The Curse Devouring the Earth by John Norton Loughborough

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 10, 1865

The Curse Devouring the Earth.

By John Norton Loughborough

We read in Isaiah xxiv, "Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth." We suppose this to have reference to what the Lord will accomplish in the last days while wickedness is increasing on the earth. The devouring of the earth by the curse must be the destruction of its fruits and grains by different causes.

In order for us to tell whether the earth has in any manner decreased in its productiveness we should want some statistics of its ancient productiveness to compare with the present crops. Herodotus 446 B. C., says: "But the soil is so particularly well adapted for corn, that it never produces less than 200 fold. In seasons which are remarkably favorable, it will sometimes rise to 300. The ears of their wheat as well as their barley, are four digits in size. The immense height to which millet and sasanum will grow, although I have witnessed it myself, I know not how to mention. I am so well aware that they who have not visited these countries will deem whatever I may say on the subject a violation of probability."—Herodotus, p. 59.

Layard, in his researches in Ancient Nineveh says: "Herodotus describes the extreme fertility of Assyria, and its abundant harvests of corn, the seed producing two and three hundred fold. The blades of wheat and barley he declares grew to full four fingers in breadth."—Layard's Researches, p. 283.

Dionysius Hallicarnasensis, and Livy, as quoted in the Jew's Letters to Voltaire says: "In many distributions of land, made not only under the kings of Rome, but 400 years after its foundation, about 300 B. C., every citizen or planter got but two acres of ground." Such planters' families, he tells us, "averaged six persons."—Jews' Letters, pp. 280, 282, and note.

"Columela informs us, that four acres of land made up the whole estate of the famous dictator Quintius Cincinnatus." "His family including slaves, is supposed to have been twelve persons." Their acre was 60 feet longer and 6 feet wider than ours.—Jews' Letters, p. 261, note.

Who would think now of trying to sustain a family of six persons on the products of two acres. Most of our western farmers would want twenty or forty times two acres to sustain a family of that size.

Again, coming this side of Christ even, Gibbon tells us that Diocletian near the days of Constantine retired from the throne of empire to a farm of between nine and ten English acres.—Gibbon, Vol. i, p. 444.

I well recollect the smile produced on the Michigan farmers a few years since, while they were listening to an agricultural lecture from Prof. Willard as he mentioned the fact that the products of so small a tract of land would once sustain an Emperor. But we have only to look to the years of our earliest remembrance to see the modern decrease in crops. With all the modern improvements with which men can take care of ten or twenty times as many acres as they once could, we have no grain to waste.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.