KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME.
“Earnestly contend for the Faith, which was once delivered to the Saints.”—Jude
Volume 1—Number 11 (November 1851)
AND THEIR TRADITIONS.
We have chosen the above caption to designate a class of people which is now pretty numerous in the old and new worlds. It is a class of politicians whose political faith is their religion. They are known in divers countries by different appellations. In France they are called Socialists, or Democratic and Social Republicans; Moderate Republicans, &c.; in England, Chartists, and Radicals; and in the United States, Whigs, Democrats, Locofocos, &c. Their apostles are numerous—“Legion” in fact—and of a world-wide celebrity. Who hath not heard of Lamartine, of Mazzini, of Kossuth, of Ledru Rollin, of Prudhomme, of Victor Hugo, of Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay? These, and a multitude of others, who are looked up to by the misguided populace as the very oracles of truth and wisdom, though differing in details, agree in mind and judgment, to wit, that republicanism is the divinely appointed panacea for the evils of the world! The Anglo-Saxon republicans of England and America regard the United States—“the Model Republic,” as it is styled—as the power by which the republican regeneration of the nations is to be effected; while Mazzini would point to Italy, and the Franks to the French nation, as the destroyers of the devilry of kings and priests, and the planters of the Tree of Liberty in the midst of the earth, under whose world wide shadow all men shall be equal, and the members of a brotherhood that shall be universal. The Websters and the Clays amuse the people with flattering predictions of the high and towering destiny of their confederacy, which will irradiate the nations with a darkness-dispelling splendor, and either prepare them for self-government and independence; or, by the cooperation of the disaffected in all lands, for their annexation to the United States. The kingdom and nation that will not become republican shall perish; yea, it shall be utterly wasted: for monarchy is a sin against society—a government for the benefit of the few—and not to be tolerated in the era when all nations are blessed in Washington and his fraternity! The Victor Hugos, however, while they rejoice in the good news of universal republicanism, and accord all honor and glory to “the Father of his Country,” and his sons, take a view of the application of their common gospel to human necessities, not altogether in harmony with the Websters and the Clays. The French Constitution perfected, and not the Constitution of the United States, is to become, according to him, the Bible* (see over page) of the nations, the book of progress of the United States of republicanised Europe, when kings and priests, and privileged orders will all be merged in “the swinish multitude,” no longer swine, but enlightened and independent freemen, every one a nobleman, a prince, a king! But, we need not trouble ourselves about the differences of detail which seem to perplex these leaders of the people.
* In a speech to the Legislative Assembly, on the proposed revision of the Constitution, Victor Hugo observed, “If it had been said the Constitution of the French Republic should be the charter of human progress in the Nineteenth Century, the immortal testament of civilisation, the political Bible of the nations, it should approach as nearly as possible to absolute social truth, therefore let us revise the Constitution, that he could have understood: but that in the middle of the Nineteenth Century they should be told, there is a great light in France, let us put it out; that they should be told the French people have hewn out of indestructible granite the first stone of that vast edifice that will hereafter be called the United States of Europe * * and then that it should be added, we were going to destroy this revolution; we will extinguish this Republic: we will snatch this book of progress from the people’s hands, we will raze out the dates of 1792, 1830, and 1848; we will bar the way against that rash grant whose name is Providence; that this should be said, that this should be dreamed of, overwhelmed him with astonishment.”—N. Y. Tribune.
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What we have to consider at present is that upon which they all mainly agree, namely, that a time is fast approaching in the history of the world when its kingdoms will become republics, and all men free, equal, sovereign, and blessed; and ruling themselves by governors of their own appointment, who shall be amenable to the majorities that have created them, and breathed into them the breath of political life. This is the political optimism of the day. Politicians can devise nothing better suited to the necessities of mankind. It is a political condition from which they consider all social blessings may flow; and by which the happiness of the greater number may be guaranteed. It is their Gospel—the Gospel of universal Republicanism—the Great Salvation of political prophets and apostles! They preach it from the presidential chair, the bureau, the steps of the Capitol, the mountain, the pulpit, the Fourth of July rostrum, the editor’s den, and the stump—until the people and their beguilers actually persuade themselves that it is the very truth of God itself! It is, however, but a small affair—a very little gospel—a sort of gospellilla, the very diminutive of “gospel;” and, therefore, we have denominated its confessors and proclaimers, REPUBLICAN GOSPELLERS.”
We say to these Lilliputian Gospelillos, your gospel of universal republicanism is a very microscopic affair. It is small and insignificant because it is a mere substitution of one evil for another. The world requires more than a change of political and social constitution. It requires this, indeed; but it requires also, a just and equitable, a righteous administration of the law in all its relations to human affairs. The wants of the nations are twofold. They need first, an independent Aristocracy of intelligent, wise, and just men, such as God would pronounce just, wise, and intelligent. They need these for the administration of their affairs, and without them their happiness could not be guaranteed for a single month. They must be independent of the people, because the people, because the people are evil, and their influence corrupting. It is not the best men that have the ascendancy in human affairs at present. The most intelligent and virtuous of society could not obtain power, because it is only obtainable in this, and in all other countries, by obsequiousness to the evil, which reigns in majorities of the people, or in despotic minorities sustained by military force. God’s people, who are the elite of society—“the salt of the earth” wherever found—could not condescend to the meanness and trickery necessary to become popular, without which the votes of majorities, or the patronage of “the great,” could not be gained. The world’s people, even the best of them, are radically incompetent to rule the world in righteousness; and without righteousness in the rulers, mankind cannot be happy. Their first want is therefore, a sufficient number of just persons to carry into effect a legislation which proscribes evil in all its ramifications, and fosters only that which is good.
The second want to be supplied is a Constitution and Laws which will establish such a civil, ecclesiastical, and social condition, as will be glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good will among men. Now this desideratum no politician, nor sect of politicians, has knowledge enough, or wisdom and virtue sufficient to supply. They do not know what would contribute to the highest glory of God, and to peace, and good will. Republican constitutions have determined that an equality of religious sects is most conducive to the glory of God, and to peace, and to goodwill. This is the best political theorists could devise. They are so ignorant of the truth that they do not know which of the sects has the true faith, or whether there be any true faith at all; what better then could they do than to treat them as they have done? From the experience of the past, and viewing the present in this the Model Republic, as the ripe fruit of the seed sown by “the sages of the revolution” as the people regard them, we conclude that the world is lost, if it have in store no other redemption than the salvation preached by the republican gospellers, the blind leaders of the blind, in Europe and America.
But granting that their gospel shall become a fact—that not a kingdom shall exist upon the earth, but that all nations shall be aggregated into the most approved republican confederacy—when their political optimism shall exist without a single sceptic of its completeness and adaptation to the real necessities of the world—is such a system to be eternal? Are generations to come and go upon the earth eternally? Are they to be subject to pestilence, famine, earthquake, disease, poverty, and all the ills which political panaceas cannot reach, forever? Are mankind to be always governed by men whose existence is the breath of their constituents? Is society though united in political, to be forever divided, in religious faith? Will human nature be then changed, and its passions hushed by republicanism into the repose of peace, of love, of righteousness, and of good will! Do its gospellers suppose that such a republican world is the mystery of God’s will which he hath purposed in himself from the beginning? Alas, alas! what a utopian speculation, what a visionary absurdity is this gospel of the republic for the redemption of the world!
The gospellers of the Victor Hugo school regard France as the first dominion of the future United States of Europe; while those of the cisatlantic brotherhood consider New York as destined to be “the Empire State” of the United States of the American Continent. When these two republican confederacies divide the world between them will there be no jealousy, no contention as to which shall take the lead—no Carthaginian and Roman tragedy re-enacted on the broad wave for political and commercial ascendancy among the nations? Yes, it is not to be denied, that the prestige of future sovereignty over the world is with the Anglo-Saxons. Theirs is the race that is to fill the globe, and to absorb all others into itself, so that all nationalities will be merged into one universal Yankee nation! We were greatly amused at the enthusiasm of a fellow-traveller in one of the Philadelphia steamers a few months since. Conversing on the progress of things around us, he exclaimed with great zest, that “the Yankees were destined to regenerate the world; and they were the boys to do it!” It is manifest he did not dream of the French constitution being “the political Bible of the nations.” It was Yankee, and not French, regeneration that was the prime article of his political faith. But what mortal man of intelligence could be satisfied with a French or Yankee regeneration of the world! What have France, or Frenchmen in their whole history, exhibited of a recuperative character to cause the nations to hope in them as the architects of human happiness! They do well as executioners of divine wrath upon the destroyers of the people—to strike kings and priests with terror, to strip “nobility” of its plumes, and to punish them with confiscation, imprisonment, and death. Frenchmen are destructives. They can build up and regenerate nothing. Their mission is to pull down, to disorganise, and overthrow. They are the Arabs of “Christendom”—the sword of God upon Austria and the Papacy.
And into what would Yankeedom convert the world that the nations should desire the Yankee era as “the acceptable year of the Lord?” Into one vast Connecticut—an universal factory of wooden clocks, hams, and nutmegs, together with “other notions,” in which a diamond-cut-diamond “smartness” would skin the teeth of conscience, and squeeze oil from the flinty rock. Men would then become all keen traders; expediency and profit, “the higher law;” women in the plenitude of reconquered rights, endued with masculinity; and all devout in devotion to the world, and punctilious in observance of Sabbath and thanksgiving days! New England sectarianism, as frigid, rigid, and heartless as the Blue Laws themselves, would be the highest glory to God upon earth; and none would be permitted to walk in the light of its divinity who did not do homage at its shrine, and burn incense at the altars of its priests. Their common schools would be universal, all lands be “the land of steady habits,” and society merged into one great “anti” for the abolition of all sins, misdemeanours, and offences hypocrisy had no mind to! This would be about the loftiest attainment Yankeeism could reach. A humdrum world at best, affording no scope for the highest and noblest faculties of the mind. A Yankee regeneration may satisfy the fleshly lusts which war against the soul; but like the French, it is a miserable abortion as a panacea for the social evils that afflict the world.
