How striking and impressive is the fulfillment of Scripture in regard to the "perilous" or troublesome "times of the last days!" And yet how sadly is the significance of the fact misapprehended! Scarcely any will admit any relation between such dreadful degeneracy, and the near approach of the great day. The multitude are "willingly ignorant." The world is on a great chase after earthly good, ignoring the one special great necessity of earth, the coming of Jesus. The explanation tendered of the extraordinary casualties and crimes of the time, is, "the natural result of the war." But it is with the fact and not with the occasion or cause, that we have to deal as bearing on one other stupendous event. Besides, how is it in England, and other countries of Europe? Is not the record universally concurrent, a record of violence and outrage? With your permission, I will present a brief epitome of facts gleaned from an article in a leading New York journal: "From April to October 10th, 95 murders are counted from metropolitan files; besides 12 homicides and half a dozen assassinations. We count 25 murderous attempts, 9 of wife-murder, and 7 attempted, and 33 suicides. We reckon 150 lives lost by criminal hands, making no account of the wreck and ruin on the great highways of travel. But the great crimes of Europe have far exceeded all these in wonder and mystery. In systematic wickedness, they show an older experience than American crime. Intellect, science, and even religion were sunk in the plot and woven in the deed." After an enumeration of cases of special enormity, the writer resumes: "Crime of this complex character seems weird, appalling, and extravagant beyond expression. Monstrous among other flagrances, was the burning of 3 houses by a girl of 14, polygamy to the extent of 10 wives, by a man who afterwards hanged himself, highway robbery by a boy of 14, the same by a politician, and the malign biting off of noses. Add to these the publication of obscene books and papers, and the vile defacing of natural scenery." And yet it is probable that this statement includes but a portion, perhaps a small portion of actual and aggregate crimes in the Northern States. In the same computation is included a list of bank robberies, in which the aggregate losses reach nearly a million of dollars. A chapter of defalcations and swindles involves the enormous amount of more than six and a quarter millions misappropriated, besides paymaster frauds, navy yard frauds, and various official corruptions. Let these facts be pondered, and their purport soberly weighed. How very far from the truth is the vain assumption, that the world is improving! With some alleged increasing good, is positive increasing evil. And how infatuated is the expectation of a world's deliverance from such awful incubus of sin and sinful works, without a coming and renovating Jesus! Is it not Jesus who is to make all things new? Oh, for that day of jubilee quickly to arrive. Never will earth, cursed and burdened with its disabling and distracting load of sin and guilt, cease to stagger like a drunken man, never will its groan of weariness and woe be hushed, nor its sigh of longing for deliverance be answered, until appears the sign of the Son of man in heaven. For this a prayer is perpetually ascending from the very heart and frame of this creation. How much more should Christians long and pray for the light and clouds that environ the enthroned One! Should we not pray and look with rapture and expectation, when the signs are so accumulating of the near Advent of the blessed Jesus? Hoping not to be tedious, I will briefly consider another evidence or manifestation of the "perilous times," in the constant and appalling casualties which painfully distinguish our day. From May 15th to October 15th (five months), there were 68 railway accidents, and in the whole year to date, not less than 100. "Thirty millions would be a modest reckoning," says the writer quoted above, "for the loss involved in demolished lives, trains, and properties. Probably 300 have been killed, and more than 600 injured in every shape, during the year. 65 disasters by steamboat explosions and shipwreck are also noted. Several of these catastrophes which have crimsoned river and ocean, far and wide, are remembered in all their awful poetry, and helpless agony and terror. From the Sultana, some 1200 found a muddy grave in the Mississippi, 400 went down in the burning ship Nelson, 250 with the Brother Jonathan, and 100 in the Pewabic, 3000 lives, it may be reckoned, have been lost between April and September." In addition, may be mentioned a great variety of miscellaneous casualties, from innovations, burnings, crushings, shootings, cuttings, and particularly explosions, from which latter cause an enumeration of only 5 cases gives a list of killed and wounded, reaching nearly 2000. The Philadelphia Ledger, of November 11th, has the following: "We still hear the most heart-rending accounts of disasters at sea, caused by the recent storm in the Gulf of Mexico and on the coasts of Carolina and Florida. At least one hundred vessels have been wrecked, and many lives lost." Conflagration must be added to the catalogue of items in the area of ruin. 155 fires between April and October 15th are minuted. A brief table of losses is subjoined: | Loss by unenumerated fires, . . . . . | $ 30,000,000 |
