Your ShelfYour Projects

Review and Herald, Vol. 32, No. 19.

THE AGE OF MURDER

Review and Herald

Nov 2, 1869

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 2, 1869

THE AGE OF MURDER.

By D. T. Taylor

We commend to the serious attention of the readers of the Review the following from the pen of Eld. D. T. Taylor. It was first published in the columns of The Christian, 19 Lindall St., Boston, Mass. The editor of that sheet, Eld. H. L. Hastings, has also published the article in tract form for general circulation. It can be obtained of the author at Rouse’s Point, N. Y., and also of the publisher.
The writer has presented, in a concise form, a most powerful array of facts to show that the present is emphatically the Age of Murder. This is certainly a startling assertion. Yet we venture to say that every candid reader of this tract will acknowledge that the author has proved its truthfulness. The tract is valuable as shedding great light on the present condition of the world. It is particularly adapted to place in the hands of those who think that we are on the eve of the millennium.—Ed. Review.
This, truly, is an age of murder. It is fast becoming notorious for deeds of blood and violence. We seek not to encourage a gloomy apprehension respecting the present or the future. We would occasion no unnecessary alarm in society touching the general peril. We only present stubborn facts, and leave the reader to scan the issue.
Crime is frightfully on the increase, especially those species of it which indicate an utter disregard of the sanctities of human life. Murder defiles the age. There are murders of fathers and murders of mothers; murders of brothers and murders of sisters; murders of unborn babes and murders of little children; murders of neighbors and of strangers; murders of rich and of poor; murders in high life and in low; murders in broad daylight and in the dark,—in the open street and in by-ways; murders by ones, and twos, and threes, and murders of whole families; murders of men for a mere difference of opinion; murders for a few paltry dollars; murders for hate and revenge; and murders in all horrible ways that human fiendishness, worked up into frenzy by poisoned liquors, and infuriated by the devil, can invent.
When in 1843 the United States Gazette examined the statistics of crime in this country and recorded the occurrence of two hundred and fifteen (215) murders by means of guns, pistols, bowie-knives, etc., in the first six months of that year in all our land, the other journals repeated the tale as a “melancholy picture,” and the community was shocked at the fearful story of bloodshed and homicide. Only six years after this, the Police Gazette with horror recorded for the single month of May, 1849, the killing, by human hands, of twenty-four persons in the United States, and did then emphatically style the present time “The Age of Murder.” Let us examine the facts and statistics that justify this appellation.
We will take Boston for our first example. From 1843 to 1849 the increase of population was thirty per cent, while a committee, chosen for the purpose, reported to the mayor, February 12, on the increase of crime, relating only to deeds of violence, an average increase of five hundred and fifty (550) per cent. The population of the city at that time was one hundred and twenty thousand (120,000), and the arrests by the police for the previous year amounted to eleven thousand one hundred and seventy-eight (11,178) persons, or one for every ten. The report says: “The grand jury complain of the increase of crime beyond that of population.” In the whole State of Massachusetts the homicides in five years, from 1855 to 1859, amounted to one hundred and nine (109), averaging twenty-two per annum: in the last named year there being twenty-five deaths by violence. Ten years later, in 1869, a January number of the Boston Journal, under the head of “The boldness of Crime,” speaks of robbery, violence, and murder, having “a constant and steady growth for some years past,” and its New York correspondent, writing to the paper, denominates these times “The reign of Violence.”
In a single week in January, 1853, there were eight murders in New York City. In 1856 only eleven homicides were reported, but the next year the number leaped up to fifty-five. In 1858 there were inquests held over the bodies of forty-nine murdered persons, but the whole number who met violent deaths in the city that year was seventy-nine. In 1859 there were sixty murders, and in all this time only one murderer was hung. In 1860 there were one hundred and three (103) inquests over murdered persons in the city, while the arrests for crime were sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and ninety (68,890), of whom only three thousand nine hundred and seventy-three (3,973) were convicted on trial and punished;—the remainder who were guilty, escaped justice to pursue a career of crime. Only a year or two later it was announced in the journals that over seventy murderers lay in the prisons of New York City, either awaiting trial or under sentence of death. Neither Paris, with its population of two millions (2,000,000), nor any other city in the Christian and civilized world, was declared to have an equal number. It was said that this fact was “startling;” the “spirit of Cain it seemed had descended on the island;” “who could explain the dreadful problem?” In ten years, from 1859 to 1868, inclusive, there were in the city, five hundred and thirty-two (532) known deaths by violence, while in thirteen years previous to 1868, there were one hundred and sixty-five (165) murders committed in the city, the perpetrators of which have never been discovered. “Make a chain, for the land is full of bloody crimes, the city is full of violence.” Ezek. vii, 23.