The Gospel of the Model Republic, then, is the gospel preached in Mammon’s temples—is the salvation vouchsafed of God for the deliverance of mankind from all evils of their political and social condition. The gospellers who feel themselves called to preach it are of two orders—lay and clerical. The lay preachers are the Jeffersons, Clays, Victor Hugos, &c., who figure in Capitols, Halls, platforms, stumps, &c.; —the clerical, the pulpiteers of theological conventicles, who “grind divinity of other days” for the “cure of souls.” The latter sanctify the speeches and legislation of their lay brethren by congressional prayers and ministrations, and promise them immortal fame below and apotheosis beyond the skies for their patriotic labors in the service of God, the people, and the State; as if these were a trinity to be worshipped combinedly by all believers who would look down from heaven and behold with joy the blessedness of the nations freed from monarchy, and burdensome taxation, and rendering a devout and willing homage to the clergy as the favourites of heaven—the saints who shall possess the honor, glory, and riches of the republic for ever, even forever and ever! Amen.
But all these speculations of the gospellers are mere vanities and lies. Indeed, lay and clerical politicians cannot speak the truth in relation to the future. There is not a single political speech on record, uttered by the orators of the people in regard to the destiny of these United States and other governments of the world, but is perfect foolishness—the merest absurdity that ever escaped the lips of ignorance and imbecility. The blinded people call it wisdom, and idolise the blind that utter it as highly gifted of the gods! But their light is darkness, their wisdom folly, and their knowledge the absence of all truth. They are possessed of a lying spirit like the four hundred prophets of Ahab, for they speak not according to the Law and Testimony of God. How can they speak truly on this subject! If they venture to prophesy, as all the peoples’ orators do when they speak of the destiny of nations, a necessity rests upon them to lie; because, being ignorant of the reality, of what God has determined shall be, they can no more speak the truth than a man could who should undertake to narrate, or to predict what should happen hereafter in Lunar or Solar society. Being ignorant, he must be of necessity, though not intentionally. “I said in my haste,” says the prophet, “all men are liars.” This pre-eminently applies to the Republican Gospellers. Their gospel is “a lie in their right hand,” and has been invented by “the Father of lies” to discredit the glorious Gospel of the Kingdom of God. If all nations are to be aggregated into one universal republic, or if their governments are to become independent republics, or if this Model Republic is to endure another century, then the Bible is not a true exposition of the reality; and men will be justified in adopting the French Constitution, or the Constitution of these United States, or the Book of Mormon, or the Koran, perhaps, as the political Bible of the nations! ! But the Book of God is true, wholly and unimpeachably true; and all sermons, speeches, and vaticinations, which do not reproduce its testimony, whether lay or clerical, are baseless fabrics, mere fables of old wives, the vapourings of an hour, which amuse and deceive the children of darkness in whom works the spirit of disobedience and untruth.
The gospel of Republicanism is the popular gospel of the age, and in direct contradiction to its crushing antagonist the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. We have seen with what “lying wonders” the former beguiles the people to their destruction. (It was faith in this republican fiction that urged on the invasion of Cuba. Some republican gospellers think they have nothing to do but to show their precious persons in a monarchical territory, and annexation to the Model Republic is an inevitable necessity! Such have yet to learn that “God hath determined the bounds of the habitations of all nations;” and that the frontiers of a people cannot be extended at their will and pleasure be they royalist, imperial, or republican. Had the Fillibusteros possessed as much knowledge and intelligence as zeal in propagating their faith, they would not now be going down to the sides of the pit, or pining in the mines of Spain. But this comes of ignorance of the true gospel, and of running before you are sent!)
The time is at hand, it proclaims, when the kingdoms of the world shall all become republics, and monarchy shall curse the nations no more. It is false, exclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom; for “the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Anointed One,” or Christ, “and He shall reign for ever.” When monarchy is suppressed the people shall govern themselves by their own chosen representatives. It is false, saith the true gospel; monarchy shall never be suppressed on earth; for Christ, the Lord shall be king over the whole earth for ever—Revelation 11: 15; Zechariah 14: 9. The people shall not govern themselves; for “the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is governor among the nations”—Psalm 22: 28; therefore “let them be glad, and sing for joy; for thou, O God, shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth”—Psalm 67: 4. Instead of choosing their own representatives to make laws for them, “a law shall proceed from me”—Isaiah 51: 4, saith the Lord; “it shall go forth from Zion”—Isaiah 2: 3; “my Servant, whom I uphold; mine elect one in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: HE shall bring forth judgment to the nations. He shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law”—Isaiah 42: 1-4. The nations shall not elect their governors any more than they shall enact their own laws; but they shall be ruled by those whom they have robbed, and tormented, and murdered, and despised, and hated in times bygone: for, saith the future Lord of the world, “To him that overcomes the world by his faith will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron”—Revelation 2: 26; 1 John 5: 4. Men talk of self-government as though their right to do so were indisputable! But they are as devoid of the right as they are unfit to govern with equity and judgment. Human government in its least objectionable form is an usurpation of divine right; for God only has the right to govern the nations upon earth. The present state of things in the several divisions of the globe is only permitted, not approved. It is merely provisional, not permanent, and destined soon to pass away. The eternity of republicanism and the divinity of its principles are as great a fiction as the eternity and infallibility of the Roman Jezebel of the peninsular. Mankind are provisionally permitted to amuse and fret themselves with political experiments and impossible schemes until they have wrought themselves up to such a pitch of wicked ambition as to necessitate the interference of Omnipotence to place things upon the foundation which has been laid in his purpose before the world began. Men err egregiously in their notions of government, which they have derived from their original progenitors. These conceived the idea of self-government in transgressing the divine law, and becoming a law to themselves. True to their ancestry their descendants audaciously exclaim, “Who is lord over us!” They are willing that God should “save their souls from hell,” upon their own principles; but as to receiving laws and governors from him they have no idea of this; and prefer that he should mind his own affairs above, and leave the world to them.
But, hear this, O ye who preach rebellion and give the lie to God, in your vapourings about patriotism and republican universality! He has proclaimed your gospel to be utter foolishness in announcing his purpose in creating nations to dwell upon the face of the earth. “I have created all thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers,” says Jehovah, “for Him who is my image, and the First-Born of every creature”—Colossians 1: 15-17; “whom I have appointed Heir of all things”—Hebrews 1: 2, “and whose lordship every tongue shall confess, and every mortal bow the knee to his name which is above every name, or title, among angels or men upon the earth”—Philippians 2: 9-11; Hebrews 1: 4. “My purpose is to aggregate all kingdoms, republics, tribes, peoples, and nations into one dominion under him for ever”—Ephesians 1: 10; Daniel 2: 44; 7: 9, 13-14, 27; “and he shall have the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces as a potter’s vessel”—Psalm 2. “This is my decree, and the kingdom and nation that will not serve Him shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted”—Isaiah 60: 12. Now when king Jesus is triumphant here; —when every knee bows to his name, from the Autocrat to the pettiest prince in Germany, and from the President to the humblest official of the States; —when all kings fall down subdued before him, and all nations serve him—Psalm 72: 11—what then becomes of your republicanism! The British Empire will have fallen to pieces, and your Model Republic will be no more! The Houses of Parliament and the State-Capitols will be barred against the representatives of the people, the echoes of whose uttered foolishness will be silenced in their political death. THE MODEL KINGDOM will become the admiration of all nations, and the Model Republic as little remembered, or cared for, as the kingdom of Bashan, or the diminutive republic of San Merino.
“The Lord shall be king over all the earth, and his name one.”
This is universal monarchy instead of universal republicanism! A glorious monarchy such as the world has never witnessed before—a government which is theocratic, not popular; and one to which none are appointed by votes of majorities, but by the absolute will and pleasure of the Lord God alone.
The anti-republican proposition of the gospel of the kingdom, then, is this—that a divinely established monarchy righteously administered in all its details is the sole panacea for the evils of the world. If it were not, God would have devised some other system of things. He has predetermined the existence of such a kingdom, and therefore we may infer it is the best remedy for the evils which exist. Hear it, ye Websters, Clays, and Hugos, ye Mazzinis, and Kossuths, “the thrones shall be cast down,” and in place thereof, “the God of heaven will set up a Kingdom”—mark ye this, not a republic, but “a kingdom,” “which shall never be destroyed: it shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” Ye would establish a republic, but “the God of heaven” is against you. The success of your work would prevent the establishment of his. He wills that a kingdom shall exist, and he will set it up as he established the kingdom of Israel in the days of old. Be afraid of his kingdom, all ye oppressors of the earth, for what republicans cannot do, he will certainly accomplish. His kingdom, like yours, is a military power. It will “break in pieces and consume all your kingdoms;” and though you may gather your armies together to make war upon his king, and the army which follows him, ye will be tormented in his presence by fire and sword—Revelation 19: 19; 14: 10, and be utterly and irrevocably defeated. The republicans seek to overthrow your kingdoms, but they will not, they cannot succeed. They may shake your foundations, but the glory of casting down your thrones of wickedness and blood is the work of Jehovah’s servant whom he retains at his right hand until the hour of judgment arrives.
