71. A PAPAL NUNCIO AT WASHINGTON.
By Editor
SIGNS OF THE TIMES—Gentlemen: What signifies the Rome dispatch November 16: "As soon as Mr. Cleveland's administration shall have been inaugurated in Washington, the Vatican will open negotiations for the establishment of a special United States legislation and the reception at Washington of a papal nuncio"? We saw the dispatch and noted it at the time. It may possibly be a canard; it may have originated in someone whose wish was father to the thought. We hope that Mr. Cleveland will have too much good sense to entertain such a proposition for a moment. And yet we would not be surprised in the near future to see just that sort of thing. The Papacy is yet to be acknowledged by the governments of Europe (Revelation 17), and if so, would not this country place itself in such relations with it as such recognition would demand? And would not all of the governments of the world do the same? And thus would be fulfilled the prophecy: "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss [we stand just here], and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall be present." Rev. 17:8, Revised Version, margin. See Rev. 13:8.