“Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Rev. 22:17.
May the poor come as well as the rich?
“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Isa. 55:1.
Who has this water of life to offer so freely?
“Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.” John 7:37.
But is there not danger that the supply will be exhausted?
“How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures. For with Thee is the fountain of life.” Ps. 36:7–9. God is “the Fountain of living waters.” Jer. 2:13.
What will those receive who listen to this gracious invitation?
“Incline your ear, and come unto Me; hear, and your soul shall live.” Isa. 4:3.
What kind of existence is it that He gives those who come? Is it a life of toil and drudgery?
“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” Matt. 11:28–30.
Do you say that you do not know where to find the Lord?
He is “not far from every one of us.” Acts 17:27. “Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord?” Jer. 23:24.
Are you so weak that you have not strength to come? That is all right; see what power there is in the word “come.”
The disciples of Jesus were on the stormy sea, in a boat, tossed by the waves, when Jesus appeared to them, walking on the water. Peter said, “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.” Matt. 14:28, 29.
Thus we see that there is power in the word “come,” which Jesus utters, to bring any one to Him who yields to the word, and trusts it. It matters not whether it be on the water, or through the air; the word “come” has the power to carry.
With what power does this gracious invitation of Christ draw those who listen and yield to it?
“The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved Thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” Jer. 31:3.
“Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” 1 Peter 3:18.
“Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Eph. 2:13.
Has the Lord given us any visible, tangible evidence of His power to draw and to hold?
“He draweth up the drops of water, which distil in rain from His vapor; which the skies pour down and drop upon man abundantly.” Job 36:27, 28, R.V. He “hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand;” “He taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” Isa. 40:12, 15.
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Rom. 5:1, 2.
“For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels.” “Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Matt. 16:27; 25:34.
If we listen now to His voice, saying, “Come,” and become acquainted with it, and love it, when He comes in His glory, and says, “Come,” we shall be “caught up” “to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” 1 Thess. 4:17.
The power by which our bodies will at that time be changed, and we be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, is the same power that now works to change us from sin to righteousness. Will you not yield to it?
“O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”
E. J. Waggoner.
PRAYER AS A MEANS OF DEFENSE.
PRAYER is the quickest, safest, surest, and best means of defense against the assaults of the adversary. “When a boy,” said a prominent member of a church, “I was much helped by Bishop Hamline, who visited at a house where I was. Taking me aside, the bishop said: ‘When in trouble, my boy, kneel down and ask God’s help; but never climb over the fence into the devil’s ground, and then kneel down and ask help. Pray from God’s side of the fence.’ Of that,” said he, “I have thought every day of my life since.”
Continuing, he remarked: “Sanford Cobb, the missionary to Persia, helped me in another way. Said he, ‘Do you ever feel thankful when God blesses you?’—‘Always.’ ‘Did you ever tell Him so?’—‘Well, I don’t know that I have.’ ‘Well, try it, my young friend; try it, try it. Tell Him so; tell Him aloud; tell Him so that you are sure you will hear it yourself.’ That was a new revelation. I found that I had been only glad, not grateful. I have been telling Him with grateful feelings ever since, to my soul’s help and comfort.”—Michigan Christian Advocate.
A NEW SOCIETY WANTED.
“WANTED: A SOCIETY,” is the title of a striking article in the Sunday School Times, not long since, by President Robert Ellis Thompson, S.T.D. After noting that the reformers were opposed to intra-church organizations, holding that the family, the nation, and the church were fully sufficient for the development of man’s social nature, and the achievement of spiritual ends, he raises the question whether the modern multiplication of these organizations is the better way. He notes the fact that Christ never joined one of these parties or sects. The following is from the concluding words:—
He [Christ] lived on, to rally His handful of disciples, and start them on their career as a world-wide church, which should deal with all evils, not in the negative and isolated way of fighting each singly for its suppression, but by drawing from His person a higher vitality, in whose light they should disappear.
Has the church of Jesus Christ become obsolete? Have we outgrown His methods? On every side we find associations formed to do the church’s work, and relieve it from its responsibilities. And these are formed by Christian people mostly, and in His name. They are formed with no consciousness of being criticisms of His method, and they are held to justify themselves by the extent to which they have promoted His objects; yet they exist mainly by deducting strength and energy from His church, and retiring it, in great measure, to the class of obsolete and effete organizations. And they have done much to retard the cause which is dearest to their members, namely, the Christianization of human society, by pushing single objects out of proportion to their real importance in the kingdom of God. Indeed, of late this mania for new associations has reached the point of laying hold of any half-truth which strikes individual fancy or (at best) meets individual needs, and giving it a central position.
