The United States in Prophecy

AND the people have taken hold to lay out their work on the grand scale that nature has indicated. Excepting only the Houses of Parliament in London, our national Capitol at Washington is the most spacious and imposing national edifice in the world. By the unparalleled feat of a subterranean tunnel two miles out under the bottom of the lake, Chicago obtains her water. The work of constructing a railroad tunnel under the Detroit river is already completed, and the traveler now passes in his steam palace under the bed of that river, while the immense commerce of the lakes is floating upon its bosom over his head. Chicago is the most extensive grain and lumber market in the world; and Philadelphia and New York contain the largest and best furnished printing establishments now in existence. The submarine cable, running like a thread of light through the depths of the broad Atlantic from the United States to England, a conception of American genius, is the greatest achievement in the telegraphic line. The Pacific railroad, that iron highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, stands at the head of all monuments of engineering skill in modern times. Following the first Atlantic cable, soon came a second almost as a matter of course; and following the Central Pacific R. R., a northern line is now in process of rapid construction. And what results are expected to flow from these mighty enterprises? The Scientific American of Oct. 6, 1866, says:—

"To exaggerate the importance of this transcontinental highway is almost impossible. To a certain extent it will change the relative positions of this country, Europe and Asia. . . . With the completion of the Pacific railroad, instead of receiving our goods from India, China, Japan, and the 'isles of the sea,' by way of London and Liverpool, we shall bring them direct by way of the Sandwich Islands and the railroad, and become the carriers to a great extent for Europe. But this is but a portion of the advantage of this work. Our western mountains are almost literally mountains of gold and silver. In them the Arabian fable of Aladdin is realized. . . . . Let the road be completed, and the comforts as well as the necessaries furnished by Asia, the manufactures of Europe, and the productions of the States, can be brought by the iron horse almost to the miner's door; and in the production and possession of the precious metals, the blood of commerce, we shall be the richest nation on the globe. But the substantial wealth created by the improvement, of the soil and the development of the resources of the country, is a still more important element in the result of this vast work."

And the extent to which we have come up is further shown by the influence which we are exerting on other nations. Speaking of America, Mr. Townsend in the work above cited, p. 462, says:—

"Out of her discovery grew the European reformation in religion; out of our revolutionary war grew the revolutionary period of Europe. And out of our rapid development among great States and happy peoples, has come an immigration more wonderful than that which invaded Europe from Asia in the latter centuries of the Roman Empire. When we raised our flag on the Atlantic, Europe sent her contributions; it appeared on the Pacific, and all orientalism felt the signal. They are coming in two endless fleets, eastward and westward, and the highway is swung between the oceans for them to tread upon. We have lightened Ireland of half her weight, and Germany is coming by the village load every day. England herself is sending the best of her working men now (1869), and in such numbers as to dismay her Jack Bunsbys. What is to be the limit of this mighty immigration?"

In passing from the subject of the manner of the "coming up" of the United States, so exactly according to the prophecy, we give one more testimony. In the N. Y. Independent of July 7, 1870, Hon. Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the United States, glancing briefly at the past history of this country, said:—

"Wonderful, indeed, has been that history. Springing into life from under the heel of tyranny, its progress has been onward, with the firm step of a conqueror. From the rugged clime of New England, from the banks of the Chesapeake, from the Savannahs of Carolina and Georgia, the descendants of the Puritans, the Cavalier, and the Huguenot, swept over the towering Alleghanies, but a century ago the barrier between civilization on the one side, and almost unbroken barbarism on the other; and the banners of the Republic waved from flagstaff and highland, through the broad valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri. Nor stopped its progress there. Thence onward poured the tide of American civilization and progress, over the vast regions of the Western plains; and from the snowy crests of the Sierras you look down on American States fronting the calm Pacific, an empire of themselves in resources and wealth, but loyal in our darkest hours to the nation whose authority they acknowledge and in whose glory they proudly share.

"From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousand square miles, it has expanded into over three millions and a half— fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and France combined—with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire circumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines far wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and renown. With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over two thousand millions of dollars per year; with railway traffic of from four to six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic exchanges of the country, running up to nearly ten thousand millions per year; with over two thousand millions of dollars invested in manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry; with over five hundred millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with their appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and producing annually crops valued at over three thousand millions of dollars; with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's population were possible, would be vast enough to include all the present inhabitants of the world; and with equal rights guaranteed to even the poorest and humblest of over forty millions of people, we can, with a manly pride akin to that which distinguished the palmiest days of Rome, claim as the noblest title of the world, I am an American citizen.'"

And how long a time has it taken for this wonderful transformation? In the language of Edward Everett, "They are but lately dead who saw the first-born of the pilgrims;" and Mr. Townsend (p. 21) says, "The memory of one man can swing from that time of primitive government to this—when thirty-eight millions of people living on two oceans and in two zones, are represented in Washington, and their consuls and embassadors are in every port and metropolis of the globe."

Is this enough? The only objection we can anticipate is that this nation has progressed too fast and too far—that the government has already outgrown the symbol. But what shall be thought of those who deny that it has any place in prophecy at all? No; this prodigy has its place on the prophetic page; and the path which has thus far led us to the conclusion that the two-horned beast is the prophetic symbol of the United States is hedged in on either side by walls of adamant that reach to heaven. To make any other application is an utter impossibility.