The peace of many families was broken up, and the village kept an establishment like a seraglio--a disgusting and melancholy commentary upon the weakness of human nature. His career, however, was but of short duration. A history of religious impostures would form a library of itself. The human mind, in all ages and countries, and under all forms of government and religion, seems to have been wonderfully susceptible of delusion and imposition upon that subject, which, of all others, is the most important for time and eternity. The court of Egypt was deluded by the impostors who undertook to contend with Moses. And the chosen people themselves, notwithstanding the direct disclosures which the Most High had made of himself, in all their wonderful history, were prone to turn aside from the worship of the true God, to follow the lying spirits of the prophets of Baal and other deceivers, from the days of Moses till the destruction of Jerusalem. So, likewise, under the Christian dispensation, from the defection of Simon Magus to the wild delirium of Edward Irving, there have been a succession of Antichrists, until their name is legion--pretenders to divine missions, the power of working miracles, the gift of tongues--perverting the Scriptures, leading astray silly men and women--destroying the peace of families, throwing communities into confusion, and firebrands into the church--clouding the understandings, and blinding the moral perceptions of men, and subverting the faith of these even whose mountains stood strong, and who had been counted among the chosen people of God. "In the last days," says the apostle Peter, "there shall come scoffers, walking after their own lusts,"--"chiefly them which walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government; presumptuous are they, self-willed; they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities; sporting themselves in their own deceivings, having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls; for when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error; while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption." Jude also admonishes us "to remember that they were foretold as mockers, who should be in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, not having the Spirit."