Earlier text: VICTORY AT LASTBURDENS, A MEASURE OF STRENGTH.
By Charles T. Everson
WE have often seen a family go forth for an outing. And we have noticed that the strong father is well loaded down, while the mother carries her share, and each child in proportion has a lighter burden down to the baby, who, rather than carrying anything, is itself carried. The burden born by each indicates the strength of the bearer if placed by a person that is capable of judging correctly. In giving a heavy burden to a member of the family the father thereby says to that member, You are strong. A lighter burden indicates a less degree of strength. So when we find that we are carrying heavy burdens, it ought to be a source of encouragement to us. The Lord apportions our burdens according to our strength. Now strength is what we want and not weakness. As the load grows heavier, it shows that we are increasing in strength. For burdens administered by a true hand are a measure of an individual's strength. Therefore, when the burdens grow lighter, it must be because we are growing weaker. We have, perhaps, also observed when a family starts off for an outing that at the outset very often the smallest member of the family will pick up a very large package, for he feels himself stronger than he really is. Then it is necessary for the father to take the bundle away from him and give it to a stronger member of the party; for otherwise the little child would wear himself out in a short time and lose all the blessings of the day's outing. So sometimes we pick up the heavy burden that the Father has assigned to some one else, and we lose our blessings by attempting to carry more than God has given us. We should not sigh to carry the burden that God has assigned to another member of the family, for another's burden might gall us, but ours never will, for it fits our condition. But we may be sure that as we grow stronger it means added burdens, for God is using to its utmost capacity every available means for the salvation of mankind. But the promise is that as thy day so shall thy strength be. In other words, a day of burdens is a day of great strength. But it may be suggested that Christ says that His burden is light, not heavy. This is true; and yet we remember that Christ carried the heaviest burden that has ever been borne. For it says that "the Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all." Altho He carried such a heavy burden, yet He could say that "My burden is light." These statements would seem to be contradictory at first thought; but let us consider what gives weight to anything. We are told that objects have weight because the atmosphere presses down upon them at so many pounds to the square inch. This pressure is the result of the weight of the columns of air extending upwards for many miles. Another factor that contributes toward giving weight to objects is the power of gravity that attracts things earthward. These two factors are said to give weight to any object. Now we can readily understand why Christ's burdens were light, for He lived in a heavenly atmosphere where the air was light, and, consequently, the burden was light. Furthermore, the power of gravity or the power to attract earthwards was reduced to a minimum in the life of Christ. The perceptible weight of a burden is not measured by its size, but by the atmosphere in which the hearer lives, and the strength of the power that attracts him earthward. When we have heavy burdens, therefore, we do not need a lessening of the burdens, but a change of atmosphere and a release from the power that draws us earthward.
Rome, Italy. WAITING FOR THE FIRE.
By H. A. St. John
THE first place of divine worship after the fall and expulsion from Eden was at the gate of Paradise, where were stationed the cherubim. The locality was recognized as the house of God, the distinctive place of His presence. There came a time when two brothers, the sons of the very first family in all the land, came together to this place of the special presence of God to worship. The Lord had ordained both the Spirit and the form of that worship that would please him. Undoubtedly both of these brothers understood this matter equally well. Perfect faith and perfect obedience, the outgrowth of perfect love, would secure to every one who went out from that Presence perfect joy and perfect peace, blessings that always make the worshiper rich. These brothers were named Cain and Abel. Both came to the right place, each erected an altar, each placed an offering thereon, all of which was in the order and form of obedience. Then both waited for the fire. The coming of fire from above to consume the sacrifice was at once the evidence and expression of divine acceptance of both the offering and the worshiper. Each had made their offering, and each was waiting for the fire. Suddenly a light rested on the offering of Abel, which grew brighter and brighter, until it burst into a flame of consuming fire, burning up the sacrifice and warming and rejoicing the heart of the one who had made the offering. But Cain waited for the fire in vain. His countenance fell, and he went out from the presence of the Lord in anger. It is evident that Cain never again returned to the presence of God, but soon after became a homicide, taking the life of his godly brother. And wherefore slew he him?