Page:Eminent Victorians.djvu/125

 Manning read several papers, and Professor Huxley and Mr. John Morley listened with attention while he expressed his views upon "The Soul before and after Death," or explained why it is "That legitimate Authority is an Evidence of Truth." Yet, somehow or other, his Eminence never felt quite at ease in these assemblies; he was more at home with audiences of a different kind; and we must look in other directions for the free and full manifestation of his speculative gifts. In a series of lectures, for instance, delivered in 1861—it was the first year of the unification of Italy—upon "The Present Crisis of the Holy See, tested by Prophecy," we catch some glimpses of the kind of problems which were truly congenial to his mind. "In the following pages," he said, "I have endeavoured, but for so great a subject most insufficiently, to show that what is passing in our times is the prelude of the antichristian period of the final dethronement of Christendom, and of the restoration of society without God in the world." "My intention is," he continued, "to examine the present relation of the Church to the civil powers of the world, by the light of a prophecy recorded by St. Paul." This prophecy (2 Thess. ii. 3 to 11) is concerned with the coming of Antichrist, and the greater part of the lectures is devoted to a minute examination of this subject. There is no passage in Scripture, Manning pointed out, relating to the coming of Christ more explicit and express than those foretelling Antichrist; it therefore behoved the faithful to consider the matter more fully than they are wont to do. In the first place, Antichrist is a person. "To deny the personality of Antichrist is to deny the plain testimony of Holy Scripture." And we must remember that "it is a law of Holy Scripture that when persons are prophesied of, persons appear." Again, there was every reason to believe that Antichrist, when he did appear, would turn out to be a Jew. "Such was the opinion of St. Irenæus, St. Jerome, and of the author of the work De