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St. Paul has been telling the Thessalonians that there is much to be done in the world before things will be ripe for the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the caution needed by the Church in those times; for, in the light of a new revelation — one of the foundation truths of which was the Second Advent of the Redeemer to judge both the dead and the living, and with the charge ever ringing in their ears to watch and pray, lest, coming suddenly, He should find them sleeping, it was natural that they should ask themselves, "Why should we take the trouble of living with any interest or earnestness the old life of time, when, at any moment, all may be interrupted and scattered to the winds by the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, to close, on the instant, the things that are seen and temporal, and to introduce, amid all kinds of fearful surprises, new heavens and a new earth?" Our danger is from quite a different quarter. Our difficulty lies not in not making enough of the life of time, but in preventing it from filling the whole field of our vision. On this very account there is something doubly striking in the scene here presented — of a Church restless and feverish in anticipation of the Advent. It shows us how far we have fallen from original Christianity if we are suffering in ourselves, under the influences of the infidel talk of the day, any doubt of the fact itself as we rehearse it day by day — "From thence He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead."

I. LAWLESSNESS WILL PRECEDE IT. On this subject St. Paul leaves no room for doubt. He speaks of a certain particular growth and spirit of evil which must have full scope and play before the Advent. Nor does he leave us in any uncertainty as to the direction in which we must look for the rise of that state of things which will bring down upon itself God's latest, surest, and direst judgment. He selects for it a particular name, not one of the common names for sin in the Scripture, but a name which he only uses twice or thrice in all his writings, and which has always a very definite and precise meaning. Our English version renders this word in one verse as "iniquity," and in the next verse "the wicked one;" but in the original the word is substantially the same in both verses — in the one "the mystery of lawlessness doth already work;" and, in the other, "then shall the lawless one be revealed." St. Paul's statement is that already, when he was writing this letter eighteen hundred years ago, there was at work in the world, if not in some degree even in the Church, a spirit of lawlessness, which was, however, kept in check by some definite impediment, which he had evidently explained by word of mouth to the privileged Thessalonians. He, perhaps, does not refer to the strength of civil and national government, as it was then exhibited in the great Roman Empire, as exercising a salutary, though rough, control over the tendencies of fallen nature toward insubordination and anarchy; but, he distinctly says, there will come a time when the controlling power will be weakened or withdrawn, and then lawlessness will come to the surface and front of the world; and will set up its own law, which shall be that of menace, intimidation, and violence; or else these same things under more numerous and more subtle nomenclatures, and in full blown insolence, shall bring matters to that pass, that nothing less than the intervention and interposition of the Divine Lord and Judge can restore tranquility and harmony to the dislocated and disorganized earth.

II. THE LAWLESS WILL THEN BE REVEALED. St. Paul seems to prepare us, in passing from lawlessness to the lawless one, for a sort of incarnation of lawlessness — principle, power, or person, sitting, as it were, in the very temple of God, "showing himself that he is God," and yet, in reality, deriving from Satan all "the powers and signs of lying wonders" by which he deludes the unhappy victims who are not fortified and preoccupied by the devout love of the truth. Why should it be a thing incredible with you that the Empire of Unrule shall at last have a personal head in whom the final discomfiture by the Advent of the great Lord shall manifest itself so that "he who runs may read"? But the thought profitable to us all is this — "lawlessness" is the predicted characteristic of the last age. May I not ask, Is it not now abroad on the Continent of Europe? Is it not abroad in one integral portion of what we still fondly term "the United Kingdom"? Is it not abroad in the family and the Church — in the workshop and the study — in the literature of a "science falsely so called" — and in the lurking places of political fanatics, who "count not their lives dear to them" if they can only but embitter an existence or topple down a throne? It is working everywhere with ingenious industry among the time honoured institutions of society itself. Frightful outbreaks of lawlessness have startled us again and again, until they have almost ceased to startle. Soon the newspaper will be fiat and dull which records not one of them — assassinations and attempted assassinations of rulers crowned and uncrowned, despotic, constitutional, or democratic — it matters not. "The foundations of the earth are indeed out of course." The reign of lawlessness is begun, though a few years, or a few tens of years, may yet intervene before the actual unveiling of the lawless one.

(Dean Vaughan.)

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KJV: For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

WEB: For the mystery of lawlessness already works. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way.