What Are the Grounds of Their Expectations?
By G.
The American Messenger, a monthly journal published in the interest of the American Tract Society, publishes the following request and enjoins it upon its patrons: "An earnest Christian recommends that arrangements be made by missionary, clerical, and other religious bodies, for 'the appointment of a day and hour, by the common consent of Christians all over the world, on which all who bow at the name of Jesus shall be gathered together, each in concert with his fellow, to ask for the conversion of the world.' 'Undoubtedly,' he says, 'there must be a much more hearty and united movement of the church of God on this subject than there ever has been, before we can begin to realize what the Bible authorizes us to expect in regard to the coming era of glory.'" This is certainly a heavy embargo. The population of the globe at the present day is some more than ten hundred millions. Of those, over five hundred millions bow to "gods many and lords many," from the bright luminary in the heavens to the most disgusting fetish. The other five hundred millions are to a great extent wrangling and quarreling with each other about forms and relics and church creeds and ecclesiastical minutiæ, many of them Christians only in name, mere court-worshipers at God's great Temple of Truth, and still it is thought there are good reasons to believe that all mankind will yet become experimentally religious! This would require a prodigious stretch of faith, surely. May the "good Lord" pardon all such misguided zeal. To those who would like to see a "thus saith the Lord" on this subject, let them refer to the following chapters and verses : Luke xiii, 23, 24; Rev. vi, 12-17; Matt. xiii, 30, 39; Ps. ii, 8, 9; Rev. xix, 19, 20; 2 Tim. iii, 1-5, 13, &c., &c.