The Result | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 5, 1870

The Result.

We have reached the year eighteen hundred and seventy. For over eighteen hundred years that gospel which many so strenuously contend was designed, and is destined, to convert the world, has been promulgated among the nations of the earth. It was first presented by the Lord himself, then by his apostles, then by the early Christians, and by a long list, through succeeding ages, of those who have been willing to seal their testimony with their blood. The noblest and best of every age have urged it upon their fellow-men. The world has had their continual example of toil, and suffering, and death, for these life-giving truths; and what, so far, is the result, as it respects the conversion of all mankind? The following statistics show the preparations made, and the consequent expenditure incurred, by some of the leading so-called Christian nations of the world for the purpose of wholesale robbery and murder among each other:

ARMAMENTS OF EUROPE IN 1869.—Baron Kuhn gave, in the Austro-Hungarian Parliament, the following statement: France—Army, 800,000; National Guard, 550,000,—total 1,350,000. North and South Germany—Army, 1,000,154; Landwehr, 228,963,—1,229,117. Austro-Hungarian Monarchy—Army, including Navy and reserves, 800,000; Landwehr and Border troops, 253,000,—1,053,000. Russia—Army, 827,350, local and irregular forces, 639,650,—1,467,000. Italy—Army and National Guard, 480,461. Grand total, 5,579,578 without including Spain, or Portugal, or Belgium, or Holland, or England herself, or the three small nations in Northern Europe. These would certainly swell the sum total to at least seven millions. What a host to guard the armed truce that statesmen call Peace, and all to keep reputed Christians from robbing and slaughtering one another.

So much for wars and fightings, which James tells us spring from a source far different from that which is pure and good. And now, if to these vast throngs we add the still larger armies of those who, though they bear no weapons of murder in their hands, are assiduously spreading the seeds of evil and corruption among their fellows, as drunkards, gamblers, thieves, blasphemers, the licentious, &c., &c., with which all the world is filled, the prospect of its conversion is not apparently brought any nearer when righteousness shall fill the earth as the waters fill the sea, if we are to look at the present dispensation as the time when, and to the gospel as the means by which, this is to be accomplished.

If the gospel was designed to convert the world, we may well begin to regard it as a failure. But this was not its design. It was given to be a witness to all nations, and to take out of them a people for God's name. And so, even from the corrupt masses of this degenerate time, a few will be saved. All may be saved who are willing to turn from the broad way in which the multitude walk, and stem the swelling tides of corruption and evil, and purify their hearts by obeying the truth, and bear the cross, despising the shame, for the love of Christ and the recompense of the reward. Reader, which company will you be in? Everything centers in this all-important and final question: Which company will you be in? Ask it seriously of your own soul; and decide in season.