Modern Orthodoxy vs. Bible and Facts.
By H. C. Miller
A FEW Sundays ago I called to visit a brother at one of the hospitals in this city, and not finding him in, while waiting I stepped into a New England Congregational church, and heard one of those “Teachers having itching ears,” who turn away their ears from the truth, and believe in fables. When I entered, the choir was singing the hymn composed of these words: “The morning light is breaking,
The darkness disappears;
The sons of earth are waking
To penitential tears;
Each breeze that sweeps the ocean,
Brings tidings from afar,
Of nations in commotion,
Prepared for Zion's war.
“Rich dews of grace come o'er us,
In many a gentle shower,
And brighter scenes before us,
Are opening every hour.
Each cry to Heaven going,
Abundant answer brings,
And heavenly gales are blowing
With peace upon their wings.
“See heathen nations bending
Before the God of love,
And thousand hearts ascending
In gratitude and love;
While sinners, now confessing,
The gospel's call obey,
And seek a Saviour's blessing,
A nation in a day.”
That hymn contains the idea he advanced in his sermon, viz., that all the world is on the eve of conversion to the God of Heaven; that whole nations were seeking Him and His blessing, and instancing the United States,—all coming before Him in grateful worship on that day! After the singing, he read the second chapter of Isaiah, then the choir sang another hymn which in sentiment was the echo of the first. Then followed a prayer, in which the speaker thanked God for such a glorious plan of salvation, and for the privilege of having a part in it. After the singing, he took his text from Isaiah xxi, 11, 12. Reversing the order there, he had the night in the past, and the morning just dawning. His argument was in substance as follows: 1. It is God’s plan of salvation that all the world shall be converted. 2. It will be a willing conversion, God’s Spirit will move so powerfully upon the hearts of men, that all will cheerfully bow the knee, confess their sins, and be pardoned. 3. Though God had not yet succeeded in this plan, yet His six thousand years’ work had not been in vain; and, 4. We are now just on the eve of the accomplishment of this great work, everything showing it. Universal education, improvements in science, arts, and agriculture, abolition of slavery, discoveries of gold, silver, and precious stones, (these were to adorn the holy city that was to be brought in at the close of this great work,) and a many speculation about rocks pouring forth oil, gas made from water, &c., which was so many that I ceased trying to follow him. He wrought himself up to such a happy hight, that he closed by thanking God for this great and glorious plan of salvation, and, Pharisee-like, telling God that he, the speaker, was doing his whole duty in relation to the work in hand. Then the whole closed with another hymn in honor of that event. All seemed pleased with the idea, and one remarked to another in my hearing, that it was sure to be accomplished, if it took 10,000 years. The preacher said the world was growing better, and they all believed it without a doubt, or question. Many passages of Scripture came to my mind: the parable of the wheat and tares, iniquity abounding, and the love of many waxing cold, making it harder to endure to the end; evil men and seducers waxing worse, show a different state of existing things. To test the truth of these things, I thought I would watch the criminal record during the ensuing week, and the result I found to be anything but flattering to the deductions by the preacher aforesaid. From the city papers during the week, we cull the following record of cases of crime. In the first paper was seven cases of common-place, ordinary crimes, such as burglaries, arson, assaults with intent to kill, &c., all taking place in this city in one day, to say nothing of those undetected. The next day an account of a midnight affray, in which a policeman kills two brothers—roughs. Then another account of crime, in which an M. D. assists death in drawing his mantle over a life of misfortune, shame, and crime. Then the case of a man knocked down and robbed of $2,000, and four others of minor importance, (in the sight of men,) all in the city. An account of a horrible crime—a wholesale poisoning by a woman—six victims, in Pittsburg. A heavy bank robbery in Ohio. The next paper gave a daring burglary. Time has been when crime sought the cover of darkness. When scoundrels “loved darkness better than light, because their deeds were evil;” but now with bold impudence, it does not even seek the cover of darkness, but acts in the broad daylight. It is an account of a house on one of the principal streets, in a thickly settled portion of the city, in midday, chopped open with an axe and robbed of over $4,000. In the next paper every other item in the local column was a record of crime—no less than nine cases. And the balance were pregnant in murders, thefts, assaults, &c. But the preacher said the world had been growing better for six thousand years. Query. Why was the flood? Why were Sodom and the cities of the plain overwhelmed? Why were Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem, &c., destroyed? From whence come slavery? From whence come wars and strifes to-day? He said the world would soon be converted; that sin was growing less. Does he read the papers? “Oh, ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” But the preacher comforted the people. Yes, we are all to be converted. No use to trouble ourselves about it, God is going to bring us all in. “Peace and safety.” “Peace and safety.” “For when they shall say Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape.” The preacher assured himself and his hearers, that crime is growing less. But the thinking, observing editor of the Chicago Tribune, from which I clip the following article, republished Sept. 3, 1865, from the same paper of July, 1857, thinks differently. He could find no more appropriate language to describe the present state of the country, than this republished article: “This may properly be styled the era of murder. Seduction and crim. con. as agencies for the public bewilderment, and stagnation of the moral sense, are thrust entirely out of view by a superior horror. Murdurs by drowning, murders by poisoning, murders by strangling, murders with bludgeons, shooting irons and butcher’s knives, murders in the day and murders in the dark; murders of foe, friends, wives and children, and appropriate suicides terminating the tragedies; bloody murders, horrid murders, and plain, slovenly, unvarnished murders, with no distinguishing or original features—have apparently become a public infirmity. It is impossible to deny or conceal it. We do not pretend to account for the deplorable fact, but murder, in all its bloody variety of forms has become so frequent an occurrence in the Western States that we have been obliged to let them pass without notice in our columns, unless accompanied by circumstances of peculiar barbarity; and while thus discriminating against the every day horror, we have chronicled sixteen murders as occurring in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, within as many days. One day we hear that a whole family is missing. The next, they are found floating in the Illinois river with their throats cut. Simultaneously with this, Judge Lynch calls his docket for horse-thieves in Iowa, and a series of confederated, open, daylight strangulations are the hideous consequence. Not to be behind in anything of public interest, Wisconsin presents us with three or four tasteful butcheries in quick succession, and Minnesota asserts her claim to notice by shooting Indians and spearing their dead carcasses. Then we learn of a drowning here, and a stabbing there, and a desperate shooting affray yonder in Illinois, followed by a consolidated tragedy in Iowa, made up of a wife chopped and pounded to death, a house set on fire, and an unspeakable villain’s brains blown out by his own hand. What may be the next horrible slaughter, or how near us it may occur, we have no data to predict, but, judging from the rapid succession of sacrifices which we have been called upon to chronicle within one short month, we may safely presume that the intelligence of some alarming arson, or spilling of human blood will be on our table by an early mail.
“And where is to be the end of all this mangling of human forms, and destruction of human life?”
Here is the end: “Behold the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.” Isa. xiii, 9.