READERS of the Express will remember the gentleman from Tien-tsin, now resident in London, whose views upon the situation in China I have more than once obtained and placed before the public in these columns.
Yesterday this gentleman called upon me, instead of asking me to call upon him; and, for the sake of our native manners, I regret to say that he was followed by quite a little crowd of small boys, though, but for his skullcap and pigtail, his costume was quite English.
“I have called upon you,” he said, “instead of requesting you to visit my humble quarters,”—there must have been sarcasm in the Celestial gentleman’s mind when he said this, looking around my severely plain working den, and thinking of the tapestried and cushioned luxury of his own semi-Oriental quarters,—“because I want to express opinions the reverse of flattering to the journal in which you have before now done me the honor to reproduce my words and thoughts.
“Have you not sneered for years at what you call the insensate barbarity of my people in referring to the invading peoples of other lands as foreign devils? You know you have. Yet this morning the Express publishes broadcast an article headed ‘Keep Out the Foreign Devil.’”
“A quotation from an incendiary pamphlet in China, issued by the Boxers to stir up enmity against the whites?—Not at all; but an article published in an English newspaper (and, mark you, other of your leading journals are taking precisely the same tone), and written with the avowed object of preventing poor workmen from my native country obtaining a footing and work in other countries.
“Is not that disgraceful? Is not that a ridiculous travesty of your boasted civilization, you people of the West? And, mind you, the Express does but voice a feeling widespread throughout the West. The principal newspapers of Europe and America, of this country, too, are all adopting the same desperately inconsistent attitude.
“‘Keep out the Chinaman,’ they say. Hound him out of our labor markets; force him back to his own country; we won’t have the yellow beast competing with our fellow-whites! Australia, America, Europe, and now London, even,—all have the same cry. I myself may quite possibly be forced to relinquish my business here. Is that your Western civilization?
“In China, frankly, we hate to have you. These many, many years we have made that as clear as possible. Do not intrude upon us; do not come here; we will not have you! There has been no possibility of your mistaking our feelings in the matter.
“But, so far from acceding to our requests, even when we have backed them with force of arms and little massacres, you have remained persistent intruders, uninvited guests, who were begged to go away.
“And now—now you will fight. Oh, believe me, I know; I know my Europe; I know how bitterly hard you will fight; and I greatly fear you will succeed. In what?—In forcing yourselves as residents—commercial, diplomatic, and fanatically proselytizing—upon long-suffering China!
“Meantime you are shouting from all the corners of your vast dominions: ‘Keep out the Chinaman! Drive back the hated yellow race! Don’t let them come in, even as laborers’—though you have to admit they are better than your own, by the way.
“O hopeless and blatant illogicality! O childish unreason of the mushroom West!
“Yet, mark you, we Chinese are not the terribly objectionable foreigners that yourselves are in China.
“We send no missionaries to worry your authorities, or to unsettle and undermine the beliefs of your ignorant masses. We send no consuls with powers to protect any foreigners who may be connected with our subjects while they sojourn in your lands.
“No; we make ourselves wholly amenable to your own laws, and adapt ourselves to your rule and methods, childish though we find them. That is because we are reasonable, a nation of philosophers.
“But with you, how far otherwise! You expect to bring your own laws, your own methods, your own habits, with you; you decline altogether to conform to ours, or to adapt yourselves in any way to our system. Yet you expect absolute liberty, immunity from our laws, and even the right to arrogantly exhibit contempt for us and our ways, and to try to force your own upon us.
“We deny you this, and you wage bitter war upon us. And at the same time you work yourselves into a frenzy to prevent Chinamen from entering your dominions, even in the humblest possible capacities.
“You would drive all Chinamen out of your dominions, and effectually prevent any others from entering them. Well and good! There is nothing particularly unreasonable about that, though you are in a position of having a use and need for Chinamen, while we in China have never had any use or need for you. However, shut them out by all means, if you will, but—
“Is not the thing clearer than crystal? Yourselves you must withdraw from our empire, to a man, if you would be even reasonably just and decent. I do not seek logic, far less philosophy, from you.