But it may be inquired, if the career of the Model Republic be so brief, so like a meteor in the heavens, what was the purpose of God in permitting it to exist? If not to republicanise the nations what was its destiny? Our answer will be intelligible to the scribe well instructed in the kingdom. The judgments of God are about to break forth with terrible fury upon Europe, when there will be a time of trouble such as there has not been since there was a nation upon earth—Daniel 12: 1. This being the case, it will be worse with that division of the globe than it was with the Western Roman Empire in the time of Attila, Genseric, and Alaric. If therefore no refuge, no asylum for the civilisation of the age had been provided, the night of “the Dark Ages” would return, and the world submerged in barbarism as in feudal times. But this calamity has been provided against by the extension of civilisation and its establishment in the New World. All that is worth preservation in arts and science, and in social life, has become naturalised in these United States; so that if Europe with all its appurtenances were to be blotted out tomorrow, the surviving nations would still advance in their career of social improvement. Hence the mission of the United States is to defend and preserve the civilisation of the age from extinction in the transition of the old world from its present state to the Age of the Kingdom of God. This transition period is a time of sore trouble—the time of God’s judgment upon Europe because of its superstition, blasphemy, and crime. War, long and terrible wars, will intermit the progress of the nations. Indeed they can advance no further in amelioration until their oppressors, lay and clerical, be destroyed. These exist as an alpine barrier between the populations of the old world and the blessedness in store for them in the Age to Come. This barrier must be removed—a removal which nothing but the sword can accomplish. The republicans have proved themselves incompetent to the work. They want unity of purpose, concert of action, and sagacity to outgeneral and destroy their oppressors. They have had fine opportunities, but have not known how to improve them. In 1792, 1830, and 1848, they triumphed; but in the hour of victory they permitted themselves to be cajoled out of its advantages by ambitious and deceitful men. So long as they allow themselves to be counselled by Jesuits and priests, or by men who pander to them for the sake of power, as in the case of Louis Napoleon and his uncle, they never can relieve themselves of the incubus that heels them in the dust. Even here in these United States the Constitution is fostering a power which in its maturity would convert the Model Republic into a despotism, if the God of heaven did not arise and supersede it by the power of his kingdom. A clear stage and no favor for all sects is an equality that in time would prove fatal to liberty. If the sects equalised by the constitution were unambitious of political power there would be nothing to fear. But this is not the case. Papalism is essentially a politico-religious despotism of the most murderous and devilish character. It is Diabolism incorporate, and is at rest never where it is treated as a sect, and devoid of the power of the sword. Its position in the old world, and in much of America, is sovereign, imperial, and regal; and it claims the same position of right in all countries of the earth. The constitution of the United States regards this hateful manifestation of Satanism with equal favor as peace-loving and non-resisting Quakerism. It puts them both upon an equality by which Papalism, which sticks at nothing, whose hellish principle is “no faith with heretics,” “the end sanctifies the means,” all things are lawful in the service of the church, lying, flattery, hypocrisy, adultery, theft, and murder, (as proved by history)—this Papalism, so worthily detested by European liberals, so cordially and deservedly abominated by democratic and social republicans in France, where in past times it has soaked the soil with the blood of men of whom the world was not worthy—this horrid and debasing superstition is protected in the exercise of all its Satanic working with all deceivableness of unrighteousness—2 Thessalonians 2: 9-10 in the propagation of its anti-republican, protestant-hating, treacherous, and treasonable faith, by the Constitutions, the political Bibles, of Anglo Saxon and Gallic republicanism! A faith that appeals to the evil of human nature that flatters its vanity, fosters its pride, tolerates its lusts, and indulges it in crime, has all the sympathy, and all the predilection of sin in its favor. It is a superstition congenial to the heart of the natural and unenlightened man; and because of this congeniality it is that Papalism is so extensively diffused, and so high in favor among “the earthly, sensual, and devilish” rulers of the darkness of the world. Mankind trouble themselves but little about its dogmas. They leave these to its wretched priests, who use them for the mystification of the inquisitive. They believe what the church believes, and concern themselves but little whether “the church” believes the truth. If the authority of the church be superseded by a denial of its faith, men cease to be papists, but they are still “earthly, sensual, and devilish,” as were “the apostles of infidelity” whose republicanism poured out such terrible fury upon kings, aristocrats, and priests at the close of the last century. Instead, therefore, of the Model Republic converting the world to liberty, fraternity, and equality, though aided in the work by “the mountain,” and the democracy of Europe, it has a worm in its own vitals, which if not crushed and time should be afforded, would destroy it, and supplant the star-spangled banner by the Cross and Keys. But, thanks be to God, there is no time for this. Consumption and destruction are decreed against the Papacy. Its 1335 years are almost expired; and though republicanism be too feeble to exterminate the evil by which the nations are cursed, and withheld from the blessedness of the Age to Come, the Model Republic will endure until its mission be accomplished in behalf of civilisation; and the God of heaven by his heroic king shall deliver the world from the power of them who spoil the earth—Revelation 11: 18.
Republicanism being remedially inert, a divine monarchy, or theocracy, is the only remedy for the world’s evils. But how will it operate the cure? By supplying that which republican-gospellers cannot—a religion without sect or faction; a legislation proscriptive of all evil; and just and infallible rulers. The first would abolish Papalism, Protestantism, Sectarianism, Mohammedanism, and Paganism; the second cause righteousness to flourish as wickedness does now; and the third, obviate all injustice from whatever cause. Would not the nations be blessed then? No sensible man would deny it. An evil-minded man would say “No!” The present race of Popes, Emperors, Kings, Priests, nobles, and officials, would protest against them. They would sooner see republicanism triumphant than such blessedness throughout the earth; for republicanism affords scope for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life, superstition, injustice, and oppression; but a theocracy administered by infallible and righteous men does not. Such blessedness they hate, because it implies that they, being only evil, will have no part in it. The Pope and the Emperors must give place to Christ; and the kings and priests, or ministers and clergy, of every superstition, must surrender their power and authority to the Saints, who with Jesus shall possess the kingdom and dominion under the whole heaven for ever. Satan must be bound and cast out of the heaven, that the aerial regions of the old and new worlds may be purified from the unrighteousness and iniquity with which they are defiled.
But at these things, one may say, “I marvel greatly! Is it indeed true that all mankind are to be of one religion, and to be subject to rulers that cannot err? Such a consummation is assuredly beyond the compass of republicanism, or of all ‘the powers that be’ to accomplish!” It is not pretended that mere human power and authority can bring it to pass. The work of bringing all men to unity of faith and practice has been experimented and signally failed. But the work is to be done, and will be perfected. Hear what Jehovah saith by his prophet—
“At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart”—Jeremiah 3: 17.
They shall be gathered unto it as the capital of the kingdom and dominion which the God of heaven shall set up—as the seat of government of the undivided empire which is to “fill the whole earth.” “At that time” shall this come to pass. At what time? The prophet informs us that it shall be when Israel is restored, and the Lord gives them pastors after his own heart, who shall feed them with knowledge and with understanding. This has never happened in the sense of the text; for the event is to be accompanied by the remarkable and hitherto unseen phenomenon of the nations ceasing to walk after the imagination of their evil heart. They have walked in their own evil ways ever since their existence; and do now as pre-eminently as ever. But mark the testimony—a time is coming when they shall do so no more—when they shall be enlightened in consequence of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea. At that time Jerusalem shall be the throne of the Lord when “he shall govern the nations upon earth.”
When these things come to pass, what will the nations then say of you, ye Republican gospellers, ye crazy and infatuated politicians of the hour, who boast yourselves of your wisdom, penetration, and enlightenment? Hear the confession of your posterity, and confess your folly with shame and confusion of face!
“The Gentiles,” saith the prophet, “shall come unto thee, O Lord, from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit”—Jeremiah 16: 19.
They have. These lies, vanities, and unprofitable things, are the things which are seen, and which make up the civil and religious system called “the present evil world.” Putting this estimate upon them, they will abandon them. They will cast away their superstitions with indignation and contempt. They will no more say, “I am of Luther,” “I am of Calvin,” “I am of Wesley,” “I am of Campbell,” “I am of the Pope,” and “I of Mohammed!”—but “I am the Lord’s” and they shall rejoice in Jacob, and surname themselves by the name of Israel—Isaiah 44: 5. Their republicanism will vanish with republics, and their admiration of its gospellers be changed into commiseration for their well intentioned foolishness. The strife of faction will be hushed into peace and good will; sect will no more war upon sect; and religious controversies, so necessary in the present state, will no more disturb their equanimity, and embitter the hearts of men; for “the Lord will turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon his name to serve him with one consent”—Zephaniah 3: 9. Is it inquired, how this is to be brought about? Read the eighth verse of this testimony, and in Isaiah 2: 3-4. By this we are taught that it will be the result of conquest and subsequent instruction. The existing governments and hierarchies of the nations must be overthrown. Their armies must be cut up and dispersed, and the nations liberated from their thrall. It is the three millions of disciplined soldiers in the old world that keep down the people and sustain their rulers. If these troops were annihilated the people would rise, and by one fell swoop exterminate from the fair fields of earth the serpent-race that binds them in its coils. The armies in the main have proved themselves faithful to their masters, and will remain so until the hour of their destruction by the Lord of Hosts arrives. The people must succumb till the Deliverer appears. If they be successful for the moment, reaction is sure to follow, and to add new rivets to their chains. But, O when their armies are every where defeated by the Lord from heaven, and the hopelessness of the conflict becomes apparent to their tyrants, will not the groans of the nations be turned into joy and exultation, when the Conqueror proclaims “peace and good will” to all the dwellers upon earth!
O then “make a joyful noise unto God all ye lands: sing forth the honor of his name: make his praise glorious. Say unto God, how terrible art thou in thy works! Through the greatness of thy power thine enemies submit themselves unto thee”—Psalm 66: 1-3.
“All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name”—Psalm 86: 9.
“O let the nations be glad and sing for joy; for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth”—Psalm 67: 4.
The governments of the nations both monarchical and republican being happily abolished; their kings bound with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron—Psalm 149: 8—prisoners of war and all armies disbanded, and the emancipated people waiting for the New Law—the civil and ecclesiastical code of the Age to Come—
“Many shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth THE LAW, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
The Lord will teach them of his ways, thereby implying that the occupation of the clerical Othellos of our day will have been wrested from them. Happy event for the world! The pulpits and theological chairs will no longer contain reverend pretenders to sanctity, and wisdom; for “the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied: neither shall they wear a hair-cloth garment (black) to deceive.” It will be dangerous for them to grind old Calvin and Wesley’s divinity, and try to palm it on the people for the way of the Lord; for “it shall come to pass when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth”—Zechariah 13: 3-4. Men, divinely appointed men, will then prophesy, or speak the truth, to edification, exhortation, and comfort; for “wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of the times,” and theological imposition will be unknown. The Lord will teach the people; for he is “the Light to enlighten the Gentiles” when he is “the glory of his people Israel;” and the result of his teaching will be, the purification of their religious speech, consentaneousness of service, the removal of the vail that is spread over all nations—Isaiah 25: 7, and their walking in his paths for a thousand years.
