Rapid Events in the Franco-Prussian War
If any doubt that events are moving with unwanted rapidity in these days, let them look for a moment at the war in Europe. On the fifteenth of last July, the emperor of the French declared war. Two weeks elapsed before hostilities actually commenced. There has been, therefore, scarcely six weeks of fighting; and what is the result? The prestige of France is destroyed, its armies annihilated, the empress and her son fugitives, the emperor a prisoner of war, the empire overthrown, and a republic declared in France! At the rate events move in ordinary times, years would have been required for such a revolution as this. The two nations were the leading nations of Europe. The most sagacious and discerning were unable to decide which was the more powerful, or to conjecture which would be the winner. That in so prodigious a conflict, with day after day of continuous and determined fighting, one party should be uniformly victorious, so that in six short weeks the other lies prostrate in the dust at its feet, is something more than the work of man. The hand of Providence is in it, and when God works, no great length of time is required for the accomplishment of great events. As a singular coincidence, just as the pope proclaims his infallibility, he is left without support, and piteously begs a little assistance from some of the powers of Europe, but is invariably refused. It becomes the people of God to make no delay, but prepare speedily for great events. A short work will the Lord make in the earth.