The Seventh Vial Chapter XXV. The Harvest Of The Earth
Continued from Chapter XXIV. The Kings Of The East—The Three Frogs.
THE harvest implies several preliminary stages. There is, first, the sowing of the seed; there is next the season of growth; and, last of all, comes the harvest, when, by the process of the suns, the plant having been ripened, it is cut down by the reapers, and borne into the garner. All these processes go on by fixed laws, which the Creator has ordained, and which are unalterable by man. By no human power can Spring and Harvest be made to coincide, or the period he annihilated which God has ordained to intervene between the two. And especially by no human power can the relation between seed-time and harvest be changed, so as that one shall sow bad seed and reap good. The same kind of seed, and no other, which one carries to the field in spring, will he gather and lay up in the barn in autumn.
It is the harvest of the symbolic earth which is now to be reaped.
This great symbolic harvest arrives by the same stages as the natural one. There is, first, a time of sowing; there is, second, a process of ripening; there is, third, a great era of reaping, and the seed reaped is of the same sort with that which is sowed. What are we to understand by this symbolic harvest? Undoubtedly there is here foretold a grand appointed era when evil principles having ripened, and noxious systems having arrived at their widest possible development, are to be mowed down by the sharp scythe of Divine judgment.
The principles and systems here in question are those which were to flourish on the Papal earth. Their spring-time was the fifth and sixth centuries, when the despotic principles and the superstitious dogmas were planted, which, in later ages, grew up into the tyrannic governments, and idolatrous churches of Europe.
Our Saviour, in His parables, oft made reference to a great coming harvest: in that harvest the tares were to be rooted up; not before, lest the wheat, the institutions of the Truth, not yet having as yet acquired stability, should perish also in the fiery judgments which were to consume the tares. Both were to grow together until the harvest. This is the harvest which has now arrived: for now the great systems of evil, which were planted so early, and which were ripening all through the middle ages, have now reached their maturity, and are ready to be cut down.
We must here distinguish between the “harvest” and the “vintage,” for it is the “harvest of the earth” that we now behold reaped by the angel. The vine is the symbol of a Church; and the vintage, by consequence, symbolizes the appointed period of destruction, waiting the ecclesiastical institutions of the Papal earth. The “harvest” has respect to the secular institutions of the Roman world; to its governments, and to nations in their civil capacity: and it predicts an era when these institutions shall be cut down, and burned in the fire of judgment.
That era opened at 1789. Then the bloody scythe of war began to reap the harvest of the Papal earth. It has been going on ever since. In the great battle of Sadowa the last leaf of that harvest was carried on. There now remains the “vintage,” the reaping of the ecclesiastical institutions of the Papal world, and this will fall under the Seventh Vial. It will be shorter but sharper than the harvest. It will consist of one terrific dispensation of vengeance: the “great winepress of the wrath of God.”
But it is of “the harvest of the earth” that we now speak. It opened in 1789. The dark Angel of Revolution came up from the depths below and France was reaped with the guillotine. The same terrible reaper went forth to all the countries of the Papal earth in succession ——to Spain, to Italy, to Germany, to Austria—bearing the great red scythe of war, and all were reaped in their turn. Institutions and laws, crowns and ducal coronets, nations and their capitals, all fell beneath the terrible scythe of this dread reaper, and all were borne home in one bloody harvest. And even now that reaper does not seem to have fully ended his work, or laid aside his sharp sickle, for he is still seen striding across the fields of Europe, and we fear the last and most terrible sweep of his scythe is yet to be witnessed.
