A Bond of Relationship.
By J. E. Titus
THE present Empress of Russia, wife of Emperor Alexander, comes from the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. Prince Karl, of the same house, married a Prussian Princess, daughter of the lately deceased Prince Albrecht. They, however, separated. The Princess is said to be slightly deranged. These two alliances form two links in the chain. The Prussian (now the German) Crown Prince and the Hessian successor, Prince Louis, married sisters, from the royal house of Great Britain, Princesses Victoria and Alice. Their brother, the Prince of Wales, and the Crown Prince of Russia married daughters of the royal house of Denmark, Princess Adelaide and the beautiful Princess Maria Feodorowna. The Crown Prince of Denmark chose a Princess from Sweden, great-niece of Emperor William, connected through her mother with the house of Netherlands, and on its side with the house of Weimar and Wurtemberg, and through the Princess, daughter of Emperor Paul, with the Russian court; and again the Princess Olga Nikolaijewna married the king of Wurtemberg, and the Wurtemburger Princess Sophie, daughter of Princess Katharina Pawlowna, married the king of Holland. The wife of Emperor Paul, Maria Feodorowna, and the deceased Princess Helena were both Wurtemberg Princesses. The second son of the Denmark house, George I., King of Greece, married the Princess Olga Constantinowna. The head of the Saxe-Coburg house, Duke Ernst, is married to a Princess from Baden; the Grand Duke of Baden married the only daughter of Emperor William; the Grand Duke Michael Nikolajewitsch chose a sister of the Grand Duke of Baden and of the Grand Duchess Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Prince William of Baden chose a daughter of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolajewna, thus uniting all these houses in close connection. The present Empress Augusta of Germany and her sister, Princess Karl, unite the house of Weimar with that of Hohenzollern, and are related through their mother to the royal house of Russia. The Queen of Sweden, as a Princess of Nassau, is in a two-fold manner related to the Holland house of Orange as a sister-in-law of Prince Peter of Oldenburg and aunt of the Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrowna, while the deceased Queen, a princess of Leuchtenberg, was sister-in-law of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolajewna. The Grand Duke Constantine and Grand Duke of Oldenburg, King George of Hanover, Prince Albrecht of Prussia, the lately deceased Prince August of Sweden, the Duke of Anhalt, and the heir-expectant of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, all married Princesses of the house of Sachsen-Altenburg, thus making a network of cousinship which binds in a manifold way all the royal houses of Northern Europe. The foregoing is a good illustration of the words of Daniel. “They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another.” Dan. 2:43. Daniel is here describing a universal kingdom in four grades of succession; and of the last he says, “The kingdom shall be divided.” This division is more fully set forth in the seventh chapter, under the symbol of the beast with ten horns. Commentators and historians very generally agree that the ten kingdoms of Europe are here brought before the prophetic mind. The kingdom has been divided—and it is the hope that these intermarriages will bring about, what other means have failed to accomplish, a bond of union among the fluctuating fragments of this broken State. The exigences of the time call for something to be done; and having forgotten Him who rules in the kingdoms and affairs of men, the people act in their own wisdom, at best but transient and feeble. Vain hope! The kingdom will remain divided, but soon the impending blow will scatter it like chaff. But though hopelessly divided as to the nations of the world, the promise is, that the kingdom in its “greatness” shall be given to the saints of the Most High. May we share in that kingdom which will be unchangeable and everlasting, the benefits of which will be eternal, and subject to no variations or vicissitudes of time and fortune.