Review and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 3. (1/21/1909)

Review and Herald

Jan 21, 1909

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 21, 1909

A Hymn for the New Year

My times are in Thy hands! My future, present, past, Are linked with golden bands, And to Thy throne made fast; The distant paths I do not see, But this I know — they lead to Thee.

Day speaketh to the day, Night answereth unto night; They keep Thy time and way, The darkness and the light; The morn and eve which round my days In their deep silence speak Thy praise.

The winter’s frost and snow, The song and bloom of spring, The summer’s golden glow, The autumn’s harvesting — They all Thy faithfulness record, And show the glory of the Lord.

Our years of health are Thine, And Thine our hours of pain; Thou bidst Thy sun to shine, Thou sendest now the rain; But on our changing skies we still Can trace the lines of Thy sweet will.

— Selected.

Life and Health for February

Comes nearer meeting the ideal of a model health journal than any previous issue. The variety of subjects presented by editors and contributors in language that all can understand, is made doubly attractive through the manner of presentation by the highest skill of the printer’s art.

Some of the leading articles are: A Faith That Works Against Disease; Cancer — Its Cause and Rational Treatment; Preventive Treatment of Sore Throat; When Baby Has the Croup; The Treatment of Tuberculosis; Children’s Gardens — Their Value for Health, Happiness, and Physical Development; The Cooking Lessons, in which are given many valuable recipes for cooking proteid foods; Health Catechism, considering the subject of exercise.

Several of these articles contain simple, practical instruction that may mean not only improved health, but the saving of life.

How Its Value Is Estimated

The chief clerk in the office of Superintendent of Public Buildings, Albany, N. Y., under date of Dec. 16, 1908, writes: “Chance recently brought to me the current number of Life and Health. I have read it thoroughly, and I want it regularly hereafter. Please enter my subscription for one year, commencing with the January, 1909, issue. My opinion of the publication is perhaps best expressed when I assure you that if the price were double what it is, I should not be without it regularly hereafter.”

A business manager of a sanitarium says in a recent letter: “In a little over four hours one day last week Miss — sold 126 copies of Life and Health, with a profit to herself of $8.82. Many of our brethren and sisters are working hard a full week for less wages. Of course not every one can do so well, but I believe there are many who could do one half as well, and that would mean good wages.”

Many words of appreciation for the improvements made this year have been received. Remember, Life and Health is now a 64-page magazine, and the price is $1 a year. Same price to agents as before the magazine was increased one third in size: 2 to 25 copies, 5 cents each; 25 to 500 copies, 4 cents; special rates on larger quantities.

A Wonderful Saviour

IN Jesus Christ there is help for the infirmities of body and mind, as well as for the tendencies to sin. He “took our infirmities, and bare our diseases.” Thus could he be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” as in no other way. To the man sick of the palsy he said, “Thy sins are forgiven;” to the infirm woman, “Thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” He was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” It is a wonderful thing to have a Saviour who saves from sin; but it is also a wonderful thing, a blessed, consoling thing, to have a Saviour whose joy it is to help and encourage and comfort in every experience in life—ever present in sickness as well as in health, in times of sorrow as well as in times of joy, in times of scarcity as well as in times of plenty, in night as well as in day, through the valley of death as well as on the mountain tops and the meadows of life. Such a Saviour, helper, friend, and brother is Jesus Christ the Lord, who was bruised for our iniquities, and by whose stripes we are healed.

The Real Explanation

WHILE some of our friends are seeking to find the reason for the rapid progress of this second advent movement, it seems a fitting time to set forth the true explanation of this marvelous growth. It is true that earnest efforts have been put forth by those who believe this truth in their desire to make it known to others, and that the most approved plans of organization have been adopted to render such efforts most effective, but this is not sufficient in itself to account for the extension of this message into nearly every country in the world within a comparatively short time. The true explanation is that all this well-organized effort is put forth in harmony with the divine purpose for this time. Thus divine and human agencies co-operate in carrying forward successfully the movement which is to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.

It is in the divine purpose, as made known through the prophecies, that in this last generation the threefold message outlined in Rev. 14:6-12 should be proclaimed to all the world. Those who are willing to be used as instruments to accomplish this work will find themselves energized by divine power, and a prosperity due to more than human wisdom or human effort will attend their labors.