—Because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous. God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. Then, wherein was the difficulty with the service and offering of Cain?—Ah! it was in both the faith and the obedience. In his faith, in that it did not take hold of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; and in his obedience, in that it did not symbolize the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. Nothing but a cherished rebellious spirit occasioned this deficiency in his faith and service, and, hence, for the lameness and imperfection of his offering, he alone was responsible. He knew that if he did well, his offering would be respected and accepted. He also knew that if he did wrong, a sin offering was at his door. Now the Lord beseeches us to present our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice. It is but our reasonable service to render unto Him such an offering. All that we are, as well as all that we have, is embraced in this offering. When this offering is fully made, there will not be long waiting for the fire. God will look upon it with respect. The light of His countenance, increasing in brightness, will kindle such a fire of divine love in the soul as will purge away all the dross, all the tin. God has promised to purify every such soul with "the spirit of judgment, and with the spirit of burning." Thus purified and transformed by the renewing of the mind, such souls will be able to show what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. How They Became Convinced
By Editor
[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.] I WAS taught to strictly observe Sunday. I heard no controversy as to what day was the Sabbath. I knew that the Bible taught the observance of the seventh day, and, seeing that Sunday was generally observed, why should not a girl in her teens conclude that it was really the seventh day, and teach her pupils to begin naming the days of the week with Monday? Nearly forty years ago I united with the M. E. Church. One Sunday, thirty years ago, out of curiosity, I attended a Seventh-day Adventist camp-meeting in central New York, and heard Brother S. N. Haskell preach on the prophecies, closing with a few minutes devoted to the Sabbath question. I did not want to make any change from the popular Sabbath, but I did want to be right, even if it should involve the disfavor of man. I studied the Bible, especially the New Testament, seeking for the privilege of keeping the first day, or Sunday, but I became very strongly convinced that it was a very poor place for an honest person to find such a right. That very week I began to think of Friday as the day of preparation for the keeping of God's holy rest day. Each weekly return brings sweeter blessings in its observance, and makes me praise the name of Him who gave it as a memorial of His creative work. I must not fail to say that the carefulness, plainness, and Christian love of the people on that camp-ground influenced me much toward searching God's Word for the truth. I also saw a decided change in the lives of some acquaintances, who had just espoused the cause. Personal influence has much to do with leading others to the truth.
MRS. D. A. FITCH. WHEN I was about ten years of age, my father began to observe the seventh-day Sabbath. My mother did not see the light of it, and this brought controversy. Her pastor, of the United Presbyterian faith, preached on the subject, presenting the usual arguments for the change of the Sabbath at the resurrection of Christ. I went home, and, alone, read over carefully the account in the four Gospels. I could not see any suggestion of a change, and, tho' of such tender years, was settled forever as to which day was the Sabbath. Fear of young companions, and of brothers and sisters, kept me from obeying at that time, and led me into many foolish sins. However, when I was converted by the love of God, at sixteen, the keeping of the Sabbath seemed just as natural as to refrain from swearing or stealing. Increasing knowledge of prophecy, history, and the unchangeableness of God's character and government only make it more certain to my mind from day to day that God's Sabbath is equally unchangeable; and the hope of celebrating it in the world to come cheers me on amidst every trial of earth.