A New York paper of 1869 says: “During the past nine years there have been eight hundred and five thousand one hundred and forty-nine (805,149) persons arrested by our police, and that does not by any means indicate that this nearly a million were a tenth of those who, in the time named, were drunk and disorderly, and committed often the entire list of crimes.” In February, 1858, the New York Observer spoke in an alarming strain of the uninterrupted course and increase of crime, and says, “Is this state of things to continue?—then we may fearfully apprehend the future.” Five years earlier than this, in 1853, the Hartford Courant of April declared, “It is a lamentable fact that crime throughout the country is on the increase. Murders for the mere purpose of plunder, highway robberies and burglaries, are much more common now than they were forty years ago, and have increased in a ratio greater than the increase in the number of the inhabitants.” Such was the constant testimony relating both to city and country. Sixteen years ago, in 1853, the children trained in crime, the receivers of stolen goods, gamblers, beggars, drunkards, habitual tipplers, thieves, and profligate persons of New York City, were estimated at one hundred and fifty-three thousand (153,000); a terrible army when compared with the sixty-four thousand (64,000) which make up the total of Protestant communicants there; “a greater number in proportion to the population than in London,” said a city paper while deploring these facts.
The whole country is no better off. “The Carnival of Crime,” is the current name given to this seething deluge of corruption, this insane lust for blood. In San Francisco in the four years, from 1849 to 1852, inclusive, there were twelve hundred (1,200) murders committed, while, in the single year 1855, there were five hundred (500) persons in the city killed by violence. Incredible as it may seem, it has been estimated that in all California during the six years previous to 1860, there were five thousand (5,000) persons murdered, doubtless, mostly for gold. Who can enumerate the murders in Kansas in 1856-7? Who can tell the deaths of both whites and blacks by violence, in all the Southern States within ten years past? A great pen on high has kept the record, though unknown to mortals; and God will surely “make inquisition for blood.” The papers report over five hun-dred (500) murders in the State of Louisiana in the two months of November and December, 1868, a reign of terror prevailing. In the single county of Marion, in Texas, there were twenty-seven murders in one week in November, and not a murderer was arrested, while in all Texas, from the close of the war in 1864 to the year 1868, it was stated that there had been seven hundred and sixty-one (761) murders perpetrated, and during all that time there was but one execution for murder. Can the imagination picture a condition of society like this? It is also reported in the U. S. Senate, in January, 1869, that there were three hundred and thirty-six (336) murders in the State of Georgia, in a period of but nine and a half months of last year. Most of these persons, doubtless, were colored, but, nevertheless, they were men who were slain.
In the Northern States, where Christianity and education exert their most powerful influence, there is, as elsewhere, the same sanguinary tale. In Schuylkill County, Penn., in the brief space of four years, between 1863 and 1867, there were fifty-seven murders committed. In the south-east county of New Hampshire, there were five cases of murder trial on the docket for the courts, all committed during the season of 1868. Last year (1868), there were thirty murders and an equal number of suicides in one western city, St. Louis; while some years ago it was declared that there were annually in the United States five hundred thousand (500,000) cases of assault and battery, with over eight hundred (800) self murders, beside an equal number murdered by other and bloody hands. Truly, the “soul is wearied because of murderers.” Jer. iv, 31. All authorities acknowledge an increase of the mania for crime. In 1867 the Penitentiary of Illinois had eleven hundred (1,100) convicts, which were eighty per cent more than in 1865.
