A Winter of Disasters by Uriah Smith

Publishing Committee · ROCHESTER, N. Y. · Feb 28, 1854

A Winter of Disasters.

By Uriah Smith

WAR on the Danube—cholera in England—conflagrations at home—wrecks on the sea—have given to the present winter a pre-eminence among disastrous seasons. We cannot remember a period so crowded with catastrophe as the last two months. A brutal power has brought the horrors of a hopeless war upon an inoffensive nation—a war upon which every principle of chivalry and every sentiment of magnanimity are excluded. In one hour, a fleet was destroyed, five thousand men were murdered, and a town was annihilated; and Europe, like a coward, stood by and saw it done—saw the Tom Hyer of Russia going to crush the feeble little boy of Constantinople—and did not hold the monster back. Cholera has admonished England, and starvation France. Fire, which is generally no respecter of houses, has, this season, chosen our best things for swift consumption—our greatest business establishment, the largest ship that ever lay at our docks, the finest hall in the country, the newest, and therefore the most magnificent of our hotels. On the ocean, the disasters have not only been numerous, but of a singularly terrible character. Ships crowded with men, women and children, have gone down with their living freight. Let no one attribute these calamities to the will of a wrathful Providence. Providence is beneficent always. To the carelessness, or the folly, or the crime of man, the blame of nearly every item in this catalogue of ruin belongs. This, perhaps, could be proved, and the blame brought home to the door of each guilty individual, and the rest of mankind warned, if, in addition to our death-coroner, we had a fire-coroner, a wreck-coroner, a pestilence-coroner, or a catastrophe-coroner-general. That such an event as the destruction of a large amount of property by fire should be allowed to go uninvestigated, is really as disgraceful as it is unwise.—Home Journal.

The above was copied by the Christian Cosmopolitan with the following remarks:—

The above description of our times reminds us of another quite similar, substantially the same, in Matt. xxiv, Mark xiii, and Luke xxi. "But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions be not terrified; for these things must first come to pass, but the end is not by and by (or not yet, as it reads in another place.) Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and great earthquakes, and pestilences, and fearful sights, and great signs shall be from heaven. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken." The complexion of the one of these descriptions looks very much like that of the other. "Why can ye not discern the signs of the times?"

Thus it is. Between the events of the present and the declarations of prophecy, so striking is the harmony, that the attention of mankind is arrested and they acknowledge the fulfillment. The characteristics of this last age are too plain to be mistaken. And while men behold with wonder the scenes which are transpiring around them, as an explanation of the fearful state of things they adopt the language of prophecy and admit the application. So far as they adhere to the prophetic word they do well; but in their conclusions they seem to overlook it entirely, or strangely to misapply it.

What is the next event to follow the signs above mentioned? It is the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; when all the tribes of the earth shall mourn; [Matt. xxiv, 30;] when the man of sin shall be consumed with the spirit of his mouth and destroyed with the brightness of his coming; [2 Thess. ii, 8;] when this world's career with its long catalogue of sin and death, shall wind up, and the kings of the earth and the great men, and the rich men and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman shall hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and shall say to the rocks and mountains, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. vi, 15-17.

This is what we are plainly taught to expect. But for what are the world and the church looking? They fondly dream that the mighty revolutions now beginning to be felt among the nations, and the secret influences at work like leaven among all classes of society, will result in the overthrow of all evil, the downfall of all tyranny and oppression, and the establishment of universal peace and prosperity—the ushering in of the millennium, or golden ages yet to dawn on earth. Such sentiments accord better with the natural desires of man's heart; and they are all too willing to have it so, without waiting to see if it is supported by a "Thus saith the Lord."

Men look upon the cars, those mighty preachers of this last mighty truth, and with feelings, as it were of self-congratulation, they acknowledge them to be subjects of prophecy—the chariots of Nahum; [Nah. ii, 3, 4;] and to make the fulfillment still more striking, they have established what they themselves term "the lightning trains" which almost literally "run like the lightnings!" yet they overlook the significant fact that those things are to be "in the day of his preparation."

The end of all things is at hand. From the open volume of prophecy we read it, and from the world-wide field where those prophecies are daily fulfilling we may read it too; yet through the delusive medium of a false hope the world is looking for results which they are not warranted to expect, and rushing on, prophesying of better days. When men acknowledge certain chains of prophecy while in process of fulfillment why do they not trace them out to their accomplishment and adopt the conclusions too? Why not admit the results to which they lead, and prepare to meet them? When they see the signs, and know them as such, why do they not take warning of the great events of which they are the sure precursors? Again we say, "Why can ye not discern the signs of the times?" U. S.