But how does the Revolution fulfill the symbol of the “harvest?” When was the seed sown, and by what process ripened, from which has come this great harvest? This is what we would briefly explain. There never was a revolution since the beginning of time whose causes were so deep-seated as that which broke out in 1789, and which, with occasional pauses, has been progressing ever since. The upheavings with which the whole of the Continent is from time to time agitated come from the very bottom of society. The changes we have seen are not the production of an agency that operates only on the surface: they are the growth of feelings and views with which the whole of European society is leavened. There are events which attract much attention while in progress, and raise great expectations of the good they are to accomplish; but the changes they work lie only on the surface of society, and never penetrate so deep as to affect its internal constitution. Such events always disappoint the hopes they excite; they produce no permanent change in the condition of the species, and leave no track behind them in future years. These changes have been induced on society rather than grown out of it. They have come without preparation, and therefore have gone without result. They have had their birth in the heads of statesmen, and not in the hearts of the people. They have been thrust by strength of arm into the soil, not sprung from the seed; and hence, like those trees of liberty which our Parisian neighbors were so busily engaged in planting in 1848, the same sun which expands the green leaves of others only burns up theirs outright. But the revolution now in progress in Europe is not one of these. It is the harvest of a great seed-time.
The laws which regulate these moral harvests are as fixed and definite as those which regulate the harvests of the earth. A certain time must intervene between the sowing and the reaping in the one case, as necessarily as in the other. What is literature in one generation is opinion in the next, and law and fact in that which succeeds.
Through these several stages has the great harvest passed which Europe is now reaping. It was literature in the days of Voltaire and Rousseau; it became opinion in France in the end of last century, where many favorable circumstances conspired to ripen it somewhat earlier than in the rest of Europe; but now, and for the past quarter of a century, it has been opinion both east and west of the Rhine, both south and north of the Alps; and what was first literature, and, as such, was expressed in biting sarcasms and ingenious sophisms on the elegant pages of Rousseau, and next opinion, finding vent in vigorous articles in the daily papers, or in fiercely-spouted orations at the evening clubs, has now, with marvelous and astounding suddenness, passed into such tangible and palpable facts as barricades, blouses, pikes, and caps of liberty.
There have been few revolutions in history whose springs have been so deep-seated; and hence it is that it is daily widening its sphere, and growing intenser in its action. Its plowshare is reaching the very foundations of society. It appears destined to form one of the grand epochs of time, and to work a change—we feel satisfied, ultimately, of a beneficial kind —on the condition of the species, which will entitle it to take rank with the mightiest revolutions of past ages, some of which it may even surpass in the magnitude of its issues.
History does not furnish an example of such another revolution—a revolution which has advanced gradually, yet irresistibly, from its first principles—which has molded opinion for itself—which has never advanced a stage till it had first prepared its ground—which has required many centuries for its growth, and, now that it is fully developed, has changed the aspect of the world; for its effects cannot be confined to Europe, but must extend to the farthest verge of civilization.
We are accustomed to speak of three French revolutions; but, in truth, the great movement in that country, though it has had three noted manifestations, is but one, and is truly European in its character. This movement was stopped for a while by the great war which followed its first outbreak; but no sooner was that war at an end, than the movement began again to progress. It is bearing the world onward to a new and untried era. Its course is entirely in the hands of God; and lies as far beyond man’s control as does that grand movement of the sun and planets which is every hour advancing our system upon some unknown point in space.
It is beyond question the great agent by which the fourth and last monarchy of Daniel is to be broken in pieces. And we see it executing its mission with irresistible and uncontrollable force, abrogating the laws, abolishing the very forms and symbols of authority, and grinding to powder the framework of the iron kingdom of Rome; prostrating thrones; extinguishing dynasties; crushing altars and priesthoods; driving into exile princes and nobles; pouring contempt upon the policy of statesmen and the strength of armies; rocking the chair of St. Peter itself, and filling its occupant with inconceivable grief, perplexity, and dismay; and evoking against the seven hills, whose thunders were wont to shake the world, the mighty winds of popular rage, which threaten every moment to sweep in their fury, from the face of the earth, that awful throne which has so long enslaved and desolated it.
Continued in Chapter XXVI-1. The Seventh Vial Poured Into The Air
All chapters of The Seventh Vial – By J.A. Wylie