Rev. Dr. Eddy said at Worcester, September, 1868, that “crime, drunkenness, embezzlement, and irregularities of every kind are on the increase.” Rev. Dr. Chapin asserts in The Liberal Christian, that “Society is honey-combed with evils and vices. It seems as though the fountain springs of vice had overflowed and oozed down through a thousand invisible channels, and made the very ground beneath our feet one vast quagmire of sensuality, corruption, and crime;” while the startled Rev. H. W. Beecher exclaims, “All the framework of society seems to be dissolving!” Zion’s Herald declares, concerning the increasing catalogue of crimes, that “the devil was never busier than now;” while the Albany Journal unequivocally asserts the existence of a mania for crime of the most desperate and daring character, and ominously predicts that this wild mania will become universal. The picture is indeed horrible. We have no love to exhibit it. But if these things actually do exist, why should not sober, moral men and women look into the jaws of this hell, and be ready to meet their responsibilities?
Not only in our own country, but in the best countries in Europe, crime increases. In Blackwood’s Magazine for July, 1844, published in Edinburgh, it was said: “Since the year 1805, that is, during a period of less than forty years, in the course of which population has advanced about sixty-five per cent in Great Britain and Ireland, crime in England has increased seven hundred per cent, in Ireland, about eight hundred per cent, and in Scotland, about thirty-six hundred per cent.” All this, too, we are told, has occurred in a half century of prosperity and material progress. At that time the annual commitments for crime were about one hundred and eighty thousand (180,000); while the commitments since five years ago had gone up twenty-five per cent above these figures. In 1858, fourteen years subsequent to Blackwood’s estimates, the Boston Recorder stated that “Within forty years, commitments for crime have increased in England from five thousand (5,000) to thirty-one thousand (31,000), more than six fold; and four times faster than the increase of population. In Scotland, the increase of crime in the same period has risen from eighty-nine (89) to three thousand eight hundred and eighty-four (3,884), which is forty-three fold, or twenty-five times faster than the population.” Ten years ago, in 1859, England and Wales had one hundred and four thousand nine hundred and eighty-five (104,985) criminals at large, enough to make seventy regiments of the line, and these villains were estimated to cost British society every year the sum of one hundred and fifty million dollars ($150,000,000), or about double the money spent upon the Royal Navy; and fifty times as much as was expended for foreign missions.
In the year 1864, the convictions for crime in England numbered two hundred and forty-six thousand five hundred and seventy-six (246,576) persons, and the number arrested and convicted for criminal offenses in France during the same year, was six hundred and fifty-three thousand nine hundred and fifty-four (653,954). British authorities say that at the present time, drunkenness, lawlessness, and violence, in the whole kingdom, are on the increase, especially in large cities. We are told there were twenty-seven murders in Liverpool in 1868, and the head constable reports intemperance and crime increasing, but declares his inability to account for it. Such is the awful record of the preponderance of sin and evil in its worst forms, right in the very heart of Christendom.
It may be earnestly asked, “What is the cause of this strange thirst for blood, this reckless disregard of human life, this onward march of crime?” Our answer is, The age is reaching its climax of iniquity preparatory to the coming of the great day of God’s wrath. And while the causes of this rising tide of evil are various, we shall here refer to but two; viz., novel-reading and intemperance. Never was there so great a demand for works of fiction; and, to supply this demand, the tribe of novel-writers has come to be named “Legion.” Especially do all classes seek those sensational works full of horrible deeds and licentious allusions, whose tendency is to destroy all love for sober reading, corrupt the morals, and loosen the restraints of virtue. The American Publisher and Bookseller says, that of two thousand one hundred and sixty-nine (2,169) new books printed in this country in 1868, classed as fiction, religious, law, biography, agricultural, historical, and educational, no less than seven hundred and fifty-four (754), or more than one third, were works of fiction; while the religious works numbered only two hundred and fifty-eight (258), there being three novels to one godly book. On the pages of a vain and vicious sheet issuing from a small town in New Hampshire, we count over four hundred works of this class, embracing novels, foolish song books, and productions of the worst authors, all on sale by the publishers of that monthly paper.
What the perverted taste of the age demands, is seen in the fact that the immense Public Library of Boston aims to keep on hand for circulation and general reading, a copy of every novel published in the English language, and that these are the books most sought for there; also in the fact that of two thousand one hundred and ninety-seven (2,197) books called for and issued by the Oxford Free Library, England, in three months ending August 31, 1857, no less than one thousand four hundred and one (1,401) were novels and tales, while only two hundred and seventy-one (271) were religious; and again, when it is stated that during the month of June, 1855, of seven hundred and thirty-four (734) books drawn from the Mercantile Library at San Francisco, three hundred and eleven (311) were works of fiction, while only seven, or one two hundredth part of the whole were religious books; the vain and lying works that poison the mind, being, when compared with the religious and serious, as nearly forty-five to one. The Advance of Feb. 11, 1869, is responsible for the statement that “more copies of the light literature papers are sold in New England than the total circulation of all the religious weeklies published there.”