But from what part of the universe are infallible and righteous men to be obtained who in the Age to Come shall rule the nations justly in the fear of God? They are to be taken out from Judah and the nations of the Roman world. The gospel of the kingdom was preached to the Jew first and afterwards to the Greeks and Barbarians for this purpose. Whosoever believed the good news of the kingdom of the Age to Come, was baptised, and patiently continued in well-doing, was promised eternal glory, honor, incorruptibility and life in the kingdom of God. Belief of the truth and baptism constitutes the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Men becoming the subjects of God’s righteousness, and bringing forth the fruit of righteousness in their lives, are the “blessed of the Father,” who with Jesus shall “inherit the kingdom.” But before they can possess it they must be clothed with immortality; for “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” When thus clothed upon with their body from heaven they will be “equal to the angels”—Luke 20: 36, and infallible. Such are the governors being provided for the nations. The Chief Magistrate is Jesus the Lord of life and glory. He is the model king to whose image and likeness all the kings of the Age to Come will be conformed. They will be like him and see him as he is—1 John 3: 2—immortal and glorious because of righteousness.
To separate from the nations such a royal community as this was the divine purpose in causing the gospel of the kingdom to be preached. How great, how glorious, the hope exhibited in this gospel as compared with the hope preached by republican-gospellers! All the latter can present to this generation is a republicanised world in which their posterity will be ruled by governors appointed by themselves. Our contemporaries believe and rejoice in it as though they themselves would be the favourites of the people! But hereditary bondsmen of sin and Satan, know ye not that ye will be rotting in your graves like sheep, having no interest in any thing transacting above the sod that covers you! What is there of glory in such a hope to you supposing that it should come to pass, which is impossible. But turn ye now from this miserable picture and behold the glory to be revealed in the Age to Come! A glory which is personally interesting not to posterity only, but to the righteous of all ages and generations from Abel till the coming of the Ancient of Days. All nations to be blessed in the Age to Come. Think of that! In an age when “the righteous shall flourish; and there shall be abundance of peace as long as the moon endureth”—when the life of the poor and needy shall be redeemed from deceit and violence; and their blood shall be precious in the sight of the king and governor of the world. Think too that when this blessedness rests upon the obedient nations, were it deferred for a thousand years to come, you may still inherit it by a resurrection from the dead. But how increasingly interesting is the reflection that this blessedness is at hand to come; that before this generation have passed away republicanism will have vanished, the thrones have been cast down, the kingdom of God have come, and his will be doing upon the earth as it is in heaven. Our planet will then be worth living in which can hardly be affirmed at present while evil and wicked men have the sole administration of its affairs.
In conclusion, there is one thing, and one only, in which the gospel of the kingdom, and the gospel of the republic, are agreed—they both predict a great revolution in human affairs in which all the kingdoms and autocratic imperialities of the world will be finally destroyed. The republican gospel says, they will all become republics; but that of the kingdom protests that they shall become Jehovah’s kingdoms which he will bestow upon Jesus, and his brethren when they shall have risen from the dead. Instead of republics being multiplied by the fall of thrones, they which exist will be transformed into kingdoms for the saints. This is the destiny of this confederacy, and of all the states of the New World; for—
“The kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him”—Daniel 7: 27.
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“OLD ECCLESIATICAL WORDS”—BAPTISM—ITS TRUE IMPORT.
Forest Hill, Mi., July 17, 1851.
Dear Brother:
Will you be kind enough to answer me the following question: —It has been said by some of the friends of immersion that King James prevented the translators of the Bible from giving the reader a correct meaning of the word in the original which means immerse in the English language; and that a record of his instructions to them to that effect has been kept. Or, which is equivalent, that an acknowledgement of the fact had been made by some of them, and might be found somewhere, perhaps appended to some of the first copies of the Bible translated by them. Have you ever seen such a thing, or do you believe it to be true? If so will you be good enough to tell me where I can find it?
J. D. B.
REPLY.
We have seen such a thing, and believe it to be true. The copy of James’ instructions to the translators of the Bible may be found in “Lewis’ History of the English Translations of the Bible.” The third rule read as follows: —“The old ecclesiastical words to be kept; as the word church, not to be translated congregation, &c.” In the same work the reader is informed, that the translators in the preface to their translation say, that “they had on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of the Puritans, who left the old ecclesiastical words and betook them to others, as when they put washing for baptism, and congregation for church: and on the other hand had shunned the obscurity of the Papists in their azymes, tunike, rational, holocausts, prepuce, pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late translation was full, and that of purpose to darken the sense; that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet, by the language thereof, it might be kept from being understood.” “In this royal version,” says Matthew Poole according to Lewis, “occur a good many specimens of great learning and skill in the original tongues, and of an acumen and judgment more than common. By others it has been censured as too literal, or following the original Hebrew and Greek too closely and exactly, and leaving too many of the words in the original untranslated, which makes it not so intelligible to a mere English reader. This last was perhaps in some measure owing to the king’s instructions, the third of which was, that the old ecclesiastical words should be kept. However it be, we see many of the words in the original retained, as hosanna, hallelujah, amen, raka, mammon, manna, maranatha, phylactery, &c., for which no reason can be given but that they are left untranslated in the vulgar Latin.” “There were certain words in the scripture,” says Nary, in his preface to the Bible printed in 1719, “which use and custom had in a manner consecrated, as, Sabbath, rabbi, baptise, scandalise, synagogue, &c., which he had every where retained, though they were neither Latin nor English, but Hebrew and Greek, because they are as well understood, even by men of the meanest capacity, as if they had been English.” “In Dr. Wickliffe’s translation of the Bible,” continues he, “we may observe that those words of the original which have since been termed sacred words, were not always thus superstitiously regarded: thus, for instance, Matthew 3: 6, is rendered weren waschen, instead of were baptised, though, for the most part, they are here left untranslated, or are not rendered into English so frequently as they are in the Anglo-Saxonic translation.” From all which it appears, that baptism and baptise were regarded as “old ecclesiastical words,” and therefore fall under the third rule of the king’s instructions, and were therefore not to be translated, but transferred.
Immersion and immerse, however, do not fully express the meaning of baptism and baptise. A man cannot be aqueously baptised without being immersed; but he may be immersed in water without being baptised in the spiritual or doctrinal signification of the word. One who dyed cloth was a baptist among the Greeks, that is, a dyer, or, one who immersed cloth in a menstrum so as to colour it. This immersion of the cloth was called baptism, and the vessel containing the dye a baptistry, or dying-vat. Dyer, dying, and dying-vat, convey to us the full idea of baptistes, baptisma, and baptisterion; which immerser, immersion, or, bather, bathing, and bath, do not. If we were to see a sign over a man’s door, “John Peter, immerser,” or “immersion done here,” we might conclude that he kept baths and bathed people, or was a water-practitioner, but we should never imagine that he was a dyer, or in the Greek tongue, a baptist. You may immerse without dying; but you cannot dye without immersing. Baptise is emphatically “a dyer’s word;” and hence the utter impossibility of its having any affinity to pouring or sprinkling. Mohammed comprehended the signification of the word, and translated it by the Arabic sebgat, that is dying; so that when speaking of a spiritual or religious dying, he called baptism, sebgat-Allah, the dying of God, or God’s dying.
And christian baptism is truly God’s dying—it is the dying a believer white in the blood of the Lamb. It is the “washing the blackamore white,” which God only can accomplish. Men by nature and practice are black in mind, heart, and character before him. Who can whiten them but He? Immersion in water can not do it; and yet they cannot be whitened without it. Immersion will not transmute their darkness into light, their hardness and impenitence into childlikeness and meekness, and supersede their diabolism by good works. The Father of lights, however, can do it, and he alone. One man can immerse another; but God in Christ only can dye him. The water is his bath or vat. He puts things into a man’s mind which change his thoughts, and create a new and right disposition within him. These things are summarily expressed by the phrases “the gospel of the kingdom,” “the word of truth,” “the word of the kingdom,” &c. They change the current of his thoughts and actions; and become as it were a mordant to his soul, to fix with the whiteness of snow the purifying efficacy of the living purple, which gives a colour to his faith, when he is washed in the name of Jesus. Though his sins were as scarlet, they become white as snow; though red like crimson, they are as wool—Isaiah 1: 18. Thus a man in the scarlet habiliments of sin is said to have “washed his robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” He is said to have done it, because he yielded himself to the action demanded by the faith, which had grown up within him from the testimony sown in his understanding; but because God manifested in Christ through the truth, is the efficient cause of the phenomena in his case presented, it is written “Jesus Christ hath washed us from our sins in his own blood.” A man might “wash his robes” by ceasing to do evil, and being immersed to join a church; but he could not discharge their scarlet hue—their crimson-red would still remain. He could only “make them white in the blood of the Lamb.” To speak literally. If a vicious man become moral by leaving off his vices, and, professing a sectarian creed, is immersed to join a church, that man is still in his sins of the past, and will certainly be brought to judgment on account of them. God looks at men through their characters. In beholding the character he beholds the man. Men not in Christ look like men clothed in scarlet; so that when their governments are collectively exhibited, they are represented by “ a scarlet coloured beast.” A man’s sins and iniquities give his character the scarlet hue. God sees the colour, but men do not; for their standard of good and evil character is not God’s standard. Hence they call scarlet white, white crimson, evil good, and good evil. We see then a fitness in Cardinals, and priests, wearing scarlet and scarlet badges. The colour is typical of their character. They are unbleached sinners—sinners unwhitened with the dying of God. For a man to “make his robes white in the blood of the Lamb,” he must not only “cease to do evil,” but he must “believe the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ,” and be united to that name in baptism. He is then a member of the Body of Christ, though he may not belong to a visible society professing religion. He is “washed in the name;” and his washing becomes the whitening of his robes or character before God, because of his faith in the blood of Jesus, which cleanses the believer in the kingdom from all his past sins. An unwashed believer of the gospel is still habited in scarlet. He has not on the wedding garment; for this is a robe made white in the blood of the Lamb; and there can be no dying of that sort without immersing the robe in the water of baptism made whitening by the subject’s belief of the truth.