Thus it was in the days of John the Baptist, and the people were moved by an unseen power to confess and forsake their sins, and to accept the message which proclaimed, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The time had come for that voice to be heard in the wilderness, concerning which Isaiah had prophesied, and neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical authorities could suppress it.

So it was in the days of Luther. It was not the prestige of great names which insured the success of the Reformation. “The Reformer Zwingli emerged from a shepherd’s hut among the Alps; Melancthon, the great theologian of the Reformation, from an armorer’s workshop; and Luther from the cottage of a poor miner;” but the hour had arrived in the divine purpose for presenting anew God’s gospel of free grace and salvation by faith, and it simply required willing agencies for the accomplishment of this work. The Reformation of the sixteenth century succeeded because God was in the movement.

The same principles again find expression in this final proclamation of truth to the world. The great prophetic periods have been fulfilled. The hour of God’s judgment is come. In a little time, He whose right it is to take the kingdom will appear in his glory, but all this must be made known to the world, and the call must be sounded forth, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” The power of the divine purpose is in this proclamation, and those who give it to the world are assured of success in their co-operation with this divine purpose.

This is the only and the true explanation of the prosperity that has attended this second advent movement, which, beginning in weakness and under circumstances which to all human appearance would render its progress both difficult and slow, has in these few decades extended into nearly every country on the face of the earth, and has won adherents from all classes.

It is well to remember that there is more power in the divine purpose than in all merely human agencies combined, and that success is assured to those who are used of God in fulfilling that purpose.

The Meaning of the Second Advent

Two or three letters have appeared recently in the Sabbath Recorder (Seventh-day Baptist), drawing some comparisons between the prosperity which has attended the work of the Seventh-day Adventists and the apparent stagnation among the Seventh-day Baptists. As a probable cause of this difference, they have suggested the belief in the near second advent, and two of them have strongly urged that the Seventh-day Baptists ought to make a careful study of the advent doctrine, as found in the Scriptures, with a view of proclaiming it, if thorough investigation should show it to be well founded.

Another correspondent urged the editor of the Recorder “to proclaim the second coming of Christ as being near at hand,” declaring that God was withholding his blessings because of the neglect of this duty. An editorial reply to this exhortation, which reiterates some of the well-worn arguments against the reliability of

prophetic interpretation, contains one statement which we have rarely seen surpassed for its brutal frankness:—

It was indeed better for them [the disciples] that he [Christ] go away; and we insist that it must still be better for the world that he stay away.

The reading of the Scriptures ought to convince any unprejudiced mind that the second personal advent of Christ to this world marks the climax of all his work in behalf of humanity, and that apart from this crowning event his mediatorship would fail of accomplishing the promised results. Thus to his disciples just before his crucifixion he said: “Let not your heart be troubled. . . . I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” In his prayer immediately following this promise, Jesus expressed the idea of reunion with his disciples in these words: “Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.” Setting forth more clearly the time and manner of this reunion, and teaching that those who were alive at the time of the second advent would have no advantage over those who had fallen asleep, the apostle Paul stated the case thus: “We that are alive, that are left until the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” The same apostle at the close of his earthly experience again emphasized the fact that at the coming of the Lord the hope of the Christian would find full fruition: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved his appearing.” In the same strain writes the beloved John at the close of his record of that remarkable series of prophecies constituting the book of Revelation: “He who testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly. Amen: come, Lord Jesus.”

Thus the promise of the coming Seed, which was given to our first parents before they were expelled from the garden of Eden, is developed with greater fulness and clearness in the succeeding ages, during which the main theme of prophets and apostles was the final overthrow of sin, and the triumph of righteousness, when the Son of man should come in his glory, until in the most literal language Christ’s second coming to receive his redeemed people to himself and to reign victoriously, is declared as the consummation of the plan of salvation. And yet in the face of all this plain teaching, the Recorder declares, “We insist that it must still be better for the world that he stay away.”

This unscriptural and antiscriptural statement is a good illustration of the way in which one error may vitiate the plainest teaching of the gospel. The belief in the natural immortality of man, and that heaven is entered at death, robs the second advent of its real meaning, and naturally leads to its neglect. When the central truth of the gospel is clearly apprehended; namely, that eternal life is the gift of God, and that immortality is bestowed upon believers at the second coming of Christ, the importance of the advent doctrine is clearly seen, and the blessed hope of the resurrection and of the glorious appearing of our Saviour becomes the comfort and the stay of the Christian through all his worldly pilgrimage. No; it can not be “better for the world that he stay away.” The delay has been a long one; the world is rapidly growing worse; the limit will soon be reached, the only hope of a better order of things rests upon the promised return of our Lord. Every lover of truth and righteousness ought to do all in his power to hasten his appearing.

