This would be contrary to the lessons taught by all past experience, and just the reverse of what we are warranted by the word of God to expect.

"All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." If ever this was true in the history of the church, we may expect it to be emphatically so when, in the last days, the world is in its aphelion as related to God, and the wicked touch their lowest depths of iniquity and sin.
Let, then, a general spirit of persecution arise in this country, and what is more probable than that it should assume an organized form?
Here the will of the people is law.

And let there be a general desire on the part of the people for certain oppressive enactments against believers in unpopular doctrines, and what would be more easy and natural than that such desire should immediately crystallize into systematic action, and their oppressive measures take the form of law?
Then we have just what the prophecy indicates.

Then is heard the voice of the dragon.
And there are elements already in existence which furnish a luxuriant soil for a baleful crop of future evil.

But a few years ago three and a half millions of human beings were held in our country in a state of abject bondage, deprived of every vestige of freedom and every trace of manhood.