p. 8 | The Crowds of People by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 10.

The Crowds of People

By T.

The crowds of people attending the trial of M. Zola in Paris remind one of the throngs that used to surround the National Assembly in the French Revolution days of a hundred years ago. Then the popular and excited and withal rapidly-changing views of the multitude, were enforced upon the Assembly by general tumult. The laws that the Assembly enacted were frequently contrary to the good judgment of a majority of the men who constituted that body. But the demands of the people were heated and urgent, and, as continually stated by Robespierre and other ultra republicans, “the people are always right,” and so they urged that their demands should be at once enacted into laws. No one would claim now that all that the “people” did in the French Revolution was right. In fact, the “people” then were often sorry for their deeds, and would gladly have reversed many of their crimes if it had been possible. And it is altogether possible that the “people” who attended the trial of Zola, and sometimes cheered and again derided the witnesses, may in less excitable days have occasion to lament their course of action. These scenes in the high court of the French nation, and all the clamors for bloodshed that are heard in so many parts of the world, lead a person to ask, Where is the so-long-talked-of millennium? Of course some rioting in France, considered in itself alone, is not so much to be thought of, but the very inflammable condition of the minds of the people everywhere, furnishes a sufficiently serious problem. The good Book tells us that “in the last days perilous times shall come.” It also tells us that the people then, despite the perils, will be saying, “Peace and safety.” Your very soul has been impressed with the perils of this time; you have also heard the people saying, “Peace and safety,” to a degree that it has never before been said in all the world. Answer for yourself the question, Where are we?