(1.) _A wide-spread departure from Christian morals_. “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;” iii. 2–4. How sad a picture, but how true! It is surely drawn from what God foresaw in present life! We have here a class of men sealed unto Christ by baptism, and, while they bear his name, dishonouring his kingdom. There is no evidence that they are born again of God, no fruit of the Spirit, no sign of his inward guidance. Love they have, but it is absorbed by self, and become hateful. For heavenly-mindedness, they are carried on by worldly covetousness; and, instead of wrestling for God, they are grasping, labouring, speculating for money. In the pride of wealth and intellect they grow boastful of their successes, and blaspheme the Lord who gave them. Parents are neglected and disobeyed; and, as is usually the case, when the earthly parent is set at nought, the heavenly Father is disregarded also; for self-confidence and self-pleasing reign in the unthankful and unholy heart. Natural affection falls next, and the vile temper vents itself in savage fierceness even against the wife, the child, the brother. Promises are broken, slanderous reports are circulated, wives are neglected, profligate companions are adopted; and the children of God are despised and scoffed at, as absurd in their peculiarities, and contemptible in their faith. Governments again are disobeyed, political factions plot against the state, dignities are evil spoken of; and, strong in their own conceit, heady and high-minded men regard their own intellect as their only guide, and their own will as their only law. Meanwhile God is forgotten in a wide-spread thirst for pleasure; sabbaths are broken in pursuit of pleasure, souls endangered, and all for pleasure. Pleasure is the idol; the phantom before which they bow; the vain idea on which they fix their hearts’ best love. They are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” Such, saith the Scripture, is to be the moral character of vast multitudes of professed believers in the latter days. (2.) And now look at what may be termed their _religious_ character.