CHAPTER 45
“Anatolia”
The publication of the Herald, his work in connection with the meeting in New York, and his tours through the country proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, did not exhaust Dr. Thomas’ energies; he still found time for other things. In the Herald for July, 1854, he announced a new publication—“Anatolia, or, Russia Triumphant and Europe chained.” It was a book of a little over a hundred pages. In the first announcement it was described as follows:
“This is a book that ought to be in the hands of every one desirous of knowing to what predetermined consummation current events in the old world are drifting. It is a work for the statesman, the politician, and the Christian; for the former because by the light it irradiates upon the situation of affairs it will enable them to foresee in what the alliances they might be disposed to contract with foreign powers might issue; and when writing and speaking upon the tendency of things, to do so as men who understand whereof they affirm. It is a work also pre-eminently for the Christian, inasmuch as it proves to him incontestably that his redemption is at hand.”
The reason for the title was: “Anatolia, from Anatole` signifying Day-Spring, or the East; because the great question whose solution it demonstrates pertains to the eventide dawn of the ‘great Day of God Almighty.’ ‘At eventide it shall be light’.”
The first announcement described it as “an original and systematic interpretation of the book of Daniel.” A later announcement gives the headings of its thirty-five sections; they are word for word the same as those of “A Brief Exposition of the Prophecy of Daniel” bound up with the third volume of Eureka, referred to later in this biography, though the last section, headed “Calendar of the Seven Times of Babylon and Judah,” is omitted from the later issue. The chart referred to set out in tabular form the events and anticipated events from Josiah’s Passover to the end of the Millennium. It is well that the table was discontinued as it was based on imperfect data.
Stereotype plates of the American edition were sent to England so that the book might be on sale there, and the issue might “open a door there for the proclamation of the gospel of Israel’s Kingdom, such as that nation has not known since the Romans abandoned Britain to its own defence.”
The hope in the last paragraph was not realised. Anatolia was published in July, 1854; the year in which the Crimean War commenced. The Doctor’s agent in Britain wrote a letter, published in the September issue of the Herald, in which he said, “It requires no ordinary perseverance to encounter the numerous discouragements projected in the way of disseminating a pamphlet bearing the ominous title of ‘Russia Triumphant!! and Europe Chained!!’ being a proclamation inimical to the imperious ambition of Englishmen, and at variance, at present, with popular opinion.” Patriotic Britons were not likely to be favourably attracted to a publication that predicted the triumph of the enemy.
It was not very different in the States, for the Doctor, writing of his tour through the South-west, records a conversation with a bookseller in one of the towns he visited. Dr. Thomas says he endeavoured to do a little amateur canvassing on behalf of Anatolia. Seeing a store displaying a placard of one of Dr. Cumming’s * books, he thought the proprietor might be persuaded to take a number of copies of Anatolia, as there were evidently students of prophecy in the place. It was a hopeless endeavour. The bookseller said the people of the town were not a reading public! a strange statement as he was advertising Dr. Cumming’s book and others. His real reason was indicated later. The people of the town, he said, did not anticipate such an ending to the War as Russia Triumphant; “England and France were too powerful for Russia, for whom Turkey single-handed was enough.” This, records the Doctor, ended his amateur agency for Anatolia in that area.
It is probable that Anatolia, in its new guise as an Exposition of Daniel, has received much more attention than it did in the days when it was known by its first title. The author was too sanguine, especially in regard to times, and many may question some of his exposition of certain passages, yet it is an interesting attempt to show how the predictions of the book of Daniel have found fulfilment in the history of mankind.
* Dr. Cummings was a well known writer on prophecy at that time.
