1870 | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 3, 1871

1870.

This truly has been an eventful year. In it some of our ablest statesmen, ministers of the gospel, educators, scientific men, and those renowned in the literary world, have died. In it the great Council at Rome declared an old man in his dotage the vicegerent of Jesus Christ on earth, and in a few days the pope saw the ambition of his life crumble to ashes, an army enter Rome, and the Vatican endangered; in it one of the most powerful monarchs of the world has been deposed and carried away into exile; in it some of the most wonderful displays in the sidereal heavens above and in the earth beneath us have taken place; meteors of great brilliancy and remarkable beauty have been witnessed. The display of “Northern Lights” this season, has been unusual in magnitude and grandeur, while shooting stars have been frequent. We have had a number of earthquakes, spreading terror in their pathway. The circles around the moon have been tinted with the colors of the rainbow, and the moon itself appeared like a bright globe of fire surrounded by rings of various hues.

In addition to these displays of nature, the human family has been visited with fire and sword. Deadly diseases have traversed sections of country, and swept away their victims by thousands. Famine and pestilence have done their work of destruction. Treachery and wickedness of men have filled the cup of human woe, and vice and intemperance have taken thousands of the fairest and most promising in our midst. But above all these woes of afflicted humanity, it has been a remarkable year for bloodshed. To say nothing of the lesser wars in other parts of the world, we call attention to the fearful struggle which has been raging in Alsace, and Lorraine, and around Paris. Within the last four months more blood has been shed than in any other equal period in modern times, even in the “most destructive campaigns of Napoleon, in the invasion of Russia, followed by the retreat from Moscow. Battles have been fought more bloody than Borodino; on a single day the carnage equalled that of Leipsic and Waterloo rolled into one. After the battle of Gravelotte, a writer followed the line of the dead for seven miles. Heaps of corpses lay on every hand a ghastly spectacle; men and horses, friend and foe,

‘In one red burial blent.’

The battle plain is now covered with graves, while far away in every city of Germany, as well as of France, the hospitals are filled with mangled remains of that terrible day. In addition to the carnage of the field, we read of the desolations of provinces, of villages burned, of peasants flying in dismay from their late happy homes, and seeking refuge with the beasts of the forest. Such is the tale of horror which makes the world turn pale, and which can only be described in language like that of the book of Revelation, when a seal is opened, or a vial full of plagues is poured out into the air.”

In view of this page of dark and terrible history, the sober-minded may well pause, as the old year is about expiring, and ask, What does it all mean? Is there no hand of Providence in all this? Yes, verily, there is; and oh! would that we could read in the glow of the heated furnace, God’s displeasure at the monstrous sins on account of which he suffers these afflictions to come upon us. We ask, with breathless anxiety, “Shall the next year be as this?” Oh! that the red war-cloud, and the dire famine, and the destroying malarias, and the earthquake shock, may not visit us. But God is just, and as long as man revels in his sin, so long shall we be unable to read the mysterious sentence written on the wall, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.”—Golden Censer.