ALBERT CAREY. IN the very nature of the case the closing days of Christian probation will be a period of the greatest intensity. Knowing that his time is short, the enemy of all righteousness will put forth mightier effort, will use every delusion and device which has ever ensnared human hearts, to deceive and destroy the purchase of the life of Christ. To meet the delusions and power of the enemy, to furnish from the armory of heaven according to His people's need, as He ever has done, God opens the treasure-house of His truth and pours out the latter rain of His Spirit. Every saving truth of God which has been lost to the church will be restored. Every truth of God required to meet all present needs will be given. Every truth reserved for this time will be disclosed. Grand and awful in its import is the time in which we live. Foreseeing all this, the array of forces on both sides of the conflict eternal in results, the ancient seer of God exclaims: "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision." Joel 3:14. And even so it is to-day. And the decision even in its last analysis lies between God's Word and the opinions, the theories, the hypotheses, the traditions of men. The Bible reveals to us the living, personal God, whose word possesses creative power. This world came forth by His fiat in the beginning. In its arrangement for the home of man it was formed and shaped and made by His word in six literal days. That very record of creation bears the Gospel message to souls in chaos and doubt and darkness that the same God can re-create and re-form lost men, and bring light into the darkness and chaos of their lives. Against this living, personal Ruler of the universe Science sets a "fortuitous concourse of atoms," evolution, "divine immanence," and other vague, meaningless terms, and hypothetical notions, which can neither lighten the darkness of the hopeless heart nor save a single soul. Which will you choose, reader, the living, loving God, who created the heavens and the earth, who stills the sea, and heals the sick, and raises the dead, who is therefore able and willing to recreate you? or the meaningless, uncertain, and often contradictory hypotheses? Multitudes are in this Valley of Decision; are you among them? Then decide for God; decide now. The great Ruler of the Universe has a law for His creatures, which reflects the character of the Law-giver, and which through faith in Him comes to us with all the potency of infinite might to enable us to be and to do the thing required. In principle that law is comprehended in one word, love. In operation it looks in the two-fold direction of love to God and love to man. In negative prohibition and prescription of positive duty to sinful man it is comprehended in that expressed Voice of Jehovah, the Decalogue, the Ten Words of Sinai. That His people may better understand it, Jehovah has written it "in ten thousand precepts" in His Word. Hosea 8:12, R. V. Its beauty in character is seen in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was obedient to its every precept, and who died to restore fallen man to harmony with God and loyal obedience to its every requirement. Against this law the adversary of God and righteousness has ever planted his strongest artillery. To lead men from that law he has used his subtlest devices. And millions upon millions has he turned from the living God to serve idols of wood and stone. He has in the hearts and practises of men torn from that law its fourth precept, guarding God's worship day—an institution ever calling to mind God's creative and redeeming power (Ex. 20:8-11; Eze. 20:20),—and substituted in its place a day ever connected with one of the grossest, most libidinous, and widespread forms of idolatry the world has ever known—sun-worship, and the counterfeit day, "the wild solar holiday of all pagan times." It does not require deep study nor long meditation nor a strongly analytical mind to discern how influential the pseudo-Sunday worship-day has been in turning man from God, the mighty Creator, to a system of "evolution" and so-called "natural selection," which evolved the earth from "fire-mist" and man from the ameba through the monkey. Between the Sabbath of the living, loving, creative Jehovah, with all its teachings of hope and rest of heart and the Sunday-holiday, worship-day of paganism and apostasy, multitudes are in the Valley of Decision. On the one side is a tree of eternal blessings, on the other side is the blighting, withering, poisoning upas tree, of tradition. Are you yet in the valley, reader? Then decide for the truth, and decide now. "Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted," says Jesus, "shall be rooted up." As the only hope of a lost world the Bible sets before us Jesus, the Anointed of God, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," the all-sufficient expiation from sin, the Regenerator of a corrupt nature, the Fountain of Life, from which man must draw every supply of power to live for God, the one perfect Exemplar of the will of God; and that all this becomes a mighty, effectual saving power in man if he will by faith accept it all. But to nullify Christ's every claim, to frustrate His divine mission to men, to shut from man his only hope of release from sin and the grave, Satan, with more than the old Edenic lie of fulsome flattery comes to man, and says, "Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye are as God;" divinity is within you, faith is but the recognition of that power within yourself; you need no blood atonement, there is but one life, and whatever and whoever you are, you possess eternal life. And with such like subtleties, Theosophy, Christian Science, and New Thought are deceiving millions to the deification of the human and the destruction of the soul. The law of God perverted is not God's law. The life of God perverted is not God's life. A mere exemplar of righteousness, a mere social reformer, a mere teacher of superior ethics, is not the Christ of God. He is to poor sinners wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, but to them that believe not none of these blessings come. Separated from Him we are as dead branches. "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." God in His goodness reveals to us our sad condition that He may save us, not to ourselves, but to Himself. Between the Christ Jesus of the Bible and the subtle theories which sometimes seem to lift Him up, but only to crucify Him afresh, lies the Valley of Decision and the undecided multitudes. O, soul, are you still there? Then decide for God, and Christ and the Bible and everlasting righteousness and life; and decide now. THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.
