THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
By Rainbow
Politicians generally do not trouble themselves about prophecy, and when they are perplexed by the entanglement of unexpected events, and can see nothing clearly, they are content to wait, in the hope that the political mist will clear away. We do not therefore, expect of them any attempt to account for what puzzles them, by a reference to the prophetic Scriptures. It is, however, worth noting that politicians—under which designation I include statesmen, and men of thoughtful mind, who are active politicians without being what we understand by the term, statesmen—are greatly perplexed, not merely by recent events in Europe and America, but by the movements of modern thought, and the democratic tendencies of the times. It is my business to study politics, and I have opportunities of frank intercourse with those who know what is passing in the minds of men whose public utterances, with which we are all familiar, afford but little evidence of the perplexity they feel. Let me refer to some of the causes of this perplexity. In the first place, there is a strong, uneasy feeling that the tendency of European society is to adopt a democratic form of government, and that this must ultimately, and at no distant period, pass into the form of military despotism, upheld by the forces of democracy. Such a government exists in France, but in that land it does not sufficiently represent popular ideas to be permanent in its present shape; and persons who have recently had opportunities of familiar intercourse with the French people, have noted that there is a general expectation of some catastrophic change in that country. The author of John Halifax, who has just returned from France, which she visited for the first time, and where everything appeared to her with freshness and clearness, because it was entirely new, tells us that beneath the polished manners, and the gentle and courteous speech of our neighbors, she detected a latent fierceness, which blazed up when political questions were discussed, and that things were said which she may not repeat, because she feels they were confidences reposed in English honor and in English reticence. Other visitors to France, accustomed to the country, and familiar with the highest persons in the State, are not unaware of this same temper of the public mind that the author of John Halifax illustrates by a reference to the gardens of Portici, blooming on the lava-roof of Vesuvius. A catastrophe in France is certainly among the events which would not surprise any statesman. But it is at this point that perplexity commences. What would follow the catastrophe? The deluge first, but what next? We have been “shooting Niagara” in England, but the “after.” Are we not all of us—at least, those of us who think with any earnestness—wondering with Mr. Carlyle at the may be or must be to come. It is the same with France. What is to replace the Imperial Government, if it should fall? Some good people have a very lively notion that Napoleon III. is the anti-Christ, who will shortly develop into something he has not hitherto seemed to be. I confess that I regard with much more apprehension that which is to follow him. The Peace Conference at Geneva, with its declaration of war against everything that is old or established; its denunciations of religion “as incompatible with peace;” its scheme for a “social revolution,” and the formation of an European republic under the name of “The United States of Europe,” and its “religion of humanity”—a “religion” with not only Christ, but God also left out of it—is to my mind an uglier and more dangerous fact than the French empire. It is easy to say that the men who met at Geneva are wild dreamers, whom nobody sympathizes with. I answer, that they represent the restlessness, and dissatisfaction, the bitterness, and the wild hopes of many thousands of the population of the chief States of Europe. If we look out of Europe, we shall discover other causes of perplexity. There is democratic America, visibly tending to despotism. The popular representatives have set aside the law and constitution, because those stood in the way of the instant gratification of their passionate desires; and we see the chief of the republic vainly striving to uphold somewhat of the authority of a constitutional king, with which the fathers of the republic clothed him, while his masters, the Congressional representatives are making holiday. The presidential election is drawing near, and the candidates are generals, who recommend themselves to the thoughtless democracy, because they represent “the god of forces.” I am sure I am correct in saying that the political state of America is a source of great perplexity to statesmen. I will not further refer to politics in the present paper. The Eastern question, and the other questions which crowd upon the mind, shall be left alone for the present, in order that a few words may be said about the movements of modern thought, which are more important than events, inasmuch as they are the cause of events. What a tangle we are all in—that is, men, everywhere. In China the revolution of ideas has commenced, for the study of mathematics will change the disposition and the attitude of society. Before long we shall have impregnated a nation of 400,000,000 souls with European knowledge and European ideas; and thus have created a new and colossal force in the world. China will take its religion also from Europe; but not, as I think, the religion of Christ. The Chinese mind is not unsophisticated, or there might be ground for hope: but fortified by its philosophic atheism against the reception of the faith which was “foolishness to the Greek.” What I should expect at the utmost—except as the result of the direct and special intervention of God—is a form of Theism such as that which is being adopted by the educated Hindus; but it is far more likely that the Chinese will take up with the new “worship of humility,” when it has fairly been launched by the apostles of the great Western republic. From China, let us turn to Turkey, where Mohammedans have abated their pretentions, and are to share the government with Christians. This, I take it, is the beginning of the end of Mohammedanism. Roman Catholicism is losing its influence over the popular mind everywhere, except in Spain and England. I do not except Ireland, where the spirit of Fenianism is at war with religion. In Ireland the tendency is to Theism, and “the religion of humanity;” in France the churches are full of women and girls, but the men, and even the boys, are absent. Is there any one wise enough to tell us what people in England believe in just now? What they did believe, in a more or less ineffectual way, some years ago, we know; but the fountains of the great deep of human thought have since then been broken up, and men are drifting. Drifting whither? Some to the modified Romanism of the Ritualists, for the want of a staff to lean upon; some to Socialism, though not separating themselves from a church whose creeds contain this article—that Christ is the Son of God; and others, to the sheer precipice of hopeless Rationalism—the “darkness visible” of utter unbelief. A similar perturbation is going on in America, where not less than 3,000,000 persons are stated, on the authority of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, to be “Spiritualists,” or persons who believe that they hold intercourse with, and have revelations of truth from, the unseen world, through the agency of the spirits of persons who have died. Nor is this the only evidence of perturbation in that great transatlantic continent, which is likely to exercise so great an influence on the affairs of the world. There the “unlicensed liberty” of religion has produced new faiths, numerous and monstrous, which strike at the very foundations, not only of Christianity, but of society and morals. What the Rationalism of Germany is doing for the destruction of faith, the religious theories of America are doing for the overthrow both of faith and morals. These are things which I think justify me in saying, that the present times answer to the description of the last days in Luke xxi, 25, 26: “And there shall be * * * upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; * * * men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” I think that since the Gospel was first preached, there has never been a time when the perturbation of thought was so general as now. There have been great crises and revolutions, but a handful of persons contributed to produce them. Now it is the popular mind that is agitated, the whole conscious fabric of society that is in the throes of a vast catastrophic change.—Rainbow.