The religious press caters to this depraved taste, Sunday School libraries are as full of pious novels as Egypt was of frogs, a great Tract Society openly announces as reading for the Sabbath at home, “Fictions in form, in substance Facts,” eminent ministers are found writing novels for the “Satanic Press,” so-called Christian women spread the land with their romances and false tales, and staid religious and evangelical weeklies which stand as representatives of morality, religion and orthodoxy, not only advertise (as a mere matter of business of course!) Spiritualistic sheets, set for the overthrow of Christianity, but also give regular notices of all novels, light literature and silly books sent to them, not excepting those allowed by the courts to be of the most scandalous and worst kind. We claim that this irruption of fiction largely increases vice and crime.
A second cause is intoxicating liquors, all of which are poisoned with drugs. With the awful increase in the manufacture, sale, and use, of these, crime everywhere keeps bold and steady pace. Rev. W. H. H. Murray, in an address at Music Hall, Boston, March 14, 1869, said, on the subject of crime being aggravated by the use of intoxicating drinks, that “In New York State, in 1849, the number committing crimes while under the influence of liquor was thirty-six thousand one hundred and fourteen (36,114). The Sheriff of Albany county reported the proportion of crimes directly traceable to intoxication in his jurisdiction as eight-tenths. In Duchess county it was four-fifths; in Erie county, eight-tenths; in Niagara county, three-fourths; the police justice of Buffalo reported nine-tenths. In 1848, in the State of Connecticut, the keepers of the prison reported ninety-one hundredths; in the city of Norwich, seventy-five hundredths. Massachusetts, in one year, sent twelve thousand (12,000) criminals to her prisons, and reported nine thousand (9,000) directly made such by intemperance. Sir Matthew Hale, after twenty-four years of observation on the bench, said: “If all the murders, manslaughters, burglaries, riots, tumults, adulteries, fornications, rapes, and other enormities committed in England, were represented by five parts, at least four parts would, beyond dispute, be directly due to intemperance.” Mr. Murray did not give one-half the dismal picture of rum’s doings, and yet the Boston Advertiser of March 15, which published this able lecture, in a leading editorial asserts that “If the alarming picture of the moral condition of the country drawn by the Rev. Mr. Murray were true, it would be high time for the purifying fires to descend and begin their work.” And they will descend.
In Sweden, the depth of misery and crime caused by the liquor traffic is so great that the voice of thousands in alarm is demanding legal and legislative prohibition of the manufacture of such drinks. In England, the drunkenness of the masses is frightful to contemplate. In all England, during the five years ending September, 1867, there were nearly one million cases of arrest for assaults and disorderly conduct, a vast majority of them growing out of intoxication. In 1862, the number of drunken persons proceeded against was eighty-two thousand one hundred and ninety-six (82,196), while in the year following it ran up to ninety-four thousand nine hundred and eight (94,908), the justices asserting that “the returns show a great increase over the preceding year.”
This annual increase has not at all diminished, as proved by the figures of crime in Liverpool in 1868, where, as already stated, there were twenty-seven murders, and where, out of sixteen thousand seven hundred and seventy (16,770) persons arrested for criminal offenses, no less than fourteen thousand four hundred and fifty-one (14,451) were drunk at the time of arrest, and where the city authorities still report inebriety increasing, and education and general morality much less. Indeed, Mr. Robert Baxter, in an address to the City Missionary Society of London, declared that the abundant inducements to criminal pleasures and “drinking” were the main causes of all the misery that was daily witnessed in London and in the country; and a member of Parliament is responsible for saying that the yearly expense to England for the use and disastrous effects of intoxicating drinks is estimated to amount to five hundred million dollars.