IN noting the fact that the pictures of a great artist are selling at much higher prices since his death a few months ago than he was able to realize when living, the press is simply repeating an old story. It only reiterates a fatal trait in the human character. The contemporaries of John Bunyan deemed him worthy of imprisonment, but succeeding generations have given his book, written while in prison, a phenomenal circulation. The treatment of their prophets by the Jews is highly illustrative of the tendency to reject contemporary worth and to emphasize the virtues of the dead. There was popular rebellion against Moses on several occasions, and at one time the people were almost ready to stone him (Ex. 17:4); but their descendants placed a really superstitious trust in Moses, even to the rejection of Christ—the Prophet whose coming Moses foretold. Jesus described this characteristic of the people when He said to the Jews: "Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets." But He says to that same class, "Behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city." And what was the result to them?—Why they were charged with the blood of the prophets, whom their fathers killed, notwithstanding the gorgeous tombs they were building to the memory of those ancient prophets. The fact of their persecuting their contemporaneous prophets shows that they were imbued with the same spirit that actuated their fathers, and were bringing upon themselves the blood of the persecuted ones of the past, from Abel down. Jesus emphasizes their condition and responsibility in these words: "Wherefore be ye witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers." Now the lesson to us is in the words of the apostle Paul, "Despise not prophesyings." 1 Thess. 5:20. That is, do not reject the Spirit of prophecy that is with you; for in doing so you virtually despise the same Spirit as it is manifest in the testimony of those who prophesied, or taught, in former days, notwithstanding your profession of adherence to them. This was what Paul himself had done when7 persecuting the disciples of Christ. In the act of putting to death the prophets of his own time, he was rejecting the testimony of those who before had prophesied of Christ. But, the Lord having shown him the folly of such a course, he passes on the warning to us. They who quench the Spirit and despise prophesyings assume a fearful responsibility, besides cutting themselves off from the progressive light of truth. 1464.—Old Garments and Wine-skins.
The parable reads thus: "No man putteth a piece of undressed cloth upon an old garment; for that which should fill it up taketh from the garment, and a worse rent is made. Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins; else the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins perish; but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins, and both are preserved." God's truth is living, strengthening, expansive, progressive. This the Pharisees of all ages, incrusted in dry, dead forms have been unable to comprehend or apprehend. This has always been the danger of those who are disciples of men. John's disciples had followed the forms of the Pharisees; why did not Christ's disciples do the same? Answering the question of mere custom, Jesus touches the deeper truth in the parables above quoted. Undressed, or unfulled cloth shrinks and thickens in the fulling. While it appears less, it is of greater worth. It is, so to speak, a living web. Placed upon old cloth, its shrinking would tear the old material, and make a worse rent. The whole Jewish system had grown old, not because of God's truth, but because truth had been mixed with human tradition till the life had departed and only a perverted form was left. God's living truth could not be patched upon the dry, dead form. Skins of animals were used for bottles. The fresh bottle would expand with the fermentation of the new wine, but new wine put into old, dry, unexpansive skins would be sure to burst them. The cloth parable was symbolical of the doctrines of tradition; the wine-skins of the hearts wedded to the traditions. Just as long as they remained in that condition they could not receive the pure, living truth of God. Therefore the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again," "born from above," or receive the living truth of God. The parable does not mean that God's truth changes, or that eternal truth is set aside; but it does mean that warm, living truth can not be patched on to human creeds, and that hearts wedded to those creeds can not receive living, expansive truth. And the parable is applicable for all time. 1465.—Life and Immortality.