“The present attitude of the mushroom West, particularly now that Britain, its leading newspapers even, has taken up the cry of the rest of Christendom, demanding the shutting out of Chinamen,—the present attitude, I say, is supremely ridiculous, savagely unjust, a travesty, and a mock of civilization.
“I have finished.”
A YEAR AT HIS FEET.
The Firebrand.
WHAT will be the result of a year's tuition under the Spirit? A year with the wonderful Teacher will so change you that you will hardly know yourself. In one year of following his voice, with all your life conformed to him, what developments in love, in humility, in patience, in spiritual discernment, in faith, in wisdom, in light on God's word, what change in the outward life, what increase of power for service may be yours.
Think what we might learn in one year in heaven by talking with God, hearing him speak, being under the influence of his presence. But here under trial is the place to be changed into his image. Our association with him, and the degree of his power over our lives, are limited only by the degree to which we yield to him.
“The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things.” Great sums are paid for the most competent instructors, but who can estimate the value of such a Teacher? The poorest may have the best.
LOOK TO THE LIGHT.
By E. S. L. Thompson
Look to the light! Yea, upward and afar,
For thee some gleam awaits,
Perhaps the glow of some resplendent star
At heaven’s very gates!
Look to the light! Though dark thy night and drear,
List for the music’s roll,
So loudly clear and sweet, “The morn is near
Unto thy waiting soul!”
It gleams! It breaks! The everlasting arms
In darkness have been thine;
The light! The light! How its full presence warms
Where endless glories shine!
Look to the light! Yea, upward and afar,
For thee some gleam awaits,
Perhaps the glow of some resplendent star
At heaven’s very gates!
— E. S. L. Thompson, in New York Observer.
Your Life as a Living Bible
Do not forget that your life may be the only Bible your neighbor ever reads. Your words, your actions, are ever spread before him as so many pages to be read. He is forever scanning you carefully, looking for a blot here, a blemish there, or some absolute mistake. You may think lightly of some inconsistent action; he does not, and is quick to take advantage of such to defend his own shortcomings. “The one argument I never could answer,” said an infidel after conversion, “was the consistent life of my Christian mother.” — Selected.
SUNSHINE AND FRESH AIR.
Christian Work.
As a general rule, we value the most that for which we pay the most. But at this season of the year we have sunshine and fresh air in prodigal plenitude freely given us. Do we really appreciate these free gifts surrounding us? We can have them in immeasurable quantity if we will. Let us see if we understand their value to us.
Suppose we go into the garden, or into a field, and gather a handful of flowers, with a little grass and a few leafy twigs to add to their beauty. Now divide this lot into two, and put them into jars containing water. One is to be kept outside—say under a tree, where at times the sunshine will break through, and where the air is pure; and the other is to go into the sitting-room of our house. Leave them a few days, giving them each fresh water daily, and notice what happens to them. We shall find that cut flowers, placed out of doors in the fresh air, and having also a measure of grateful and comforting sunshine, not too hot and burning, will live three times as long as those placed in an average living-room of a house, where fresh air and sunshine do not so penetrate. True, human beings are not flowers, but they do require favorable circumstances of atmosphere and influences of sunshine to enable them to breathe their best, and to produce satisfactory specimens, all the same. Humanity toils and spins, and, therefore, needs all the kindly influences that nature so lavishly bestows. Daily labor in stuffy, sunless atmospheres and dull apartments will cause to droop and wither all the flowers of manhood and womanhood, making limp and lifeless what ought to be as fresh and sweet as a wild rose.