| Burning of Gov't Works in Tenn. . . . . | 10,000,000 |
| Warehouse conflagration in New York, . . . . . | 3,000,000 |
| Other fires, . . . . . | 1,000,000 |
| Fires in Canada, . . . . . | 1,500,000 |
| Total in six months, . . . . . | $ 45,500,000 | Nor does this include the burning of 1000 acres of forest in Massachusetts. Another item of disaster should be mentioned, viz., by freshets and deluges. Certainly, the number has been of late remarkable. On the coast of Texas and Louisiana, recently, 90 were drowned, not to mention 600 cattle on one farm. I presume almost every community in America can attest a marked increase of local expenses, for the repair of roads and bridges. It is needless to enumerate disasters. Let us suggest a little practical and particular observation for the next year. Let us see if there is not something fearfully uneasy and ominous in the elastic elements of nature. What says our great Prophet himself? In the enumeration which should prefigure and immediately precede the COMING, is perplexity, and distress of nations, the sea and waves roaring. And what further says the Prophet Christ? "And when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Is it pretended that these signs are figurative of Jerusalem's overthrow? But what particular redemption ensued on that catastrophe? No, it is a nobler redemption than any which then occurred, which watching Christians will soon realize. Who does not recall the recent terrible inundation at Calcutta? And who has not observed the recent frequency of tornadoes, those resistless angels and engines of wrath, rising and sweeping on with terrific suddenness and power, surging and tossing about the most ponderous objects as playthings? One may, henceforth, confidently expect the future will be characterized by the evidence of uneasiness in the elements, storms, floods, fires, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Let us look for them, for I am confident that they will continue to occur in extraordinary manner and degree. And amid all this tumult and agitation, we have something for a positive basis and substance of hope, the Advent of Jesus. Let not those who believe in the proximity of this event be astonished at startling and unprecedented disturbances and convulsions of the elements. When they begin to come to pass, look up! for they will continue, until the end. Doubtless defunct volcanoes will have their energy revived, and those lately inactive will put forth their suspended and slumbering power. Earthquakes will communicate the token of their awful jar to astonished families and communities. Electricity, the fleet and vehement agent of God, will obediently and resistlessly manifest its multifarious agency and with tremulous elasticity await and with tremendous power execute the mandate of the Almighty. Facile and sensitive, with its kindred elements it will give token of the impress of the Power in Heaven, ready to be revealed, and manifest the agitation with which the glory of the Person of Jesus will affect the subtlest elements of nature. It is no wonder there is premonitory activity in the elements which are to be readjusted in the world to come, which are to be so rectified in their relations and operations as to dispense ten thousand blessings, while now they so frequently precipitate disaster. It is well. Let the purposes of God be accomplished. Let all the essential preparatory revolutions go on. Let the wheels of "progress" turn incessantly until the Chariot of the Restorer appears. But the progress will be one of turning upside down in this disjointed frame, of upheaval and commotion in nature and in nations. Thank God for every token of the epiphany. It will be the jubilee indeed to earth, though a dreadful astonishment and disappointment to millions of the wicked. So many fond calculations dismay! So many great preparations discommoded and disconcerted! Such a great expectation of progress [with the Devil yet current and tyrant in the atmospheric spaces] confounded! How complacently does the adversary survey divers kinds of progress in art and knowledge, while he retains his princedom of this world! How well they subserve his artifices, and co-operate with his ambition, as infernal autocrat among the powers of the air! But the Lord will have the Kingdom. Amen. I will only add a few words, by way of recapitulation. The correspondent already quoted says, "A fair calculation from the foregoing, would place the entire damage to property by disasters, at about eighty millions. Robberies may be set down at twenty millions more." I append an item, which might, perhaps, more appropriately have been inserted before, showing the great increase of shipwrecks on the coast of France, in seven years prior to 1863. It is from a French paper, the Moniteur de la Flotte. | Shipwrecks in 1856, . . . . . | 91 |
| " 1860, . . . . . | 127 |
| " 1863, . . . . . | 176 | Although the subject is so suggestive and important, perhaps I have said enough.—c. c. in Prophetic Times.