THE CONDITION OF THE TIMES.
By Editor
THIS paper has had something to say from time to time concerning the conditions of the present time, and has been accused of pessimism because it could not see what some profess to see—a glorious, roseate future for this present world. It has brought before its readers from time to time facts concerning the deteriorating process now going on in the world, not because it gloats over the deterioration of the race, but because that downward tendency is itself a sign of a rapidly-approaching event which will, in its outworking, bring in such a reign of peace and righteousness as even the most ardent advocates of this present world's “glorious-future” era have not dared to hope for. To hold to the idea that man, through efforts of his own, will be able to bring order out of this chaos, plant righteousness where unrighteous is flourishing in noxious and luxuriant growth, is to deny the Scripture in toto, deny the second coming of Christ, deny man's need of a Saviour, and seek to make of man that which only God can be. The SIGNS OF THE TIMES is not the only journal that sees the conditions as they are. The following editorial utterances from that widely-quoted journal, the Springfield Republican, show that others see the conditions and fear not to tell of them to the world:— These are times in the American state which should agree with those who enjoy the strenuous life. Let the citizen take up his newspaper of Sunday morning, and note some of the contents: Civil war in Colorado, where people charged with no crime are being driven away from their homes by armed mobs which incidentally loot and smash a co-operative store belonging to union miners; strike riots in Chicago, in which one man is killed and several wounded; strike riots in New York; strikes threatened in the anthracite coal region and in the mills of the United States steel corporation; and a continuation of the race war in the south, extending from Georgia to Alabama, where a negro has been stoned to death. Strikes actually in progress in three or four industries have rendered over one hundred thousand men idle, and impaired the livelihood of several times that number; and the spirit animating the strikers as a rule is shown at Chicago, where a shout of triumph goes up when the city authorities decide that the meat packers have no legal right to house their non-union help within the stockyards, but must compel them to find lodging-places outside, where the strikers can get at them better. “Once out, they will never get back,” is the cry of the strike leaders; and we all know what that means. It has come to be the way in which the average strike nowadays is to be won, if at all, has it not? Thus all about us crop out the manifestations of a prevalent lawless spirit, an impatience with constituted processes, a revolutionary stirring of the feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, bitter class animosity, and quick readiness to appeal to the power of force and arms. It must be disturbing to the thoughtful and reflecting citizen, however enjoyable it may be to the lovers of strenuousness and the supporters of national policies of the might-makes-right order. We seem to be permitting the Republic to drift into volcanic conditions, fundamentally threatening to industrial peace and social disorder. Over against reports of desperate poverty among riotous strikers at Chicago, and peaceful strikers at Fall River, where no effort is being made to fill their places, stand accounts of how a well-known market operator, high in the financial world, a plutocratic creation of our recent boom period, loses $32,000 at one sitting at a Saratoga gaming-table with impressive nonchalance and equally impressive shamelessness. There is news enough of this character. We have never known it to be so abundant as in recent months. And how little there is of the constructive and conserving kind: how few the evidences of popular awakening to the dangers so obviously present and threatening. The dangers of which that editorial speaks are growing; the conditions depicted are becoming more threatening; the lawlessness mentioned is increasingly prevalent; and at the same time there never was a greater spirit of apathy concerning the consequences of these things. Some tell us it portends a great and wide-spread revolution; but the general public hear this with complacency. Others teach—and the Word of God supports the teaching—that it is a sign of the end of this present world, and the advent of our Saviour. And this solemn truth, pressed home with the “powerful witness of fulfilled prophecy,” finds only a small fragment of this generation willing to listen and heed. Notice these statements of the Republican: “All about us crop out the manifestations of a prevalent lawless spirit.” “There is news enough of this character. We have never known it to be so abundant as in recent months.” “How few the evidences of popular awakening to the dangers so obviously present and threatening.” It is the long-studied design of the enemy of souls to deaden the sensibilities of the people of this last generation lest they should hear and heed and be saved. He is doing his utmost to make the conditions what they are, and at the same time is throwing a curtain of drowsiness over the world, lulling to the sleep of death those who have not laid firm hold of the truth of God for these times. It is high time to awake out of sleep.