DISTRESS OF NATIONS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 2, 1879

DISTRESS OF NATIONS.

He who faithfully chronicles the passing news of the day is writing the most accurate commentary upon the prophecies of the word of God that was ever produced, showing their most marked and explicit fulfillment. And what is the more striking in the matter is that those who do this are largely all unconscious of the part they are acting, many of them being bitterly opposed to the idea that prophecy is fulfilling, or that anything whatever on prophetic subjects can be understood. The following from the Advance of Dec. 26, 1878, is one of these unconscious commentaries on Luke 21:25:—

“England is the richest country in the world, and no other country has such a ‘compost heap’ of pauperism. The monetary center, the manufacturing and commercial center of the world, the rich, a little while ago, were fast growing richer, and the industrious poor, those who had a mind to work and would not squander wages in drink, were getting on increasingly well. But a sharp change has come. A variety of causes, some obvious, others occult, have combined to produce the result. Our own and other countries have grown comparatively independent of English manufactures. The forced attempts to discard one of the coins from the world’s currency has had, many believe, its effect in disturbing values and disconcerting commercial transactions. Meanwhile the all-devouring army-systems of Europe have gone on absorbing the wealth of nations. But whatever the causes, the British Parliament has been constrained to ask the Home Society, ‘whether it is true, as reported, that we are now face to face with a crisis of distress such as this generation has never known?’ To the inquiry the official referred to makes the soothing reply, that there is nothing to cause ‘unnecessary alarm.’ Still the alarm, necessary or otherwise, continues. The streets of the great manufacturing cities swarm with thousands clamoring for food, or work that they may earn food. Nor is the case any better in the agricultural districts. But the English people—to say nothing of their kin this side the sea—when their attention has been arrested and their sympathies touched, are the most generous people on the globe; and we may be confident that British Christian philanthropy will not rest until social wrongs get righted, and the present horrid chasm between the abnormally rich and favored few and the pauperized or half-pauperized millions begins to close up. In the meantime we of America have enough to learn—to learn to do on the one hand, and to avoid doing on the other.”