The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1916-01-20
FEAR or THE WORLDS END.
Some Critical Situations Due to Over
CredulOuS ThrOng.

the year 999. A stream of wailing
penitents, screaming and sobbing,
beating their bosoms with clenched
hands, crawling on their hands and
knees, crowded their way to the
churches all over Europe, says the
Kansas City Star. The sick, the lame
and the halt, helped by friendly
hands, clamped their lips and held
back the cries of pain which every
moment shot through their bodies.
A few, exhausted, fell by the way
side, crying out in anguish. At the
church doors the lines halted to
glance back at the setting sun, which
they would see no more, for mid
night and the year 1000 was to usher
in the end of the world.
All through the night they writhed
upon the temple floors, praying, their
ears straining for the sound of the
seven trumpets which would an
nounce the coming of the Antichrist,
who would gather the wicked togeth-
er to take them to their punishment.
The night wore on. No stars fell
from their sockets. The walls of all
Europe were growing more feeble.
The eastern horizon became flushed.
Still from the churches rose hushed
murmuring. The sun rose to still the
groans of the exhausted, and all Eu-
rope YEARLY went home. A short
respite had been granted in order
that the sinners might be converted,
it was said. Days, weeks and months
were counted anxiously; Eclipses,
comets, overfowing rivers and a
thousand other signs urged the sin
ner to hasten.
Then famine came. Houses were
choked by the dead. For every man
who hoped for salvation on midnight
of the year 999 had given all his
earthly possessions to the church.
Ships had rotted at quays during the
preceding year. Commerce had ceas-
ed. The reaper's hands had not
flung the grains upon the soils. All
hands had been raised night and day
in prayer. What matter? The end
cf the world was near.
Misery everywhere. Day by day the
end was expected. Day by day star
vation added to it's toll. What earth
Iy goods remained were expended in
further remodelling churches. Tales
of wonderful miracles were told, and
believed.
Little by little industry was taken
up again. Slowly the belief that the
end of the world was near became
dimmed.
At this time the mind of all Europe
was filled with a belief in strange
creatures. Man shared his world with
fantastical giants, pigmfes, one-eyed
monsters, creatures half human and
half animal, egg-shaped bodies with
human feet and arms in inverted po-
sitions, horses heads attached to
long, spindling human legs and
snakes of hideous shapes. His world,
night and day, was peopled with mon
strosities which the mind of man to-
day, even if stimulated with mix
ture of lobster and rarebit, could not
conceive. He lived in constant de-
lirium tremens.
The early teachers of Christiani-
ty made use of the monsters in which
paganism had founded a belief. The
transition from religion to religion
had to be made gradually. But the
teachers clothed these pagan brutes
with evil The end of the world
would be riot of these beasts who
would carry off the wicked, they said.
Thus it was that the end of all took
so urul d TUOL Ill lllO W1Ad VI Ho
rope.
The human mind, however, never
has lost the fear of the worlds end.
In 1888 William Miller, an American
farmer, predicted the second advent
of Christ on October %, 1914. He
had many. followers, who gave away
all their worldly possessions and
made ascension robes that they
might more easily be caught up into
Heaven. The night of October %
thousands stood outdoors in terrific
electric storm praying and singing,
while those who had doubted quaked.
But the sun rose again and the wet,
cold enthusiasts shivered before kind
neighbors' fires.
Mother Shipton's prophecy caus-
ed much uneasiness during 1881,
even after it was known that Moth
er Shipton" was an Englishman who
wrote his jingle in the sixties.
Comets, shooting stars and reports of
hens eggs with fatal dates on them