In the closing quarter of the eighteenth century the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were missionary documents in the Old World. The seed sown by them has worked wonders in Europe, in the matter of liberty for the masses. But while the nineteenth century witnessed the gradual relaxing of the shackles of the people in almost every European State, its closing years witnessed a strong tendency to place new restrictions upon civil and religious liberty in the United States. While, in the guise of National Reform, the twentieth century opens with marked encroachments of the Church upon the prerogatives of the State, with a growing tendency on the part of the Church to control the people through the State, which means a restriction of religious liberty, we find even in Russia a royal decree enlarging the religious liberties of the people. While in this country there is on every hand a building up of great land monopolies, we find even in Ireland that the government is moving to break up great landed possessions, and give the poor a chance to own their homes. From being the boasted “land of the free,” the trend in America grows stronger and stronger toward the rule of monopoly. It is a rush for monopoly in every phase of life—in politics, in religion, in business circles of all kinds, and even in the matter of ordinary labor. And monopoly always means oppression. By no other means can monopoly be sustained. The spirit of self-interest seems to have taken possession of all classes of men, and the Book of the law of God is lost in the rubbish. What will remedy this great evil, and check the mad rush in self-interest to self-destruction?—Nothing but a seeking after God, a taking heed to His Word. Are we likely to see such a general work?—No; for we are in the last days, which our Saviour said would be as in the days of Noah. “For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Because men have turned away from the Word of God, they will be ignorant of the things it foretells until the threatened doom is upon them.