A CATACLYSM APPROACHING.
By Rev. J. A. Wylie
The affairs of Europe appear to me to be tending at this hour to a great cataclysm: a cataclysm of despotism, should the kings and the ultramontanes combine; a cataclysm of revolution, should the ultramontanes and communists contract alliance. There is only one thing that can prevent such a catastrophe, even the rapid diffusion of the gospel in Europe. But I see nothing at this hour to justify the hope of that. Neither the populations nor the governments of Europe show any great desire for the word of God, or any disposition to receive the gospel. Till the gospel enter there can be no national conscience, and till a national conscience be created there can be no basis, I do not say for piety, but for civil order and constitutional government. So far as I can see, no true basis for permanent liberty has yet been laid by the continental kingdoms. They are in the presence of forces to which they have no opposing element of equal or greater power and how they can escape being broken up, I do not very well see. They have the Commune beneath them, they have Rome above them, and between these nether and upper mill-stones it may yet happen that they will be ground to powder.—Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D., of Edinburgh.