The Promise of Entering His Rest

DURING all the time of man's journey through this world, the promise of salvation has been held before him. Nevertheless, during all that time the history of man shows the timeliness of such an admonition as this: “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.”

Sanitarium Training Centers

By W. A. S.

OUR sanitariums are coming to be a strong department of our training-school system for missionary workers. The Boulder (Col.) Sanitarium, for example, last month graduated a class of twelve. Already two of the class are abroad; one is on the way to the Foreign Mission Seminary, with India in view; and others, who for a time are entering home work, expect to get into mission fields in due time. Next year's class is a large one, and with almost one thought they have the mission fields in view. Boulder has made a strong feature of its nurses' training class, and is now represented in all parts of the foreign field.

With all our hearts we should rally round our sanitarium training centers, not only for the work they do in healing the sick and educating the world in the principles of health and temperance, but also for the strong work they are doing in training workers to go out into pioneer service in the mission fields. These conference institutions are training-schools as verily as our colleges. All these facilities, properly supported by our efforts and our prayers, mean quick work in the preparation of missionaries. No other missionary bodies have such a complete system for the raising of recruits for service. It is because of the swift progress to be made with the last message that the Lord has so armed us for the work. W. A. S.

The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America

By C. M. S.

A Recapitulation

FREEDOM of choice is the key-note of the gospel. The gospel invitation is the very antithesis of force. “Come unto me,” is an invitation, not a command; and what Jesus would not compel, he has given no one authority to compel for him. We have seen in these studies how he himself first proclaimed the doctrine of religious liberty in these words: “If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not.” He found a condition of religious intolerance and a united church and state, and his teaching was a rebuke to it. He was lifted up upon the cross, a victim of the intolerance of his times. His followers were hunted in every country as the legal prey of the intolerant system. A time came when their increased numbers made them respected. That was the hour of the church’s great temptation. The organized body yielded, as did Eve in Eden; and the great deceiver accomplished by stratagem and temptation what he could not accomplish by open threat and force. He induced the church as an organization to deny her Lord. She became an oppressor not of the heathen only, but of the true followers of the Lord she professed to serve, putting them to cruel deaths in his name.

Constantine’s Edict of Milan, granting religious freedom to all, was repudiated by his sons in their acts, and the church he established relegated it to oblivion, so far as her interest in the edict’s perpetuation was concerned. For fourteen hundred years the principles of that edict and the principles laid down by Jesus Christ found expression only among the scattered flocks of our Lord’s fold in the mountains, the deserts, and the wilderness.

The Reformation broke the power of the papal church to a large extent, but the lessons of intolerance which Luther and Calvin had learned in the school of the Catholic hierarchy they practised upon those who differed with them when they had the power so to do. They left the church as they found it, in unholy wedlock with the state, and forged new fetters to bind the consciences of men. This is demonstrated in the persecution and death of those who perished with their sanction or by their orders.

In spite of bitter persecution, in spite

of death itself, there persisted, during all that dark time, a little band who would not yield their faith at the command of any earthly power. They were the Paulicians, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and the Anabaptists. The first three named suffered all things at the hands of Rome, while the last named were the special object of attack by the established churches of the Reformation, as well as by the Catholic Church. It was these Anabaptists who became the real apostles of religious freedom for both the Old World and the New. Their blood flowed like water in Europe because they insisted on an unshackled conscience. That they were not exterminated in all Europe, as in Germany and Switzerland, was due to the championing of their cause by Prince William of Orange.