It is unnecessary to say more upon this point now. There are evils connected with the use of the words immerse, and baptise. The mere English reader is apt to suppose that baptism can be administered under the divers forms of sprinkling, pouring, and immersion; while others are apt to conclude that a man has been baptised because he has been immersed; just as if baptism were nothing more than the ceremony of dipping a man in water in the name of God. Much has been said, and well said, on the subject of baptism, yet have the pros and cons not understood it. It has been truly said that the only proper subject for baptism is a believer of the gospel; but they who have said so have not, and cannot, answer the question, what is the gospel? without the belief of which immersion is no baptism. They have said it is “for the remission of sins;” but they know not upon what principle. Faith is for remission of sins. Not the belief simply of the things hitherto fulfilled in Jesus; but the belief of these, and the things hereafter to be accomplished in him, which they deny—of which multitudes of them have not, and will not hear, though a man declare it unto them. Faith is for repentance also; and repentance is for remission of sins. Therefore to believers of the gospel of the kingdom in the name of Jesus as its priest and king, the record saith “Repent in the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins”—“be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins.” But how is such a believer to repent in the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins? By being united to his name. And how is this effected? In one way only, and that is, by immersion into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is then baptised, not for remission alone, but for the resurrection, for the kingdom, for every thing in short God hath promised in the gospel he hath believed. In conclusion, it is impossible to baptise an unbeliever or a misbeliever; you may immerse him, but he is not the subject of God’s dying, or baptism, being destitute of the principle (the childlike belief of the very truth) which can alone convert his scarlet robes like “fine linen clean and white which represents the righteousness of the saints.”
EDITOR.
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LITERAL INTERPRETATION.
The great question which, after fourteen hundred years, is again brought into public and open issue before the whole church, concerning the literal accomplishment of every jot and tittle of the Law and the Prophets, is a question of such vast importance—touching, as it doth the veracity of God, the integrity of faith, the object of hope, and almost every other subject of intercourse between God and man—that I have meditated very much in my own mind, how the merits of such a question might best be brought before the eyes of men, and an impartial judgment for it. It is a question purely of interpretation, resoling itself into this simple issue, Whether God’s word is to be interpreted after the same manner and by the same rules as the word of any man; whether the holy scriptures are to be understood according to the way of understanding another book, by the natural meaning of the words, similitudes, metaphors, and other figures employed therein. We, who stand up for literal interpretation, hold that it ought to be so interpreted and understood: and only with the more diligent and exact study of the language, because it is the word of God. Therefore we would examine every jot and tittle, because we know that “one jot or tittle shall not pass from the Prophets, till all be fulfilled.” A figure of speech, we hold should be treated as a figure of speech is elsewhere treated: an emblem, as an emblem; a symbol as a symbol; all in order to come at the real thing which the word seeketh to express. That real thing may be a truth concerning God’s own being, which is not visible; or it may be concerning God’s Image in the flesh—that is, Christ—which is visible; or concerning our own body, which is visible; or concerning the destinies of nations upon the earth, and of the earth itself, which are likewise visible. But of whatever kind it is, the only way, we maintain, by which the real thing intended to be made known can be known, is through the exact, honest, and common sense interpretation of the words in which it is made known. We do not mean to say, that when the real truth of the words hath been arrived at we are then arrived at the ultimate end of God; which to an intelligent and responsible creature, cannot be in the mere understanding of a fact, but must rise into the apprehension of the purpose God hath in communicating the same unto men; —a purpose originating with himself, and terminating with men; or rather embracing men, and through men returning again into himself. It is therefore an error to impute it to us, who stand for the literal interpretation of God’s word, the fault of stopping short when we have arrived at the knowledge of the visible or historical thing therein conveyed: which indeed we prize only as the ground upon which to stand, and from which to demonstrate the being and the purpose of God to his fallen and responsible and redeemed creatures. Far be it from us to object to the raising of every good doctrine, and the enforcing of every spiritual truth, upon the basis of every historical revelation of God. Nay, we are zealous for understanding the thing declared concerning men, and nations, and the church, for this very reason, that, being firmly persuaded of the truth thereof, we would use them for “doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.” It must be surely some mistake, concerning our purpose and design in literal interpretation, which moveth any honest-hearted believer in God’s word to quarrel with us, to discountenance us, or to mistrust us, in our well-meant endeavours to arrive at the real thing which God intended to declare, and to use it for the end for which he hath declared that he caused it to be written.
To suppose, with Origen and his followers, that there are subtle and recondite senses in the text of Holy Writ, is not only to degrade the understanding of men, as we see it degraded in the Rabbinical writers, and to introduce those Gnostic aberrations which misled the Christian church in primitive ages; but it is really to strike at a higher mark, even God himself; and to suppose, that in revealing his mind to man he adopted a cipher which a few might attain unto by erudition, or obtain the secret of by revelation, but from which the many should be forever hidden, or, at least till some of the illuminated ones should disclose to them the matter, this is the very basis of the Papal tenet; most hateful to God and pernicious to man, that the scriptures are not to be interpreted by the people for themselves, but only through the medium of the church. For if it be true that there are other principles of interpretation than those which the common good sense of men would by natural sagacity and ingenuity guide them to, then those methods must be attained by some uncommon means; and those only who have attained them can be allowed to interpret the writing unto the rest. Call those initiated ones the church, or the assembled councils of the learned of the church, and you have the Papal tenet in its perfection. But if, as all Protestants believe, the scriptures are to be given in their mother tongue, according to the best translation which can be made thereof by the learned; then have we done a great injury both to God and man, unless we believe that God wrote for the understanding of common men; and that common men, by the right use of their understanding, are able to comprehend him. While thus we speak, we do no injury to the truth, that “the natural man apprehendeth not the things of the spirit which are spiritually discerned:” for such spiritual discernment never cometh but through the revelation of the word. It hath been lost by the fallen and rebellious will, and can not otherwise be attained save by a communication from God, spoken by the mouth of accredited messengers or written in their inspired books; and he who withdraweth himself from the hearing or from the reading of the same, need not to expect spiritual discernment, but will walk in that ignorance of God wherein men, all men, are naturally found. —Proph. Exp.
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OUR VISIT TO BRITAIN.
(Continued from page 324.)
There is a very general custom in Britain of having “soirees” on notable occasions, and for the entertainment of such individuals as their friends and the public may “delight to honor.” They are evenings devoted to sociality in part, and to speech making in relation to the subject deemed most interesting to the assembly. When a soiree is determined on, notice is given that it will be held at such and such a hall, meeting house, or assembly room, and that admission may be obtained at so much per ticket. When the company is supposed to have convened, which is pretty accurately ascertained by the tickets taken at the doors compared with the number sold, a chairman is appointed, who invites the attention of the meeting, and perhaps proposes the singing of a hymn, and afterwards calls upon some one to give thanks. The waiters then proceed to supply the company with tea and cake, who for an hour or so, discuss the things most interesting to themselves and their neighbours. Eating and drinking being over, the band, partly vocal and partly instrumental, favours the assembly with some appropriate piece, which is oftentimes executed in very fine style. The chairman then invites some one by name to address the meeting on the subject which has brought them together. After the address music again; then another speech; and so it alternates according to the program till it is time to adjourn. Sometimes baskets of fruit are brought in after two or three speeches, which is a signal for conversation, upon the principle, we suppose, that the audience in general like to speak as well as to listen. An evening is a tea party on a large scale in a public place where all things are done decently and in order—a social meeting where men and women of the higher and lower classes, rich and poor may meet on common ground to spend a few hours together as rational and intelligent beings. All sects and parties, religious, literary, and political, have them. They answer a very good purpose, and are quite agreeable when well conducted. When the fruit is disposed of, music charms the ear, and prepares it soothingly to endure the next prosaic utterance. When the end approaches, the chairman feels the cacoethes loquendi creeping over him, and he is necessitated to deliver himself of a speech for the benefit of his inner man. He glances rapidly at the addresses of the night; tells his constituents how much they have enjoyed themselves; praises the music and thanks the musicians for their contribution to the pleasures of the night; and compliments the ladies on the zest their presence has imparted to the evening’s festivity. The waiters also who are very often amateurs and volunteers are not forgotten, for without them and the committee there would have been no soiree. Having squared up accounts in this agreeable way, he vacates the chair with a dignified consciousness that he has done his duty, and deserves the thanks of the meeting. The empty chair is soon filled, and an eulogium pronounced upon the able “Ex,” and his efficient conduct on the occasion. After which he is recompensed with a vote of thanks which overwhelms him with grateful feelings, and the meeting is dismissed.
We attended several soirees while in Britain. One was given by the friends composing the congregation of “reformers” in Glasgow at the Mechanics’ Institute to which we were invited. It was held in connexion with the ever memorable Convention whose tumultuous proceedings we reported in our last. A goodly number assembled, and among them the men of Fife, or the “Fife Covenanters,” as they were called. These did not seem very sociably disposed; for as soon as they had sipped their tea and stomachised their cake, an inveterate fever for “business” seized them—that evil work they had been engaged in since 10 A. M. Much time was lost in discussing the vitally important question of business or sociality. The friends had not met to eat and drink as the end of their soiree, but to enjoy themselves in an interchange of views on whatever interesting topics might be started connected with the gospel and its diffusion throughout the island. They had had enough of business for one day. They had worked while it was called “today;” but the night had come, and with it an indisposition to be engaged in, or to witness any longer, the precious business affairs so absorbingly interesting to the practical anti-socialists of “the kingdom of Fife.” The covenanters, however, could not be reasoned into amiability. The spirit of the fathers had got possession of them—we do not mean the disposition of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the spirit of the old wife (we forget her name, Moll Somebody,) who threw the stool at the parson’s head in one of the churches in Auld Reekie—the true covenanter-spirit which had no bowels when murder was to be committed in the service of “the church” and of its “solemn league and covenant”—this dogged, pious, unenlightened, zealot-spirit, which would iron-bedstead every man or church that did not reverently bow to its decrees, shone forth terrible as the moon from dark and tempestuous vapours. Their devotion to “business” had become a passion that would not be controlled, and that threatened to bear down every thing before it. The soiree was on the eve of dismemberment, when fortunately for the socialists, they “absquatulated,” and peace and good manners took the lead.
