Remarkable Events During the Nine Years Past.
By Clinton Collegrove
We are now (in December, 1869,) about to enter the tenth and last year in one of the most wonderful decades of the world's history, and who can tell but that the last year of the decade (1870) may be the most wonderful of the ten? Glance a moment at the leading features of this startling and prolific epoch, opening with the destructive and tremendous four years' war of the rebellion in America. Add to this gigantic conflict, with its awful waste of life and treasure, the total extinction of American slavery. Follow this with the foreign conquest and occupation of Mexico, with imperialism established and overthrown, and the tragic death of the ill-fated Maximilian. Recall the Austro-Prussian spoliation of Denmark, followed by the short, but sharp and destructive, war in 1866, between Austria single-handed, and the allied armies of Prussia and Italy. What were the marked issues of this eventful campaign? The aggrandizement of Prussia by the incorporation of sundry German provinces into her kingdom, and the “unification” of Italy by the addition of Venice on the shoulder of the Adriatic Sea. Nor, least of all was the detachment of Austria, as a right-hand, imperial support of the pope, leaving France alone, of all Europe, to guard and uphold, with special responsibility and concern, the Papal See. These were important results, certainly. Then we had the Spanish war on some of the South American republics, and the grapple of mammoth Brazil with obstinate Paraguay, a vexation not yet quite finished. We had the bloody and heart-rending struggle of Crete in the Mediterranean, with her Turkish oppressor. We had the costly and difficult English expedition to Abyssinia. Spain is yet contending with the insurgent forces in her West Indian dependency, Cuba. England has been vexed and perplexed with the mutinous, uneasy, and menacing Fenian Brotherhood, stirring up alarms in Ireland and Canada. A revolution has recently swept over Spain herself, with the result to dethrone and exile her queen. Other insurrections, revolutions, and wars, of more limited extent, we cannot now be at the pains to enumerate, unless we mention the harassing Indian wars and tumults on our own Western border, and the insurrections in China and Japan. Then the nine years past have been marked by signal perturbations and strange phenomena in nature. Most obvious and impressive in the retrospect is the mighty South American earthquake of 1868, with its prolonged subterranean undulations circling around the globe, and its awful ocean tides rolling with ponderous fury in various directions. Nor can one easily forget the frequent repetitions of terrible disaster on the ocean by fierce and destructive gales. Typhoons, hurricanes and tempests have kept the vast and salty world of waters in almost constant excitement and agitation. Nor have the inland waters escaped. The fall of 1869 is declared to have been the most remarkable in its swift, succeeding, and fearful storms ever known on the great lakes. Tornadoes and gales have run riot also on the land, while the skies have poured down floods, that, gathering momentum and power, have swept numerous sections of the country and of Europe with destroying torrents and inundations. We mention these facts, as not merely in the ordinary course of nature, but as strikingly unusual and peculiar. Recall, again, the series of meteoric showers in various countries for several years, besides single meteors of singular brilliancy, aerolites, and falling masses of huge dimensions. Remember the strange appearances in the sky, the brilliant corruscations of the northern auroras, the luminous nebulae, or bows of cloudy brightness spanning the heavens, and shapes and phases of light that have startled casual observers in different parts of the world. Volcanoes, too, have spouted their fiery and awful cataracts in Italy, in South America, in the Sandwich Islands, and in various tropical regions and islands of the sea. Unusual appearances in the solar orb likewise have attracted the attention of astronomers, and led to conjectures in which the welfare and interest of this our planet are possibly and seriously involved. The nine years past have been remarkable also for pestilences and famines of distressing and calamitous character, as, for example, the destructive famine or famines in India. One easily recalls accounts of the cholera, cattle plagues, Russian fever and yellow fever, and the sufferings of various populations from sickness and harvest failures. Casualties have abounded. Consider the railway collisions, the steamboat collisions and explosions, the shipwrecks, the fires, both in town and country, fires in the forest, on the prairie, and in the cities, the frequent and dreadful coal mine disasters, with loss of life immense and fearful. Is this a foretaste of the world's jubilee, a millennium of progress and victory by material and human genius and wisdom, or through the zeal, and wealth, and enterprise of societies and churches in the nineteenth century? What shall we say of the lawlessness of the age, the adulteries, and seductions, and assassinations, the theatrical indecencies, the pictorial pollutions of newspapers, the fictions of romance, and the wonders and wickedness of Spiritualism, including free-love and planchette? The decade now drawing to a close has been characterized still further by the most astonishing enterprises and achievements, by which the