Luther regarded the extinction of artificial brotherhoods, and the elevation of the brotherhood of the church into its rightful honor of activity, as a large part of his work as a reformer. Do we not need another Luther to repeat his work? While we are waiting for him, we might find use for yet another association: The Society for the Suppression of Useless Societies.
But that will be when the re-born church of Jesus Christ will do the work He gave her to do, depending only upon Him for help.
BAPTIZED INTO HIS LIFE.
“Baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” This is a part of the great commission to God’s ambassadors.
We learned last week what it is to be baptized into, or swallowed up by, the name of the Father; it is to possess God’s character; it is to have His righteousness, His goodness; and the only way we can have it is by faith, by confession and renunciation of sin, and by believing on Jesus Christ for forgiveness and cleansing.
The next step in experience is
Baptism into the Name of the Son.
And as with the Father, name means character. The name of the Son is the character of the Son as revealed in Jesus, the Son of God. What did Christ reveal of Himself? What character did He manifest while here upon the earth?
Jesus, the Son of God, revealed nothing, absolutely nothing, of Himself. But in this He did reveal His absolute self-effacement for the sake of God and humanity. Herein is presented the character of Christ: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who being originally in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, becoming in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” Phil. 2 : 5, 8, R.V., margin.
This was the mind, the character, the name, of Christ. Hear Him: “I can of Mine own self do nothing; as I hear, I judge. . . . I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me.” “The Son can do nothing of Himself.” “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” The sum of all this is that Jesus Christ did not put forth Himself, call attention to Himself, or manifest Himself. If any being in the universe had the right to aspire to an equality with the Father, He had. But He chose the opposite,—complete self-effacement. And therefore He could say, “No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.”
And all this we can see to be true in the very nature of the case. The agent who represents his own interests, does not properly represent his employer. The ambassador who represents himself is but a poor representative of a government. Jesus came to declare, not Himself, but God the Father. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”
As He emptied Himself that He might do the Father’s will and represent the Father to the world, so the Father filled Him. “For it was the good-pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.” “For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
He was emptied that God might fill Him, so that He might reveal God to the world. And because of this He tells His disciples, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” He prays to the Father: “I have glorified Thee on the earth.” “I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me;” “I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest Me;” “I kept them in Thy name;” “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it.”
The name of the Son, therefore, means the voluntary and absolute emptying of self, self-denial, self-effacement, self-abnegation, glorious, blessed unselfishness, for the Father’s sake, and to redeem a lost world. To be baptized into the name of the Son is to be immersed into that same mind, to be swallowed up in that same all-absorbing unselfishness.
That was consecration on His part that the Father might fill Him, so that He could be “the Faithful and True Witness” to the world of what the Father was. All that He did, from the miracle at Cana to relieve the ruler of the feast and to cheer the guests, till He died upon Calvary, was a revelation of the wisdom, power, and love of God.
To be baptized in His name is to be consecrated to God. It is to empty ourselves, to give up all for His sake, to do His service, to witness not for self but for Him. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself.” “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it.” “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh [renounceth] not all that he hath, he can not be My disciple.” There is no other way save the way of unselfishness, of self-emptiness.
Are you baptized into the Father’s name? Are you baptized into the name of the Son? Not, Did some one go through the formula over you as they buried you in the water, but, Does it mean in you what the words of Christ imply? Are you baptized into His name? It means everything in success.
AN ALARMING SYMPTOM.
THE leading article in the Missionary Review of the World for September is by the editor-in-chief, Dr. A. T. Pierson. It is entitled, “A Great Exigency in the Work of Missions.—The Fact, the Causes, the Remedy.” It certainly should arouse the Christian world to its condition of stupor and apathy.