These are the days of micro-organisms. We have learned much of the habits of deadly microbes, and have discovered various means of putting them to death. We have our poisonous solutions—our antiseptics, as we call them—to spray them with, and thus put an end to them. And we are daily discovering more and more in this direction. But let us not forget the sun. This is the greatest and most powerful antiseptic agent of all. The sun gives life and color to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and it no less helps us by destroying the legions of organisms that would otherwise create disease when opportunity permits. The sun is the finest antiseptic known to man. And how pleasant! If sunshine were scarce, what money the rich would pay for it! But, thank heaven! it is as free as it is abundant and delightful. We have only to put our head out of the door or window, and revel in it.
We must not forget, either, that where the sun is, there will be, as a rule, fresh air also. The house should not be closely shut up in summer-time just because the dust will blow in, or because the sun may fade the furnishings. Well, so too will the occupants of the house fade if their rooms are kept unaired and unsunned. The color upon a daughter's cheeks should certainly be as important as the shade of a carpet; and a little dust blown through the window now and then would not be as poisonous as the stagnant air of a darkened room. Draw up the blinds, then, and throw open the window, that the fresh air of heaven and the pure sunshine may come in, with all their health and life-giving power. One hour of such a vivifying draught will be of more healthful value than would the swallowing of the entire pharmacopoeia.
MY INHERITANCE.
By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle
MRS. L. D. AVERY-STUTTLE.
Thou’st made the face of nature fair,—
The towering mount, the verdant tree,
The beauteous forms in earth and air,—
For me, the creature of thy care,
Thou’st made them all for me.
I plucked a fragrant rose this morn,
And gazed upon its beauty bright;
For me those radiant tints were worn,
As if a rainbow had been shorn,
To give my soul delight.
A dewdrop sparkled on a flower,
Like kingly diadem it shone.
It might have graced some prince’s bower,
Yet it became, for one brief hour,
A diamond all my own.
I stood and watched the setting sun
Like master artist paint the sky;
The gray clouds kindled one by one,
Until, the mighty picture done,
It hung before my eye.
No fairer scene had e’er been flung
Were I a queen upon the throne,
No fairer picture had been hung
The galleries of God among,—
Yet it was all my own.
The starry heavens shine for me
As bright as if a crown I wore;
O’er mighty pathway, broad and free,
Each planet through immensity
Rolls onward evermore.
And more, yet more; one Gift above
All other gifts so broad and free,—
The mighty God, whose name is Love,
As if his matchless grace to prove,
Has given his Son for me.
THE SPIDER MADE USEFUL.
ONE of the most novel exhibits in the Paris Exposition is said to be a complete set of bed hangings made in Madagascar from the silk of the halabe. The halabe is a native spider, of huge size, and ferocious temper. This is by no means the first time that fabrics have been made from spider’s silk, but this is of remarkable strength. Mr. Vogue, the head of the Antananarivo technical school, so reports the Home Journal, has been studying the life of this particular spider for many years, and observing the strength of the silk as exhibited in its web, invented a process of winding off the silk before the unfortunate and bereft spider could use it for its own purposes. Each spider yields from three hundred to four hundred yards of this silk, which is somewhat finer than that of the silk-worm, and of a light-golden color. The bed hangings are the first results of Mr. Vogue’s skill and patience.
THE OFFENSIVE TRAILING SKIRT.
Springfield Republican.
A DISTINGUISHED scientist at Rome, Dr. Casagrandi, in an address at a congress lately held in that city, told his colleagues that he had been making some simple experiments to show the abuses of trailing skirts. He employed, he said, a number of women wearing long skirts, to walk for one hour through the streets of the city, and after their promenade was over, he took their skirts and submitted them to a careful examination. As a result, he found on each skirt large colonies of noxious germs, including those of influenza, consumption, typhoid fever, and tetanus. The bacilli of minor diseases were also well represented on each skirt.
Dr. Casagrandi maintained that, in view of these facts, women, and especially mothers, ought at once to stop wearing long skirts; and the other members of the congress unhesitatingly expressed the same opinion, and passed a resolution to this effect.
