p. 60 | COMMUNISM

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 20, 1879

COMMUNISM

From a sermon by T. De Witt Talmage, published in the Advance of Jan. 9, 1879, we take the following statement concerning the origin, the different forms, and the nature of Communism:—

Communism was born in France, April 10, 1792. It was born again in France, March 18, 1871. It invaded Germany in 1844, and was called “socialism.” Trouble arising among the Silesian weavers about their wages, it was supposed that socialism would cure the trouble. It invaded England in 1862, and was called the “International Party,” and it has come to this country under various titles, and unless our American people find out its true character, the time will come when it will build barricades across the streets of New York, and Brooklyn, and Boston, and New Orleans, and all the streets of our great American cities will run red with the blood of our best citizens. I can tell you its true character. Instead of being the friend of the workingmen, it is their worst foe. I arraign it to-day, not only as the worst foe of the workingman, but as the robber, the despoiler, and the murderer of nations. Robespierre, Danton, and Marat projected it. The party in France was called the Committee of Public Safety, the National Guard, the Mountain because of the elevated seats in which they sat in convention. On the night between the 9th and 10th of August, 1792, suddenly the bells of Paris rang, and indiscriminate wholesale cut-throatery began. The depraved people of the city marched up to the Tuileries, took it, captured the prisons, took off the heads of 1,500 people that were incarcerated, guillotined the king, throwing his body into a trench and covering it with quicklime, so that no future funeral ceremony might be expected; after the sham trial of beautiful Marie Antoinette, they rolled her head into the sawdust; and without any opportunity of appeal or trial, they arrested and put to death all those who were suspected of being friendly to law, and order, and government. Communism ruled the hour of assassination.