen in the sepulchral, bewildering, superstitious twilight of Baalistic tapers; while the murmurings of unearthly music, the chantings and mutterings of unintelligible words, and the spell of imputed and pretended mysteries, subdue the victim to whatever the spiritual operator may prescribe or denounce. The nations in the four quarters of the globe seem to many to be about to renounce their idolatries, and to be released without a struggle on the part of Satan, who has held them in bondage hitherto, and to be arranging to assume white robes and take their stations on the glass-like expanse before the throne. The partisans of such views neither realize nor believe that there is any thing to the contrary revealed in Scripture; or if there is, it is so concealed in symbol and figure as to preclude its being understood till all is over. And accordingly, like the Pharisees of old, who scrupulously paid tithes of mint and all manner of herbs, and omitted the weightier matters of practical righteousness, faith, and the love of God, they resolve religion into outward action, the love of God into eclectic sympathy with his creatures, and faith into their theory of particular duties.