The Mark of the Beast | Page 9

far as I have been able to gather, the story is the same, the missing
people are in almost every case those whom, when they were with us,
were least understood by us."
Some such thought had been filling the mind of Ralph Bastin, as he sat
in his Editor's chair in the office of the "Courier." Allied to this thought
there came another--an almost necessary corollary of the first--namely
the new atmosphere of evil, of lawlessness, of wantonness that
pervaded the city.
With a jerk, his mind darted backward over the years to that remarkable
sermon on Judas and the Antichrist.
"It is true, too true," he murmured, "'the mystery of iniquity' that has
long been working undermining the foundations of all true social and
religious safety and solidity, is now to be openly manifested and
perfected. The real Christians, the Church of God, which is the Bride of
Christ, has been silently, secretly caught up to her Lord in the air. She

was 'the salt of the earth,' she kept it from the open putrefaction that has
already, now, begun to work. Then, too, that wondrous, silent, but
mighty influence of restraint upon evil.--The Holy Spirit, Himself, has
left the earth, and now, what? All restraint gone, the world everywhere
open to believe the Antichrist lie, the delusion. The whole tendency of
the teaching, from a myriad pulpits, during the last few years, has been
to prepare the world to receive the Devil's lie."
For a moment or two he sat in deep thought. Suddenly glancing at the
clock, he murmured:
"I wonder what the other papers are saying this evening."
He rang up his messenger boy on his office phone. The lad came
promptly. Bastin handed him half-a-crown, saying:
"Get me a copy of the last edition of all the chief evening papers,
Charley, and be smart about it, and perhaps you will keep the change
for your smartness."
In six minutes the lad was back with a sheaf of papers. Bastin just
glanced at them separately, noting the several times of their issue, then
with a "Good boy, Charley! Keep the change," he unfolded one of the
papers.
The boy stood hesitatingly, a moment, then said:
"Beg yer pardin', Mr. Bastin, sir, but wot's yer fink as people's sayin'
'bout the 'Translation o' the Saints,' as it's called?"
"I can't say, I am sure, Charley. The careless, and godless have already
said some very foolish things relative to the stupendous event that has
just taken place, and I think, for a few days, they are likely to say even
more foolish things. What is the special one that you have heard?"
"Why they sez, sir--its in one o' the heving peepers, they sez--that the
people wot's missin' hev been carted off in aeroplanes by some o' the
other religionists wot wanted to git rid o' them, an' that the crank

religiouses is all gone to----"
"Where?" smiled Bastin.
"I don't think anybody knows where, sir!"
"I do, Charley, and many others to-day, who have been left behind
from that great Translation know--they have been 'caught up' into the
air where Jesus Christ had come from Heaven to summon them to
Himself.
"Mr. Hammond is there, Charley, and that sweet little adopted daughter
of mine, whom you once asked me whether 'angels could be more
beautiful than she was!'"
"Ah, yus, sir, I recollecks, sir, she wur too bootiful fur words, she wur."
There was one moment's pause, then the boy, with a hurried, "it's all
dreadful confuzellin," slipped from the room.
Ralph Bastin opened paper after paper, glanced with the swift,
comprehensive eye of the practised journalist at here and there a
column or paragraph, and was on the point of tossing the last
news-sheet down with the others, on the floor, when his eye caught the
words, "Joyce, Journalist."
The paragraph recorded the finding of the body of the drunken
scoundrel. "From the position of the body," the account read, "and from
the nature of the wounds, it would almost seem as though some infernal
power had hurled him, head on, against the wall of the room. Whether
we believe, or disbelieve the statements concerning the taking away, by
some mysterious Translation process, of a number of persons from our
midst, yet the fact remains that each hour is marked by the finding of
some poor dead creature, under circumstances quite as tragically
mysterious as this case of Joyce the reporter."
For a time Ralph Bastin sat deep in thought. He had not yet written the
article for to-morrow's issue "From the Prophet's chair." He felt his

insufficiency, he realized the need of being God's true witness in this
hour that was ushering in the awful reign of The Antichrist. He did the
best thing, he knelt in