Harmony and cheerfulness being restored, speeches were called for by special and general invitation. Among others, we spoke in brief on the gospel in relation to its “Mystery,” and the “Fellowship of the Mystery.” We remarked that a whole gospel was the desideratum of our age. Preaching a few facts would not do. Such preaching might begin to hundreds, but would soon dwindle down to tens. If, however, “the things of the kingdom of God, and of the name of Jesus,” were laid before the people, society might be aroused from one end of the United Kingdom to the other, and the listening ears of a multitude become ravished with the truth. We had tried the experiment and found it to succeed. Suppose a hundred were travelling to and fro through the island as we had done, would not a spirit of inquiry be created that might result in many separating themselves from the unclean for the name of the Lord? This was what they needed; and without such a proclamation nothing genuine and important could be accomplished.
At the time of the convention, the Glasgow congregation consisted of seventy-one. Of these we were informed by one of the members, sixty-six were in favor of inviting us to meet with them at their First Day meetings. But the remaining five (two males and three females) were opposed to it, and for the sake of peace allowed to rule. This was a forbearance characteristic of our friends on both sides of the Atlantic. Our opponents make all the trouble. We maintain the right and desire it alone; yet though power sometimes favours us, we submit to the wrong rather than result to compulsory measures enforced by majority-votes.
Lord’s Day, October 1, were our last two addresses at Glasgow on our first tour. The citizens assembled at our lecture on the 25th ult. prolonged their sitting on our retirement to the vestry, to consult about having a soiree as a public testimonial and acknowledgment of their obligation to us for our disinterested labors in their behalf. The soiree was resolved upon, and a committee of management appointed, who were to invite us in the name of the meeting to meet them on Thursday, the 12th of October, at 6 P.M., and others who would be able to address them on subjects in connexion with the things we had discussed. This, it was expected, would terminate our tour in Britain, and become the eve of our return to the United States. But the future was to be otherwise disposed of, as will appear hereafter.
On Monday, October 2nd, we visited Paisley by invitation, a town of some 60,000 inhabitants, about seven miles from Glasgow. We sojourned in this place ten days, during which we resided with the pastor of the Scotch Baptist church, to which and the public we addressed ourselves about eight times. He was a friendly man, highly esteemed by his brethren, free to talk, ready to listen, and desirous to learn. We experienced much attention from him; and hoped, from the interest he seemed to take in us and the things we advocated, that hereafter he might prove an efficient advocate of the gospel of the kingdom. But the end has shown that the Lord had no use for him in the case; for not many months elapsed ere he was laid low; and he is now a mouldering skeleton in the sides of the pit waiting for the resurrection to life or condemnation as his works have been.
The interest excited in Paisley was very considerable. The church-members seemed to hear without prejudice until the spirit of Campbellism began to agitate them after our second visit, when trouble began to brew, and disturb the peace of the camp. There were not more, perhaps, than two or three Campbellites in the church, but unfortunately they were wealthy, and looked up to as pillars of the establishment. The people of this country have no idea of the influence of riches in the Dissenting congregations of Britain. Money is power, and nearly all-powerful there. It is not only a defence, but an offence, and causes the needy to stumble and to fear. A congregation of a hundred may consist of ninety members employed in the palace-like factory of three others, with perhaps the remaining seven in ordinary circumstances. The riches are with A, B, and C; the numbers, the devotion, and the intelligence with the ninety-seven. Yet the firm is as omnipotent in the church as in the factory. We knew a minister in England who reproved one of his rich deacons for drunkenness. He professed great contrition, shed many tears, thanked him for his faithfulness, and become his enemy from that day. He was regarded in his congregation as the poor man’s friend and advocate, making no distinction between rich and poor, maintaining that character and not riches should preponderate in spiritual affairs. Such doctrine was very unpalatable, and indirectly resulted in the withdrawal of one half of his yearly stipend. The poor of the flock learning this, though they dared not remonstrate lest evil should befall them likewise, entered into a subscription, and exceeded the deficiency by ten pounds. Ground rent, taxes, lighting, repairs, and the preacher, are expenses that must be met. A, B, and C, with whom money is as dirt, contribute largely; indeed the church would go down without their aid: therefore they are consulted in all things before a step is taken, or an opinion expressed; so that the ninety and seven become in effect the servile dependants of the few, whose illustriousness shines forth from the polished metal they possess, rather than from their intelligence in the word, and zeal for the diffusion of the truth. This ought not to be. An intelligent poor man, of good christian character ought to be esteemed as highly as a rich one. They are both equal before God, being brethren of Jesus, kings and priests elect unto God, and heirs of riches in comparison of which Croesus of Lydia was a beggar. Aristocracy in the churches is so enormous an evil that Mr. Miall, the editor of the Nonconformist, has written a book to exhibit the deformity and correct it. But his labour will be in vain. The aristocracy of wealth supports the parsonocracy whose shield is interposed to quench the fiery darts of radicals and factionists, who would disturb the downy amiability and equanimity of their ostentatious and luxurious patrons.
An incident occurred on Lord’s Day morning after we had finished which deserves to be noted. One of the audience arose and stated that he had been combating against baptism for thirty years; but that he now saw for the first time in his life, the relation of the institution to the kingdom of God. He added that he wished to be immersed, if any of them would do it, without his pledging himself to their opinions, or being under the necessity of joining their body. No one present could be more surprised at this application than we; for not many days before we had met him at a friend’s house in Glasgow with several others, among whom was one exceedingly pressing on the subject of baptism with this same gentleman. The former had the better of the argument; but neither of them the most amiable disposition on the occasion. By management civility was maintained between them, though it was often a question if its flimsy cuticle had not been abraided. In our speech on Lord’s day we had not been discussing baptism, but showing the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the Name of Jesus Christ, which in quoting the testimonies presented baptism incidentally. This case is proof to us that the way to bring people to a union with the name of Jesus by baptism, is to enlighten them on the kingdom and name; for when they get to understand these they will demand to be baptised of their own accord. His request as acceded to, and on the following evening he was immersed with his wife and daughter.
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Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
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HERALD
OF THE
KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME.
RICHMOND, VA., NOVEMBER, 1851
“OUR ISRAELITISH ORIGIN.”
This is the title of fourteen “Lectures on Ancient Israel, and the Israelitish Origin of the Modern Nations of Europe and America, by J. Wilson: being the Third American from the Third London edition. In paper cover 50cts.”—Sold by J. Dingle, 24 Andrew street, Rochester, N. Y.
We have read it, and can truly say with Mr. Bickersteth, “we have read it without any conviction.” The proposition contained in the title does not begin to be sustained by the arguments and testimonies quoted in the lectures. The text which seems to be the author’s polar star, is the saying of El-Shaddai to Jacob “a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee.” He rightly regards the “nation” as that of the Twelve Tribes; but the “company of nations” wrongly as “the Modern Nations of Europe and America.” A misunderstanding of this prediction has been the stumbling-block in the author’s way, which has precipitated him head-long into an abyss of speculation which he has not been able to fathom. The words of the prediction are Goi u-ke-hal goyim yihyeh mimmecha. The u here is to be taken as an expletive, and not as a conjunction copulative. The ukehal goyim is explanatory of the goi, and not to be added to it. Hence even, and not the copulative and, is the proper rendering of the wav in this text. The rendering, therefore, should be “a nation even a company of nations shall be from thee,” not “and a company;” or, as goi is sometimes used for people, it may be read, “a people, even a company of peoples shall be of thee.” This translation agrees with the fact, which corroborates it. The people or nation of Israel is “a company of peoples,” each people, or nation, descending from a particular son of Jacob. Twelve tribes or peoples united is one nation, and that the Israelitish, is the obvious import of the prediction of God Almighty.
The above promise to Jacob was a repetition of that to Abraham, when God said to him, “I have made thee a father of many nations”—Ab-hamon goyim nethathticha; and again, “thou shalt be for a father of many nations”—we-hayitha le-av hamon goyim. Mr. Wilson says “he is the father of us all before Him, whom he believed; although to the view of man, the literal accomplishment of the prophecy has not taken place.” This is equivalent to saying, it hath literally taken place. In what sense? According to Mr. W., in “the Modern Nations of Europe and America” having descended from Ephraim, the Seed of Abraham, of whom the promised multitude of nations was emphatically to come! The words were nethathti I have made or appointed cha thee. When is the appointment to take effect? “When thou shalt inherit the world of which I have made thee the heir;” for this promise is interpreted by Paul as constituting Abraham “the Heir of the World.” If then the nations indicated be now Abraham’s sons, they are all now blessed in him; for Abraham’s national paternity, or fatherhood, is coexistent with national blessedness. But this no one acquainted with the state of the nations now, and what it shall be hereafter under the reign of Abraham’s Seed, will pretend to say. They are all travailing in pain to be delivered. “He is the father of us all.” Truly; but to whom doth the “us” refer? “All them that believe,” saith Paul, “circumcised and uncircumcised.” He is their father now, and theirs only in the highest sense; he is also the father of Jacob’s circumcised posterity in the lower, or animal sense; but the father of uncircumcised unbelievers at present in no sense, and never will be. The time is coming, however, and not very far off, when he will be “for a father of many nations;” but it will not be until Israel is grafted into their own olive, and they and the uncircumcised nations, renouncing their idol-gods, and idol-saints, their Mohammedanism, Protestantism, and rabbinism, shall “serve the Lord with one consent,” and bow in homage to his King.
