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Review and Herald, Vol. 37, No. 15.

The Coming Kingdom of Glory

Review and Herald

Mar 28, 1871

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 28, 1871

The Coming Kingdom of Glory.

By Dr. Cumming

THE first prophecy that sounded, amid the wrecks of Paradise, rich music in the ears of the fugitives that had sinned and fled from the glorious presence of the Almighty, was in these words: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” This prediction has not yet been wholly exhausted. That the seed of the woman is the Christ of Nazareth is unquestionably true. That he has finished transgression, made an end of sin, brought in everlasting righteousness, is also true. But can it be said as a historic fact already accomplished that he has finally bruised the serpent’s head? That this has not been fully done, is obvious from such considerations as these: Satan is still the prince of the power of the air; Satan still works in the children of disobedience; Satan still sifts every Peter, buffets every Paul, and goeth about seeking whom he may devour. If these can be predicated of his power and presence in the midst of us now, it cannot with any fairness be alleged that his head is bruised. Satan is a living, restless, malignant power in this world, perverting where he cannot destroy; he still goeth about seeking whom he may devour; him we are still to resist. Therefore this prophecy has not been wholly translated into history; it is a process not yet completed. When Satan is cast down from Heaven, driven to the bottomless pit, and the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, then the great primal prediction will be exhausted. * * *
Isaiah says, “The government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever.” This is the portrait of a personally present, triumphant, and glorious Prince. The 53d chapter of Isaiah has been fulfilled on the cross; but the promises in this chapter of Isaiah will only be exhausted when the crown shall be unveiled in all its glory, and the throne shall be established forever.
* * * * *
It is obvious that the Jews looked for a temporal sovereign. Were they wrong? No, certainly not; but they looked for a profile instead of a full-face view. They looked far across the humiliation, and rested their admiring eyes only on the glory. They spurned the intervening, necessary cross, and looked only for the splendid and the promised crown. Their ignorance of their error was fatal and disastrous; yet still what they looked for was a reality; but what they ignored was the only way by and through which that reality could ever be historically fulfilled. I admit a figurative interpretation is not excluded where that interpretation can be justified by a fair and reasonable exegesis; but here the words of a most able and accomplished divine are well worthy of our remembrance. The judicious Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, says, “I hold it as an infallible rule of exposition of the sacred Scriptures, that where a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the letter is commonly the worst.” And Prof. Stuart, a very learned American theologian, says, “It is one of the plainest and most cogent of all the rules of hermeneutics, that every passage of Scripture or any other book is to be interpreted as bearing its plain and primary and literal sense, unless good reason should be given why it should be tropically, figuratively, or metaphorically understood.”
A disastrous error lay in the one-sided or partial interpretation of the Jews; but let us never forget that it is possible for us Christians, holding to the cross, which is our safety, to ignore or to shut our eyes to the rising splendor of the crown, which is the source of our hope and our happiness forever.
The Saviour, no doubt, teaches that true religion must have its birth in the individual heart, and that until true religion secures a lodgment in the heart, all expectations of a glorified Messiah are utterly vain. Hence he says, in words which have been very often misinterpreted, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” It is urged, Will not our idea of a visible, triumphant, and glorious reign, be a procession with observation? He is speaking to a people who misapprehended its fundamental nature at the time, and therefore, he says, The kingdom cometh not with material pomp, and procession, and visible splendor, such as you see to accompany the kingdom of Cæsar, and the approach of his Proconsul, or his Procurator; it comes first like the breath of spring, and must be first lodged in the individual heart; for “the kingdom of God is within you.” They were looking for a visible, and overlooking an invisible, but real, spiritual kingdom, evermore within. The apostle defines the “kingdom within” in these words, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Jesus does not say that their expectation of a splendid and triumphant kingdom was vain, for he tells them expressly, “When the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” But he shows them that, as an essential preliminary to a kingdom that should be universal, there must be an inner, spiritual, heartfelt kingdom in each individual heart, consisting of righteousness, and peace, and joy, grace first within, and glory next around.