The article first calls attention to the necessity of candor, of facing the situation as it is, to know the very facts and to feel their force. We are then told that—
such candor makes impossible blindness to certain patent and alarming facts. No such emergency in missions has been known since Carey went to India and Judson to Burma. God has thrown open the doors of five continents, given every facility for rapid travel and transportation, and supplied translations of the Scripture by the hundreds, and provided for their swift multiplication by the press, and their wide scattering over the globe. Fifty millions of communicants are in Protestant churches, with untold millions of money at their disposal. We are at the threshold of a new century, with a hundred years of heroic missionary lives behind us, and with astonishing fruits of their seed-growing already apparent in many lands. Yet, at this very time, missions have come to such a critical state that, like Nehemiah, we have sounded the trumpet to call all the Lord’s workers to the one place in the wall where for the time the assault of the enemy is concentrated.
In the face of these facts “the cry goes forth on all sides, ‘Retrench!’ and we can not send new laborers or even support those now in the field; and there is a general apprehension, on the part of intelligent friends of missions, that matters are apparently growing worse instead of better.”
Dr. Pierson mentions as the causes of this apathy:—
1. “The scientific spirit of the day.” Science has made marvelous strides, and “men make a god of science, become idolaters, and practically if not actually say, ‘There is no God.’” And science in the form of evolution has come in to set aside regeneration through faith in Christianity. Its drift is towards materialism and naturalism and away from the supernatural and the spiritual.
2. “The liberal spirit,” which admits other religions as on a par or in the same category with Christianity. “While sectarian rivalries had scarce abated their violence, parliaments of religion were welcoming representatives of every conceivable creed, negative and positive, to a fraternal embrace.” This is saying in effect that Christianity is only a sister religion.
3. “The secular spirit.” “The church in our day is essentially secularized.” The church has become engrossed with the world, and has no burden for lost souls. And the writer might have told us what we know to be true, the church is vainly endeavoring to find in politics the power she has lost by unbelief. Dr. Pierson asks: “Dares any honest man dispute that the prevailing atmosphere of church life is essentially secular? that wealth, fashion, fame, formalism, culture, caste, polite society, worldly opinion, intellectuality, have crowded out simple worship, self-denial, passion for souls, devoutness of spirit, spirituality, and whole-souled devotion to God?” All this is hostile to missions.
4. “The selfish spirit,” manifest in ostentatious extravagance, in hoarded wealth by professing disciples, in self-indulgence, etc. All of which, of course, shows that the church is in great part unregenerate, and has not the Spirit of Christ, leading to open infidelity in repudiating a part or the whole of the Holy Scriptures.
The picture is a sad one, but “the candid mind” will acknowledge its truthfulness in general and particular. Dr. Pierson well says: “It behooves us to ask candidly whether the prevalence of a scientific, liberal, secular, and selfish spirit, such as we have seen to prevail even in the church, is not virtually a repudiation of the Holy Spirit as the divine administrator in the church.”
The remedy suggested is (1) “a more complete submission to the divine authority;” (2) “a far higher form of identification with God,” “sympathy with His plan and love;” (3) “a thoroughly Biblical hope as the basis of our work;” (4) “supreme dependence on God and on the means He has instituted”—“going,” “sending,” “giving,” “praying.”
And let us add, O church of the living God, by whatever name called, that the remedy is found in the reception and giving of His own last Gospel message (Rev. 14:6–14) to prepare a people for His coming.
SPIRITUALISM
Mr. W. T. Stead and Automatic Writing.
It is well known that Mr. Stead, of worldwide fame, is a Spiritualist and medium. That is, Mr. Stead has a “familiar spirit” named “Julia,” who uses Mr. Stead’s hand for the purpose of writing messages to her friends as well as to Mr. Stead. It has been suggested that the writing is done by the sub-conscious self of the one whose hand and pen is thus used, but Mr. Stead gives abundant proof to show that he is not the one who guides the pen, but that it comes from another personality. Mr. Stead tells this and much more in a little volume, “Letters from Julia, or Light from the Borderland.” We quote from the Literary Digest of May 7, 1898:—
The evidence may be briefly summarized under the following heads: (1) The beginning of the communication as above described. (2) The giving of a test in the first message of an affectionate sobriquet bestowed by her [“Julia”] on her death-bed, which was known to her friend but unknown to me. (3) The minute description of an incident which had occurred in or about 1885, of which I had never heard, and which Ellen [Julia’s friend] herself had entirely forgotten until her memory was revived by the mention of details of place and time, which were quite unknown to me. (4) The writing out with my hand of names, Christian and surname, entirely unknown to me, who were her friends in her native land. (5) The intense personal and affectionate interest taken by the user of my hand in persons and movements in which my interest was by no means so deep as was Julia’s. (6) The strongly marked and unvarying personal idiosyncrasy of the writer of these letters, which is certainly not my own—is, I am afraid, in many respects very much superior to my own.