intercourse, and we may say, in a certain sense, the neighborhood of nations has been promoted. We may mention the successful laying of three ocean cables connecting America with Europe, to say nothing of innumerable shorter lines by sea and land, and the completion of the great Pacific Railroad, besides immense extension of iron lines in almost every direction throughout the civilized world, and projects of other lines, to an extent almost surpassing belief. The recent celebration of the Suez Canal is fresh in recollection, and it is impossible not to be struck with the magnitude and significance of this achievement, not merely in the facilitation of commercial intercourse between Europe and the Orient, but in the prophetic relations evolved between Egypt and Turkey on the one hand, and imperial France on the other. It is eminently a building age. Constructive schemes of immense magnitude and cost are not only proposed and commenced, but actually completed. Art, invention, science, and enterprise, are fruitful in conceptions, and achievements, too, of almost endless variety and extent. In machinery and implements the results are so great as to render an adequate appreciation difficult. Nor, least of all, should we fail to mention the fruitful genius of the age, in the engines of war, both for attack and defense. Look at the monitors, and huge, heavy iron-clads of every type. View the needle-guns and manifold kinds of repeating weapons, the huge cannon of enormous weight and calibre, and certain deadly agents of destruction, the knowledge of whose mechanism is said to be kept concealed. The last ten years may be said to be the decade of needle-guns and iron-clads. And every civilized nation on earth is extensively supplied with the weapons of war, and literally armed to the teeth. The few years past have been known as a period of that kind of exhibition of universal enterprise, comprehended under the familiar name of World's Fairs. Especially, as far transcending every other like example, may be mentioned the World's Exposition at Paris, in the year 1867. The collection of specimens of the industry of the world was wonderful and bewildering in that fashionable capital, on the whole, perhaps, the chief metropolis of the world's pride, and vanity, and grandeur. Nor should we omit to mention the fact that this is an era of Congresses and Conferences, political and religious, diplomatic and representative, local and universal. Alliances, societies, fraternities, associations, orders, and organizations, of every aim, ambition, and complexion, are appointing their places and times for consultation and debate. Men of peace, of temperance, of reform, Masons, Templars, Spiritualists, and Infidels, people of every religion and no religion, politicians, scientists, laborers, and capitalists, publishers, editors, and inventors, people of every pursuit and profession, and of both sexes, have their convocations and public meetings everywhere. Who can keep pace with them all? Greatest and most notable of all, hitherto, is the great Catholic Ecumenical Council, now in session in the city of Rome. Doubtless, in view of the revolutionary tendency of the times, and the culmination and the terminal agreement of the prophetic epochs, which must be located in these days—unless we are greatly mistaken—very great and important results are destined to flow from this gathering of Catholic dignitaries—results affecting the status and welfare of millions, and closely related to the near coming kingdom of our Lord. We do not propose to indulge in comments on this subject now, though it is a theme of intense interest to the watchful and intelligent Christian. We have thus recounted the more prominent features and developments of the wonderful nine years just elapsed, and we see in the striking assemblage of events the evidence of the extraordinary character of the epoch. No such nine years has the world ever seen before. We find in them the accomplishment of our Lord's prophetic outline, which was to be the stimulus of his praying and watchful people's expectation and hope. In them was to be the signal of rapidly approaching redemption. We ought to have mentioned the vast commercial interchanges, and speculative manias of those who heap up or covet earthly riches; the rapid accumulation of wealth, and the instant determination and activity of individuals and corporations in repairing losses, and replacing, with the aid of hundreds and thousands of busy hands, the vehicles and highways of traffic and transit. We should have spoken, too, of the fearful gust of financial disturbance—the earthquake that shook Wall street with its money-gamblers, in September last. “The distress of nations with perplexity” is now already incipient, we think, but may be more marked in the course of another year. In view of the pregnant and yet inspiring solemnities of the hour, eloquent of the return and dominion of earth's divine King, what should be the Christian's attitude? Surely our joy and comfort should be in the service of the Lord Jesus. Every feeling of sacred interest in divine things should be elicited and stimulated by the assurance of those august and blessed realities which are approaching. What activity of intelligent devotion to the work before us is enjoined, and a work, too, happily as congenial, as it is obligatory! May God in love and mercy be pleased to direct all our way to glorify his adorable name!—CLINTON COLLEGROVE, in the Herald of the Coming Kingdom.