Whatever the character of the respective governments in Christendom may be, the constituent elements which mark the masses to be acted upon, even though separated off into nationalities, are the same.
Indeed, these apparent diversities, by geographical boundaries of mountains and rivers, which divide one kingdom from another, have more to do, in distinguishing a throne, or form of government from its neighbor, than as affecting the generic character of their populations.
The diverse languages of Europe do much more in this respect to break up the masses, and so prevent a general confusion, by one great moving crowd swayed this side or that, as powerful agencies may act on human passions, or enterprise. In truth, these great continental distinctions are now viewed as little more than deeper-cuttings of our home-method of dividing a kingdom into counties-or of the varying dialects, which meet the ordinary traveler in an extended provincial tour. Passing by these considerations, which mark differences of an external order-what are the constituent and common elements of the people who are to be governed?
These cannot be more in number than each man naturally possesses as his birthright, and they are soon told. He may be viewed (in these relations)-physically, mentally, and morally, and it is in this way that each government treats its subjects practically. Physically, man becomes the care of the State from his birth, and is thus registered; his health is in a great degree its concern too, and therefore sanitary measures are instituted; poverty is also considered and provided for, hence its poor-law unions.
The paternal kindness of the State, in those needing this care, raises no opposition on the part of those receiving it; but the danger and difficulty begin, when these governments take up their subjects, as mental and moral beings, to be instructed and controlled.
The schoolmaster, and an education which was first purely elementary, and met by national schools, presented no fear to the State-reading and writing were good, and useful for every-day life; but can any government say to development " hitherto but no further"? A population, made conscious of a power put into its hands, different to the wealth, which is seen all around (and only seen to' be coveted), asserts its own rights, by calling in question the rights of others. What is now to be done? The State will patronize the Church and its clergy by the enforcement of duties and obligations, and seek to counteract this one sided liberation of mind and will. Religion and conscience are added, as checks to what has become rank and luxuriant.
Moral means are also in abundance, and man is a moral being, and can be thus acted on-but the discontent is wide-spread, and ingenuity is prolific in the assertion that all outside is not what it should be for the general good of society. What is to be done with a new born power, which the State is impotent to guide, and unable from the nature of its constitution to satisfy? If the disaffection cannot be suppressed, because of free institutions and liberty, it will find an opportunity from this state of things, to help itself forward, and by means of agitation and public meetings, make its threatening voice to be heard by the rulers in a popular outcry.
The pressure from without is felt and yielded to-the franchise is extended, and a further grant of power is thus put into the lands of the people, " the iron mixes itself with the miry clay," before the downfall of the image.
When a throne or government forbids such assemblages for such objects, and enforces its authority by the sword, the discontent changes its character to a growl, and in its enmity waits the hour for a bite. Barricades, and a revolution at length break out, like a volcano from its hidden depths, and these are the reliefs, and the resources, alas! But is bloodshed a remedy? Let history answer. Mankind goes on repeating itself in these forms, only in new latitudes and longitudes, and what is there magnanimous, or great in this? Modern history is but a new volume of an old and disgraceful series. Egypt with its Pharaohs-Babylon and its Nebuchadnezzars, have given place to the Medes and Persians, and they in their turn to the Greeks and Romans. What are these ten kingdoms of modern Europe compared with the empires and dynasties of ancient times? A man who thinks he would be content with a freehold plot of ground, and another who counts up his acreage by hundreds and thousands, cannot understand what the Imperial monarch feels as he looks around the vast enclosures by which his kingdom is hedged in, and sighs for a base of operations large enough for the unlimited conquests of neighboring states. An Alexander may regret there is not another world to conquer-a Caesar may find enough to do in this-and a Napoleon may covet a reconstruction of the Roman earth. Every one upon his own line of things, great or small, mistrusts his fellow, and is mistrusted. Restrictions by diplomatic arrangement must be put around the great potentates, and " a holy alliance" will be mutually formed and signed. When this has been broken through, and war;; has exhausted the resources of the combatants by blood and by wealth, " a balance of power" will be accepted, as a common term of honorable compromise. By such means an Autocrat, an Emperor, or a President, may agree upon certain conditions of expediency; but essentially each means to be what he was. More recent corn-pacts have made us acquainted with the principle of " non-intervention" (if such it may be called), as an accepted proposition by the allied powers. But what is this in result, if it be not leaving might to overcome right-a state of things which every man of common sense shrinks from, and repudiates emphatically the nearer it fastens on his home circle and family interests.
A mere glance such as this, at governments, peoples, and tongues, must show the gravity of an inquiry whether the prophetic image of gold, as interpreted by Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, the head of Gentilism, remains true, and is fulfilling the course of predicted declension? Has the boasted progress from Babylon to Rome, and from Rome to these ten kingdoms, reversed the doom and fall of the image-or, are men bold enough to change the gradation of the symbolic metals, and affirm that the progress has been from iron to brass, and from brass to silver, and from silver to gold?
What a relief to any student of Scripture, and much more to the man of God throughly furnished there into open that book, and step into the vast arena of human enterprise, and Satan's seat, boldly saying " Let God be true, but every man a liar." There are few lessons so solemn to such an one, as the discovery that God allows I evil to grow, and come to its maturity, before He deals with men in the midst of it, and then puts all aside by judgment. If we confirm this statement by Scripture, we may call to mind the early record in Gen. 15, " for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full;" and again, the words of Jesus, " in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and bind them;" and further, of the time when " iniquity shall abound." The closing scenes of this dispensation, as described in the Revelation, will confirm the fact of the growth of evil to its climax, by the judgment which is poured out on the seat of the beast, and the binding of Satan.