In addition to these internal evidences, there was the evidence of psychic persons gifted with the power of seeing the spiritual forms which surround all of us. To those who deny that such forms exist, or are visible to any one, this evidence naturally does not count. But even those skeptics would probably weaken in their dogmatic incredulity if, after accompanying me to seer after seer, persons to whom I was totally unknown either by name or by features, they were to find that each and all of these gifted with psychic vision described, among others, the easily recognizable form of Julia. Those who know that certain persons have this gift of clear seeing will realize my increased sense of the objective reality of her presence when I state the following facts: (1) That strangers who have never heard of her existence have described her as standing near me when my automatic hand was writing. (2) That several of them have not only described her but have given her name. (3) That one here and one in her native land have also given her surname, which I have refrained from publishing, and which I have equally in vain endeavored to telepath to the minds of other mediums. (4) That in one case the seer picked Julia’s portrait out of a score, from which there was nothing to distinguish it, and identified it as “the lady who writes with” me. (5) That in another case details were given in the description by the seer which I believed and asserted were mistaken, but which, on reference to her more intimate friends, were admitted to be correct; and (6) that, by arrangement, Julia has kept appointments with seers at great distances from me.
Besides these reasons for believing that the intelligence which moved my hand when the “letters from Julia” were written is not my own, but a superior intelligence independent of my workaday consciousness, there is the fact that on several occasions she has foretold with no less persistence than accuracy events which did not happen for months, and which I roundly told her I did not believe could possibly happen.
Certainly, this evidence is sufficient to show that another intelligence operated the hand of Mr. Stead. What was it? Was it some dead person? The Word of God declares: “The dead know not anything.” “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Other scriptures also show that the dead are wrapped in profound, unconscious slumber and insensibility, which will be broken only by the resurrection of the dead at the last day.
What, then, is this intelligence?—It is the spirits of demons, who, taking advantage of popular belief, originating in Satan’s falsehood to Eve (Gen. 3 : 3, 4), and fostered by erroneous theology, come in the guise of the spirits of the dead, assuming their names, their manners, their voices, their forms. They come professing to bring great light from the world beyond, while their teachings are diametrically opposed to the Word of God. The power is indeed superhuman, but it is the power of the prince of darkness coming to us in the guise oftentimes of earth’s holiest friendships. Would you know the truth?—Take the Word of God.
GREAT TRUTH—COLOSSAL ERROR.
The greater the truth, the greater and more deceptive the counterfeit error. God is the Source of all life; and men only find life when they find it by faith in Jesus Christ, the representative, the power, the wisdom of God for this world. Life, life truly, comes to man through a mind yielded to God. But in the place of God and faith, man reasoning from himself is deceived by the devil, and is led to put himself in the place of God, and science in the place of faith. Hence we have “evolution,” and “Christian Science,” and a multitude of other things to deceive souls and hide God from men. Below is an illustration of this deception in the medical world, from the pen of Prof. Elmer Gates, in the Denver Medical Times:—
The conviction has been steadily growing in the minds of scientific observers that medicine is not a science, and that, with the exception of surgery and sanitation, it is not even a rational art. If disease is to be actually cured and crime is to be abolished, there is but one royal road to such an achievement, and that is by the scientific study of the mind as we find it manifested in living things, and as it is capable of being modified by environmental conditions and its own activities.
Mind is life. Life is not something different from mind. The life of a cell is its mind. The activities of a cell are psychological activities, and therefore the regulation of the psychological activities of cells and multi-cells is the basis of the long-looked-for fundamental laws of cure; therein lies the key to the mystery of disease and pain and evil, and therefore also lies the Ariadne’s clew to health and happiness and success. I think no impartial mind can review with me the evidence upon which these conclusions are based and doubt for a moment that life and vitality and psychic processes are solely mental processes. If so, then we are in sight of the law of health and disease and crime, and we see it not by faith, or through mysticism or symbolism, but through the medium of verified facts which are conquerors of scientific knowledge; and the study of this law comes within the province of strictest scientific research. If we can know how to regulate mind processes, then we can cure disease—all disease. There are two methods of regulating the mind in an organism—first by varying the environment conditions and the bodily conditions of the organism, and thus bringing about modifications of the mental activities; and, second, by causing the organism voluntarily to vary its own mental activities, and thus change its bodily structures and its chemisms and environments.
