Significant Sayings by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 30, 1871

Significant Sayings.

By Uriah Smith

At the anniversary meeting of the Congregational Union, held in New York, May 11, 1871, there were some sentiments offered which will be of interest to all whose attention has been called to the prophetic aspects of our times. We make two extracts. The first is from R. Palmer, D. D., and relates to the significant rapidity with which events are transpiring in these days. He says:—

“We are reminded to-night how fast the world moves. Since last year a Protestant empire has been formed in Europe; and that other one which was sustained and upheld by forms of the grossest error has been ground in the dust. The poor pope has turned the vatican into a convent, and has himself withdrawn from the world. We wish him peace.”

The second is from the President of the meeting, W. I. Buddington, D. D., and relates to the great danger now threatening this nation, and the fearful forebodings which agitate the hearts of the most discerning in view of it. Can we fail to see in this the fulfillment of Luke 21: 26, which was to indicate the near approach of the end? Dr. Buddington said:—

“Strangely enough, we have no sooner come up from one grand struggle before another is facing us. I remember, on the Monday morning which followed the battle of Bull Run, taking my seat in the cars for Washington at New York, spreading before me the issues of that morning press, announcing a glorious victory on the battlefield of Bull Run. Till I reached the Delaware it occupied me to read the story of our successes. Crossing that river, it was whispered in my ear by a telegraph operator that news of another significance was even then passing over the wires. Taking my seat in the Baltimore cars, I told the gentlemen around me (men of distinction in military and political life) what I had heard, and the larger part of the time consumed in the journey to Baltimore was taken up in proving that it was not true, and, what was more, could not be true. When we reached Baltimore, the Baltimore Sun was placed in our hands, and that confirmed the evil tidings. But the Baltimore Sun was secession. And the Clipper then came, and the Clipper told the same story with the Sun; and then began a change of feeling, and all the way to Washington our countrymen were filled with the saddest forebodings. And when I reached the city, I was in the midst of a crowd of travelers who expected to see the stars and stripes falling from their heights, and even Lincoln himself tumbled into the Potomac. But, fearful as was the panic that ran through the country at that time—I say it solemnly, and I say it deliberately—there is more serious fear taking possession of intelligent American minds than in that day of evil tidings. The question is, Have we the virtue, have we the manhood to stand up against corruption and misapplied wealth, as we stood up against the embattled lines of rebellion? [Applause.] It has been said that every man has his price, and it seems to be held by the same disbelievers in human virtue that every country has its price. Has our country a price? We are told that one of the great parties of this land are even now laying their plans to make up a sum of sixty millions by which they shall control the nomination of one of the great conventions of the land; and then, by the formation of rings in four or five of the leading cities of the four or five predominating States of the Union, elect the man. I ask you, Shall sixty millions of dollars buy this land, wet with the blood of our sons, and even now billowy with the windrows of her glorious dead? Are we to be sold? Shall these liberties of ours go down where those of the great Roman Empire went—into a chasm excavated by the accursed thirst for gold?”

No, says Dr. B., this calamity shall not overtake us; and he looks to the church to rescue the country from this peril. If the members of all the churches were, to a man, persons of unimpeachable integrity, or even if a redeeming majority of them were such, they might do much to check the incoming tide of evil; but, alas! are not many of those most deeply involved in moral obliquity, themselves members of the churches? And where is the line of distinction between the churches and the masses of those whose god is gold, and with whom personal interest and aggrandizement overbalance all public considerations? He who leans upon the professed church as a body, for the suppression of evil, leans upon a broken reed; while the individuals whose hearts are pure, whose motives are true, and whose aims are right, are so few as to render impotent all their earnest and well-meant endeavors.

U. S.