THE FULFILLMENT COMING.
By Uriah Smith
I SEND the following item, thinking it may be of interest to the readers of the Review. What may we look for next? “A special session of the Iowa Peace Society, was held in the Senate Chamber at the capitol on Thursday, Feb. 20. It was a large assembly, and included several members of the legislature. “The resolutions were all interesting and important, and the following remarkably so:— “Resolved, That, having on our roll of membership the names of generals, majors, captains, privates, and chaplains, of the volunteer force in the late war of the rebellion, we respectfully submit to them the propriety of responding to the call of the President of the Peace Union, to furnish implements of warfare to be placed on an anvil at the Centennial Peace Forge. “The grand conception of forming at Philadelphia a huge procession of workingmen, bearing the Centennial anvil, swords, bayonets, and other implements of war from the different States of the Union to be melted in a furnace, and then actually transformed by willing blacksmiths into ‘plowshares and pruninghooks,’ is one of the sublime and marvelous developments of the progress of ‘peace on earth,’ and will be a literal fulfillment of the ancient prophecies of God and Isaiah.” If this move was an index of the real state of feeling existing in the world it would be a happy and beautiful transaction. But viewed upon the background of the gigantic preparations for war now going forward all over the world, who cannot see that it will be a mere form and farce? And who can really take this to be a fulfillment of the prophecy which is interpreted to mean the cessation of war in all the earth, and the universal reign of peace? But then, perhaps they might as well consider it so as any way; for it is the nearest approximation that will ever be made to the fulfillment of the prophecy as they interpret it.