Another expression of his has also been misinterpreted: “My kingdom is not of this world.” It is literally from the Greek, “My kingdom is not from this world.” It does not spring from Cæsar; its birth is not in this world; it does not descend in any shape from the powers of this world. This meaning is obvious from what he adds: “If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.” He evidently speaks of that spiritual kingdom he came to inaugurate, a kingdom which has lasted now eighteen centuries. But these words are not in the least inconsistent with the expectation of a future, glorious kingdom, visible from the river unto the ends of the earth; they simply rebuke the partial misapprehension of the Jew, who looked across Calvary, invisible to his jaundiced and prejudiced eye, and saw only the fulfillment of a glorious promise, that related to a kingdom that should have no end, and a glory that should have no shade. That this is no forced connection of these passages will be obvious from other texts scattered over the New Testament, one or two of which I will now quote. Gabriel said, “Thou shalt conceive, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.” This was literally fulfilled. But what follows? “And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David,” this has not been fulfilled, “and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Nathaniel said, what the Saviour accepted, “Thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” The dying thief was not corrected when he prayed, “Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom;” a thing still future. And Jesus said to his disciples, “When the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory”—that is, the throne of David—“ye also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” And again, “I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” We must understand this to mean what the words imply in ordinary usage. They coerce and constrain the meaning of the word of God who try to prove that these words have simply a spiritual significance, and that they are all fulfilled and actualized in Christ’s reigning over the hearts and consciences and minds of his believing people. Can it be said that the words of the Saviour in the gospel of St. Matthew have been fulfilled, “When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory”? or the promise of Gabriel to Mary, “He shall give him the throne of his father David”? “And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit,” what we have never yet inherited on earth, “the kingdom”? If it be a spiritual kingdom, “the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,” that is meant in all these passages, then every true Christian has inherited the kingdom already. But this cannot be, for he says, “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” St. Paul writes, “The Lord Jesus Christ shall judge the quick and the dead.” When? “At his appearing and his kingdom;” something still future. In the Apocalypse, when Christ returns, we are told, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.” And says St. Paul in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, “The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first,” called in the Apocalypse “the first resurrection;” after which, says John in that same book, “they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”
I have shown there are countless predictions of a future advent of Christ into our world. I have also shown that it is impossible, with any reasonable interpretation of the passages I have given, to suppose that Christ has fulfilled these glowing and magnificent predictions in any century that has passed away, from his crucifixion on the cross, onward to the present hour. It will follow, therefore, from all this, that the earth is to be restored; that this orb of ours is to be the capital not only of our solar system, but, in all probability, of the universe itself; that the sunshine of Sinai, Calvary, Tabor, and Olivet, shall never be extinguished, they are too memorable ever to be forgotten; and that from this earth shall go forth the law, the light, and the love, that are to be the admiration and law of surrounding orbs, and that to this world other kingdoms throughout the universe shall look as to the kingdom of grace and righteousness now culminating in this kingdom of glory, swayed over by a sceptre that shall have no interruption, and governed by a King of whose reign there shall be no end. Such seems the just and inevitable conclusion from the passages I have quoted, and I cannot come to any other. There never yet has been a perfect nation, a perfect government, or a perfect ruler. Despotism, monarchy, republics, aristocracies, all have risen, and all have disappeared in succession; and the very imperfections of all human governments, imperfections that multiply with their duration, seem to indicate, almost to prophecy, that some more perfect and more excellent order yet will be, and that a Ruler and a reign will one day be reproduced in the world that will satisfy the demands, and gratify the yearnings of the human heart, and bring in a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. It is impossible to come fairly to any other conclusion than that a personal King is to reign over all the earth; that Jesus, the same Jesus whom they saw ascend from the Mount of Olives, “shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go;” and he will fulfill in his person, and in the manifestation of his glory, and in the erection of his everlasting kingdom, all the prophecies I have quoted; for not one jot nor tittle shall pass away from one of them until all shall be fulfilled.—Dr. Cumming.

