The United States in Prophecy

POLITICAL corruption is preparing the way for deeper sin. It pervades all parties. Look at the dishonest means resorted to obtain office, the bribery, the deceptions, the ballot-stuffing. Look at the stupendous revelations of municipal corruption just disclosed in New York city: millions upon millions stolen directly and barefacedly from the city treasury by its corrupt officials. Look at the civil service of this government. Speaking on this points The Nation of Nov. 17, 1870, said:—

"The newspapers are generally believed to exaggerate most of the abuses they denounce; but we say deliberately, that no denunciation of the civil service of the United States which

has ever appeared in print has come up as a picture of selfishness, greed, fraud, corruption, falsehood, and cruelty, to the accounts which are given privately by those who have seen the real workings of the machine."

Revelations are continually coming to light going beyond the worst fears of those who are even the most apprehensive of wrongs committed among all classes of society at the present time. The nation stands aghast today at the evidence of corruption in high places, which is thrust before its face. Yet a popular ministry in their softest and most soothing tones, declare that the world is growing better, and sing of a good time coming. The Detroits Evening News of March 4, 1876, referring to Secretary Belknap's fall, says:—

"The revelations of corruption in connection with the administration of the Federal government have gone further than anybody's worst fears, in the humiliating intelligence of Secretary Belknap's disgrace. That among the underlings there were to be found rascals might have been expected in such times as these, but that a minister of the cabinet should have turned out to be nothing better than a vulgar thief is something which must fill this nation with dismay, and the civilized world with contempt. Where is all this to stop? Are we so utterly rotten as a people that nothing but vileness can come uppermost, that we cannot preserve even the great offices of the cabinet from the possession of rascals?"

Further enumeration is here unnecessary. Enough crops out in every day's history to show that moral principle, the only guarantee in a government like ours for justice and honesty, is sadly wanting.

An evil is also threatening from another quarter. Creeping up from the darkness of the Dark Ages, a hideous monster is intently watching to sieze the throat of liberty in our land. It thrusts itself up into the noonday of the nineteenth century, not that it may be benefited by its light and freedom, but that it may suppress and obscure them. The name of this monster is Popery; and it has fixed its rapacious and bloodthirsty eyes on this land, determined to make it its helpless prey. It already decides the election in some of our largest cities. It controls the revenues of the most populous State in the Union, and appropriates annually hundreds of thousands of dollars raised from Protestant taxes to the support of its own ecclesiastical organizations, and to the furtherance of its own religious and political ends. It has reached that measure of influence that it is only by a mighty effort of Protestant patriotism that measures can now be carried, against which the Romish element combines its strength. And corrupt and unscrupulous politicians stand ready to concede to its demands, to secure its support for the purpose of advancing their own ambitious aims. Rome is in the field with the basest and most fatal intentions, and with the most watchful and tireless energy. It is destined to play an important part in our future troubles; for this is the very beast which the two-horned beast is to cause the earth and them that dwell therein to worship, and before whose eyes it is to perform its wonders.

And in our own better Protestant churches there is that which threatens to lead to most serious evils. On this point one of their own popular ministers, who is well qualified to speak, may testify. A sermon by Charles Beecher contains the following statement:—

"Our best, most humble, most devoted servants of Christ are fostering in their midst what will one day, not long hence, show itself to be the spawn of the dragon. They shrink from any rude word against creeds with the same sensitiveness with which those holy fathers would have shrunk from a rude word against the rising veneration of saints and martyrs which they were fostering. . . . The Protestant evangelical denominations have so tied up one another's hands, and their own, that, between them all, a man cannot become a preacher at all, anywhere, without accepting some book besides the Bible. . . . . And is not the Protestant church apostate? Oh! remember, the final form of apostacy shall arise, not by crosses, processions, baubles. We understand all that. Apostacy never comes on the outside. It develops. It is an apostacy that shall spring into life within us; an apostacy that shall martyr a man who believes his Bible ever so holily; yea, who may even believe what the creed contains, but who may happen to agree with the Westminster Assembly that, proposed as a test, it is an unwarrantable imposition. That is the apostacy we have to fear, and is it not already formed? . . . Will it be said that our fears are imaginary? Imaginary? Did not the Rev. John M. Duncan, in the years 1825-6, or thereabouts, sincerely believe the Bible? Did he not even believe substantially the confession of faith? And was he not, for daring to say what the Westminster Assembly said, that, to require the reception of that creed as a test of ministerial qualifications was an unwarrantable imposition, brought to trial, condemned, excommunicated and his pulpit declared vacant? There is nothing imaginary in the statement that the creed power is now beginning to prohibit the Bible as really as Rome did, though in a subtler way.

"Oh! woeful day! Oh! unhappy church of Christ! fast rushing round and round the fatal circle of absorbing ruin! . . . Daily does every one see that things are going wrong. With sighs do every true heart confess that rottenness is somewhere; but, ah! it is hopeless reform. We all pass on, and the tide rolls down to night. The waves of coming conflict which is to convulse Christendom to her center are beginning to be felt. The deep heavings begin to swell beneath us. 'All the old signs fail.' 'God answers no more by Urim and Thummim, nor by dream, nor by prophet.' Men's hearts are failing them for fear and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth. Thunders mutter in the distance. Winds moan across the surging bosom of the deep. All things betide the rising of that final storm of divine indignation which shall sweep away the vain refuge of lies."

In addition to this, we have Spiritualism, infidelity, socialism, and free-love, the trades unions, or labor against capital, and communism, all assiduously spreading their principles among the masses. These are the very principles that worked among the people, as the exciting cause, just prior to the terrible French revolution of 1789-1800. Human nature is the same in all ages, and like causes will surely produce like results. These causes are now all in active operation; and how soon they will culminate in a state of anarchy, and a reign of terror as much more frightful than the French revolution as they are now more widely extended, no man can say.

Such are some of the elements already at work; such the direction in which events are moving. And how much further is it necessary that they should progress in this manner, before an open war-cry of persecution from the masses, against those whose simple adherance to the Bible shall put to shame their man-made theology, and whose godly lives shall condemn their wicked practices, would seem in nowise startling or incongruous?

But some may say, through an all-absorbing faith in the increasing virtue of the American people, that they do not believe that the United States will ever raise the band of persecution against any class. Very well. This is not a matter over which we need to indulge in any controversy. No process of reasoning, nor any amount of argument, can ever show that it will not be so. We think we have shown good ground for strong probabilities in this direction; and we shall present more forcible evidence, and speak of more significant movements hereafter. As we interpret the prophecy, we look upon it as inevitable. But the decision of the question must be left to time. We can neither help nor hinder its work. That will soon solve all doubts and correct all errors.