In this country the figures are still more saddening and frightful. In 1850 the value of the spirituous and malt liquors produced in the United States was twenty-one and a half millions of dollars ($21,500,000). In 1860 this sum had nearly doubled, it being forty-one and a half millions ($41,500,000). Only seven years later, in 1867, the number of gallons of intoxicating liquors manufactured amounted to two hundred and forty millions ($240,000,000,) or aboutsix gallons per year to each and every man, woman and child in the United States. In this last brief interval of years the distilleries had increased from one thousand one hundred and ninety-three (1,193) in 1860, to three thousand (3,000) in 1867. These drugged and damnable liquids, together with others imported, were, it is well known, according to the report of Commissioner Wells, made out from the sworn returns sent in to him, sold at retail during the year, for the gigantic sum of one billion, four hundred and eighty-three millions, four hundred and ninety-one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-five dollars,† ($1,483,491,865.) Such being the sum expended for drinks of this kind in a single year ending June 30, 1867, we have here in part the secret of the Age of Murder; the horrible figures and facts which underlie the Carnival of crime with which the whole land is being flooded and desolated. Indeed, the New York Tribune of November 18, 1868, goes further, and makes the yearly loss to the whole country by the use and abuse of intoxicating drinks to be equal to “two billions, two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, ($2,250,000,000,) or considerably more than the interest-bearing portion of the national debt.” Have the people in this land looked these figures in the face?
As the result of this general drunkenness, Hall’s Journal of Health a few years since, stated that of six thousand (6,000) persons tried in one year before the New York Court of Sessions, only ninety-four (i. e., one in sixty-three), were sober when arrested. Senator Henry Wilson recently declared in public that we have now five hundred thousand (500,000) drunkards in the country; and Mr. Murray, whose address is already quoted from, with a terrible earnestness, declares: “Bear me witness if I exaggerate when I say that the country is rapidly becoming one VAST grog-shop, to which half a million of its youth are yearly introduced, and over whose threshold sixty thousand are annually carted to a drunkard’s grave.” With these facts before us it is easy to see that a desperate and fearful struggle is at hand. Will the Christianity of this age, the moral conscience of the country, meet and defeat this tidal wave of hell? We shall see. Thus far, heedless of law, careless of death or the judgment, bidding defiance to all restraint, and all appeal,—crime, murder, and drunkenness, stalk right on, bold and impudent, mocking all hope of reform or of better days,—the gospel of Jesus being powerless, and the Christianity of the age being impotent to stay their career even in the most favored, enlightened, and Christian lands. These are not the ages of darkness; nor are we writing of heathen lands, such as India, where Archdeacon Jeffries declares that “for every person truly converted to Christianity the drinking practices of the English have made fully a thousand drunkards,” but of countries whose united ministry would perhaps reach a hundred thousand, and where Bibles are as thick as the green leaves of summer. If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? Alas, man is every day proving himself incapable of governing the earth, and the great want of the times is “another king, one Jesus,” to rule the world in visible splendor and righteousness.
It is our solemn conviction that this Carnival of Crime, this Age of Murder, this sad era, when a country of nearly forty millions of free and enlightened people has become one vast grog-shop, this overflowing wickedness of the careless multitudes, is the predicted iniquity which, in the waning years of time, was to come to its full tide, not only as proceeding from the depravity of human nature, but also from the increased activity and intense anger of Satan, who is the prince of this kingdom of darkness;—and that the last days, with all their foretold deluge of evil, are upon the world, and that the coming of the Lord is very near. And it is our deliberate opinion that the crimes of this last age are provoking the most terrific divine judgments on cities and countries, and that before long there will be such calamities and catastrophes in the earth as will cause the ears of men to tingle when they hear the tale. The Judge has said, “As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed;” and in Noah’s time, just anterior to the world’s destruction, not only was man’s heart given to continual sin and evil, but this inward evil overflowed until “the whole earth was filled with violence.” Gen. vi.
And while there remains for the pure and the good, one “blessed hope,” namely, the personal coming of Jesus to the everlasting joy of all who love his appearing, there waits for the impenitent, the prayerless, and the persistently wicked, the nearing Judgment Throne, the sentence, Depart, and the fiery lake. In view of these things we cry to the child of God, Stand fast! and in the ears of drunken and bloody men, proclaim God’s law, “Thou shalt not kill;” “Woe unto him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor’s lips and maketh him drunken;” “No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God;” “No murderer hath eternal life in him;” “but murderers shall have their part in the lake of fire, which is the second death.”
Thus saith God: REPENT!

