PREDICTIONS CONCERNING AMERICA 27 Dr. Johnson says of it: the rise and progress of America. "When New England shall trouble New Spain, Nor count them their lords, but their fellows in trade." In 1773 the Bishop of St. Asaph (Wales), before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, said: "The colonies of North America have not only taken root and acquired strength, but seem hastening, with an accelerated progress, to such a powerful state as may introduce a new and important change in human affairs."-Id. The transfer of religion to this land, and its revival here, was also expected. George Herbert, in a poem entitled "The Church Militant," published in 1633, said: "Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, -Id. Of these prophecies, some are now wholly fulfilled, and the remainder far on the road to fulfilment. This infant of yesterday stands forth to-day a giant, vigorous, active, and courageous, and accepts with dignity its manifest destiny at the head of powers and civilizations. A QUESTION OF PROPHECY This gov A question of thrilling interest now arises. ernment has received recognition at the hands of men sufficient to satisfy any ambition. In Does the God of heaven also recognize it, and has he spoken concerning it? other words, does the prophetic pen, which has so fully delineated the rise and progress of all the other great nations of the earth, pass this one by unnoticed? What are the probabilities in this matter? As the student of prophecy, in common with all mankind, looks with wonder upon the rise and unparalleled progress of this nation, he can Dr. S. F. Smith, Author of the Words of the National Anthem And this not repress the conviction that the hand of Providence has been at work in this quiet but mighty revolution. conviction he shares in common with others. Governor Pownal, from whom a quotation has already been presented, speaking of the establishment of this country as a free and sovereign power, calls it "A revolution that has stronger marks of divine interposition, superseding the ordinary course of human affairs, than any other event which this world has experienced." De Tocqueville, a French writer, speaking of our separation from England, says: "It might seem their folly, but was really their fate; or, TOKENS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE 29 rather, the providence of God, who has doubtless a work for them to do in which the massive materiality of the English character would have been too ponderous a dead weight upon their progress." Geo. Alfred Townsend, speaking of the misfortunes that have attended the other governments on this continent ("New World and Old," p. 635), says: "The history of the United States was separated by a beneficent Providence far from the wild and cruel history of the rest of the continent." Again he says: "This hemisphere was laid away for no one race.” Rev. J. M. Foster, in a sermon before the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, Nov. 30, 1882, bore the following explicit testimony to the fact that the hand of Providence had been remarkably displayed in the establishment of this government: "Let us look at the history of our own nation. The Mediator long ages ago prepared this land as the home of civil and religious liberty. He made it a land flowing with milk and honey. He stored our mountains with coal, and iron, and copper, and silver, and gold. He prepared our fountains of oil, planted our forests, leveled our plains, enriched our valleys, and beautified them with lakes and rivers. He guided the 'Mayflower' over the sea, so that the Pilgrim fathers landed safely on Plymouth Rock. He directed the course of our civilization, so that we have become a great nation." WHE CHAPTER II HEN, four centuries ago, the caravels of Columbus reached the waters of the western hemisphere, there was not the faintest prospect that with the lapse of only four hundred years there would exist upon this virgin continent one of the greatest, most enlightened, and most powerful nations that had ever risen since time began. when the thirteen colonies had achieved their independence, there was nothing to foreshadow the great republic stretching from ocean to ocean, and from Canada to the Caribbean, which is now designated by the name, the United States. Even Every person whose reading is ordinarily extensive has something of an idea of what the United States is to-day geographically, industrially, and politically; he likewise has an idea, so far as words can convey it to his mind, of what this country was at the commencement of its history. The only object, then, in presenting statistics and testimony on this point, is to show that our rapid growth has struck mankind with the wonder of a constant miracle. Said Emile de Girardin, in La Liberte (1868): "The population of America, not thinned by any conscription, multiplies with prodigious rapidity, and the day may before long be seen, when they will number sixty or eighty millions of souls. This parvenu [one recently risen to notice] is aware “ UNPARALLELED PROGRESS " 31 of his importance and destiny. Hear him proudly exclaim, 'America for Americans!" “In view of his unparalleled progress and combination, what are the little toys with which we vex ourselves in Europe? What is this needle gun we are anxious to get from Prussia, that we may beat her next year with it? Had we not better take from America the principle of liberty she embodies, out of which have come her citizen pride, her gigantic industry, and her formidable loyalty to the destinies of her republican land ?" The Dublin (Ireland) Nation, as long ago as the year 1850, said: "In the East there is arising a colossal centaur called the Russian empire. With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews of a huge barbaric body. There one man's brain moves 70,000,000 [now 136,000,000.- World Almanac]. There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and conquest in the West. There but two ranks are distinguishable — serfs and soldiers. There the map of the future includes Constantinople and Vienna as outposts of St. Petersburg. "In the West, an opposing and still more wonderful American empire is emerging. We islanders have no conception of the extraordinary events which amid the silence of the earth are daily adding to the power and pride of this gigantic nation. Within three years, territories more extensive than these three kingdoms [Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland], France, and Italy put together, have been quietly, and in almost 'matter-ofcourse' fashion, annexed to the Union. "Within seventy years, seventeen new sovereignties, the smallest of them larger than Great Britain, have peaceably united themselves to the Federation. No standing army was raised, no national debt was sunk, no great exertion was made, but there they are. And the last mail brings news of three more great States about to be joined to the thirty, Minnesota in the northwest, Deseret in the southwest, and California on the shores of the Pacific. These three States will cover an area equal to one-half of the European continent." Mitchell, in his School Geography (fourth revised edition), p. 101, speaking of the United States, says:— |