Peace and Safety by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 22, 1874

“Peace and Safety.”

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

The Apostle Paul, speaking of the coming of “the day of the Lord,” says, “When they shall cry, Peace and Safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” The “battle of the great day” will be fought, and the inhabitants of the earth will arm for the conflict, yet they will cry, “Peace and safety,” in the very face of impending destruction. So great will be the blindness of the wise of this world under the influence of the deceptions of the last days.

Another prophet says that “many nations” shall say that nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Micah 4. But the Lord says by Joel, “Proclaim war, wake up the mighty men; beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears.” The context shows that this is a prophecy of the last days; when the harvest of the earth is about to be reaped, and the battle of the great day to be fought.

This shows that in the last days, when men are crying, Peace and safety, or, in more modern language, are singing, “There’s a good time coming,” when almost every pulpit is congratulating the world on its “progression,” and teaching that the nations are laying aside their thoughts and their weapons of war, and are about to inaugurate a new era of peace, the world is actually arousing its war spirit, and the nations are making preparations for war on the most gigantic scale.

We have sometimes represented it in this light as an illustration: If an inventor should produce some implement or machinery by which the products of the soil might be greatly increased or utilized, something of the greatest possible advantage to the agricultural interests of the world, he must secure his right, and manufacture at his own risk; and if he has not the means to defend his rights in the courts, he may, by infringements, lose his labors, and be suffered to die in poverty.

On the other hand, should he invent some instrument of destruction, something by which war could be carried on more successfully, by which human life could be destroyed far faster than ever before, he need not be subjected to any risk or expense. Any government in the world will purchase his invention or so patronize him as to assure to him a fortune.

Our own country—the land of genius and inventions, of agricultural and commercial enterprise—furnishes us a case in point. Eli Whitney is celebrated as the inventor of the “cotton gin.” The planters of the South were about to abandon the idea of the extensive raising of cotton, as the expense of cleaning was so great that it was considered impossible to raise and clean it to profit. The attention of young Whitney, a “yankee schoolmaster” in Georgia, was called to the subject, and he invented the machine which has made cotton the great staple of the South. Its great value was in its simplicity, but this fact led to infringements, and they were everywhere made and sold. The courts refused to vindicate his rights. “It was rare that a jury in a cotton State gave a verdict in his favor.” In the book entitled “Great Fortunes,” Mr. Whitney’s failure to secure his rights is thus noticed:—

“Whitney, thoroughly disheartened, now abandoned the manufacture of cotton gins in disgust, wound up his affairs, and found himself a poor man. In spite of the far reaching benefits of his invention, he had not realized one dollar above his expenses. He had given millions upon millions of dollars to the cotton growing States, he had opened the way for the establishment of the vast cotton-spinning interests of his own country and Europe, and yet, after fourteen years of hard labor, he was a poor man, the victim of a wealthy, powerful, and, in his case, a dishonest class, who had robbed him of his rights and of the fortune he had so fairly earned.” “America never presented a more shameful spectacle than was exhibited when the courts of the cotton-growing regions united with the piratical infringers of Whitney’s rights in robbing their greatest benefactor.”

In this emergency Mr. Whitney turned his skill in another direction. He undertook to improve the fire arms of the country, and with success. He established an arms factory in New Haven, Conn., and the book already quoted says: “He has the honor of being the inaugurator of the system of progressive improvements in fire arms which has gone on steadily for now fully sixty years past.”

In this business Mr. Whitney received the patronage of government, and was enabled, not only to “pass the evening of his days in comfort, but also to leave a handsome estate to his family.”

And this is the way of all the world in these days except that the war spirit, and the preparations for war have greatly increased since the time of Whitney who died in 1825.

The following articles from the Inter-Ocean show how the nations are turning their swords into ploughshares, and how fondly they are dreaming of peace! With the many facts of this character before our eyes we are sometimes led to question if the ministers of the day believe their own preaching of the prospects of peace and the millennium. If they do, they are the blindest of all people, and least fitted to be teachers and leaders. But here are the articles.

THE NEW FRENCH MUSKET.

The Journal de Paris states that orders have been given to proceed immediately with the manufacture of the new muskets, model 1874 (system gras). These weapons will only be constructed in the work-shops of the state; private firms will not be called upon to assist. The calculation is that in about a year a million of them will be made. Then only will the arms be placed in the hands of the soldiers of the acting army, and the men of the reserve, and the territorial army will be drilled in the management of this musket. The chassepots will be withdrawn, and they will be altered to the new pattern.

France has at present 1,800,000 of them; so that, by adding 200,000 new ones to be constructed in the interval, the Minister of War counts upon possessing, at the end of 1876, 3,000,000 of muskets (model gras), with a store of 250 metal cartridges per weapon. The manufacture will afterwards be continued on a normal scale, and in proportion to the resources of the ordinary budget of war. The news concerning the artillery is no less satisfactory. France will have at the end of the year 1875, 494 batteries of six cannon each of calibres 5 and 7, with iron carriages, the pieces in bronze, breech-loading, on the Reffye system. From the beginning of next year the construction of bronze cannon will be abandoned, and those in steel on the Lahitolle system will be adopted.

—Inter-Ocean.

“THE WAY OF PEACE.”

Experiments lately made in the Austrian Loan Office have created something approaching to a panic in military circles throughout the Empire. The new Krupp field gun, eight centimeters in diameter, has been tried, and found superior in every respect to the Austrian cannon heretofore in use. According to the official returns, the superiority of the Prussian gun was in the proportion of five to one. The reform of the Austrian artillery had already been decided upon in principle, and the Krupp gun had many partisans previous to these experiments, which seem to have settled the point in its favor. Great as is the anxiety of the military authorities to effect the change, the reconstruction of the whole material of the army cannot be the work of a day, and the cost, estimated at from three to four millions, will quite upset the equilibrium of a budget which is never remarkable for a large surplus. This Krupp gun is not quite the same as that used by Prussia during the late war, being something lighter, with a wider range and greater precision. It is, in fact, because the German army is not yet itself completely provided with this new gun that the Austrians can afford to restrain their impatience; and they might perhaps do well to remember that before they have obtained a full supply for their own artillery, something more perfect in the way of engines of destruction may have been invented; for the progress made in artillery since Napoleon III. introduced the rifled cannon into the French army has been little short of incredible. The Austrians, enlightened as they thought by what took place at Solferino, flattered themselves in 1866, that they had the best field artillery of any European nation, and many competent foreign officers shared this delusion, which was rapidly dispelled by the campaign in Bohemia. The superiority of the Prussian artillery was still more manifest during the war with France, and since that time further improvements have been effected. And so the game goes merrily on, every nation arming itself to the teeth, and spending millions upon millions because it loves to walk in “the way of peace.”—Inter-Ocean.

J. H. WAGGONER.