“WHEN HE SHALL APPEAR, WE SHALL BE LIKE HIM.”

Oh! mean may seem this house of clay, Yet ’twas the Lord’s abode; Our feet may mourn this thorny way, Yet here Immanuel trod.
This fleshly robe the Lord did wear, This watch the Lord did keep; These burdens sore the Lord did bear, These tears the Lord did weep.
Our very frailty brings us near Unto the Lord of Heaven; To every grief, to every tear, Such glory strange is given.
But not this earthly robe alone Shall link us, Lord, to thee; Not always in the tear and groan Shall thy dear kindred be.
We shall be reckoned for thine own, Because thy Heaven we share; Because we sing around thy throne, And thy bright raiment wear.

TERRIBLE RECORD OF A MONTH.

“The curse devoureth the earth.”—“There is sorrow on the sea, it cannot be quiet.”—“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain.”
From Sept. 6 to Oct. 6, 1869, deserves to be remembered as a month of extraordinary events. A mere glance at some of them is sufficient to show that earth is greatly disquieted on account of sin—creation groans for the promised deliverance—the times are perilous—and God hath a controversy with the nations.
On Monday, Sept. 6, “one of the most frightful colliery disasters that it has ever been the painful lot of American journals to put on record,” occurred at the Avondale mine in Plymouth, Pa. One hundred and ten persons lost their lives; the widows and orphans bereft number “not less than one hundred and sixty-eight,” and a generous public have been called upon to raise means for the relief of those thus suddenly left destitute of support.
Sept. 8 brought “the great gale” on the Atlantic coast. “No gale approaching it in severity has been witnessed in this city for the past thirty years,” says the Boston Journal. Such a storm has not occurred here “since the great gale of 1815,” says the Providence Press. Several lives were lost, a number of vessels were wrecked, and an “immense destruction of property” took place. The damage done to the shipping and buildings in the Eastern Navy Yard alone, amounts to $30,000—of which Boston comes in for a share of $9,000.
Sept. 12, a tornado in New Braunfels, Texas, lasting only about a minute, “killed two persons, fatally injured three, and more or less hurt thirty or forty others, besides tearing thirty or forty houses to atoms,” and killing cattle and fowls.
Telegrams from Great Britain and the Continent, of Sept. 12 to 18, say, “A fearful hurricane has swept over the north of France, causing much damage to the crops and property.” Telegraph wires were prostrated; and it is estimated that 120 vessels were wrecked, and several hundred seamen injured.
Good judges estimate the damage done to wheat alone, by the great storms throughout the State of Minnesota, to be not less than five million bushels, while two-thirds of the hay crop is worthless.
Wall street, in New York, on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 24 and 25, was a scene of excitement such as is seldom witnessed even among gold speculators—in fact “the excitement was without parallel among gold dealers on the Continent.” The price of gold advanced from 135 to 165, when the bubble burst, “fortunes vanished, speculators were ruined,” and an insane asylum received at least one more inmate. “Probably the entire average amount of gold which could be raked together from all the vaults and treasure-hidings of that city, would not reach twenty millions,” says the Congregationalist; and yet, during the excitement, there was the pretense of the sale of four or five hundred millions of gold, which shows that “the whole business of selling gold and stocks, as now carried on there, is as purely gambling and swindling as are the transactions of the avowed gambling saloons.”