Literature for the Young.

We find the following truthful and timely hints to parents, in the Cincinnati Commercial:
“There seems to be a conspiracy between book publishers and writers for the young, to destroy the taste of the rising generation for books containing substantial and useful information. Ninety-nine out of every hundred books written specially for the entertainment of the youth of the country are fictions, or, as moderately put by the authors, ‘stories founded on fact,’ and which slip into the best regulated families as Sunday-school literature, or books written to convey some lesson of morality. The art of the engraver and bookbinder is brought into requisition to give them an appetizing appearance. The illustrations are pretty, and the books undeniably attractive in their garments of red, and scarlet, and green, and gold. If some solicitous parent is doubtful about the value of these books as literary aliment for his children, he is met with the assurance that there is no harm in them—on the contrary, much good. They convey such useful lessons of duty, and inculcate such high morality, and in such a pleasant way, that children who read them, insensibly acquire and put in practice a system of morals as effective as if they had been taught them through the sterner forms of the New England primer and the catechism. Without further ado, therefore, he lugs home a basketful of this diluted trash, and distributes it with the other holiday gifts. The publishers and the writers find profit in the business, and the result is a shower of such books with the return of the holidays, each, if possible, weaker and more trashy than the other.”
It would be a positive advantage to the children if the accumulated juvenile literature of the last twenty-five years were gathered together and made an example of, after the manner of the Alexandrian library. To be sure, some good and useful books would be lost, but there would be an average gain, if the whole were consumed in a sea of fire, and we would not have the Sunday-school books spared either, for they are the greatest offenders. Then let us have a restoration of the books that have meat in them, not the mildest of meat tea. Restore a few good books of travel, history, and biography, books treating of the principal discoveries of science in a popular style, and judicious selections from the recognized poets of our language; these form the food with which to develop the men and women of intellectual fiber and muscle.
We protest against these everlasting series—the Dolly Dimple Series, the Ragged Dick Series, the Rolling Stone Series, the Tom Tit Series—one and all of which add to a weakness of invention, no end of sentimental nonsense, pious platitude, and feeble morality. A good, vigorous thought, vigorously expressed in plain English, would be a serious disturbing element in all this level of intellectual softness and mud.

JUDGE NOT.

“Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth.” Rom. 14:4.
How do we know what hearts have vilest sin? How do we know? Many may be like sepulchers within, Whose outward garb is spotless as the snow, And many may be pure we think not so; How near to God the souls of such have been, What mercies secret penitence may win, How do we know?
How can we tell who sinneth more than we? How can we tell? We think our brother walketh guiltily— Judging him in self-righteousness. Ah! well, Perhaps had we been driven through the hell Of his untold temptations, we might be Less upright in our daily walk than he; How can we tell?
Dare we condemn the ills which others do? Dare we condemn? Their strength is small, their trials not a few. The tide of wrong is difficult to stem. And if to us, more clearly than to them, Is given knowledge of the good and true, More do they need our help, and pity too— Dare we condemn?
God help us all, and lead us day by day; God help us all! We cannot walk, alone, the perfect way; Evil doth lure and tempt us, and we fall. Alas! alas! our human strength is small; Not one of us may boast, for not a day Rolls o'er our heads, but each hath need to say, God help us all!

Timidity of Pastors.

A YEAR since, two friends of a pastor were discussing the liberality of his people in providing for his comfort. “Why is it,” said one, “that they are so much more generous toward their pastor than other churches, in proportion to their means?” “Because,” said the other, “he has schooled them to such liberality toward the various benevolent causes of the day that they have come to apply the same scale of giving to himself and family.” The answer was correct, and the principle is one of universal application. Another pastor, at a meeting of the Presbytery held in his own church, and with many of his people present, gave a timid apology for having neglected an important collection in which other churches had joined. His people were indignant. “It is not true,” said the leading men after the meeting—“It is not true that the money could not have been raised. Our pastor knows that he had but to ask for it, and it would have been cheerfully contributed. We never knew of this matter, and are ashamed that such an impression of us should go abroad.” The principle here involved is also of universal application. Will it not be found true that one of the greatest obstacles to the beneficence of the churches is the timidity of the pastors? Ministers are afraid to ask them to give.—Religious Herald.

Work for Christ.

By T. L. Cuyler

Work for Christ! This is the best cure for a spiritual invalid in the church. Work develops a man's spiritual proportions. Work makes a Christian sinewy to carry burdens, broad-shouldered to bear responsibilities, strong-voiced to sing God's praise, quick-footed to do good, and healthful in the pulse-beat of his piety. I seldom have known of a good worker giving his pastor the heartache, or making trouble in the church. I never knew a warm-hearted worker to freeze up a prayer-meeting. I am never afraid to offer such a man a subscription paper. It is the lazy professors, the people who ride on cushioned seats in the church-car, and mistake that orthodox luxury for a personal advance in grace—these are the people who are the trouble and torment of themselves and of their minister. It is easier to be the pastor of a thousand workers than of ten drones. The sight of a dying church, or even a dull one, wears harder on a pastor than the most arduous toil for a living and growing church. It is not what we do, but what we fail to do, that wears us out.—Rev. T. L. Cuyler.

