The End Approaching—Ominous Signs.
THE following is from the Pittsburg Christian Advocate, and whether sign or not, it shows a very peculiar state of things. “Human affairs seem to be approaching a crisis. Great events thicken around us. Decades of years now accomplish results that formerly required centuries. Sin moves with quickened steps; so, too, holiness. The hour is instinct with momentous deeds. A night of crime is settling down upon the world. In our own nation it is dark and tempestuous, passional and tragic. Drunkenness runs riot. Speculation is unsettling the foundations of public confidence. Skepticism is robbing all classes of their faith and hopes. Fraud and dishonesty darken the halls of trade. Robberies and murders are frequent. Peculation and bribery dwell in high places. The land is full of wickedness. Great cities are seats of sin, pollution, wretchedness. Not over-drawn is this life-picture of to-day. The counterpart and corrective of all this is seen in the steps of God's providence, admonishing men in the tempest and the earthquake. Turn seaward, and behold the tornado engulfing vast argosies of ships. Look northward, and witness the earthquake shocks that extend far inland from the ocean; or southward, and see them accompanied by mountainous tidal waves that submerged fleets and cities. It is Jehovah who speaks to man in tremblings of the rock-ribbed earth and destroying winds. And what shall we say of cholera, traveling like a destroying angel among the nations; of other epidemics, decimating shiploads of emigrants, or falling upon communities and depopulating them; or of fires, explosions, and railroad accidents, that destroy millions of property and thousands of lives, and send thrills of sadness through widely-scattered homes? Are not these God's messengers of wrath—his visible footsteps—dissuading from evil deeds, and sent as warnings to the incorrigible? They premonish the evil-doer that God is just, as well as good, and that the day of retribution will certainly come. They are daily-occuring revelations of God to show his eternal hatred of sinful deeds.”