At the State Fair at Indianapolis, Ind., Friday, Oct. 1, a boiler attached to a saw-mill had just been fired up for a test with another machine, when it exploded, killing twenty-seven persons and wounding nearly sixty,—several of whom it is feared will die. Five horses were also killed.
On Sunday and Monday, Oct. 3 and 4, a terrible storm of wind and rain swept over many of the States, and some of the British Possessions, drowning thousands of cattle and sheep, sweeping off in the swollen streams, bridges, houses, lumber, crops, and people—for not a few lives were lost. Telegraph wires have been broken, railroad tracks gullied out, traveling impeded in all directions, and millions on millions of property taken away as it were with a stroke. Reports of the fearful disasters are daily coming in.
Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions also have been “in divers places.” “Colima has been blazing in Mexico, another volcano is smoking in Costa Rica, and the old mountain furnaces of South America are not silent. Quito is in imminent danger, and great alarm exists along the whole coast. Three shocks occurred Sept. 17, at St. Thomas; and Etna is reported, by cable dispatch, to be again in a state of serious eruption, and throwing out lava.” A dispatch from Fillmore, Utah, dated Oct. 1, says: “At ten minutes to 7 o’clock this evening a violent shock of earthquake was felt here. . . . It is said to have been the most violent shock that has been felt in this part of Utah since its first settlement. The shock and trembling altogether lasted two minutes.”
We will say nothing of thefts, burglaries, and murders, which are of every-day occurrence, but when have so many heavy bank robberies, “defalcations,” and business “irregularities” been reported within the same space of time? Look where you will, and earth, sea, and society, are apparently in a state of unrest. France has been shaken to her centre by the illness of Napoleon—not knowing what his death would bring forth, should it occur while the Prince Imperial is in his minority. The interest in the Pope’s Ecumenical Council, appointed for December 8, has been increased by various circumstances, not the least of which is, the defection of the renowned Pere Hyacinthe of Paris. Spain is unsettled, Cuba still is in a state of insurrection, and “unusual bustle and activity” prevail in the United States Navy yards—having an eye probably to Spanish affairs.
We know not what a few weeks will bring forth in the East or West. As we have seen, the last month has brought events—startling, unusual, and terrible,—but who heeds them? In the race to be rich, the whirl of pleasure, and the excitement of sin, there is little pause to listen to the voice of the Almighty in his mercy or judgments. Men may be startled for a moment by the earthquake’s tread, the sweep of the tidal wave, the fatal accident, the fury of the wind from the fists of Jehovah, or the wasting rainstorm, but in the rush to repair damages, to travel by steam, and talk by lightning, who heeds the cry, “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD?” As forces on the battle-field trample on the dying and dead in the excitement of the conflict, so do earth’s inhabitants press onward in sin and worldly business, regardless of passing events!
But it will not be always so. The day of the Lord cometh!—“a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.” Earth has never yet witnessed the like. Through the telescope of revelation we see it—in the light of prophecy we behold it. It comes apace. It is “the day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Men will then be compelled to pause and acknowledge the hand of God—but it will be too late. Happy they who will be hidden “in the day of the Lord’s anger.” Reader, are you ready? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”—Advent Herald.

THE POWER OF EXAMPLE.

