The End of the World.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4020, 16 November 1881, Page 3

The End of the World.

We have often noticed that the narrator of a fabulous adventure (supposed to have occurred to himself) tells it so often in the course of a few years, that he really ages himself into the belief that such a circumstance had actually taken place. It appears to us that it must be of a somewhat similar nature for a person to be so Vinfatuated as to settle definitely when the ; globe we inhabit shall be annihilated. No doubt many so called prophets, like Mother Shipton, the.late Dr Gumming, etc., have set their minds fixedly upon this subject (a pleasing one) until it has absorbed every atom of their time and application. We were told a few months ago that the world's destruction was to be compassed immediately, and we had some thought of keeping Saloons in readiness for our special to make a good report of the whole affair, but then the recollection that we might be disappointed deterred us from such a vast enterprise. We are led to make these remarks by the fact that, according to an American prophet, the world is to be destroyed to day. He has, no doubt, good reason for his statement, but however pleasing it may be to hiE>, and however much he laughs at the credulity that receives his prophetic utterances as facts, there is one thing certain, that among the untutored, and ignorant multitude, there may be found many who will feel uneasiness. To those who are not under the ban of superstition, and who are not : /wholly ignorant of astronomy, these prophetic vagaries have long been considered as emanating from a disordered imagination. A person said to us the day, "Oh yes. I know-all about the end of the world. It will take 15 days to destroy it. The first two days tber'll be a flood that will reach the top of the mountains." We ventured to ask the, knowing one, where the water i would' come from ? " Out of the sea of course," said he. On our receiving with increased doubt this last assertion, he further remarked, for our edification, " that the world would be reduced into a substance of the same properties as air;" We told him that to our thinking such a change was altogether unlikely, because of the many matters in the earth which were utterly unconver. tible into gas, (for such our atmosphere is). "Ah! Well you'll see," said he, "if I am not right." I ventured to remark thatif the world subsided into gas, that we should probably do ditto, when the probabilities would be that our perceptive organs would neither be available nor . "needed.v "I never thought of that, 1' he returned. And so it is with these people who by putting forward their prophecies as to the end of the world insult common tense and reason. They become infatuated with the idea that earth must pass away at a date they have fixed in their own minds, without' having rhyme or reason for their notions, and it is a wonder they do not proceed to carry out their idea by atomising the world, when they find her pursuing the even tenor of her way, wholly heedless and unmindful of the sentence passed on her by them in their absurd self-sufficiency, and laughable conceit. _-L^