After a comfortable dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel, the Society, which included Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall, Mr. John Morley and Sir James Stephen, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Tennyson, and Dean Church, would gather around to hear and discuss a paper read by one of the members upon such questions as: 'What is death?' 'Is God unknowable?' or 'The nature of the Moral Principle'. Sometimes, however, the speculations of the Society ranged in other directions. 'I think the paper that interested me most of all that were ever read at our meetings,' says Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff, 'was one on "Wherein consists the special beauty of imperfection and decay?" in which were propounded the questions "Are not ruins recognised and felt to be more beautiful than perfect structures? Why are they so? Ought they to be so?' ' Unfortunately, however, the answers given to these questions by the Metaphysical Society have not been recorded for the instruction of mankind.
Manning read several papers, and Professor Huxley and Mr. John Morley listened with attention while he expressed his views upon 'The Soul before and after Death', or explained why it is 'That legitimate Authority is an Evidence of Truth'. Yet, somehow or other, his Eminence never felt quite at ease in these assemblies; he was more at home with audiences of a different kind; and we must look in other directions for the free and full manifestation of his speculative gifts.
In a series of lectures, for instance, delivered in 1861--it was the first year of the unification of Italy-- upon 'The Present Crisis of the Holy See, tested by prophecy', we catch some glimpses of the kind of problems which were truly congenial to his mind. 'In the following pages,' he said, 'I have endeavoured, but for so great a subject most insufficiently, to show that what is passing in our times is the prelude of the antichristian period of the final dethronement of Christendom, and of the restoration of society without God in the world.' 'My intention is,' he continued, 'to examine the present relation of the Church to the civil powers of the world by the light of a prophecy recorded by St Paul.' This prophecy (2 Thess. ii 3 to 11) is concerned with the coming of the Antichrist, and the greater part of the lectures is devoted to a minute examination of this subject. There is no passage in Scripture, Manning pointed out, relating to the coming of Christ more explicit and express than those foretelling Antichrist; it therefore behoved the faithful to consider the matter more fully than they are wont to do. In the first place, Antichrist is a person. 'To deny the personality of Antichrist is to deny the plain testimony of Holy Scripture.' And we must remember that 'it is a law of Holy Scripture that when persons are prophesied of, persons appear'.
Again, there was every reason to believe that Antichrist, when he did appear, would turn out to be a Jew. 'Such was the opinion of St.
Irenaeus, St. Jerome, and of the author of the work De Consummatione Mundi, ascribed to St. Hippolytus, and of a writer of a Commentary on the Epistle to the Thessalonians, ascribed to St. Ambrose, of many others, who said that he will be of the tribe of Dan: as, for instance, St. Gregory the Great, Theodoret, Aretas of Caesarea, and many more. Such also is the opinion of Bellarmine, who calls it certain. Lessius affirms that the Fathers, with unanimous consent, teach as undoubted that Antichrist will be a Jew. Ribera repeats the same opinion, and adds that Aretas, St. Bede, Haymo, St. Anselm, and Rupert affirm that for this reason the tribe of Dan is not numbered among those who are sealed in the Apocalypse... Now, I think no one can consider the dispersion and providential preservation of the Jews among all the nations of the world and the indestructible vitality of their race without believing that they are reserved for some future action of His judgment and Grace. And this is foretold again and again in the New Testament.'
'Our Lord,' continued Manning, widening the sweep of his speculations, 'has said of these latter times: "There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, insomuch as to deceive even the elect"; that is, they shall not be deceived; but those who have lost faith in the Incarnation, such as humanitarians, rationalists, and pantheists, may well be deceived by any person of great political power and success, who should restore the Jews to their own land, and people Jerusalem once more with the sons of the Patriarchs. And, there is nothing in the political aspect of the world which renders such a combination impossible; indeed, the state of Syria, and the tide of European diplomacy, which 'is continually moving eastward, render such an event within a reasonable probability.' Then Manning threw out a bold suggestion. 'A successful medium,' he said, 'might well pass himself off by his preternatural endowments as the promised Messiahs.'
Manning went on to discuss the course of events which would lead to the final catastrophe. But this subject, he confessed, 'deals with agencies so transcendent and mysterious, that all I shall venture to do will be to sketch in outline what the broad and luminous prophecies, especially of the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse, set forth without attempting to enter into minute details, which can only be interpreted by the event'. While applauding his modesty, we need follow Manning no further in his commentary upon those broad and luminous works; except to observe that 'the apostasy of the City of Rome from the Vicar of Christ and its destruction by the Antichrist' was, in his opinion, certain. Nor was he without authority for this belief. For it was held by 'Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject', and who, besides, 'states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius that Rome shall apostatise from the faith'.