But all this never will be apart from God. Whatever real, radical change is made in mind must be made by the power of God; and God acts in response to faith. Would that the world knew, as expressed by the weeping prophet, “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself;” then would the world know that whatever change for good took place in man it would not be by might nor by power, but “by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” O, remember it, reader, it is only the Word of God, the Spirit of God, the power of God, that can regenerate mind! Creative power, the power which spoke the world into existence, must make man a new creature if he is to live. There is no true life apart from God.
PLEASE explain Isa. 24: 22. Does this chapter refer to the time of the end and the last great day? If so, why are they reserved, or shut up in prison, and visited after many days? C. B.
Isaiah 24 refers to the great day of the Lord. Compare with Isa. 13: 6–13; Zeph. 1: 14–18, and Revelation 20. Verse 22 reads as follows: “And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.” The gathering together of the wicked is their sojourn in the prison-house of the grave. The many days are a thousand years. The visiting of them is their resurrection at that time. See Rev. 20: 5–9. The margin of “visited” is “found wanting.” So they will be found wanting in character, and because of this will be utterly destroyed. Ps. 37: 10.
858. Salvation.
(1) WHAT is salvation? (2) What is the difference between earthly salvation and eternal salvation? (3) Did God intend the Ten Commandments for a guide to our earthly or eternal salvation, or both? M. T. N.
1. Salvation means deliverance or preservation from impending evil or danger. It is the state of being saved.
2. Earthly salvation is simply to be saved for the time from some danger, such as from disease or drowning. God does not give men earthly salvation. He does give temporal deliverance even to sinners, from temporal dangers, but all are to win men to eternal salvation, which Christ came to give.
3. The Ten Commandments are the law of the eternal God, spiritual, holy, good, everlasting. God’s law implanted in the heart is a guide to His children to all eternity.
859. Judas Iscariot—Why Chosen?
IF Jesus foreknew the character of Judas, why did He call Judas to the apostleship; for He said, “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?”
The last part of the above inquiry shows that Jesus knew Judas. Why did He choose him? Several reasons may be given: (1) Judas may have offered himself, the disciples favoring him; (2) Jesus put him in the place He did in order to give Judas the best opportunity to overcome his sin. He was with the most perfect Teacher and Example the world has ever known; and when Judas made his last confession, “I have betrayed innocent blood,” he condemned not Jesus, but himself. God gives the wicked opportunities to reform. Judas in many churches to-day would be called a shrewd business man.
860. The Termini of the Sabbati.
WHEN does the Sabbath begin? and where end? See Matt. 28: 1.
It is neither wise nor right to take a text which is not clear to establish a truth when there are texts which clearly do it. Note: (1) The day begins invariably at evening. Gen. 1: 5, 8, 13, 19, etc. (2) The evening comes with the going down or setting of the sun. Matt. 8: 16; Mark 1: 32. (3) Here the Sabbath began and ended. Luke 4: 31, 40; Neh. 13: 15–19. See also Lev. 23: 32. Matt. 28: 1 is not contradictory. For an understanding of Matt. 28: 1 read Mark 16: 1, 2.
A Blue Law
President Guggenheimer, of the New York City Council, in an effort to stop profanity, has prepared the following resolution, which passed the council unanimously, July 19, and waits at last report approval by the aldermanic board and Mayor Van Wyck:—
“Be it ordained by the municipal assembly of the city of New York as follows: Section 1. That under the provisions of section 49, subsection 22, of the charter, the use of profane, vile, or obscene language in any public street or place within the limits of the city of New York, or in any public transportation car, ferry-boat, or other public conveyance operated within the limits of the said city, shall constitute a misdemeanor, and that the person using such profane, vile, or obscene language shall be liable within the cognizance and jurisdiction of the magistrate’s courts of the city of New York to a fine of not more than ten ($10) and not less than two dollars ($2.00). Section 2. This ordinance shall take effect immediately.”
