U. S by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 4, 1874

U. S

By Uriah Smith

1874.

WHAT will be the completed record of 1874, if casualties, disasters, and crimes shall continue to crowd its register to the close, as they have thus far filled it since its commencement? Compared with any preceding year, its proportional quota must be acknowledged to be more than full. Fires in the West, floods in the East, five millions of property destroyed in Chicago at one conflagration, a flourishing city in Wisconsin, nearly wiped out of existence at the same time, destructive fires raging over large sections of country parched by the drought, causing an immense loss of property; the bursting of a water-spout in Nevada, destroying a portion of a city in the mountains, with great loss of life, the bursting of large reservoirs in Massachusetts, causing terrible damage to property with a fearful loss of life, and now a terrible storm in Pittsburg and Alleghany, Pa., inundating the streets, sweeping away whole blocks of dwellings, and hurrying multitudes to a watery grave, with scarcely a moment's warning,—all these have come like horrors treading fast upon the heels of horrors. The storm at Pittsburg, it is reported, occasions the loss of nearly three millions of property, and about two hundred lives. By the flashes of lightning, horses and cattle could be seen floating in the torrent, and their cries of terror could be heard above the roar of the flood.

A similar disaster is reported from Sarnia, in Canada, and the destruction of a town by the same means in Moravia, in the Austrian Empire.

With these disturbances in the physical world, the foundations of society in a moral point of view seem to be about giving way. The agitation of the Beecher-Tilton scandal, however the matter may be fixed up in the end, can but tend to greatly loosen the restraints of morality upon masses of the people. And here comes a shameless troop of ultra spiritualists heralding with trump and drum their debauching doctrines, and publishing and boasting of their equally debauching practices. Surely there is occasion for the sighing and crying of which Ezekiel speaks when he brings to view the sealing of God's people in the last days. Eze. 9: 4: “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”