A French writer, commenting on these experiments, says that the time may not be far off when all women will wear short bicycle skirts, and that the sooner this time comes, the better pleased will be all those who have made a study of hygiene, and who know how dangerous to public health the long skirt is.
That women should willingly subject themselves to the danger as well as the filth of the trailing skirt, is a subject of perpetual wonder.
THE TWO SIDES OF IT.
By Priscilla Leonard
There was a girl who always said
Her fate was very hard;
From the one thing she wanted most
She always was debarred.
There always was a cloudy spot
Somewhere within her sky;
Nothing was e’er exactly right,
She used to say, and sigh.
And yet her sister, strange to say,
Whose lot was quite the same,
Found something pleasant for herself
In every day that came.
Of course, things tangled up sometimes
For just a little while;
But nothing ever stayed all wrong,
She used to say, and smile.
So one girl sighed, and one girl smiled,
Through all their lives together;
It didn’t come from luck or fate,
From clear or cloudy weather.
The reason lay within their hearts,
And colored all outside;
One chose to hope, and one to mope,
And so they smiled and sighed.
— Priscilla Leonard.
Proper Sterilization and Drinking of Milk
MILK is sterilized by bottling, corking with cotton, and after placing the bottles in a kettle having a false bottom, filling the vessel with cold water, and allowing it to come to a boil. At the end of half an hour, the bottles may be removed and closely corked. Whatever unwholesome bacteria the milk may have contained are killed by the heat. But even then, milk must be sipped. Taken at one draught, it is coagulated by the gastric juice the moment it reaches the stomach. There it remains in one large lump, upon which that digestive fluid can not act. There results disturbance or pain, and the person supposes the milk disagrees with him. The fact is that the same amount of milk, slowly sipped, would present to the gastric juice small, separate masses of coagulum, which are readily acted upon. Hence all depends upon the manner in which fluids are imbibed.—Good Housekeeping.
Strict Habits of Cleanliness
“Strict habits of cleanliness should be observed.”
PROPHECY is given to lift up Christ, and to reveal God’s dealings with the nations.
Never become so interested in relating the wonders of Babylon, or the achievements of men, that you forget to mention the still greater wonders of God’s love, and the greatest of all achievements,—the plan whereby salvation is offered to all men in all ages.
What happened when Israel continued in sin? Dan. 1 : 1, 2.
How many retained their integrity, and could be trusted in responsible places? Dan. 1 : 19, 20.
How did they gain the king’s confidence? Dan. 2 : 1–19.
The king’s mind all centered in man. God took an image of a man to represent the world’s history, and utterly destroyed it while the king looked upon it. Dan. 2 : 31–35.
All earthly nations finally reject God; they are destroyed. God sets up his everlasting kingdom. Dan. 2 : 44, 45.
EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE.
The Word tells us that even the hairs of our head are numbered, and of late I have been wondering if the Lord is interested in our headwear, and have decided that he is. I went to a millinery store a few days ago, but could find nothing that would be suitable, and pleasing to the Lord, for a woman of my years. If we are to be a peculiar people, why don’t we choose a plain, sensible shape in headwear, suitable to all ages, and adopt it as a general style? If I were to choose a shape, I would select something with a rim wide enough to avoid making it necessary to carry an umbrella except in rainy weather, and yet not wide enough to obstruct the view of those behind us in public places. I would choose something light in weight, made of material that would bear brushing frequently, or even the use of a damp cloth. It seems to me that, as our people have established broom factories, tailor shops, etc., this industry could be added with profit also, and be in harmony with the message, and forever settle the matter as to what we shall wear on the head. I believe that anything which brings comfort to God’s people is pleasing to him, and you can help me personally by giving me something to wear in the sunshine, which will not make my head ache, and will leave both hands free to carry books, papers, etc., containing the message. Much has been said and written about hanging the skirts from the shoulders, and is not the headdress as important as that? I am ready to step into line with a uniform headgear, furnished by our Woman’s Gospel society—a headgear that is modest and womanly, and in harmony with the Testimonies.
