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The Watch-Tower

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 27, 1870

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 37, No. 2.

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The Watch-Tower.

By WATCHER

ALL must admit that the times through which we are passing are of a most impressive character, and that it will be well for us to ascend the watch-tower to look out on what is passing not as politicians, excited by their own special opinions or prejudices, but as devout men, anxious to discover what the Lord is doing, that we may be ready for any duty that may be demanded of us.
It is a time of great distress among the nations. Nation is rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There are wars and rumors of wars; and no one believes that the end will be arrived at when France lies prostrate at the feet of Germany. Now that the war drum has begun to throb throughout Europe, its echoes will long be heard; and it will be long before the earth rests again in the blessed silence of peace. The attitude which England has firmly held amidst the convulsions by which she has been surrounded is one which must fill all devout hearts with thankfulness. Uninfluenced either by galling taunts or insidious artifices, she has maintained a strict and dignified neutrality, while, at the same time, she has stood anxiously waiting to win for herself the blessing pronounced upon the peacemaker.
It is a time of great social distress. Abroad, the industrial classes have been robbed of their peaceful homes, and the simple industries which have hitherto been sufficient to meet their wants; have been ruthlessly broken up. They no longer anticipate famine. It has come as a dread reality, bringing with it hunger, cold, nakedness, and death in its most frightful forms. The coarsest and most unpalatable food, the scantiest dress, the barest shelter, are received as boons unspeakable; the poor are thankful for the crumbs that fall from rich men’s tables. At home, we find our own poor and our own industrial classes dreading the approaching winter, and several cases of starvation are already reported.
It is a time of great religious distress. We do not allude to the need of greater church accommodation for the masses. If that were all, it would be a want easily supplied, comparatively speaking. There is a still greater distress than this continuing to manifest itself—the want of religion itself. There is a spirit of skepticism among us which is infecting every kind of literature, every kind of lecture-room, and, alas! every kind of pulpit. There is a spirit of apathy among us which counts soundness in the faith a matter of no importance, and which encourages a man to believe what he likes, so long as he is “sincere”; and if he is “insincere,” and has no creed at all, it is not a matter of much consequence. There is a spirit of decided infidelity working aggressively among us; getting up its organizations and issuing its publications to pour contempt upon the Christian faith, upon all the great truths of revealed religion, and to infect the young with the so-called “principles” of atheism. There is a spirit of practical infidelity at work among us which is, perhaps, even more dangerous than any infidel theories which their advocates ever attempted to sustain. Large masses of the population are sunk in selfishness, sensualism, profligacy, godlessness. The tavern is their church, the ribald song their finest litany, the life of profligacy their beau ideal of existence.
These are a few of the things which we see around us as we look forth from our watch-tower; and what is the attitude becoming all devout men as they look upon them? In reference to the distress of nations, we may have a firm reliance upon the overruling providence of God. The Lord is on high, and mightier than the sound of many waters; and he will most assuredly make the wrath of man to praise him. The church may, and should, in the midst of disturbances and conflicts, wars and commotions, with calm earnestness and faith, put up the prayer, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” That prayer which has been heard with more or less distinctness through all the centuries, and which our Lord himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, taught his disciples, will one day very clearly be answered; and we know not how soon the prayer may be lost in the praise of a redeemed humanity, and of a regenerated world.—“WATCHER,” in the London Rock.