majority of the human race will be consigned hopelessly to never-ending
torments.

If prophecy be indeed a divine message to man; if it be anything but a
cabbala, useless either to the simple-minded or to the logical, intended
only for the plaything of a few devout fancies, it must declare the
unchangeable laws by which the unchangeable God is governing, and has
always governed, the human race; and therefore only by understanding
what has happened, can we understand what will happen; only by
understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that not merely
by picking out--too often arbitrarily and unfairly--a few names and
dates from the records of all the ages, but by trying to discover its
organic laws, and the causes which produce in nations, creeds, and
systems, health and disease, growth, change, decay and death. If, in
one small corner of this vast field, I shall have thrown a single ray of
light upon these subjects--if I shall have done anything in these pages
towards illustrating the pathology of a single people, I shall believe
that I have done better service to the Catholic Faith and the
Scriptures, than if I did really "know the times and the seasons, which
the Father has kept in His own hand." For by the former act I may have
helped to make some one man more prudent and brave to see and to do what
God requires of him; by the latter I could only add to that paralysis of
superstitious fear, which is already but too common among us, and but
too likely to hinder us from doing our duty manfully against our real
foes, whether it be pestilence at home or tyranny abroad.

These last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to say
a few words. I have, at the end of these Lectures, made some allusion
to the present war. To have entered further into political questions
would have been improper in the place where those Lectures were