A Sign of the Times

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 16, 1864

A Sign of the Times.

The following warning words are from the Chicago Journal; a careful, reliable paper, in no wise given to sensational articles. It tells a few plain facts which anybody can see who will carefully consider the present condition of the country. But here is the trouble. As it was of old, so now—"My people will not consider;"] and so they rush blindly to ruin. Railroad speed in everything, is the order of the day; and the man who engages in business has got to put a double watch over himself, or he will soon become engrossed in worldly affairs, and leave religion, the prayer-meeting, the Sabbath-school and attendance upon the ordinances of God's house, to those who have the time to spend. Take care brethren! The thorns which choke the word, never grew so rank as now. Take care! Lest that day come upon you unawares and find you engrossed in the cares of this life.—Voice of the West.

THE MANIA FOR SPECULATION.

"There is one sign of the times that oppresses the heart of every wise and pure patriot. It is the speculation mania. It has taken hold of our people with unprecedented tenacity and unexampled prevalence. It holds on to them like a scar in the flesh, or a hereditary disease. It converts the mild man into wild men; civilized men into savages. It abolishes composure and gravity, and puts into their places a furious extravagance both of conduct and imagination, and enthrones the god Greed on the market stall, the store-counter and the wharf. Speculation is the love of money in rabidest expression. It is the love of money ripened into a madness for money. Now, it requires no prophet's clear sight to foresee and to foretell the consequences of this wild, fierce, furious, and insane itching of the palms of the hands of our people after that, the mere love of which, according to the Scriptures, is the root of all evil. Why, it would be an argument for atheism if this thing went on perpetually without the abrupt arrestment of it in frightful disaster. As for us, we cannot look upon this spectacle of enormous and abnormal avarice, cupidity, and lust for money, without coming to the melancholy conclusion that this war will have to reach this quarter of the country in some frightful shape or other before it accomplishes its errand of reformatory chastisement, which is declared by our moralists to be its errand to the whole nation. Warnings are uttered by preacher and by press to no purpose, and nothing but a universal and unexampled financial crash will bring our people to their right mind; and that may grind out of them the all-devouring greed for gain which can be gotten out of them by no other means. Such is our fear."