I am much interested in what you write about women’s headwear. I know that this is a perplexing problem. There is nothing I dread more than the getting of a hat or bonnet. I wish I might be able to suggest something that would meet your needs, and be a relief to other sisters, but I think that every woman must find the style of hat that suits her best, and keep to it. You can have your milliner take her blocks and make a hat, such as you have in mind; and if you find it as convenient as you expect, you can recommend it to others. I know of no hat that is more becoming for girls than a sailor hat. Many women over twenty-five years of age can also wear it, but for women of your age and mine such a hat is not suitable. The walking hat is a good shape for nearly every face. It is suitable for women of all ages, and is very desirable because it does not require any trimming. I have always found a bonnet the most satisfactory covering for my head, but I know that many women do not wish to wear one.
In regard to having a uniform style of hat, I can hardly see that it would be advisable. I quote the following from an unpublished Testimony; while referring especially to the dress, it applies to everything in a woman’s wardrobe: “Our sisters whose minds are agitated upon the subject of again resuming the reform dress should be prayerfully cautious in every move they make. We have now the most solemn, important test given to us from the word of God for this special period of time. This test is for the whole world. The Lord does not require that any tests of human invention shall be brought in to divert the minds of the people, or to create controversy in any line. No one precise style has been given me as the exact rule to guide all in their dress. Simple dresses should be worn.”
I fear that the industry of hat-making would not receive sufficient patronage to be sustained, and therefore, as I said before, each one must find and adopt her own style of headwear. I am sure that the Lord wishes us to wear things that are becoming, and also comfortable.
I am always glad of any suggestions from the sisters, and will pass them along just as far as practicable. Write freely about anything you have in mind for the furtherance of our work. MRS. GEO. A. IRWIN.
HER PURPOSE.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Down the long vistas of the years she gazed
With eager eyes, expectant and alert.
Somewhere her purpose waited — that great work
For which she was created. In her heart
Burned the deep longing to achieve, achieve —
To lead some glorious effort for reform!
To feed poor, starving minds with loaves of thought,
And hungry hearts with love; to cheer, to aid,
To help humanity to nobler heights
And purer attitudes. She cared not how,
Nor through what paths, God led her to her work;
She was prepared for sacrifice and toil
And suffering, so be it to the last
She might attain her purpose. Night and day
This thought was dominant; it had shaped her dreams
And colored all her actions, and it grew
To be a wall, which shut her duty out,
And hid the hearts of dear ones from her view.
A good man starved for love beside her hearth,
And little children wandered from the home
To find their pleasure elsewhere, and to learn
Life's mysteries from other lips than hers.
She dreamed of leading hosts to happiness,
The while her own was hungering for her care.
She dreamed of fame and glory, while dear love
Sat in the solitude and pined to death.
She waited for her purpose, and knew not
It dwelt forever lonely at her side
And wept because she would not understand.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
A Critical Wife’s Influence
The following in regard to one of our sisters—a Sabbath-keeper, though she may not yet be a member of the church—tells a story that needs no comment. May it be a warning to every woman:—
A sister who lives near me is very critical about everything. She is painfully neat. She has always lived in luxury, and without labor; but now she lives on a farm, and the dirt of a farmer’s lot is almost more than she can stand. Her kitchen is as nice as a parlor, and her stove is a thing to admire for its shine. She finds so much fault that her husband has given up all his religion. He said to me, with tears in his eyes, “The Holy Ghost has not made my home any better, if that is what my wife has. I am ready to keep the Sabbath with her, and do right, if my home can be less like a hell. She has disgusted me with religion, and I know not what to do. I would give all I am worth to have the peace of God, the forgiveness of the past, and a quiet, peaceful home.”
REQUESTS FOR PRAYER.
“My dear husband is a backslider, and some of my children are far from the truth. Pray for my dear ones, that they may see their lost condition, and turn to God.”
