p. 181 | The Times

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 3, 1864

The Times.

We live in a most momentous and most remarkable age. And the present point of time seems more remarkable than any which has preceded it. There was never such a war as the present. People of the same language and blood are contending fearfully against each other. It is truly a war of subjugation, full of blood and suffering. American soldiers during the last three years have been counted by millions. Physical movements and physical destruction and consumption have been more than ever before. The martial excitement of the whole people is new and excessive. It is universal and intense.

But the moral excitement among those who are not in the army is also equally intense. In many States the foundation of our civil institutions is destroyed. The body politic is lacerated and wounded and scarred from head to foot. In the States too where the civil institutions remain entire, there is much that is abnormal and unnatural. Extravagance characterizes the people. They are extravagant in their modes of living. The luxury now manifest is alarming, and begets many other vices. Popular amusements are patronized to great excess. All this too in a time of civil war. Other countries, in times of distressing war have acted very differently, and so did our own during the Revolution. Self-control is lost and selfishness holds sway. The anchors of society are loosened, and there is danger of greater disorder, the longer the war continues—danger of disruption and social chaos.

We have all felt that there would be great advantages growing out of this war. But many have seemed to think that there were no very great disadvantages except a temporary check to the population of the country, some derangement of commerce and industry and a heavy national debt. All these are calamities indeed, but there is reason to fear that they are far less than some of the other results of the rebellion and the war carried on to suppress it. There is a want of honesty manifest throughout the country; a disposition to overreach and cheat each other which is appalling. Men do not mind appropriating the money of their fellow men to their own use. They do not scruple to cheat and overreach wherever they can. The amount of public patronage has been immense beyond all precedent and the corruption and depreciation of public morals has been just what we might expect it to be. Sometimes we almost fear that the streets of every city in the Union may yet run blood, as did those of Paris in the days of her revolution. There have never been so fearful indications among us of something of this sort before. Just now it is hard to tell how much of conservative virtue and morality may yet remain among us.

Another feature of the times is a want of respect among the people for personal character. Politicians are sharper than usual in their attacks upon each other. Partisans are more intense and bitter than usual. There is a spirit of destructiveness manifest; everywhere is a kind of moral epidemic that rages in various neighborhoods and communities like a fatal and contagious disease. Men are reckless in what they say, as well as what they do, against others.

Excitements sweep over communities just as storms sweep over the land. Destructiveness is one of the

most active principles now operating in human society. Men seem to take delight in scandal. Relatives and kindred seem to have lost their wonted affection for each other. The sanctions of religion are weaker now than a while ago. The Christian and the moralist are amazed at this new order or rather disorder of all things moral and social. It is high time that we were aroused to a consciousness of our social and political dangers. If we do not awaken now it may be too late to save a country not only convulsed and shattered, but made an absolute wreck.