A Forlorn Hope | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 23, 1858

A Forlorn Hope.

We find the following desperate source of consolation going the rounds of our exchanges:

The Gospel Triumphiing. It is true that we often take desponding views of christianity. It is aggressive and it is progressing. Here is an abstract statement, showing the advance the church has made. There were of christian communicants in the First century . . . 500,000. Fifth century . . . 15,000,000. Tenth century . . . 50,000,000. Fifteenth century . . . 100,000,000. Eighteenth century . . . 200,000,000. True, there was one century during the madness of the crusades, and the locking up of the Bible, when there was a decrease. But to take the past, and you have an advance of 50,000,000 each century, of 140 every day. Is there not something really inspiring in such a view? Let it go on a little longer, and we may well say, 'From the tops of the rocks I see them, and from the hills I behold them; who can count the dust of Jacob and number the fourth part of Israel?'

If the human race was all the while decreasing, and the nominal converts to christianity still increasing, there might be some ground to hope that the world would eventually become christian. Or if crime and depravity, taking the world as a whole, were on the decrease, instead of growing more and more prevalent, there might then be some ground upon which to rest a hope. Or if christianity itself was not continually degenerating, so that even now the standard is trailed in the dust, there would be more reason to hope. But when the human race is increasing faster than the converts to christianity; when vice is counting an increase of its votaries by hundreds day by day; and when, in such enlightened lands as our own, which are confessedly all the hope the world has, the degree of depravity is so great, that one evangelical denomination, has to appoint a day of fasting on account of the sins of another, (according to the quotation in last week's REVIEW,)—in view of all these things, we say, where is there room for hope? There is none. Men may shut their eyes to all but one side of the subject if they wish, and delude themselves into the belief that all the tares are becoming wheat; but the Lord has given his immutable word that wheat and tares shall grow together until the harvest.