Please explain 2 Tim. 1:10: "Christ Jesus . . . hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel." (1) Jesus Christ is the only One through whom life and immortality can be obtained. (2) He is this because life is in Him; "for as the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself." John 5:26. (3) He abolished death by abolishing it in Himself as the representative of the race. Immortality is God's seal on a character incorruptible, on righteousness inwrought into character. And of all who ever lived in the flesh, Jesus alone by "the power of an endless life" wrought out a character incorruptible. While He died for man, the grave could not hold perfect righteousness. Acts 2:24. This righteousness and this life Christ gives to all who accept Him; and thus He abolishes death in every faithful soul, and has abolished it in Himself for all who will take it in His way. And all these blessed tidings of life to a dying world constitute the Gospel, "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." Rom. 1:16. OUR BUSINESS IN THIS WORLD.
As WE brought nothing into this world, and as it is certain we can take nothing out of it, it is proper to stop once in a while and address to ourselves the question, "What is my business in this world?" If I am doing nothing to make the world better than it is, nothing to better the conditions of those around me, nothing to bring creature into harmony with Creator, I am but waste material, and the very force that keeps me going is misspent energy. Too many are content with "making a living." It is better so than being an incumbrance on the community, an additional weight to the burdens of others in making their "living." The Word declares that the church member who lays upon others the burden of maintaining his house is worse than an unbeliever. He has a disintegrating influence in that he lowers the organization to which he belongs in the estimation of those who are still outside the church. This, of course, does not apply to the worthy poor, rendered poor by misfortune or accident. Such are not a hindrance to the church; for they help to stimulate the grace of liberality. So, while Christianity is the antithesis of avarice, it is also the antithesis of idleness. But in this last place its application is not restricted to physical idleness alone. He who gives his attention wholly to a busy-ness about the affairs of this life is not being "diligent" in a true Christian sense. With him one side of duty is slowly becoming paralyzed while the other is exercised far beyond the Creator's intent, and the result is deformity. The old Roman galley-slaves became abnormally developed on one side while the other was more or less atrophied. It was wholly unnatural, and the appearance of these unfortunate men was grotesque and pitiable. Just so must the lives of many professed Christians appear when viewed by heavenly beings. It is outside God's purpose that men's lives should be deformed by a misconception of duty along material lines, or that the duty of providing for one's house should be neglected because great light from heaven is shining before us. The example of Paul is to the point in this matter. He did not consider it beneath him to maintain himself, tho bearing a direct commission from the Lord to witness for Him in regions afar. So he labored with his hands while he bore witness to the truth by his life and words. That is an example of the well-balanced Christian, neglecting neither duty. But material increase was not his aim. Preaching the Gospel was his business, and he "worked to pay expenses." His own support occasioned a considerable part of those expenses. This is not teaching, either, that preachers and teachers of the Gospel should not receive support from mission funds, or that they must pay their own fares to the fields to which they go. Many consecrated workers could not do the latter, and so those who have means are given a chance to help in that work by contributions of money. Some may be sent to fields where the competition for existence is so great that it would require all their time and energy to "make a living." The point is, the making of a living is not the Christian's business in this world. He makes a living in order that he may live to do a greater and much more important work, the proclamation of the Gospel in the earth. Making a living is merely a means to that greater end. It is incidental only, but one of the incidentals which indicates the character of the individual and his right conception of duty. We can "make a living" and in the end die, without leaving any impress for good on the hearts of men; without bearing before them any testimony for God and righteousness; and without any possibility of a "living" beyond the closed door of this short life. But in the place of a living, it is possible, by the power of God, to make a life, a life that shall be a living witness for God, and the thread of which God will pick up again when the story of sin has been told. Be not content with "making a living." Make a life, and be a witness to the life of God, a worker in the great field of God, and, finally, a precious stone in the eternal temple of God, bearing the Father's name, and going "no more out forever." Worse a thousand times over to cherish or tolerate one sin in the heart than to have a thousand sins committed on every side of us by the world. Evil environment will not hurt us if we do not let it inside. Jesus formed a perfect character in the wicked city of Nazareth. The pure, white lily matures in the midst of slimy, putrid ooze. If Christ abides within, the soul can resist any environment in the way of duty. Sooner or later God's children and institutions will be called out of cities, but while duty holds any soul in the city, God will protect that soul if it trust Him. The saloon and theater will do us no harm if we keep them out of our heart. The evil of them gets into our heart before we yield to enter them. Worse a thousand times over to be in the most fruitful, blessed land, with no evil environment, and there cherish sin in the heart, than to live loyal to God in the Five Point district of New York or the East End of London. infinitely, to lose every earthly friend and retain our integrity, than to win the world and lose the companionship of our God. Better a thousand times to stand with Christ alone, even in the judgment hall, or driven before a mad mob, than to shine in the courts of kings, or companion with all the pleasure-loving of earth. Better, far better, is a church of only ten active, whole-hearted, full-souled, consecrated Christians than a church of one thousand allied with the world, moved by the world, possessed by the spirit of the world. The one means an increasing company of witnesses for the Master, the other a graveyard of disappointed hopes. Better, far better, is poverty with Christ than riches with the world. Better, infinitely better, is one moment of eternal day with Christ our Lord than a lifetime of pleasure in this world; for no second or minute or hour or day or year of pleasure is a surety of happiness beyond, and oftentimes a moment is the seed-sowing of a harvest of death, but that moment of eternal day with Christ is God's infallible pledge of an eternity of ages of bliss. Shall it be worse or better? WRITING in the Union Signal of the terrible evil of child labor in Southern factories, Harriet K. Bell says:— Children as young as five years of age have been found working all day in cotton factories. Many children, some not more than seven years old, work from 6 P. M. to 6 A. M. Those who change the bobbins in the frame, usually small boys, run sixteen or seventeen miles a day with their necks between frames. Dropsy, pneumonia, and consumption are the diseases which are widespread as the results of the conditions of factory children's lives. Mutilated hands, through the amputation of fingers, are common. In one mill city alone, one doctor has reported that he has personally amputated one hundred babies' fingers, which had been mangled in the mills. Many toil for ten cents a day; twenty-five cents is a common wage; few reach forty cents. Somewhat over eleven hours is the average day of a child worker, tho it is not unusual for many to work fourteen hours. Thirty per cent of the hands in many mills are children; the proportion in some factories fifty per cent. In the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama alone 20,000 children are in the factories and 10,000 of them are under twelve years of age. Many Southern mills are owned or controlled by Northern capital, attracted by cheap white labor and the chance to escape labor laws. A mild climate and certainty of employment, without strikes, are bringing an increase of Northern children into the rapidly multiplying factories of the South, chiefly from the congested mill centers of great cities. To this we add an extract from an address by Mrs. Marion H. Dunham:— The term of life of factory hands is short and the average is growing shorter; if they survive to the brief limit with hope, ambition, and aspiration crushed out of them before they know the meaning of the words, they are prematurely aged and become what is called "spent" men and women, that is, their stock of vitality, which should have served them threescore and ten or more years, if properly conserved, has been so drained and exhausted in their early years that they become unable to care for themselves by labor, and so necessarily become a public charge. The pity of it, the uselessness of it, the cruelty of it all! "Where shall we fix the responsibility for this iniquity?" do you ask. Sometimes on the worthless, drunken father or mother, who care for the child only for what it can bring in, but they are infrequent exceptions. Thousands of children are held in literal bondage in our great cities by those who make profit from their labor, but the main cause is that many employers refuse to employ men and women, when children can serve their turn, and often employ the father only on the condition that the children shall come also. It is our infamous commercial system, in these lands we call Christian, which grinds up the little ones as no barbarous or pagan country has ever done, and this alone should place upon it eternal condemnation and determine its overthrow. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON CAPITAL AND LABOR.
By Editor
A Question of Human Rights.