There is quite a sprinkling of good sayings in the book, which may be worth fifty cents and the postage. We are much obliged to the friend who sent us the copy before us, because the gift is expressive of his goodwill, and we like to read good sayings wherever they are to be found. “The author holds,” says Mr. Wilson, “with many modern students of prophecy, that the prophecies must be literally fulfilled; and that Judah must mean Judah, and Israel mean literally Israel.” This is excellent. But unfortunately he turns it all into corruption by continuing, “At the same time he agrees with those who apply to these Christian Nations, “any of the prophecies respecting Israel!” Where is a christian nation to be found on earth? He says “they are the modern nations of Europe; and especially those of the Saxon race, whose glorious privilege it now is, to preach the gospel for a witness unto all nations until the end come.” This is egregious nonsense, and clearly demonstrates that Mr. Wilson does not know what the gospel is.
He very properly makes a distinction between the restoration of the Jews, and the restoration of Israel, or the Ten Tribes. They are distinct processes. In another place, he says, “It is true, we as yet know but little of the Bible.” He has proved this in relation to himself; for though he has quoted much of it in his book, he evidently understands very, very little of what it says. If ever he come to understand the gospel of the Kingdom, the scales will fall from his eyes, and he will confess himself astonished, that with such a revelation in the premises he could ever have been so infatuated as to conceive, to say nothing of publishing, such a baseless fabric of a theory as “Our Israelitish Origin.”
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ANTAGONISM OF POPERY AND LIBERTY.
To the People of England:
FELLOW COUNTRYMEN, —Experience, whose lessons are but slowly learned by mankind, may be said to have at length demonstrated one thing—the fact, namely, that a sincere belief in the doctrines of Catholicism is incompatible with civil liberty. It ought, indeed, to have been evident from the commencement, that servile submission to a priest is incapable of being reconciled to manly self respect. Nothing degrades the mind like superstition, and of all superstitions the worst is that which gives one man an unlimited and unquestioned sway over another—which supposes the keys of Heaven to be in the hands of the church—that confers on a miserable ecclesiastic often imbecile, helpless, and ignorant, the power to make or mar the happiness of Christendom.
Of this you must have become convinced by the numerous debates which have taken place in parliament on the arrogant pretensions of the Pope. From beginning to end the papistical members have proved their incapacity to think for themselves by degenerating on all occasions into the unreasoning instruments of the Romish hierarchy. Their behaviour can scarcely fail to prove injurious to the cause of religious toleration. It may, with much share of reason, be urged against the admission of any fresh sectarians into the legislature that the Papists have so grossly abused their privileges, formerly conceded to them by the nation’s sense of justice, that it must always be deemed hazardous to repeat the experiment and admit others who may prove equally unworthy. This sort of reasoning, it is true, will not satisfy the enlarged and liberal mind, but it will probably, in many instances, warp the decision of those who might otherwise have acted liberally, and thus, to some extent at least, prejudice the cause of Christian charity.
During the present week you have witnessed in the conduct of the Irish members an illustration of how little genuine wisdom can ever be expected from the believers in an infallible church. The Irish Papists have acted like galley slaves, inspired by the grossest and most vindictive feelings against their political benefactors. But for the Liberals now in office they might still have been agitating in their bogs for the recognition of their right to sit in parliament; for nothing whatever is to be inferred from the threats and menaces they employed during their exclusion, since these have been their habitual weapons whenever they thought they might use them to their own personal advantage.
I am by no means a thick-and thin advocate of the ministerial measure, which I think in many parts defective. But the Popish members can scarcely pretend to quarrel with its inefficiency, or to complain that it is not sufficiently stringent. They denominate it a bill of pains and penalties, whereas, in truth, it is little more than a simple declaration of the state of the law as it is, and if passed tomorrow, could produce no injurious effect on the real interests of the Catholics in Great Britain. Meanwhile, one important good must arise from these prolonged discussions in the House of Commons. They will inevitably force Protestants in general to examine the political bearing of popery, and to inquire what would be the probable condition of Christendom should it ever again obtain the ascendancy. Civil liberty, you may be sure, there would be none, and as to religious liberty, the bare idea that such a thing could exist has never presented itself to the mind of a genuine Papist. Reason he condemns as heretical. According to his views man’s only duty is to succumb to the priest—to accept what he teaches for truth—to consider his decision as binding on the conscience—to abjure all knowledge, instruction, or enlightenment not proceeding from the church, and, to consider the laity in all things as bound to receive direction from the priesthood.
Not long ago there were here among us several journalists who, surveying the events of the Continent, thought the revolutionary torrent would be cheaply stayed at the expense of a complete reaction in favour of popery and despotism. Their convictions have since undergone a very material change. Instead of repeating their cuckoo song about the dangers to be apprehended from democratic institutions, they now acquiesce in the usefulness of democracy, and earnestly deprecate the return of several continental governments to the maxims which prevailed with them before the great rising of 1848. It is felt that popery alone can thoroughly counteract the influence of civilisation, because where knowledge is inimical to its sway popery prohibits or corrupts it, and, indeed, has just decided in plain terms that education is incompatible with the pretensions of the church of Rome. By this, in the minds of all thinking persons, it must stand condemned, because if the mental discipline of the believer be compatible with the continuance of belief it may be regarded as an unanswerable argument against the validity of its foundation. If your faith be inconsistent with knowledge it must be based on fable and nourished by credulity. Knowledge of all sciences of history, politics, and morals, is perfectly reconcilable with truth, and may serve as a proper basis for that faith which believes nothing contradicted by sound reason, though it may rise far above it, and embrace conclusions to which logic could not conduct it. Religion, for this reason, is never adverse to the enlightening and development of the mind, which only becomes the more worthy of containing its truth in proportion to its vastness and elevation. The case is altogether different with superstition, which feeds on ignorance, on the weakness and timidity of the mind, on fears, errors, and intellectual obliquity.
I am happy to perceive that the cause of Austria and Spain, in both which countries popery reigns triumphant, has been abandoned by some of the most strenuous partisans of absolutism. It is at length recognised that in those benighted countries, popery forms the basis of despotism, in favour of which there could be no reaction, were it not that the priest is there able to degrade the mind of the masses to the level of implicit faith and passive obedience.
Nothing can be further from my mind than to become the advocate of persecution. Yet there is one form in which I think it is allowable—namely, to persecute error with knowledge, falsehood with truth, superstition with religion. Batter down the walls of popery, by pouring instruction into those minds on whose errors and weakness they rest. Give the people knowledge, train their minds to reason, accustom them to self-examination, and popery must ultimately succumb before the spirit which you will thus create. At present, you must be profoundly humiliated at the spectacle for some time presented to us by the House of Commons, where the Scullys, and the Reynoldses, the Grattans and the Moores, the Keoghs, the O’Connels, and the Surreys, retail, at the bidding of the priests and cardinals, the meanest verbiage and sophistry, degraded still further by the constant admixture of vindictive fiction and malignity. You should really concentrate your contempt, and pour it undiluted on the heads of these priestly emissaries. They legislators indeed! Why, they have not emancipated themselves from swaddling clothes, but move still in a sort of mental go-cart, pushed hither and thither by the ancient harlot of Babylon. If man can occupy in this universe one position more humiliating than all the rest, it is that of being a Papist, and yielding up the direction of his conscience to a mumbling old necromancer on the banks of the Tiber. Imagine men educated in the science of civilisation, and enabled to study in the originals the legacies bequeathed to us by the philosophers of Greece and Rome, deserting Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, to become the followers of beggarly priests, like Pio Nono and Cardinal Wiseman! But this mischief entirely traces its origin to the enfeebling of the mind by the study of what we call theology, a monstrous compound made up of assumptions, fallacies, and traditions. In its real nature no branch of study can be nobler, but when perverted, as it generally is by ecclesiastics, it degenerates into a mere instrument for the diffusion of mental darkness.
I pity the government and the great Protestant section of the House of Commons that they should be condemned night after night, to be stunned by the vapid commonplaces of the shameless agents of the Vatican. Shade of Gulliver, didst thou ever witness anything more ludicrous in the councils or universities of Laputa! Did the doctors in that babbling commonwealth ever approach in illogical monstrosity Mr. Keogh or the member for Dublin? Did a priest out of doors move by wires fifty-nine puppets in the legislature? Was the first minister of the state compelled to postpone all the serious business of the country till the pretensions of some foreign impostor, claiming irresistible authority over the minds of all men, had been disposed of to the satisfaction of his slaves? For myself, I had rather be a “pagan suckled in a creid cutworn” than bow the knee to the contemptible charlatan whom Reynolds and Sculley imagine to be invested with infallibility.
And, then, there is poor Lord Arundel and Surrey, who comes rolling in at the heels of these hollow Irish declaimers, and babbles he knows what to gratify his spiritual director! There is clearly no security in any stage of civilisation against the folly and weakness of the human race, unless where men are possessed by a strong and enlightened passion for liberty. It will then be sufficient for them to know that popery is incompatible with freedom, for they will reject it on that simple discovery. You cannot be politically independent if you are mentally a slave—cannot assert your rights against presumptuous and dishonest men, if you imagine them to be backed by spiritual agencies, of which you have been, and ought to stand in awe. In all ages the imposture of the church has been still more audacious than the impostures of absolutism. This power only pretends to be based on divine right, but the other usurps the place of divinity, denominates itself infallible, and on that account demands the unconditional surrender of reason. Better by far return to the condition of the primitive ages, and rid yourselves entirely of sacerdotal caste, than thus to subject your understanding to the guidance of a small body of impostors, who subsist in pomp and splendour through your ignorance and weakness.
Protestantism, at all events, whatever imperfections it may have, allies itself readily with liberty, which is, indeed, necessary to its unchecked development. But popery is a toothless tradition, which has come down from blear eyed Eld to press like an incubus on the weak minds and timid consciences of old women, whether in breeches or petticoats. If you wish to see despotism established over all Christendom you may easily gratify your desires by adopting the impostures of popery—by silencing the voice of your understanding—by forfeiting the right of private judgment, and investing a few beggarly priests and ragged monks with the privilege of judging and deciding for you. Throughout Europe they are now eagerly on the watch, imagining that the time is come when they may once more enjoy universal dominion. A few conversions of puerile clergymen, whose minds are overlaid by the weight of copes and surplices, have betrayed them into this frantic opinion. But the process of conversion will cease when it is found that to adopt the doctrines of popery is to become a slave, and impress the mark of the beast upon one’s forehead.
