Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-03-10
THE END OF THE WORLD.

l DAY was at ITOpntts nave lOAStOiN
| the awful time when "the heavens shall nell
with fervent heat" and the green and smil-
i1g world become engulphed in seething
fame. Often and often as the same grave
comedy of errors has been performed, even
our own generation has witnessed multi
tndes listening to the vagaries ol
Miller, and throngs filling immense
tabernacles, have listened, and shuddered
with fear as they listened to narrowing de-
scriptions of the great and terrible day that
was at hand, and have awaited with the
utmost confidence "the coming OF the end
The supposed prediction of Old Mother
Shipton, an ancient British prophecies, OBJ
tanned degree of attention that few of our
readers are aware OF. In 1881, year in
which the first two and the last two numerals
that named it made nine, which is three
times three, a magic number-in that year
this world and all it contains was to be cut
off and time be no more. At the end of that
year almost innumerable country papers,
very many of which we ourselves have seen,
comment, often almost angrily, on the failure
of Old Mother Shipton; the number of those
notices showed how familiar large masses of
people were with her alleged prediction, and
what an impression it had made upon their
minds. That impression is not even now
eradicated; the question is asked, whether
the prophecy did not mean "about the time
of 1891" and therefore the fulflment still
be near Just at this juncture comes
another prediction that revives all the old
ideas about the world being burned up at no
distant day. This time it is neither an old
witch nor long-haired fanatic that gives
warning of the approach of the dread
catastrophe. The cry of warning comes from
the ranks of science, and is backed up with
all the array of erudition and all the mystic
influence of astronomic lore. The telescope
is the revealer, "the stars in their courses"
have divulged the solemn secret. Mr.. Proc
tor, better known by his writings than any
other living professor of astronomy, assures
the world that a comet, whose terrific ap-
pearance alarmed every nation of the world,
civilized and barbaric, in 1868, and that has
appeared at several intervals since that date,
has all along been drawing nearer and nearer
to the sun, as shown by the shortening inter-
walls at which it appears, and that in fifteen
years it will have come so far within the
suns attrac ion that its centrifugal motion
will be neutralized, and it will fall into the
sun with all the immense train of meteoric
objects that are circulating in its wake. The
shock OF the collision will engender an i'm
mense amount of heat, and comet and me-
teorites will be food for a confagration
whose vastness defes all mortal calculation
to estimate. 1t is but few years ago that
our amazed astronomers gazed in awe at one
of the stars of the well-known con-
stellasion, Corona Borealis. Suddenly
that star, mere dot of the ninth
assumed great increase
OF size and brilliancy-it was sun in phe-
nomenal conaagration. That conhagration,
there was no doubt, was the result of some
body outside of itself striking upon it, as the
coming comet will strike upon our sun. To
the earth, az one of the planets circulating
round the central luminary, this collision
will be extinction by fire. The atmosphere
will grow warmer and warmer until the heat
CLOVIS with force that will wither all vege-
tation, dry up the streams and rivers, and
draw up to the skies the vast seas themselves,
which will ascend in vast columns of steam.
The very ice of the poles will become flowing
waters, and the waters will dissipate and van
ish amid the horrors they are pewerless to
mitigate or subdue. The earth will be left a
vast mass OF bare and vitrifed rocks, amid
whose awful grandeur everlasting silence
will have It's dwelling, for long before the
completion of the doom is reached all animal
life will have persisted, the maid and the
wife, the child and the man, the fool and the
hero, will alike have been engulphed in the
nnutterable burning. This announcement
mas attracted universal attention. In Eng
and the bishop of Manchester, in thrilling
sermon, pointed out how all the fearful phe-
nomena it proclains agrees with the awful
of holy writ. All the treasures OF
he earth, all its grandeur and greatness, all
It's beauty and its wisdom will be as though
hey had never been. That commentators
lpon scripture, ancient well as modern,
nave traced a converging of the figures of
prophecy to the declining portion OF the
present century is well known, and it was on
UGH authority that the Irvingites in Eng
and and Scotland, and later the followers OF |
he Rev. John Cumming and our own Mil
critics founded their predictions, which to |
his day are not abandoned. While this is |
he case in the christian world, by the vast
millions of the Mohammedans similar ca
is looked for, and at this very time
he Arabs are moving toward the accom-
olishment OF a prophecy registered by Mo-
BANNED, who said that the world should not
nave an end till one of his own family
whose fathers should be the same as
lis own and his fathers own abdul
ah). 1t has long been the belief of
he Moslems that descendant OF the
prophet of the tribe of the Koreish will
-ule over the Arabs about the beginning of
he fourteenth century of the hegira, and at
hat time the mahdi will reveal himself at
Mecca and the era of the caliphate be brought
% an end. The beginning of the fourteenth |
century is near at hand; the caliph of Mecca,
Abdul Mutallib, has raised the standard of
rebellion and proclaimed himself ruler over
he Arabs; and the mahdi himself has APP
peared at Mecca in the person of Abdallah,
he son of Mohammed, by a mother by the
name of Eminch. The names of the prophet,
mis- father and mother, are properly grouped
together, and the circumstances of time and
place all answer to the prophecy. The sui
tan of Turkey is in no little trouble about
this movement, as it threatens the caliphate,
that is, his power as head of the Mohamme-
dan believers, for he himself is not a de-
scendant Of the prophet. The French, also,
in Tunis, look for trouble from the fanaticism
raised to fever-heat among the Arabs by
these events. There is a coincidence about
these varied circumstances that is certainly
peculiar and startling.
Business Mans Experience.
He could not tell what allied him. He
knew his digestion was poor and his heart palpi
tatei. He felt his nervous system shat