“Twenty-four Facts on Baptism.”

THE above is the heading of a tract of four pages, number 306, published by the Tract Society, 200 Mulberry St., New York. As this tract has been benevolently published, and liberally circulated among the people where we have been holding meetings, to assist in enlightening them on baptism, we propose copying and noticing its “facts.” We take it that this tract is one of the best efforts, in a small space, the Society could procure. Let us, then, look at its facts:
“1. It is a fact that the word baptizo does not mean to dip only. No lexicographer or commentator in the world will risk his reputation in giving such an exclusive rendering to the word.”
This is a curious “fact,” as a first, second, or any other kind of a “fact”! It runs backward. It is but for one reason a negative fact, and that one reason is, that it is not a fact at all. How adroitly some men manage to occupy, as often as possible, a negative position. Is it so convenient to tell what baptizo does not mean? What is it that it does not mean? Is it not that it does not mean dip? No, for every authority in the world deposes that it does mean dip. Nobody denies this, except those too reckless to deserve attention.
What, then, is it that it does not mean? How sly and convenient to talk negatively! But among people of common intelligence, this is no fact at all, or anything more than a simple denial, a mere negative assertion. But what is this negative assertion; that baptizo does not mean dip? No; that is not it. What then? That it does not mean dip only? Or, to put this negative asserter where he belongs, in this case, in the affirmative, baptizo has other meanings, or, at least, some other meaning besides dip!
But what if the lexicographers do give baptizo some other meaning, or meanings? Do they give sprinkle or pour as a meaning at all? It is simply what every man who has access to the lexicons can know for himself to be so, that the lexicons in use in the schools, colleges, and universities, of the country, do not give sprinkle or pour as a meaning of baptizo at all. If a man were weak and stupid enough to maintain that every definition given by the lexicons, either primary or secondary, literal or tropical, is a mode of baptism, then sprinkle or pour has nothing in the world to do with it; for neither sprinkle nor pour is given as a definition at all, either primary or secondary. If sprinkle or pour is to be sustained as a mode of baptism, it must be done on some other ground than any definition of baptizo.
“2. It is a fact that baptizo means to sprinkle, to pour, to stain, to paint, to cleanse, to purify, etc., as well as to dip. No one can deny it. We have as legitimate a right to assert that sprinkling and pouring are the only modes of baptism as our Baptist brethren have to maintain exclusive immersion, so far as mere definition is concerned.”
This is not only not fact second, but not a fact at all, nor even a truth. It is a group of most reckless statements, without the shadow of a foundation. Let us number the false statements here called “a fact”: 1. That baptizo means sprinkle. 2. That baptizo means pour. 3. That baptizo means stain. 4. That baptizo means to paint. 5. That baptizo means to cleanse. 6. That baptizo means to purify. 7. That no one can deny that baptizo thus means. 8. That Pedobaptists have as legitimate a right to assert that sprinkling and pouring are the only modes of baptism as our Baptist brethren have to maintain exclusive immersion, so far as mere definition is concerned. There is not a fact here, or even a true statement. Instead, there are eight false statements. But why does our writer select sprinkling and pouring from his list of definitions? Why does not he advocate the staining mode? why not put in a plea for the painting mode? why not give the cleansing mode a place? why not put in the purifying mode also? why not come out, with John Wesley, and maintain that the mode is not revealed? Can any man fail to see that this is simply an effort to throw dust in the eyes of the people? What does this “legitimate right,” to make sprinkling or pouring the exclusive mode, rest on? The lexicons in the schools, colleges, and universities, of the country, give, as the primary meaning of the word baptizo, to immerse. They do not give sprinkle or pour as a meaning of the word at all. So far as the definition is concerned, the Baptists take the first one, the primary meaning, as the learning of the world admits, and practice accordingly. How any man, claiming any honor or veracity, can affirm that he has as legitimate a right to take that which is not given by the lexicons as a meaning of baptizo at all, and practice according to it, is more than we can understand. There is divine authority for what the word baptizo means, but none for what it does not mean.
“3. It is a fact that in the Scripture, the classics, and the ancient fathers, SPRINKLING and POURING are called baptism. Heb 9:10; Acts 11:16; Isa. 52:15 (a direct prophetical reference to baptism, and also the verse from which Philip enlightened the eunuch on baptism), and Num. 8:7 (expressing the manner in which Christ fulfilled all righteousness). So both our Saviour and the eunuch were baptized by sprinkling.”
This “fact” turns out, like its predecessors, to be not only not a fact at all, nor a truth, but a mere false assertion. This assertion is as completely without a shadow of foundation as any false assertion ever uttered. Not an instance is found in Scripture, or in the classics, where sprinkling is called baptism. The Greeks had their word for sprinkle, their word for pour, and their word for immerse. The Greek words for sprinkle, pour, and immerse, are used as distinctly as our three English words for these three actions. These three Greek words are never used interchangeably, and cannot be, any more than our three English words, sprinkle, pour, and immerse. These three words are all found in the New Testament. The proper Greek word for sprinkle is found several times in the New Testament, and rightly translated sprinkle in every place. But it is never applied to the ordinance or rite in question. It is always applied to something else. The same is true of the Greek word for pour. It is found in several places in the New Testament, and translated pour in every instance. But it is never applied to the ordinance in question. Nor is the word baptismos ever applied to the ordinance, but baptizo. Bapto is found in the New Testament three times, and translated dip in the common version in each case where it occurs. But it is never applied to the ordinance.
Touching the words of the prophet, Isa. 52:15, “So shall he sprinkle many nations,” though the precious word “sprinkle” is found, the usual, original word for sprinkle is not found there, nor baptizo, nor anything about baptism in the entire chapter. Dr. Clarke reads it, “So shall he astonish many nations.” Not only so, but this is not the chapter the treasurer of Queen Candace was reading, not the same “scripture at which Philip began to preach to him Jesus, to enlighten him on baptism,” or any other subject, but it was the next chapter. Paul said nothing about “divers washings,” but the King James version is responsible for the “washings.” It is simply “divers immersions.”—Church Advocate.