The folly of this law is that it has no standard by which to determine what is “profanity” or “obscenity,” save the opinion of some police judge. Profane words in some would be reverential in others. Who is to determine the heart and motive behind the utterance? And as to obscenity, etc., what about many of the books and other publications in the market, and the nude and lewd art just now in the ascendant. All this is in the same line as Sunday laws, making men better by statutory enactment. It will not do it.
ONLY BY THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT.
It is not the demon alcohol alone by which Satan gathers in his captives. He has among his faithful servants tobacco, opium, hashish, and several others of the same sort, not the least of which is Captain Cocaine. Many who break from whisky and opium turn to cocaine. It is much cheaper and acts more quickly than morphine. Not long ago the New Orleans Times-Democrat told of the ravages of the drug in that city. It declares that opium-smoking is a thing of the past, with the exception of its use by the “fiends;” but it remarks:—
“Never a vice was killed, tho, that another did not spring up in its place. Cocaine has superseded opium, and it is a question if cocaine is not doing more harm to-day than opium ever did. Indulgence in the cocaine habit is cheap. There is no stove needed, no needle, no long pipe. You can take cocaine in whisky, you can inhale the white powder, or you can use it hypodermically. Any one of the three methods insures forgetfulness and recklessness. Cocaine is dreamily maddening, it intoxicates, it deadens heartaches and bodily pains. Ten cents worth of cocaine will last most victims of the habit one to two days. Its extreme cheapness puts it within the reach of the most poverty-stricken.”
“The police realize what harm the cocaine habit is doing, and are making every effort to stamp it out. They are making slight headway, tho. Not a day passes but that from four to ten shattered wrecks of humanity, devotees of the drug, drag their trembling forms from the prisoner’s pen and take their medicine from the recorders in the shape of fines and imprisonments.”
“‘The cocaine habit,’ said a police officer, as the women were being led back to the dock, ‘is responsible for more crime, for more immorality, and for more degradation than any of the standard evils. Of course it is against the law to sell the stuff, and any one caught in the act would be bitterly prosecuted, but there is no getting at the facts. There are too many druggists who are ready to violate the law for the profit there is in it. No reputable druggist will furnish the drug, but, as detection is impossible and there is big money in selling the stuff in spite of its comparative cheapness, a cocaine fiend never has any trouble in gratifying his appetite.”
“‘You can take cocaine anywhere. A pinch of the stuff on the back of the thumb nail, a sniff, and the drug is at work. I suppose cocaine is mostly taken this way. Inveterate users of the drug, I believe, get sooner or later to using the hypodermic syringe. I remember not long ago when we arrested a hoodlum and cocaine fiend and locked him up for creating a disturbance and using vile language. We searched him at the station and took away his syringe and supply of cocaine. When the effect of the drug already in his system wore off, he gave way to hysterical grief. Tough as he was, he wept and begged and prayed for his accustomed instrument and its deadly load. We refused to give him back his belongings. He grew hysterical, and at last we thought it safer to telephone the Charity Hospital for instructions. We were told that it would be dangerous to keep him without the drug.”
“‘I carried the fellow his syringe and some cocaine. He danced and shouted for joy. Dissolving about a grain of the drug in a spoonful of water, he rolled up his sleeve. The marks left by previous injections were so thick that it was impossible for him to find a spot big enough to allow the insertion of the needle. The other sleeve was rolled up. There was the same result. At last it was necessary to insert the needle point on the man’s right thigh, where there was an unpunctured spot the size of a dime. The man’s skin looked as if he was suffering from smallpox. It was a horrible sight. I believe he has since died. I never knew until then how awful the use of the drug was.”
“‘In my opinion the worst result of the cocaine habit is that it absolutely kills all sense of self-respect and decency. Its users have no morals, no consciences. There is no depth too low for them to dive into to procure the money for supplying themselves with the drug. Opium-smoking is almost stamped out. Of course it still goes on in the Chinese quarter, and there are some fiends who smoke in their rooms, but it isn't anything like it used to be. If the cocaine habit could be stopped, it would be a good thing. But there isn't any way to stop it. Some druggists will sell it and buyers won't give them away.’”
New Orleans has not a monopoly of the evil. We wish it had. A physician in San Francisco tells us that the use of the deadly drug in that city is widespread and increasing. These things are among the terrible evils which no human hand or human power can stay. It is only the power of the Spirit of Christ which can help these souls. O, there is need of workers! These pictures are not calls to the civil power, but to the church of Christ.
