The Aspect of Europe

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 11, 1870

The Aspect of Europe.

The swift progress of great events in Europe may well fill him who watches them with an unspeakable sense of wonder and awe. The life of centuries seems to be crowded into a single year. The whole aspect of a continent passes from one phase to another as swiftly as the scenes of a magic lantern. All prophecy is baffled; the most self-confident lose courage to predict, and can only look in mute wonder for the birth of the next hour. We have seen the two foremost nations of Europe clash together in sudden shock; from the one there has shone out courage, discipline, intelligence, in their highest forms, while the other has revealed an all-pervading and almost hopeless weakness. Victory has followed victory in dazzling succession; but with such loss of life and infliction of suffering as were never known before. At the same time the government of the empire has fallen like a dead tree before a storm, and France again calls herself Republican. Now the proudest and most brilliant capital of Europe is closely beleaguered by confident foes. Meanwhile Rome has been seized by the kingdom of Italy, and the pope’s temporal power has fallen. Vague tremors and throes throughout Europe have responded to the Republican war-cry of France. The Italian monarchy feels the ground uncertain under its feet. England stands openly confessing that it has no longer any power to influence continental affairs. And now word comes that Russia is turning an armed front toward the jewel of her eye, the long-coveted Constantinople. From such a chaos of accomplished wonders and looming portents, who can say what forms will at last emerge?

There are certain aspects on which the eye dwells with especial intentness. It seems next to certain that the first issue joined is already settled, that France must become by the side of Prussia what Austria already is, and a great Germanic nation be the dominant power of Central and Southern Europe. Then comes the absorbing inquiry as to what form national governments will assume. Shall we see now that great triumph of the Democratic impulse which has so long been predicted? Here we feel our scrutiny for the present entirely baffled. It is a bad augury for the Democratic cause that France, which was expected to be its foremost representative, has suffered such loss and shown such weakness. A Republic within it, born of defeat and humiliation, could hardly be the terrible leader in a crusade against kings that was the France of ’92. Of Italy no one knows what to expect. If national good fortune could avert internal change, her monarchy might be thought safe. For the third time within eleven years, it has richly profited by the quarrels of its neighbors. Rome has fallen to it, as Lombardy and Venice fell to it, as an incident in the struggles of greater powers. Yet there is something volcanic in the Italian people, which may be only stimulated to greater activity by this last triumph. No one can say that in a week Victor Emmanuel may not be a fugitive before Garibaldi and Mazzini, yet no one would dare predict such an event.

From this we turn to a wholly different side of affairs, the bearing of the pope’s loss of Rome upon the religious question. This seems to be generally regarded as but slight; it being assumed that the spiritual power of the papacy will be little affected by the event. But as a sign, rather than as a cause, it seems to us of the greatest moment. The party that triumphed in the Council and controls the church is the Ultramontane school. That party has been devoted to the pope’s temporal power; and now on this great point they have been utterly worsted in the Catholic Kingdom of Italy. It is a sign that the power of the Ultramontanists, and of the Catholic church, is utterly feeble in Italy, where they have been so completely overridden on this important point. The will of the Catholic church on what it considers a great matter, has been contemptuously overborne. If the papacy is weak in Italy, where is it strong? Of Italy’s Catholic neighbors, probably France and Austria are even more alienated than herself. Spain may perhaps be counted firm, and so may Ireland. But Southern Europe for the most part is rapidly becoming lost to the Church of Rome. No wonder she puts forth her best efforts in England and America,—she has good need.

We shall touch briefly on another point, for the reason that the facts regarding it do not yet seem to be strongly authenticated. Russia is said to be massing her troops on the borders of Turkey, and giving signs of aggression there. It will be strange if the news is not true. For this seems the very conjuncture for which Russia has been watching long and patiently. If she demands Constantinople, who shall say her nay? Not England, for out of her own dominions England is nobody. Not France; not Austria; not Prussia, who when less engaged might be disposed to make this the issue on which to try her strength with her only remaining rival. Turkey would be but the sheep in the bear’s paw. Let Russia win Constantinople, and make the Black Sea a Russian lake, and her power will be what would hitherto have been thought more than a match for any single European State. We might then see events which would fulfill the first Napoleon’s words, that in fifty years Europe would be all Cossack or all Republican.

We are like those who look upon a thunder storm, in which man’s fate seems to hang on mighty causes before whose power he trembles and is powerless. —Christian Union.