War and the 19th Century.

There have been much preaching and prophesying, within the last hundred years, of a rapidly approaching millennium of peace and happiness for our world. Not from the word of God, but from the pretensions and dreams of a humanitarian philosophy, have these ideas and hopes been begotten, and attempted to be read into the sacred prophecies. To our mind, the evidence from the sacred Scriptures is perfectly conclusive and overwhelming, that all such anticipations are utterly false, and of the devil. We cannot understand how men can take the Bible, and, with any show of reasonable dealing with its language and claims, suppose for a moment that anything but growing disorder and ultimate ruin is ever to come out of this world, or all its boasted science and improvement.
But, apart from all statements from Revelation or doctrines of prophecy, we would think that, by this time, the facts, as they have been developed, ought to satisfy men that these dreams are nothing but delusion. With all the preaching of peace, and the organizations and appliances to bring to an end the ravages of human butchery and the devilish horrors of war, the nineteenth century has been prolific of fearful bloodshed. Not one year of the seventy which are past, has been a year of entire peace. Somewhere there has been all the time war. And it has been the most civilized nations, and those paraded as the most thoroughly under the influence of the illumination and advancement of this superlative age, who have done by far the greatest part of the fighting.
We have seen a recent review of the wars of the nineteenth century, which we think it well to reproduce in these columns, and from which the doting spirit of our times ought to learn the emptiness of its hopes and the falsity of its pretensions.
Thus, England alone has waged forty-nine wars since 1800. Of these, there have been three with France, two with Russia, five with China, two with Denmark, two with Holland, two with Turkey, two with Burmah, two with Persia, one with the United States, one with Prussia, one with Spain, one with Sweden, one with Portugal, one with Egypt; the others were with the Peishaw, the Mahrattas, the great Mogul, Nepaul, Algiers, the Wahabees, the Pindarrees, the Ashantees, Caffres, Hottentots, Baers, Afghans, Canadian rebels, Paraguay, Scinde, Sepoy mutineers, Maoris, Japan, and Abyssinia.
France figures in thirty-seven wars; viz., four with Austria, three with Russia, three with Prussia (including the present war), three with England, four with the Arab tribes, two with Mexico, two with China, two with Spain, two with Holland, two with Turkey, one with Portugal, one with Egypt, one with Switzerland, one with Denmark, one with Sweden, one with Algiers, one with Morocco, one with Paraguay, one with Japan, and one with the Roman republic.
Russia shows a list of twenty-one wars; viz., three with France, three with Turkey, two with England, two with Poland, two with Persia, two with Khiva, two with Bokhara, one with Hungary, one with Egypt, one with China, and one (very long and bloody) with Circassia.
Austria figures in twelve; viz., five with France, three with Italy, one with Prussia, one with Hungary, one with Denmark, and one with Egypt.
Prussia comes last with seven; viz., three with France, two with Denmark, one with Austria, and one with England.
So much for the leading powers of the Old World. But to the desolating wars above enumerated, must be added the numerous revolutionary movements in Italy and Spain, invariably suppressed with great bloodshed; the dynastic contests of the Carlists and Christinos, in Spain, which are not extinct yet, and of the Miguelites and Pedroties in Portugal, all of which occasioned great misery and loss of life.
