WHEN WILL THE TEMPORAL MILLENNIUM COMMENCE?
By Editor
Look at the following picture of the city of New York, the metropolis of this nation, which boasts of enlightenment and christianity—New York, the very head quarters of various Missionary, Reform and Tract Societies, who are apparently bolstering up themselves and others in the belief of the world's conversion, and the universal triumph of religion in this dispensation, and tell us when, in the order of things, such a time will commence. We would like to put this question to every infatuated believer in a view so monstrously irrational. We feel discouraged for any who are indulging in so delusive and groundless a hope. It is a sign that a reform is true when it begins at home. Before, therefore, so many men, and so many dollars are expended upon far distant shores, we want to see reformed the wretches of our own country, who though living in a land blazing with light of civilization are heathen still, with a moral character more hideously misshapen, perhaps, than even the devotees of Paganism. We want to see enough “salt” which has not lost its “savor,” manifested here to preserve the morals of the city of New York from rotting in its very streets; enough to save the city from becoming a second Sodom; before we rest our faith upon the permanence and holiness of any edifice built of material drawn from the slough of heathenism. However bad the state of things might now be, if it was growing better, if there was evident improvement from day to day, there might be chance to hope;85but when we see things growing worse and worse, and have the positive affirmation of Inspiration that they shall grow worse continually till God overwhelms the world in one great and final outburst of his indignation, where is there ground for faith? Let each ponder the following statements and answer promptly: “Our Commercial Metropolis.—Sixteen murders have been perpetrated in this city since the 1st of April, about which time Mayor Wood began to develop his programme of violent resistance to the laws, and the whole army of grog-sellers bade defiance to any legal interference with their desolating traffic. There have been at least twice sixteen attempts at murder, beside violent assaults and rum-hole fights without precedent. Ten thousand hardened and hopeless female outcasts swarm the streets at night; two thousand children, under the guise of peddlers, from the ages of ten to sixteen, penetrate every public building, store and office in the city, to beg, steal, spy for burglars, and on their own account practice those vices which cannot be named in respectable language; five thousand great and small gamblers prey upon the credulous and the infatuated, standing all day at the doors of their dens in Broadway, as well known in name and profession as the Mayor himself; ten thousand lazy, drunken, thieving short-boys, swill-boys, killers, roughs and rowdies of other names, lounge on the rum-cursed corners of the streets, making day disgusting, night hideous, and travel dangerous to all who can be suspected of having respectability or money; thousands of emigrant swindlers, mock auctioneers, lottery dealers, policy backers, pickpockets, hall thieves, burglars, wharf-rats, area-sneaks, pimps and vampyres, practice their knaveries as openly and with as little fear of punishment as though they were engaged in the most virtuous and legitimate of human purposes. The swell-mob of London, flying from the argus eyes of a real police and the unendurable felons of San Francisco, expatriated by the bullet and the hemp of the Vigilance Committee, are received here with open arms, parade our streets, under not only the toleration but the protection of our police, carry our primary elections, and fill high places on our nominating committees. On every hand we have vice and crime, and splendor; crime, vice, rum and beggary. “And this is the metropolis of the Western World to day, full of uncleanness within and without; the disgrace and sorrow of all good citizens; the very Mecca of political and moral rascals throughout the world.—Tribune.”