“I would still ask for prayer for the prisoner that Sister Henry wrote to—the one who was sentenced to be hanged February 9. He was granted a reprieve, but may be executed soon.”
A sister requests prayer for her loving husband, who is grieving because of her acceptance of the truth. This seems the only barrier between them. Pray that the way may open for them both to attend the camp-meeting, and that he may be inclined to go, and may see the truth.
“Will you kindly remember to pray earnestly that my dear father and two brothers may yield themselves to the Lord, and be saved? God is working with them, for I ask him to, and I know he hears me. I love to remember those who have made similar requests through the REVIEW. It draws us nearer to God to have something definite to ask for, and special ones to pray for.”
We have just received word in regard to one of our sisters who is discouraged. Her husband, once a worker in the cause of God, has grown indifferent to the truth, and also to his family, and does not even provide comfortably for them. This sister has six children, and she is trying to earn enough for their support by making shirts at forty cents a dozen for the factory. This is certainly a pitiful case, and she should have our prayerful interest.
“I earnestly desire prayer for my husband and children. My husband was once a Baptist, but now he makes no profession, and does not seem to believe the Bible. My daughter is married, and is very worldly. She has everything to make her happy as far as this world’s goods are concerned; and although she has been brought up to know the truth, she does not seem to care for anything religious. I have a son fourteen years old, who seems to be drifting out into the world. He says that he loves his Saviour, and he attends Sabbath-school and church, but the things of the world are getting a hold on him. O Christians, pray earnestly for me and my loved ones.”
Care for the Needy and Afflicted
When the Master shall come, he will commend those who have visited the sick and relieved the necessities of the afflicted. There are multitudes of poor children who need care and protection. There are multitudes of aged people who are dependent upon others for the necessities of life. The Lord has not designed that these sufferers should be neglected.—“Testimonies for the Church.”
THE THIRD ANGEL'S MESSAGE.
Its Basis in the Seven Trumpets.
“AND the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.” Rev. 9: 13-15.
In the year 1449, at the death of the emperor of the Eastern Empire of Rome, that empire had dwindled almost to the very walls of the capital itself. And so certain did it seem that the capital itself must shortly fall, that the successor to the throne would not accept the place without the knowledge and permission of Amurath, the sultan of the Turks. And thus that empire at that time really passed under the control of the Turkish power; and all that remained to complete the blotting out of the empire in every respect, was the actual taking of the capital, which was accomplished in 1453.
Thus the time of the sixth trumpet began immediately upon the expiration of the fifth, July 27, 1449; and was to continue “an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year.” Counting 30 days to the month, according to the Scriptural mode of computing time, a year is 360 days; and taking “each day for a year” (Eze. 4: 4-6), we have 360 years. A month—30 days—is 30 years. A day is 1 year. These, added together, give 391 years. From July 27, 1449, the 391 years reach to July 27, 1840. But there is “an hour” more. An hour is the twenty-fourth part of a day; and (a day for a year) this would be the twenty-fourth part of a year, or fifteen days. Fifteen days, from July 27, extend to August 11. Therefore Aug. 11, 1840, this period of an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, would expire. For this length of time, and to this date, the power of the Ottoman Empire was to continue.
And as that power, in the place of Eastern Rome, was made complete by the voluntary surrender to it of the authority of Eastern Rome; so, when the end of the time had come which was marked for its continuance, that power itself, as an independency, should be expected to cease. And on that very day the actual power of the Turkish government passed into the hands of the great Powers of Europe, and from that day to this, the very existence of the Ottoman Empire has been solely dependent on the support of these great Powers.
Before the expiration of that time, the light of this prophecy was seen; and in 1838 it was announced to the world that Aug. 11, 1840, the independence of the Turkish power would cease. For several years there had been discontent on the part of Egypt and her pasha, which were subject to the Turkish power. In 1839 actual hostilities were begun, and the forces of the pasha of Egypt were victorious, the sultan's army was destroyed, and his fleet was captured and taken into Egypt.
