“THE KING OF KINGS.”
The following is a leading article, under the above caption, taken from a British weekly journal of a recent date, named The Leader. It speaks, no doubt, truthfully in regard to the present condition of Europe, the platform of the dominions symbolised by the Ten-horned and Two-horned Beasts of the Apocalypse. “As to the greatest powers now triumphing,” says the writer, “who of us can pronounce the future?” Who of them, indeed! Not one. No mere politician can do more than guess. All he can do is to tell us what has been, and what exists; but as to “what shall be hereafter,” he has no data from which to reason out the truth. The problem is too difficult for the thinking of the flesh, unaided by light of revelation. Hence The Leader, who does not seem to suspect that it could find its solution there, gives it up, and in effect confesses, that the wisdom of the world can divine no plausible conjecture of the future of “the powers that be.” But let us hear what he has to say:
“If there is any one thing certain in the future of Europe, it is Revolution. As to the greatest powers now triumphing, who of us can pronounce their future? What insurance office would grant a policy on the life of the Emperor of Russia? What stock-broker of average intelligence and prudence, would give an English price for stock depending on the permanency of the House of Hapsburg? Who would even lay a bet on the position, or even the lodging-place of Louis Napoleon next year? None but a person who would go to a betting office. But that there will be some sweeping change; that these things which are maintained with so much effort, and which rest upon the flesh and bones of great peoples, who are incessantly betraying the torture they endure, must be displaced; that the region of despotism, in short, is only the region of a postponed revolution, such is the one thing certain.
“The outbreak in Milan was not a riot: it was only the irrepressible voice of the Revolution which has lived in Italy for so many years, which the Austrians know to exist among them, but whose whole extent they cannot compass. Like a great phantom, at times they see it in parts, but they cannot discover it. The revolution, indeed, is the only established power in Italy; for it is no construction of ours, but a plain historical fact, that in Absolutist Italy, not one of the Governments has been able to re-establish itself since 1848. They are only defending their possessions by an immense military force; in Rome, by the aid of foreign allies, whose troops remain in position. We have the Pope’s formal declaration to the Austrian minister, so long ago as 1849, —and he would not alter a letter now, —that if the foreign troops were to abandon his capital, he would be at the mercy of the fury of his own people. And we have the vain proclamations of Radetzky and his subordinates, heaping threat upon threat, as a means of frightening the revolution that they cannot extirpate. They cannot command the actions of the Italian people: the Secret Government of Italy can so far command it, that even after a popular movement has been prepared, it can be kept back, with the one exception of the rash men in Milan.
“There is the same uncertainty in other countries. Neither Turkey nor Russia, nor Austria, can dictate to the little province of Montenegro. Turkey sends an army against it, and dares not let that army conquer. Austria can only forbid Turkey, and dares not seize it herself. Russia offers to take it for Turkey, or for the Montenegrins themselves, but dares not grasp it on her own account. In Hungary, the people are all on the quivive, looking out for movements in Italy, and eager for news that Louis Napoleon has ceased to exist. And in Paris, as we learn by our own correspondent, they are already discussing the next revolution, which is said to be close at hand.
“We do not know whether the immense armies of the despots have not somewhat broken from command. They are becoming too big to be fed according to their appetites; wherefore they are growing dissatisfied; for your strong man with a hearty appetite likes to be full, and if he is not full, he is angry. There is many an officer in the armies of Austria and France, who thinks that he has been passed over; and, in retaliation, he is inclined to Passover. Independently of the possibility that Hungarians could not be calculated upon to coerce Italy as of old, and vice versa, there are ambitions in the heart of those armies, that may turn them against their own Governments. These are things not to be calculated beforehand; but unquestionably the people do not everywhere regard the armies as their inveterate enemies. They remember the Garde Francaise, who would not fire upon their countrymen. The latest rebellions of France, of Italy, in short, of Europe, have sickened the people with the ‘rose water’ style of action; and we might hazard a supposition, that in the next popular effort, the aim will be, not so much to fall indiscriminately upon adverse forces—not so much for the populace to waste its own blood upon a Garde Francaise that may be arrayed against it, but not move against it, —as to call the ringleaders to account. That is the plan which the Absolutists have followed themselves, as well as the indiscriminate mode of attack; for they use both modes. So eager have they been for ringleaders, that they have picked out the mildest type for the harshest punishments—a Poerio, a Simoncelli, a Blum, or a Tazzoli. But the next time that the people have power in their hands, they will remember the perjurers who forget the clemency that they abjectly receive, such as the Bourbons, the Bonapartes, and the Hapsburghers. It is not for us to presume the actions of the people when next they rise in power; but that they will rise once again, and at a year not very far removed, we are certain. Under the protection of immense armies, the Absolutist Kings enjoy the present day; but they are by their own actions doomed, and they will have their hour. Their victims do but await the rising of the power which shall be greater than the oppressors. The only potentate in certain possession of the future is Revolution; that is the King of Kings.”
Thus, the future of Europe is all hypothesis! Yet The Leader thinks that revolution is a certainty, if in that future certainty hath any place. The student of the prophets knows that the future of Europe is more certain than its present; for there is much reported concerning this of a doubtful character; but of the invisible future there is certainty, and no mistake. Revolution is as certain as that the sun shines on a cloudless day. Nothing can stave it off. “The absolutist kings are by their own actions doomed, and they will have their hour.” The Leader is quite prophetic. They are doomed, and their “hour” is fast approaching: and Revolution is the King of Kings by whom they shall be judged.
But revolution made by whom? Who are the great actors in it that shall bring them to account? I answer, not the people. The “Sovereign People” is not the King “to execute upon them the judgment written.” No effort devised against them by King People can finally prosper. Reaction will repress all their endeavours, and only rivet their chains the faster. Democratic turbulence will only temporarily embarrass the kings; but at the same time force them into a position already marked out for them of God, and necessary to the full manifestation of his purpose. This is the usefulness of popular outbreaks—they are the excitants of a new course of policy, which the governments would never have adopted but for the force of circumstances they did not create, and could not control. Thus the present of Europe is all referable to the events of the 24th February, 1848. It attitudinised the powers towards one another, as we now behold them. That crisis was the ring-staple from which the chain of subsequent manifestations is suspended. It has brought out the French empire; another similar outbreak might convert that dominion into a dissolving view; and mould Europe and Turkey into the ferro-aluminous feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s image; but the emancipation of the nations from the kings, who, as Satan’s cabinet, rule them with an iron rod, it could never effect. The people! Sin incarnate. A revolution made by this is The Leader’s “king of kings!” The people is sin; and the oppressors are sin. Sin, armed to the teeth, destroying sinners, is the present of Europe and Asia. But earth is not to be always cursed by such a present. The invisible future—the “Hades” of the word—is pregnant with a revolution to be made by “the man at Jehovah’s right hand, whom he hath made strong for himself.” He being King of kings immortal, will make a triumphant revolution, in which his companions in arms and glory shall “bind sin’s kings with chains, and its nobles with fetters of iron.” “He doth judge and make war in righteousness,” and “overcome them” gloriously. This is the revolution to which they must succumb; this is the convulsion that will deliver Europe from its corruptors and destroyers, and bless all its nations in Abraham and his seed. O that the time were come!
EDITOR.
