Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/472

Rh also in America, and will there ripen for harvest. Frequently, during my residence in America, was I reminded of your words, in your article on the coming of the Lord, and the completion of all things, in which you say,

“The nearer history approaches to its close, the greater is the impetus attained by the wheel of time; the greater is the speed and the rapidity, the more quick the revolution of dissimilar conditions hurrying onward development; and he may greatly miscalculate who conceives that in the present condition of the world there still remains as much to do as may require the labour of centuries, and that the end may still be very distant. For, if the Lord so will, it may be done in an eventful day, and without such an one it never will be accomplished. Neither, therefore, is it opposed to the doctrine of Scripture, if we conceive of the Millennium as a very short period, as one day which concentrates in itself a fulness and a glory which otherwise would extend over a century.” The life of North America exhibits such a hurrying onward, such a concentration of the fulness of development in good and in evil. The vastness and comprehensiveness of this hemisphere, embracing the productions and peculiar beauties of every zone; the means of communication, their abundance and facility, which places them within the reach of every man; the extent of individual freedom, the unlimited scope for competition; nay, even the nervous temperament of the climate, and its stimulating effect upon a race whose inborn energy impels them onwards, and carries all other people along with them, ever accelerating their speed with the force of the avalanche, onward to the goal, to the day of judgment. For, though I have already said it, I must repeat it here, we must not expect a Utopia from America, but rather a day of judgment. And to no nation so much as to this does