According to all regular order of human events, this matter should have ended in the breaking away of Egypt from the Turkish power, and the establishment of her independence of that power. But instead of this, the four Powers—Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia—entered upon the scene, interposed their united authority, and determined, themselves, to settle the controversy. And the way in which it was settled was that the pasha of Egypt must again yield himself in subjection to the defeated sultan, whose standing and authority these Powers assured, and for which they became responsible. And this arrangement, by which the authority of the Turkish Empire passed into the hands of the Powers of Europe, was completed Aug. 11, 1840, the very day to which the time marked in the prophecy continued, and the very day which, in the light of that prophecy, had, two years before, been named for this very result.
Several times since 1840 the Turkish government would have ceased to be, had it not been upheld in this way. In a little pamphlet on the Turkish-Armenian question, published in 1895 by the Armenian Society in London, the following statement is made concerning England's connection with this matter:—
We are responsible for Turkey. We saved the Turk twice at least from the doom which he richly merited. The Duke of Wellington sixty years ago lamented that the Russians had not entered Constantinople in 1825 and brought the Ottoman Empire to an end. We have much more reason to lament that it was not destroyed in 1853, and again in 1878. On both these occasions we interfered to save it. But for us there would be no sultan on the Bosporus.
On the same page is a quotation from an article by the Duke of Argyle, in the Times, in which the duke says:—
It is not too much to say that England has twice saved Turkey from complete subjection since 1853. It is largely—mainly—due to our action that she now exists at all as an independent Power. On both these occasions we dragged the Powers of Europe along with us in maintaining the Ottoman government.
We do not reproduce these statements for the purpose of attaching blame to England, or to any other Power; but solely for the purpose of making clear the fact that the Ottoman Empire, since 1840, has not existed by its own power, but wholly by the action of other Powers. In accordance with this fact, the pamphlet truly says:—
It is impossible to talk of the Ottoman Empire as if it were a nation, like the United States, or like Holland. It is an artificial . . . creation of treaties, that is kept in existence by the Powers for their own convenience.
Thus, Aug. 11, 1840, the time set by the Scripture for the existence and work of the Ottoman Empire, as such, expired; on that day the sixth trumpet ceased to sound, and the second woe ended; and of the seventh trumpet—the third woe—we read: “The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.”
Note the expression as to the coming of the third woe—it “cometh quickly.” It did not come immediately upon the expiration of the sixth, as the sixth came immediately on the expiration of the fifth: there was a little space between the expiration of the sixth trumpet and the beginning of the seventh, which space is announced, and its shortness signified, by the word “quickly.” And in this short space between the sixth and seventh trumpets, that mighty angel of Revelation 10 came in with his message, which was to sound over sea and land.
And that this is the place of that angel, is made certain by the fact that he refers to the beginning of the trumpet of the seventh angel as future. For that angel which stood “upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” Rev. 10: 5-7.
And when that mystery of God shall be finished, the kingdoms of this world “become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” This is at the coming of Christ; and the coming of Christ brings the end of the world. The first four trumpets mark the downfall of the Western Empire of Rome; the fifth and sixth mark the destruction of the Eastern Empire of Rome; and the seventh trumpet marks the downfall of all empires, all kingdoms, and all nations; for when the God of heaven sets up his kingdom, “it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms.” Dan. 2: 44.
The woe of the fifth trumpet was called by Gibbon the “shipwreck of nations;” but the woe of the seventh trumpet will be not only the shipwreck of nations, but of the great globe itself; for, in Rev. 11: 19, among the events of the seventh trumpet—the third woe—are that earthquake by which every mountain and island are moved out of their places, and that great hail, both of which come in the seventh plague, when God “ariseth to shake terribly the earth,” and the great voice is heard out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done.” Rev. 16: 17-21.
The events of the seventh trumpet will be considered next week.