Then there was the war of independence in Greece, which lasted more than seven years, and was at last terminated by the intervention of England, France, and Russia, and the battle of Navarino.
On this continent, war has been the chronic state of the southern portion of it ever since the Spanish colonies threw off the yoke of the mother country. Incessant revolutions constitute the dreary history of Mexico and the South American States. But we have not been without our troubles. We have had several Indian wars, a war with England, one with Mexico, and our great civil war. Cuba, Hayti, and San Domingo, have suffered at intervals from the same scourge. Brazil has recently concluded a long and costly struggle with Paraguay, and, in short, it is difficult to call a single nation in the world which has not been involved in war of some kind or other, domestic or foreign, in the course of the present century.
Asia has seen an enormous amount of bloodshed during the past seventy years. There have been the incessant wars carried on by the English in India, Burmah, Negro, and China; and by the French in Cochin China and Annam; also by the Russians with the Circassians and the wild tribes of Central Asia, and with Turkey and Persia; also by the Turks with the Persians and the Egyptians; by the Persians with the Belooches, Afghans, and Tartars; and there have been the continual domestic wars among the Afghan, Sikh, Mahratta, and other Hindoo chiefs, for supremacy.
For the first fifteen years of this century there was war all over Europe, and it extended even to this continent. During the next ten years, it appeared all over Mexico, Central and South America (excepting Brazil). Then Asia and Africa came in for their turn, with the French in Algeria, the English at the Cape and on the west coast, and Egypt on the east; the Russians in Turkey and Circassia; the English and the French in India and China. This lasted for twenty-five years, when the scene shifted to Europe once more, and the Crimean war, the wars in Hungary, Italy, Denmark, Germany, and lastly, France, have filled up the remainder of the time.
What a commentary, this, upon the boasts of modern enlightenment, and upon the Christianity of the populations and governments which are to give us the millennium! Shame on the philosophy, to say nothing of the way it handles holy Scripture, which can promise an era of universal and abiding peace and righteousness in the face of such a record! Well might it take up the lamentation of Jeremiah: “We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble.”
We are happy to know that there is an era of peace coming, and that it is not far off; an era of peace which is peace; when the nations shall learn war no more, and the world shall rest forever under the almighty Prince of peace. But it will never come by means of humanitarian reforms, and the progress of earthly science, effort, and freedom. It is not from this world. It cometh from Heaven. It cometh with judgment and destruction to all in which earthly wisdom rests for its attainment. It cometh with Him who has promised to come again, and whose right it is to reign.
Meanwhile, let the nations rage, and the people imagine vanity. Let the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together. And let the professed ministers of God go on fanning the vanity and false hopes of the depraved and deluded world. He that sitteth in the Heavens laugheth at them. The Lord holdeth them in derision. When he setteth up his King on his holy hill of Zion, he will break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. When they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape. Let us beware that no man spoil us with vain and deceitful philosophies of human progress and self-redemption.—Prophetic Times.
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