War and the 19th Century.
There have been much preaching and prophesying, within the last hundred years, of a rapidly approaching millennium of peace and happiness for our world. Not from the word of God, but from the pretensions and dreams of a humanitarian philosophy, have these ideas and hopes been begotten, and attempted to be read into the sacred prophecies. To our mind, the evidence from the sacred Scriptures is perfectly conclusive and overwhelming, that all such anticipations are utterly false, and of the devil. We cannot understand how men can take the Bible, and, with any show of reasonable dealing with its language and claims, suppose for a moment that anything but growing disorder and ultimate ruin is ever to come out of this world, or all its boasted science and improvement. But, apart from all statements from Revelation or doctrines of prophecy, we would think that, by this time, the facts, as they have been developed, ought to satisfy men that these dreams are nothing but delusion. With all the preaching of peace, and the organizations and appliances to bring to an end the ravages of human butchery and the devilish horrors of war, the nineteenth century has been prolific of fearful bloodshed. Not one year of the seventy which are past, has been a year of entire peace. Somewhere there has been all the time war. And it has been the most civilized nations, and those paraded as the most thoroughly under the influence of the illumination and advancement of this superlative age, who have done by far the greatest part of the fighting. We have seen a recent review of the wars of the nineteenth century, which we think it well to reproduce in these columns, and from which the doting spirit of our times ought to learn the emptiness of its hopes and the falsity of its pretensions. Thus, England alone has waged forty-nine wars since 1800. Of these, there have been three with France, two with Russia, five with China, two with Denmark, two with Holland, two with Turkey, two with Burmah, two with Persia, one with the United States, one with Prussia, one with Spain, one with Sweden, one with Portugal, one with Egypt; the others were with the Peishaw, the Mahrattas, the great Mogul, Nepaul, Algiers, the Wahabees, the Pindarrees, the Ashantees, Caffres, Hottentots, Baers, Afghans, Canadian rebels, Paraguay, Scinde, Sepoy mutineers, Maoris, Japan, and Abyssinia. France figures in thirty-seven wars; viz., four with Austria, three with Russia, three with Prussia (including the present war), three with England, four with the Arab tribes, two with Mexico, two with China, two with Spain, two with Holland, two with Turkey, one with Portugal, one with Egypt, one with Switzerland, one with Denmark, one with Sweden, one with Algiers, one with Morocco, one with Paraguay, one with Japan, and one with the Roman republic. Russia shows a list of twenty-one wars; viz., three with France, three with Turkey, two with England, two with Poland, two with Persia, two with Khiva, two with Bokhara, one with Hungary, one with Egypt, one with China, and one (very long and bloody) with Circassia. Austria figures in twelve; viz., five with France, three with Italy, one with Prussia, one with Hungary, one with Denmark, and one with Egypt. Prussia comes last with seven; viz., three with France, two with Denmark, one with Austria, and one with England. So much for the leading powers of the Old World. But to the desolating wars above enumerated, must be added the numerous revolutionary movements in Italy and Spain, invariably suppressed with great bloodshed; the dynastic contests of the Carlists and Christinos, in Spain, which are not extinct yet, and of the Miguelites and Pedroties in Portugal, all of which occasioned great misery and loss of life. Then there was the war of independence in Greece, which lasted more than seven years, and was at last terminated by the intervention of England, France, and Russia, and the battle of Navarino. On this continent, war has been the chronic state of the southern portion of it ever since the Spanish colonies threw off the yoke of the mother country. Incessant revolutions constitute the dreary history of Mexico and the South American States. But we have not been without our troubles. We have had several Indian wars, a war with England, one with Mexico, and our great civil war. Cuba, Hayti, and San Domingo, have suffered at intervals from the same scourge. Brazil has recently concluded a long and costly struggle with Paraguay, and, in short, it is difficult to call a single nation in the world which has not been involved in war of some kind or other, domestic or foreign, in the course of the present century. Asia has seen an enormous amount of bloodshed during the past seventy years. There have been the incessant wars carried on by the English in India, Burmah, Negro, and China; and by the French in Cochin China and Annam; also by the Russians with the Circassians and the wild tribes of Central Asia, and with Turkey and Persia; also by the Turks with the Persians and the Egyptians; by the Persians with the Belooches, Afghans, and Tartars; and there have been the continual domestic wars among the Afghan, Sikh, Mahratta, and other Hindoo chiefs, for supremacy. For the first fifteen years of this century there was war all over Europe, and it extended even to this continent. During the next ten years, it appeared all over Mexico, Central and South America (excepting Brazil). Then Asia and Africa came in for their turn, with the French in Algeria, the English at the Cape and on the west coast, and Egypt on the east; the Russians in Turkey and Circassia; the English and the French in India and China. This lasted for twenty-five years, when the scene shifted to Europe once more, and the Crimean war, the wars in Hungary, Italy, Denmark, Germany, and lastly, France, have filled up the remainder of the time. What a commentary, this, upon the boasts of modern enlightenment, and upon the Christianity of the populations and governments which are to give us the millennium! Shame on the philosophy, to say nothing of the way it handles holy Scripture, which can promise an era of universal and abiding peace and righteousness in the face of such a record! Well might it take up the lamentation of Jeremiah: “We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble.” We are happy to know that there is an era of peace coming, and that it is not far off; an era of peace which is peace; when the nations shall learn war no more, and the world shall rest forever under the almighty Prince of peace. But it will never come by means of humanitarian reforms, and the progress of earthly science, effort, and freedom. It is not from this world. It cometh from Heaven. It cometh with judgment and destruction to all in which earthly wisdom rests for its attainment. It cometh with Him who has promised to come again, and whose right it is to reign. Meanwhile, let the nations rage, and the people imagine vanity. Let the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together. And let the professed ministers of God go on fanning the vanity and false hopes of the depraved and deluded world. He that sitteth in the Heavens laugheth at them. The Lord holdeth them in derision. When he setteth up his King on his holy hill of Zion, he will break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. When they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape. Let us beware that no man spoil us with vain and deceitful philosophies of human progress and self-redemption.—Prophetic Times.