“When it is considered that one hundred years ago the inhabitants
     numbered but 1,000,000, it presents the most striking instance of
     national growth to be found in the history of mankind.”

Let us reduce these general statements to the more tangible form of facts and figures.  A short time before the great Reformation in the days of Martin Luther, not four hundred years ago, this Western Continent was discovered.  The Reformation brought out a large class of persons who were determined to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.  Being fettered and oppressed by the religious intolerance of the Old World, they sought, in the wilds of America, that measure of civil and religious freedom which they so much desired.  A little more than two hundred years ago, Dec. 22, 1620, the Mayflower landed one hundred of these voluntary exiles on the coast of New England.  Here, says Martyn, “New England was born,” and this was “its first baby cry, a prayer and a thanksgiving to the Lord.”

Another permanent English settlement was made at Jamestown, Va., in 1607.  In process of time other settlements were made, and colonies organized, which were all subject to the English government till the declaration of Independence July 4, 1776.

The population of these colonies, according to the U.S.  Magazine of August, 1855, amounted in 1701, to 262,000; in 1749, to 1,046,000; in 1775, to 2,803,000.  Then commenced the struggle of the American colonies against the oppression of the mother country.  In 1776, they declared themselves as, in justice and right, an independent nation.  In 1777, delegates from the thirteen original States, New Hampshire, Massachussets, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in Congress assembled, adopted articles of confederation.  In 1783, the war of the Revolution closed by a treaty of peace with Great Britain, whereby our independence was acknowledged, and territory ceded to the extent of 815,615 square miles.  In 1787, the Constitution was framed and ratified by the foregoing thirteen States, and on the 1st of March, 1789, went into operation.  Then the American ship of State was fairly launched, with less than one million square miles of territory, and about three millions of souls.

Thus we are brought to the time when, in our interpretation of Revelation 13, this government is introduced into the prophecy as “coming up.”  Our territorial growth since then has been as follows:  Louisiana, acquired from France in 1803, comprising 930,928 square miles of territory.  Florida, from Spain in 1821, with 59,268 square miles.  Texas, admitted to the Union in 1845, with 237,504 square miles.  Oregon, as settled by treaty in 1846, with 380,425 square miles.  California, as conquered from Mexico in 1847, with 649,762 square miles.  Arizona (New Mexico), as acquired from Mexico by treaty in 1854, with 27,500 square miles.  Alaska, as acquired by purchase from Russia in 1867, with 577,390 square miles.  This gives a grand total of three million, five hundred and seventy-eight thousand, three hundred and ninety-two (3,578,392) square miles of territory, which is about four-ninths of all North America, and more than one-fifteenth of the whole land surface of the globe.