The Approaching Climax in the World's Drama
Some day, according to Holy Scripture, it will come—the grand climax in the drama of human history. Is it approaching now? No one can have failed, in these times to note how constantly keen observers are giving utterance to the thought that the world is approaching a great crisis. It is a time of swift changes. World-shaping events take place with startling suddenness. Addressing the graduating class in one of the Washington law schools, Dean Hamilton recently characterized the spirit of our time in these words:— “We have entered upon a period of upheaval and change, the spirit of unrest has entered into the minds of men.”
There is a feeling of uncertainty as to the stability of institutions and things which men have heretofore expected to continue jogging along indefinitely in the accustomed way. “Nothing is certain,” said the conservative Washington Post editorially the other day; “no throne or dynasty or nation is so entrenched and immured that it is invincible. That which has stood for a thousand years is not now guaranteed against a fall.” Throughout the world, too, there is a growing spirit of expectancy—as of a coming climax of the age. Not only in Christendom is this noted, but in non-Christian lands as well. Travelers have again and again in recent years reported this expectancy among the millions of the interior of Asia. The Hindus and the Buddhists, we are told, look for the end of the age and the coming of a divine teacher. One leader of thought in India puts it,— “In the West as well as in the East, the heart of man is throbbing with the glad expectation of the new avatar.”
The Moslem world, we are told, is expectant of the end of the age and the coming of a greater than Mahomet. The “sure word of prophecy” gives God's answer to the world's spirit of inquiry and expectancy. The voice of divine prophecy cries to this generation,— “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.”
We may know that above all the affairs of men and of nations, in these times of change and overturning, is the living God, waiting the time when his everlasting kingdom shall at last be ushered in. As Canon Ainger has put it,— “God is working his purposes out, as
year succeeds to year;
God is working his purposes out, and
the time is drawing near;
Nearer and nearer draws the time,
the time that shall surely be,
When the earth shall be filled with the
glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.”
But between us and that everlasting kingdom of peace lies a brief and thrilling course of events, constituting indeed the climax of this world's history.