In 1647 the Westminster Confession of Faith was adopted, which authorized officials of the English church-and-state system to do all that Rome could have asked the state to grant her permission to do. In 1689 came the Toleration Act of William and Mary, which granted toleration to Quakers and Protestant dissenters, but left Catholics and anti-Trinitarians outside the scope of its beneficence. But for even this small measure of toleration we are indebted to the persistent agitation of the Anabaptists, many of whose tracts were written in prison. To these people we are indebted for the declaration that every man’s worship should be in accordance with “the dictates of his own conscience.” Through them the doctrine of religious liberty was transferred to America, and through their oppressors came the opposite principle in superabundance, so that in every colony save Rhode Island and Maryland the heavy hand of religious oppression was felt. Both men and women were whipped, fined, imprisoned, and killed on the soil of the New World for exercising liberty to believe the Word of God and practise its teachings. The state established the church, supported it by general taxation, and compelled the people, under pain of fines and imprisonments, to attend its services and accept its teachings. All religious instruction not authorized by the established church was put under the ban, and all unauthorized teachers of the Word were criminals, to be dealt with by the state.

In spite of these forbidding circumstances, the leaven of better things was working in all the colonies. Where existed a system denying religious freedom to all save those of the established church, there was to be established a system that would recognize the freedom of the soul from the control of the civil power. Like the persecutions in the time of the apostles, the New England persecutions only served to spread the doctrine it condemned. The banishment of Roger Williams in 1635 planted a State which stood for the principles that caused his banishment. The history of all the different colonies where church and state were united reads very similarly in respect to religious intolerance. Though the manner of punishment for dissenters differed, the institution that fostered it was the same, and the church that persecuted dissenters in one colony had its own members persecuted in another. In each colony the fact was demonstrated that wherever a church is established by law, conscience is made an outlaw. In the midst of such travesties on true religion Roger Williams and his compatriots were making a “livelie experiment” which is still living, and the influence of which will never die. In the constitution, or charter, of Rhode Island we find the church disestablished, the principles of republicanism and the equality of man established, and the prohibition of all religious tests for the holding of public office—principles later incorporated into the Constitution of the United States, but logically lacking in the charters and constitutions of all the church-and-state colonies.

The uneasiness of souls in bondage, the leaven of a spiritual unrest, the persistent teachings of such believers as the Quakers and Anabaptists, and the inhuman punishments inflicted, were having their effect in all the colonies. The people were drifting away from their oppressive leaders. In New England the arrogance of the hierarchy was such that it resulted in its own downfall at the hand of the king of England, and the revocation of the colony’s charter in the year 1685. In 1691 a new charter was granted to Massachusetts, which guaranteed religious liberty to all “except papists.” But it was not until 1833 that church and state were finally separated in that State.

The same struggle went on in Virginia, where Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians felt the heavy hand of the established church. Not until 1774, two years before the Declaration of Independence, did light begin to break in Virginia. With the dawn of the Revolution came better days for the oppressed Christians of that commonwealth. The same year that the Declaration of Independence was adopted, the Virginia Convention adopted its famous Bill of Rights, whose sixteenth article declares the principle of religious liberty. The downfall of British rule in the United States was practically coincident with the downfall of the established church in Virginia.

The great majority of the State constitutions, while containing many of the grand principles of the national Constitution, contained also some of the principles of church-and-state union. Some seeds of the old order of things were left, and are bearing evil fruit to-day. The opponents of religious freedom in the days of the Constitution’s adoption have never lacked successors. An attempt was made in 1829 to have Congress committed to a career of religious legislation. The effort was brought to naught by the master defense of Col. Richard M. Johnson; but in the year 1864 the forces opposed to the freedom of conscience began an active, systematic campaign to re-establish religious thralldom in this country. That organization, the National Reform Association, has called to its aid the American Sabbath Union, the W. C. T. U., the labor unions, the Lord’s Day Alliance, the Roman Catholic Church, and numerous State organizations, to insure the enactment of laws for the enforcement of a religious ordinance—the Sunday sabbath—the entering wedge to a union of religion and the state. These organizations, banded together for the accomplishment of that purpose, must be looked upon as one in spirit, actuated by one motive. That motive has been forcefully expressed by the prime movers in the undertaking. It is that religion shall be established by law; that the hand of oppression shall be laid upon non-conformists again as in colonial days. In 1888 Congress was besieged again by the same forces for the same purpose, and found an able champion in Senator Blair, of New Hampshire. In 1892 came the Supreme Court dictum that “this is a Christian nation,” and the forces of retrogression and soul-thraldom had won a victory that meant much for them. Since that pronouncement, those forces have taken new heart, and redoubled their efforts to re-establish a censorship over religion in America.