There is, however, another way of learning according to truth, besides that which makes all plain by judgment, at the close, when every eye must see and own " there is a God by whom actions are weighed." This same God who judges in crisis, teaches those who are simple, in the beginning-and none else can tell the mercy of being saved the disappointment of a longer or a shorter life, spent in the schools of science, falsely so called, where our lessons have been accepted according to the course of the world.
First, we may learn by the man who fell, what man was at his best,-or we may learn by Cain, what man is at his worst-or we may learn an end of perfection, as we look at Job; and after these examples, who can find a ground of confidence, or a door of escape? But further, God passes outside the mass of mankind, and calls out a people and judges all other nations, by that sample nation God judges a king, when at his brightest, for He magnified Solomon exceedingly-and then put him to the proof. If we step outside the nation and its king into Gentilism, and see power and majesty transferred in righteous judgment from Jerusalem to Babylon, and from Solomon to Nebuchadnezzar, we shall find this new head, forfeits as speedily as His predecessors, his place and dominion, " for he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws."
There is nothing left to be proved. "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting," is the handwriting on the wall, and the threatened consequences follow. History gets its place, after God has tried the creature upon the original ground of responsibility, where He placed it in sovereign goodness. And what is history but a filling up of the dark interval of ripening iniquity by successive generations, till men, carried away by delusions, " believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Do any wish to learn the doom of Gentile greatness, in its last forms of crisis, let them listen—" and they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast, who is able to make war with him?" The practical value of these lessons, when viewed in the light of God's word, is immense, to the soul which seizes them and holds them fast. The contradictions between the wisdom of age, with-its flattering prospects, and -the gathering clouds of divine vengeance upon the ripening grapes of the vine of the earth, are of giant growth But let no soul hesitate a moment; "at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it: because it will surely come." Neither the world, nor men in it, would be what they are if the light of divine truth were accepted; on the contrary, "the prince of the power of the air" would be detected and exposed; and the vaunted spirit of this age would be discovered in its character, and shunned.
Who is bold enough in these last days to challenge the course of this present world? Who dares take a place outside the ranks, with a sling and a stone, to defy the uncircumcised Philistine, this antitypical Goliath?
Let not such an one be discouraged, even though Abner, the captain of the panic-stricken host, knows not the youth, and though the king may command him to inquire whose son the stripling is? Then, the armies of the living God were defied—but now, the man of sin, son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, is on the scene. Much that perplexes, and terrifies the heart, on its first discovery of the wide departure of man, and Israel, the Gentiles, and the professing Church, from God and His word—is explained, as we learn that Satan is, the grand actor, in the midst of mankind, and the corrupter of whatever God gives. Indeed, as the grace of God is to the sinner—so is light to the great enemy of souls—and if that light be turned into darkness, how great is that darkness, for the devil's use. What else can he do so well, as corrupt and change the truth of
God into a lie-so that the Lord, in separating Himself from the lie, must, judge His people. What is the history of Judaism but this-and why the coming judgment on Christendom, but for the same reason?
The working of the enemy with man is awful-take, as examples, Judas, and Satan entering into him-or the closing up of the age in the coming Anti-Christ, to whom " the dragon gives his power, and his seat, and great authority. What a place does man occupy, in his three score-years and ten so close-to-the devil and his wiles and stratagems and, on the other hand, so close to God, by the testimony of the gospel of salvation, through His Son.
Oh! the deliverance to stand outside the whole scene at, the cross with Jesus, and to take the place of rejection with the cast out Lord and King. What an elevation to be one with Him, as an heir of God, and joint heir through Christ, and to look on to the dignity that awaits us in the coming day of His glory, for which we are now sealed by the Holy Ghost I Occupied as men are by power, riches, and glory, skilled as Satan is, in their bestowment and use—they and the devil alike know, that the Son of Man refused them at his hands, and said, " Get thee hence." Full well does Satan realize the fact, that the Lord Jesus is the rightful possessor of them all, by the sovereign decree of the Father—and that the angels of God worship Him as the rightful heir, before the day comes, when every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess it on earth. " The dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan," knows too that his time is very short; and that the bottomless pit awaits him, when the morning without a cloud dawns, which ushers in the second Man, the Lord or glory, with ten thousand times ten thousand round about Him. How graciously has God turned all round, and will yet do so, to His praise and glory, and for the blessing of His own people, who by faith in Christ Jesus have come out to Him, and thus set to their seal that God is true. "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven," introduces us to a power, ' that will establish that kingdom which cannot be moved.
It is a sad thought, in the midst of the world's swellings and strivings, that man is doing nothing for himself in his relation to God—and therefore only earning a heavier title to judgment, by scattering abroad, and bringing on the delusions of the wicked one, and thus hath ring fast for the burning. "For Tophet is ordained of o yea for the king it is prepared—he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of _the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, Both kindle it."
The power that shakes, and the power that binds and destroys, is the power that will build up and bless.
" And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." B.
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.