Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 23, 1866

1866.

ThE historic eye of four thousand years looks down upon this point, the year 1866, and sees the issue fairly made up—is man capable of self-government. During that long, tedious march man has demonstrated a thousand times, and upon as many battle-fields, his capabilities to fight, has shown beyond question his physical prowess. And the last great showing on that issue was the grandest of them all, the crushing of the rebellion. The question for 1866 is to see if the broken fragments of war, a disorganized nation, can be harmoniously combined, "the many in one," by the diplomacy of peace, so that virtue and intelligence shall enable the people to make love of country its bulwark, and not its army and navy. For

"A union of hearts, a union of hands, A union of lakes and a union of lands,"

must be the bonds of a Republic, or it ceases to be a Republic. Well, the result sought is the most important man ever attempted to accomplish.

But 1866 is a year of note to the world. As an epoch it stands at the head of consummating grand events. The four quarters of the globe, at the dawn of this year, stand in strange and significant juxtapositions, as to coming troubles. A net-work of surroundings, not the devisings of human ingenuity, mysteriously enthrall the nations. All Europe watches Turkey. That appears to be the key of the arch of government of that continent. The Suez canal during this year will make "Palestine the highway of nations," and knock the last prop from beneath the rotten bottom of the worm-eaten Ottoman Empire. In 1866 the Emperor of the French will control the "short line route" to the East. On the first of May he is to withdraw his troops from Rome and leave the Pope to take care of himself. And already that venerable successor of the "rock-bottom," Galilean fisherman is looking out for a home, and the "Empire of Malta," the "kingdom of the sea," is talked of.

There is not a nation on earth that is at rest. The great cry is, "More rights to the people." The British empire is troubled. Fenians and pauperism are causing the corruptions of that government to quake. But why numerate the trials of the nations and the people. They are without end.—Warren Republican.