THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
By G. E. Fifield
To UNDERSTAND the workings of the mystery of iniquity in the present century, it is necessary that we have freshly before us just what that mystery is, as contrasted with its opposite, the "mystery of God;" we must also in our minds review the working of these mysteries in the past. For this cause I must briefly allude to the principles of these "mysteries," and to their previous history. The mystery of God, into which the angels still desire to look, is the mystery of a wisdom past finding out, and of a love that passes knowledge. It is the mystery of divine humiliation, "God manifest in the flesh," not simply in Christ's flesh, but in ours through him, God thus stooping to conquer and lift us up; the mystery of a humiliation, therefore, that proves in the end a most wonderful exaltation, lifting Christ to unfathomed heights, giving him a name that is above every name that is named either in earth or heaven, and ex- alting us with him to heights that transcend our imaginings, given us before the universe of intelligent beings, the honor of those that have come up out of great tribulation and that "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." It is therefore the mystery of the kingdom of God,—a kingdom not of intrigue or of force, but of all-subduing love, a kingdom now "within you," that is, in the hearts of his followers, but finally to control and dominate the earth. Neither now nor in the final consummation is there any such thing as arbitrary force in that kingdom. The subjects are ruled not by an outside law, but by an inside principle, the law of love. They do what they please, because, with his law written in their hearts, they please to do right. Even Christ in the eternal future is not king, because God sets him on the throne and compels obedience. In a certain sense it is not God who makes Christ king but we, his subjects. Every one of the mighty company, gathered out of every nation, kindred, and tongue, to people the redeemed world, every one, has been won by his mighty love, every one casts his crown at his feet, crowning him Lord of all, and, having no worthiness of his own to boast, he spontaneously joins in the mighty chorus of redemption's mighty song, saying, "Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood." The twelve apostles are placed according to Christ's promise, upon secondary thrones in that kingdom, not by any arbitrary power, but because they, as coworkers with him, have won secondary places in our hearts. Such is the mystery of God, the mystery of divine government, and of the workings of the divine love. In contrast with this is the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of intrigue, and of arbitrary force, the mystery which has been more or less fully illustrated in every organization of men, and in every earthly government. It is the mystery of self-exaltation, manifesting itself in a thousand ways in both Church and State; the mystery that led Satan to seek to exalt his throne above the stars of God. The workings of this same mystery transformed the church of Christ from the original brotherhood with no earthly master, into an hierarchy, a pyramid of human life, the laity at the bottom, and above the vast base, the narrowing, ascending series of priests and bishops, and archbishops and cardinals, with the pope at the top, he having climbed up in arbitrary power above all men and earthly kings, unsatisfied still, seeking still to climb into the seat of God and change his laws at pleasure. Such are the manifestations of the workings of this mystery. Here all is selfishness, and intrigue, and force, and arbitrary power. The feudal system, and especially the practice of subinfeudation, are other marked historical illustrations of the workings of this same mystery, which includes all sin; for whenever the individual forgets the good of humanity and the happiness of the race in the present effort, through murder, theft, adultery, or other sin, to secure some present advantage to himself, there is the mystery of self-exaltation, the mystery of iniquity. Such exaltation has proved the source of all degradation. Each man seeks through intrigue and arbitrary power to exalt himself above his fellows, yet dragging himself down in the race with them, into this pit of iniquity into which we have fallen, a depth which we cannot here fathom, as our eyes cannot catch the heights from which we came and which God designed us to occupy. With this brief consideration of the contrast of these mysteries before us, we are prepared to note the present working of the mystery of iniquity. It is evident from the above that in the professed church of Christ, wherever and whenever the internal working of disinterested, unselfish love is exchanged for the external power of intrigue and scheming, arbitrary force, there and then, and to that degree, has the mystery of God ceased in that church, and the mystery of iniquity has taken its place. It is unnecessary to inform the intelligent reader that the Papacy, that best of all concrete illustrations of the mystery of iniquity, is still in the nineteenth century, alive and working with increasing power. At the Reformation in the sixteenth century, it received what men fancied was a deadly wound, and so the prophecy declared. Men of a philosophical and optimistical turn of mind have ever since been pronouncing that wound permanently dead, and declaring that the Papacy, though lingering still, must surely soon pass away before the awakening intelligence and broadening knowledge of the masses. So, indeed, it did seem for a time, long enough to blind men's eyes, and get them to looking in that direction, and cause them to cherish with seductive confidence that hope. Now, however, and for some time past, it has in almost every land been getting new hold of the hidden forces of national life, and preparing to turn all to the working out of the great schemes. The keen observer has already, both in Europe and America, begun to wonder at the rapidly healing wound. In Germany, the native land of the Reformation, where, even in the time of Luther, it was said that only one man in ten was a Papist, the Roman Church has for some time been getting a new control, and much has been said about the representatives of the government repeating the journey to Conosa. In England, since the days of Henry the VIII., professing open hostility to the Roman pontiff, hundreds of Jesuit priests working in disguise in the so-called Protestant Episcopal Church, are seeking, and gradually succeeding, in bringing it back to the forms, that it may finally bring it under the control of the Papacy. Essentially the same may be said of all Europe, save perhaps in Italy itself; in almost every land the Papacy is gaining power. Nor need we wonder at this exception, for, as has been aptly observed, natural forces increase toward the center, but the unnatural and arbitrary ones decrease. THE PAPACY IN THE UNITED STATES.