THE following is from the President's message of Dec. 7, 1903; we have placed in bold-faced type several points of vital interest which ought to commend themselves to every true man and woman:— The consistent policy of the National Government, so far as it has the power, is to hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee; but to refuse to weaken individual initiative, or to hamper or cramp the industrial development of the country. We recognize that this is an era of federation and combination, in which great capitalistic corporations and labor unions have become factors of tremendous importance in all industrial centers. Hearty recognition is given the far-reaching, beneficent work which has been accomplished through both corporations and unions, and the line as between different corporations, as between different unions, is drawn as it is between different individuals; that is, it is drawn on conduct, the effort being to treat both organized capital and organized labor alike; asking nothing save that the interest of each shall be brought into harmony with the interest of the general public, and that the conduct of each shall conform to the fundamental rules of obedience to law, of individual freedom, and of justice and fair dealing towards all. Whenever either corporation, labor union, or individual disregards the law or acts in a spirit of arbitrary and tyrannous interference with the rights of others, whether corporations or individuals, then where the Federal Government has jurisdiction, it9 will see to it that the misconduct is stopped, paying not the slightest heed to the position or power of the corporation, the union or the individual, but only to one vital fact—that is, the question whether or not the conduct of the individual or aggregate of individuals is in accordance with the law of the land. Every man must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do as he likes with his property or his labor, so long as he does not infringe the rights of others. Surely, who can in fairness ask more than this? CAN THE CHURCH AFFORD IT?
By Editor
REFERENCE is being made in the press, both religious and secular, to the probable discussion of the secret order question in the next Methodist General Conference, to be held in Los Angeles, Cal., next May. The Northwestern Christian Advocate, a leading Methodist organ, is quoted to the effect that "there is no disguising the fact that there is a growing friction between the church and the various fraternal societies, and that it is a question that must come up for settlement in the near future." Referring to this subject, the Los Angeles Times says:— The Methodist Episcopal Church now has in operation a fire-insurance company which insures the church and parsonage properties. While not condemning this, the promoters of the new idea say it would have been wiser for the church to have evolved a scheme whereby the members may receive the same temporal benefits as are furnished by the lodges. This they will urge for consideration at the Los Angeles session of the General Conference, and if the church is unable to do the good work that the lodges do, say they, then give them a blessing instead of a curse. It seems hard for many people, both in and out of the church, to see that the church is an organization for carrying the Gospel to the world, for giving the Word of God to every creature, and that it is not solely a selfish club to dispense temporal benefits to its own members. It is evident that many members would fain make of it a mutual benefit affair, to help one another to get along easier in this life. Many have joined churches with this very object in view, and because they see the world's societies, organized for this very purpose, doing more in that special line than the church does, they would like to see the church leave its legitimate work, its first work, and follow the world. It is a fact that about all the general charity work is done by the churches or by their influence—without confining their efforts to their own members. Where is the secret fraternal society that does any charity work for any one outside of its membership? To ask the church to put itself in line with the world's societies, and become a selfish mutual benefit business concern, is to ask it to depart materially from the model laid down in the Word of God. Neither can the church put its "blessing" on all the chaff of the secret lodge because of the few grains of good that are apparent! It must be remembered that the lodges contend that they must maintain the secret feature in order to protect themselves from imposition. Without it their benefit system could not succeed. The Christian should also remember the words of his Lord: "In secret have I said nothing." In this connection it might be well to add, that an opposition society to one that has been one of the most successful in the past thirty years, has just been organized by seceding members, because the dues in the old one have become so high that they can no longer stand them. When this same order was first started, it promised more benefits for the money than any society had done before. But its ever-increasing obligations have increased the expense of membership to the point of secession. Few complaints are more common than the complaints of wives about their husbands' lodge expenses. Were the churches to attempt the fraternal society role, they would soon find themselves staggering under burdens far beyond anything they have experienced yet. And not the least of these would be the increased number of unconverted members drawn in by the so-called "fraternal" feature. The church of Christ can not afford any such incubus, or any such departure from the "old paths." We make these comments, not because some Methodists advocate the proposed measure, but because members of other churches are also talking in the same strain.