What varied thoughts and feelings are awakened in the soul by the very sound of the word “Christendom.” It is a terrible word. It brings before us, at once, that vast mass of baptized profession which calls itself the Church of God, but is not: which calls itself Christianity, but is not. Christendom is a dark and dreadful anomaly. It is neither one thing nor the other. It is not “The Jew or the Gentile, or the Church of God.” It is a corrupt, mysterious mixture, a spiritual malformation, the masterpiece of Satan, the corrupter of the truth of God, and the destroyer of the souls of men, a trap, a snare, a stumbling block, the darkest moral blot in the universe of God. It is the corruption of the very best thing, and therefore the very worst of corruptions. It is that thing which Satan has made of professing Christianity. It is worse, by far, than Judaism; worse by far than all the darkest forms of Paganism, because it has higher light and richer privileges, makes the very highest profession, and occupies the very loftiest platform. Finally, it is that awful apostasy for which is reserved the very heaviest judgments of God—the most bitter dregs in the cup of His righteous wrath.
C. H. M.