p. 9 | Famine and Pestilence

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · May 13, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 19.

Famine and Pestilence

Famine and Pestilence.—Among the many signs of the nearness of the end of this age and the earth's dissolution, are "famines and pestilences," and with these, "distress of nations, with perplexity." While distress of nations exists in greater or less degree throughout the inhabited earth, it seems that the great famine and pestilence countries are China and India. Now it is India. In 1877 fearful famine stalked abroad unhindered. At that time the government (British) set apart £20,000,000 as a reserve fund to meet future famines. The people, being nearly all agriculturists, are dependent on the soil for almost daily bread. This last year the crops failed, and when there was a call for funds from the $100,000,000 which had been set apart from taxes paid by the people for the last twenty years, there was but a paltry million dollars. The rest had been "diverted," it is reported, in making plethoric the purses of British officials. So a writer in the Sunday Examiner says, and his information, we are told, comes from the missionaries. Sir Edwin Arnold tells us that unless the whole world helps, ten millions of people will die, instead of six millions, in 1877. People are dying by thousands; the famine district covers an area of 160,000 miles; the population of the district is 44,000,000; and the territory involved extends from the north of India, in Lahore, down through the Punjaub, Delhi, Oudh, Jabalpur, Benares, Orissa, and to Bombay. Fifty million dollars are needed to save India from the most terrible famine it has ever known. And much of this might have been saved if men had been honest. And yet British officials are no worse than the selfish, heartless princes of India. The spectacle is simply men acting out human nature without restraint. Even professed Christian people will spend hundreds, thousands, and millions for pleasure even in the face of such misery; and yet the spectacle should move the hearts of all.