Our example tells upon our fellow-men with a power which can never be fully estimated. We act before them either in good deeds or in evil ones. Our actions are rightly held as the real index to our character. They show what we are. They give evidence whether we are living for God or for self. They show whether we really esteem this world or the next. They declare to our fellow-men which we have most at heart, the pleasures of sin or the cross of Christ.
Most professors of religion exert a deadly influence upon all around them. Their lack of interest in the cause of Christ gives the lie to their profession of love for him. Their careless, worldly lives bear testimony to the fact that they love the world and not the Father. They do not recommend the religion of Christ. They do constantly dishonor and reproach that worthy name by the which they are called. To be a Christian is to walk as Christ walked. Yet his professed followers dare to walk in sin and folly while bearing his name and claiming to be his disciples. They thus accomplish, in the cause of Satan, by making the world believe that there is no reality in religion, an amount of injury that they could hardly have caused in the open service of Satan. The day of Judgment will astonish the careless, ease-loving, lukewarm Christians when they see the amount of evil that they have wrought in their lives. Our Lord characterizes them justly as workers of iniquity, and bids them depart from him.
There are a few out of the great mass of professed Christians whose lives adorn the doctrine of Christ. They exhibit in their conduct the excellence of our holy religion. Every such person is a powerful preacher of righteousness. They may have no command of language; they may be unable to express in words the deep emotion of their hearts, but God puts in their actions a tongue that can speak with commanding eloquence.
How self-forgetfulness and disinterested benevolence will commend themselves even to a selfish world. How honesty, integrity, and truth, will shine in the midst of the dense moral darkness that covers our world. How the returning of good for evil will attest, even to a sinful man, the reality of Christ's religion. How the spirit of forgiveness toward our enemies, and of patience and long-suffering toward those who despitefully use us, will cause men to admire the excellence of true piety. Finally, how excellent is the religion of the Bible. How powerful is our example for good or evil. Who of us are ready to meet our own examples, and to receive their consequences in the Judgment?

WORTHY OF NOTICE.

The following, from 2 Esdras ii, 33-48, is worthy of particular attention. It is a description of the same persons that John saw in Rev. vii and xiv. I quote with a few words of paraphrase thrown into brackets:
“I Esdras received a charge of the Lord upon the mount Oreb, that I should go unto Israel; but when I came unto them, they set me at naught, and despised the commandments of the Lord. And therefore I say unto you, O ye heathen, [i. e., the Gentiles,] that hear and understand, look for your Shepherd, [see Heb. xiii, 20; 1 Pet. v, 4,] he shall give you everlasting rest; [see Matt. xi, 29;] for he is nigh at hand, that shall come in the end of the world. Be ready to the reward of the kingdom, for the everlasting light shall shine upon you forevermore. [Isa. lx, 19, 20; Rev. xxii, 5.] Flee the shadow of this world, receive the joyfulness of your glory. I testify my Saviour openly. Oh! receive the gift that is given you, and be glad, giving thanks unto him that hath called you to the heavenly kingdom. Arise up and stand, behold the number [144,000] in the feast of the Lord; [i. e., the marriage supper;] which are departed from the shadow of the world, and have received [past tense, for the future] glorious garments of the Lord. The number of thy children, whom thou longedst for is fulfilled; beseech the power of the Lord, that thy people which have been called from the beginning may be hallowed. I Esdras saw upon the Mount Sion, [see Rev. xiv, 1,] a great people whom I could not number, and they all praised the Lord with songs. And in the midst of them there was a young man of a high stature, taller than all the rest, and upon every one of their heads he set crowns, and was more exalted; which I marveled at greatly. So I asked the angel, and said, Sir, what are these? He answered and said unto me, These be they that have put off the mortal clothing, and put on the immortal, [i. e., they have been changed from mortality to immortality,] and have confessed the name of God; now are they crowned and receive palms. Then said I unto the angel, What young person is it that crowneth them, and giveth them palms in their hands? So he answered and said unto me, It is the Son of God whom they have confessed in the world. Then began I to commend them that stood so stiffly for the name of the Lord. Then the angel said unto me, Go thy way, and tell my people what manner of things and how great wonders of the Lord thy God, thou hast seen.”
Continue reading: BRIEF THOUGHTS CONCERNING LIFE AND DEATH