GONE WRONG.

Patea Mail, 25 November 1881, Page 2

GONE WRONG.

The end of the world is now some days over-due, yet no last trump has blown, and there is no final kick-up. The arrangement must have been defective. Perhaps the Clerk of the Weather pulled the wrong string, and has been raining us water when he should have rained fire from heaven. The celestial mechanism appears to be not so easily controlled from downstairs as some prophets thought. The stars still move in their courses ; the earth and sea and sky keep there places ; and mankind goes on working and drinking and sleeping and il filing.” Yet we do these things at our peril, for we are all flying in the face of prophesied destruction. As Artcmus Ward used to say, “ Don’t ever prophesy, unless you know.” But some prophets know too much. Dr Gumming was occupied some twenty years in drying up the Euphrates, and opening the Seventh Seal, and mysteries of that sort. He succeeded so well in his interpretations of prophecy that he was able to fix the end of all things lor a particular year. That year passed, and he unfixed the day of destruction, but got it settled all right for a later date. Just before that date, and when some serious people were considering what knick-knacks they should pack up for the last journey, Dr Gumming quietly took a house on lease for 21 years, making elaborate covenants to bind the landlord and protect himself in the future years. Somebody found this out, and the doctor’s “ mana ” was no more.

So it is with these latter-day prophets. They are a queer lot. They are always discovering something wrong in the machinery of the Universe, yet somehow the machinery goes on working after they say it shouldn’t. Some people make coffins and sleep in them, to get used to the sensation. Others select their graves, and draw out long instructions about the funeral details. A few have been known to leave, instructions for money and food to be placed in the funeral vault, so that they might be able to pay Charon’s toll at the dark ferry, and have something to eat on the way. Morbid temperaments are prone to eccentricities. Abnormal prying into Nature’s secrets is apt, in like manner, to disturb the mental balance, leading either to suicide (as in the case of Hugh Miller and others), or to prophetic foretellings of things which don’t come to pass. Even practical men and women have been known to quiver and shiver on reading Mother Shipton’s prophesies. The age of ghosts and necromancy is not yet ended, in spite of the noble teachings of pure science. Children still shudder at shadows in the dark. The world is full of mysteries, no doubt; but the intelligent mind should feel no silly fright, but rather reverent awe, at the mysteries of the infinite. It is better to mind your business, and pay your bills, than; to go on fooling- about the end . of the world. -