Distress of Nations

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1858

Distress of Nations.

Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe, in an article on Heb. xii, 26-27, in the Independent of Nov. 12, 1856, thus thrillingly writes:

"How can we look for peace? Peace! One might as well stand when a storm was rising, when clouds were rolling up from every quarter of the horizon, lightnings darting, thunders muttering, and fierce winds lashing the storm into fury, and talk of peace. These are the times spoken of by Christ, when there shall be distress of nations, the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking for the things that are coming on the earth. His voice once shook the earth, but now hath he promised, saying, 'Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also the heaven.' In these shakings, earthly hopes fly like the chaff of the summer threshing floor, earthly joys like the withered leaves. Earthly reliance is as stubble. Things firmest set, trees that have grappled with the storms for years, towers that are hoary with the moss of centuries, institutions hallowed with ages of reverence, all must go crashing down together;—but, thank God, something will remain. The tempest removes the things that can be shaken that the things that cannot be shaken may remain."