GREVILLE BROOKE.
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PRESENT ASPECT OF RUSSIA.
By Rev. John S. C. Abbott.
There is no subject which now excites a deeper interest in England, and indeed with all thinking men throughout the continent of Europe, than what is there called the Eastern Question. Russia and England are now playing as important a political game as ever excited the eastern hemisphere. Russia, with an ambition which knows no bounds, with resources almost inexhaustible, and secret policy intriguing at every court in Europe, seeks to extend her territory over all of central Asia, and to outvie ancient Rome in the extent of her dominions and in the majesty of her power.
England trembles at the gigantic acquisitions of her great northern rival. She sees, with a degree of dread which she can neither appease nor conceal, the Russian power crowding closer and closer upon her East Indian possessions, and contemplates with irrepressible anxiety the rapidly increasing navy of the autocrat, threatening soon to supersede her in her ancient sovereignty of the seas. To thwart the designs of Russia is now the great object of English diplomacy. And there is at the present time a contest going on between the two powers, which, though it has excited but little attention on this side of the Atlantic, is an all engrossing subject of interest in every cabinet of Europe.
The Russian dominions now compose about one seventh of the habitable globe, extending from the Baltic Sea, across the whole breadth of Europe and of Asia, to Behring’s Straits; and from the eternal ices of the northern pole to the sunny clime of the pomegranate and the fig. The Emperor Nicholas reigns with unbounded sway over seventy millions of the human family; a population considerably exceeding that of England, France, and the United States combined. He has a militia of eighteen millions of well armed and respectably disciplined men. He has a standing army of highly disciplined troops, many of them veterans in the hardships and horrors of war, consisting of one million of men, two hundred thousand of these being cavalry, perhaps unsurpassed by any other body of mounted troops in the world. His navy consisting of forty or fifty ships of the line, with frigates, sloops, floating batteries, and gunboats almost without number, is now manned by about sixty thousand men, daily exercised in all the arts of war. And the shores of the Euxine and the Baltic incessantly resound with the blows of the ship carpenter, as month after month, new ships are launched upon their waters. The annual revenue of the Emperor is about fifty millions of dollars. Such is the gigantic power now over-shadowing the north of Europe, and apparently aiming at the sovereignty of the world.
The Emperor Nicholas is about 45 years of age, in the very prime of his intellectual and physical vigour. He is, in all respects, one of the most extraordinary men on the busy stage of life. It is said that he is in form and feature one of the handsomest men on the continent of Europe. Lord Londonderry, who not long ago returned from a visit to his court, says that if all the seventy millions who compose the subjects of the Emperor of Russia, were assembled together, Nicholas is the one, who, from his commanding figure, his symmetrical and intellectual features, and his princely bearing, would be selected from them all, as formed by the God of nature for their chieftain. His mind is of the highest order, uniting in that wonderful combination which made Napoleon the master-spirit of his age, the comprehensiveness of the man of genius, with the practical man’s minutest acquaintance with details. He is alike at home everywhere—in the army, in the navy, in the cabinet. The diplomatic corps is, by general consent, the ablest in Europe. In England, as in America, a man is appointed to an important mission, not because he is the most suitable man, but because there are certain interests which must be conciliated, or particular friends who must be rewarded. But Nicholas feels none of these trammels. He reigns in unlimited despotism. Dukes and Barons are nothing to him. He cares not who is a man’s father, or where he was born. Looking simply at the qualifications of the individuals selected as the instruments of his government, he has gathered around him from all the nations of Europe the most brilliant and comprehensive talent, and no cabinet in the eastern hemisphere is probably equal to the associated diplomatists of Nicholas.
The favourite plan of Russia, which has never for a moment been lost sight of since first projected by the dissolute and ambitious Catharine, is to found universal dominion by the monopoly of the commerce between Europe and Asia. To do this, she must first so extend and strengthen her central power as to have nothing to fear from the other nations of Europe. She must so enlarge and perfect her navy as to wrest from the hands of Great Britain the sceptre of the ocean; and she must subjugate Turkey, and make Constantinople her third capital, and fortify Gibraltar’s rock at the Dardanelles.
Towards the accomplishment of these projects she is advancing in her career triumphantly, rapidly, and apparently resistless. By diplomatic intrigue and the power of her armies, Russia has succeeded in bringing a large portion of the empire of Poland under her control. The Poles manifested some uneasiness under the yoke, and made an effort to regain their ancient independence. The imperial autocrat poured into the ill-fated territory his resistless armies. They swept over Poland with hurricane fury. One wild shriek vibrated upon the ear of Europe, so deep and piercing that it even passed the Atlantic wave and rolled along our shores—and Poland was no more. Her armies were massacred. Her Nobles were driven into Siberian exile. Her cities and villages became the property of Russia. Her population of twenty millions of inhabitants were transformed into the subjects of the grasping conqueror, to swell his armies and to fight his battles; and her annual revenue of twenty millions of dollars was emptied into his overflowing treasury.
The empire of Sweden lines the western shore of the Baltic Sea. It would be convenient for Nicholas to have possession of the whole coast. It is said that Russian gold has already bought up the influence of her leading Nobles and Statesmen. And there is now in Sweden a powerful party, even with the King himself at their head, who openly advocate the annexation of their territory to the powerful empire upon whose border they lie. They say it is far better for them to become assimilated with this majestic nation, to share its glory and power, than to be an independent but feeble empire, which may at any moment be inundated with Russian troops. Thus Sweden virtually belongs to Russia. Her monarch is but the viceroy of Nicholas, to do his bidding in the furtherance of all his plans.
And Norway, a narrow strip of land washed by the German Ocean, is left unmolested, simply because she is not worth possessing. Her cold and cheerless waste, inhabited by a population of but about a million, without a navy and with hardly the shadow of an army, only add to the interior strength of that powerful monarch, who can fill her whole territory with Russian subjects whenever it shall be his will. Thus the stormy waves of the German Ocean are the only real limits to the power of Nicholas on the west.
Let us now turn to the east, and note the acquisitions of this gigantic empire in that direction. There is a large promontory jutting into the Black Sea from the north, called Crimea. The possession of this promontory is important to any power that would control the commerce of the Black Sea. Turkey owned it. Russia wanted it. She took it. And when Turkey remonstrated, Nicholas very significantly pointed to his guns and his troops, and advised the Sultan to keep quiet. Mahmoud took the hint, and exercised discretion, that “better part of valour.”
Sevastapool, on the southern shore of the Crimea, is now the naval depot of the Euxine fleet. Here an immense navy, manned by thirty thousand seamen, rides proudly, armed and provisioned, ready to unmoor, at a moment’s warning, for any expedition of aggrandisement. For many years Nicholas has had twelve thousand men constantly employed in throwing up fortifications around this important position. No assailant can now probably harm it. Said Captain Crawford, as he visited a few years ago the Russian fleet at Sevastapool, “It was a strange feeling that came over me, as an Englishman and an officer in the British navy, on finding myself at sea with six and twenty line of battle ships, manned with nearly thirty thousand men, and four months’ provision on board, knowing, as I do, that for the protection of the coasts of my own country, of our ports, of our mercantile shipping in the Baltic, the North Sea, and the Channel, we had but seven line of battle ships in a state of preparation, and those not fully manned. I confess that, confident as I felt of the superiority of my countrymen, I almost trembled for their preservation of the ancient sovereignty of the seas.”
On the eastern shores of the Black Sea, between her waves and the Caspian, lies Circassia, a wild and mountainous region, filled with gloomy ravines and inaccessible crags, where small bands of resolute men might bid defiance to a host. Amongst these defiles, for many ages, there has lived a brave and warlike race, famed for martial prowess and personal beauty, and for the spirit of indomitable independence. Russia having obtained undisputed possession of the western and northern shores of the Euxine, cast her eyes across the eastern shore, and resolved to subdue the warlike race which for ages had ranged these wilds in unconquered freedom. The Euxine fleet was all ready to transport the armies of the Emperor to the shores of Circassia. The plan was, however, found more difficult of achievement than was at first supposed. These hardy men and women fought bravely for their liberties. From the year 1828 to 1832, these distant solitudes resounded with the din of the most determined and murderous war. The explosion of Russian artillery rivalled the thunders of heaven, as they reverberated around the summits of the Circassians. Army after army were cut up in these Thermopolac fastnesses, but still new thousands were poured into the doomed country, till, at last, numbers and discipline triumphed and the brave Circassians were vanquished, and their country became, by right of might, a province of rapacious Russia; and now the Russian flag floats from almost every promontory of the Black Sea, and her fortresses frown in the strongest holds of the Caucasian mountains. —New York Evangelist.
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POPERY.
The political press of Europe teems with denunciations of this liberty-destroying, and hateful superstition. Editors in this country under the mask of charity, and liberality, but really from fear of curtailing their party votes, and diminishing their subscription lists, are afraid to look the serpent in the mouth. It is not so in Britain where the reptile’s fangs once fastened themselves with their usual deadly effect upon society. The drunken Jezebel is well understood there, and held up to the execration she deserves. Popery unrestrained and liberty cannot long coexist in unity. They are essentially antagonistic. They are the Serpent and the Woman, as it were, between whom God has placed eternal and implacable enmity. The republic or kingdom that cherishes her will sooner or later be enslaved. This is believed and felt by the liberals of Europe, whom power and want of opportunity only restrain from wreaking terrible vengeance on the Harlot, drunk with the blood of the saints and prophets of the Lord.
We extract the following from the “London Weekly Times,” containing the cheering assurance that every thing in Europe indicates the speedy overthrow of the Pope’s ascendancy over the West. We rejoic