Rise of the Two-horned Beast by John Norton Loughborough

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Aug 7, 1855

Rise of the Two-horned Beast.

By John Norton Loughborough

BY J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.

IN REV. xiii John says, "I beheld another beast coming up," &c.; from which we are led to suppose that wherever the prophecy of the Two-horned beast had its accomplishment, a government would be developed, enterprising and prosperous. It has been before shown through the columns of the Review that our own government in its rise and progress has fulfilled the specifications of the Two-horned beast. At the present time a strife is made by some to throw off this application, and they endeavor to show that the power may have risen in foreign lands; but God has represented in prophecy, the governments of foreign lands at this time, as in a state of brokenness and disunion. "Iron mixed with miry clay." . . . "they shall not cleave one to another as iron is not mixed with miry clay." England is certainly looked upon by all nations as bankrupt, France is not much in advance. The kingdoms of Spain are in a decaying condition. While we see other kingdoms of earth in this position, and that in their rise they have not answered the specifications of the prophecy, we have been led to look elsewhere than among them for the rise of that power. As our own nation has arisen at the right time to answer the specifications of the prophecy, as well as in the right manner, we may with confidence expect it to come up (while its career is measured by prophecy as in a rising condition) even to the astonishment of its own citizens. An English Journalist, speaking of the unexampled growth of the United States, in all the elements of national prosperity, sums up in this wise:—

"In an interval of little more than half a century it appears that this extraordinary people have increased above 500 per cent., in numbers: their national revenue has augmented nearly 700 per cent, while their public expenditure has increased little more than 400 per cent. The prodigious extension of their commerce is indicated by an increase of nearly 500 per cent in their imports and exports, and 600 per cent in their shipping. The increased activity of their internal communication is expounded by the number of post-offices, which has increased more than a hundred fold, the extent of their post roads, which has been increased thirty-six fold, and the cost of their post-office, which has been augmented in a seventy-two fold ratio. The augmentation of their machinery of public instruction is indicated by the extent of their public libraries, which have increased in a thirty-two fold ratio, and by the creation of school libraries, amounting to 2,000,000 volumes. They have completed a system of canal navigation, which, placed in a continuous line, would extend from London to Calcutta, and a system of railways which, continuously extended, would stretch from London to Van Diemen's Land, and have provided locomotive machinery by which that distance could be travelled over in three weeks at the cost of 1½d per mile. They have created a system of inland navigation, the aggregate tonnage of which is probably not inferior in amount to the collective inland tonnage of all the other countries in the world, and they possess many hundreds of river steamers, which impart to the roads of water the marvelous celerity of roads of iron. They have, in fine, constructed lines of electric telegraph which, laid continuously, would extend over a space longer by 3000 miles than the distance from the north to the south pole, and have provided apparatus of transmission by which a message of 500 words despatched under such circumstances from the north pole might be delivered in writing at the south pole in one minute and by which, consequently, an answer of equal length might be sent back to the north pole in an equal interval. These are social and commercial phenomena for which it would be vain to seek a parallel in the past history of the human race."