And what shall be said of the workings of this system in the United States? Here, perhaps, more than anywhere else at present, are the deeply laid plots and the gigantic schemes of this masterpiece of worldly and diabolical wisdom being carried out, with a view to future conquests. Just what those schemes are we cannot tell, for in all its workings the Papacy is the mystery of iniquity. This we know, the Roman Church is alive and active here, and all its infernal enginery is at work, for what purposes the student of history need not be told.4The order of Jesuits, that omnipresent eye, and silk-gloved, iron hand of the church, through the coolly laid plots of a hundred years, is now all too frequently beginning to be manifest. Under their influence, even in the time of the war, the armies of the republic were but too largely officered and controlled, and by their minions, after the war was over; for he who, among all men, could best have thwarted their schemes, and placed on a firm basis the liberties of our land, he, the brave hero and patriot, Abraham Lincoln, was foully assassinated. Now they control the elections in fourteen of our States and Territories, and where is the political party that dare hope for success without first bidding for their support. There are numerous military orders all drilled and armed, and under their control. Every Roman Catholic college is a military school where the students arm and drill for some future work. A university goes up in the national capital, and an Italian cardinal comes here to be the American pope, or the recognized head of the Papal church in America. Meanwhile there is certain knowledge of Catholics massed, by church dictation, in the large cities, for the purpose of controlling the elections, and vague rumors of arms secreted in the basement of churches and in nunneries, and of some future uprising. All this is the mystery of iniquity, which seeks not the glory of God and the conversion of souls, but the exaltation of the church and the hierarchy. All this speaks of a hope, at least, cherished in many breasts, and worked and plotted for in secret, that the professed church of Christ may again become externally unified and transformed into the kingdom of this world, the Mississippi itself, the father of American waters, becoming but a tributary to the Tiber. But worse than all this is the fact, everywhere manifest, that the Protestant churches are forgetting, or have forgotten, their high mission, and are passing rapidly through the same transformation that the early church passed through when it ceased to be a manifestation of the mystery of God and became the manifestation of the mystery of iniquity. Everywhere the sufficiency of the internal power of divine love to redeem and regenerate the soul is denied, and everywhere, with headlong haste and often with unscrupulous intrigue, the church is seeking the arbitrary, the external power of the State for its ends. God himself made the mind of man free, as free to do wrong as to do right, and proposes through the plan of redemption to arrive at the sublime result of a universe subdued and brought under the external control of infinite love, without ever once infringing that freedom by the use of arbitrary force. However thoroughly these aspiring clericals may disguise the fact to their own minds, and so fancy, as did the bishops of old, that it is all for the glory of God, it is still patent to every spiritual mind that when they ask for arbitrary power of the State to use for ecclesiastical ends, they are, in the nineteenth as in the fourth century and onwards, seeking to exalt themselves, not only above men, but also above God. This is the mystery of iniquity. In the eleventh century it is Pope Hildebrand boasting that kings are under his feet and can receive their crowns only from his hand. In the nineteenth century it is the would-be popes of the National Reform ilk boasting that the church holds Congress in its hands, and can do with it what it will. In the eleventh century it is the church exulting that its human head has the power to compel the repentant king of Germany to stand outside the gate at Conosa three long days, bareheaded and barefooted, in the winter snow, before haughtily receiving him and granting him absolution. In the nineteenth century it is the professed church of Christ seeking to get the power to compel the millions of the American people (every one of them kings according to our theory of government), to stand outside the gates of the World's Columbian Exposition, to receive admission only when and as she permits. The form may be slightly different, varying with the change from monarchical to republican institutions, but the spirit is the same. It is the mystery of iniquity. Meanwhile, as of old, to every listening disciple comes the same soft voice, sweet and low, and subdued by love, "Ye are not of the world," "even as I am not of the world;" "I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." "Put up thy sword into the sheath." "My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The true church, hearing and heeding the voice, puts on the whole armor of God, and with the inspired apostle of old confesses that the "weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."