To assist in the work outlined by the instigator of the undertaking—the National Reform Association—the various organizations named have pledged themselves. The most forceful and efficient ally of that organization is the Catholic Church—always and everywhere the foe of religious freedom. That the Catholic Church sees in this backward movement the abandonment of Protestant principles is plainly evident. That she plans eventually to lead the undertaking is shown in the recent declaration of her purpose to build here an enduring edifice “upon the ruins of decaying Protestantism.”

Seeing in such movements as the National Reform Association has inaugurated an unmistakable evidence of an abandonment of Protestant principles, and seeing the success of that organization in winning other so-called Protestant organizations to its standard, the Roman Church rightly argues that Protestantism is no longer a power to be dreaded, but a force to be guided; and she, the Roman Church, will act as the guide. She declared her intention of being that guide when she declared that “all Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitution of States, and legislation, to be modeled on the principles of the true church.”

This religio-political combination, which already professes to hold the Congress of the United States in its hands, is even now beginning to come under the leadership of Rome. When that combination through its increased power and influence shall have actually accomplished what it now professes to have already accomplished, and when Rome accomplishes her purpose to be the leader of the combination, as she confidently expects to do, it is not difficult to foretell what the character of the nation and its legislation will be. The activity of the hierarchy in this country portends no good for the country; and the rapid abandonment of Protestant principles by professed Protestants is making Rome’s victory easier with every new day. If Americans value civil liberty, if Christians value freedom of conscience and of worship, there is no more opportune time than now to let the fact be known. Religious liberty, without which all other liberties are valueless, is being attacked in front, flank, and rear—yea, even within its own citadel, by its professed defenders; and the horrors and hypocrisies of medieval and colonial days are in a fair way toward repetition in this country, so blessed of heaven, so forgetful of history.

C. M. S.

Now Is the Time

By W. A. S.

IN a letter from Inland China, Dr. A. C. Selmon says of the revolution of thought going on in that ancient land:—

It looks as if China would be able to carry itself through this crisis, and if it does, it means much to this empire. Now is the time to put in our best efforts here in China.

The reports from our missionaries in all lands bring that word, “Now is the time.” The same message was sent us a little time ago by the spirit of prophecy. “Now, just now,” was declared to be the time to press the work in foreign lands. The conditions in entered and unentered fields, amid old civilizations and new, cry to us, “Now is the time.”

The hope of meeting this call, humanly speaking, depends upon the faithfulness of believers in every church in bringing in the weekly offerings for missions. If believers, led by church and conference officers, will only agitate and encourage, until from every church, month by month and quarter by quarter, there shall flow in an average of ten cents a week each, for missions, it will mean a mighty extension of our field of operations. We must see it, for, truly, “Now is the time.”

W. A. S.

Note and Comment

Living Like Jesus

JESUS CHRIST is the Christian's example in all things, and it is incumbent upon all who unite themselves to his visible body on earth, taking upon themselves that name, that they should “walk even as he walked.” If our Saviour's example means anything to his professed followers, it means that. To profess Christ and walk in the ways of sin, makes us hypocrites, and puts him to shame. It is a serious matter to make public profession of Christ, take part in the ordinance of baptism, and have one's name enrolled upon a church book. It is quite evident that this matter is lightly considered by many at the present time. A few years ago the question, “What would Jesus do?” was heard upon the lips of many who professed his name, seeming to indicate that though professed Christians, they had hitherto been living with small regard to the example of their Lord. The originator of the question won fame and financial prosperity by publishing a story-book with such a title. Recently there has sprung up in Cincinnati a movement of much the same character. The pastor of a large congregation at a mass-meeting induced eighteen hundred of his hearers to pledge themselves to live for two weeks as Jesus would. This is the program:—

Christ was a man of joy as well as a man of sorrow. He would have us lead a joyous life. Learn to smile. Quit your kicking. Go to work with a word of cheer on your lips. Be like a burst of sunshine. Don't go down to work ten minutes late sour. Jesus would have us be honest in business. There was no shoddy work done in Christ's carpenter shop. Let there be no shoddy work in your business. When the temptation comes to be dishonest, say no, no matter what comes. Let us be honest in our speech and in our social position. If you are worth only fifty cents, don't try to pass off for a dollar. For the next two weeks let us pass for what we are. If you would live as Christ lived, you would have an open Bible, you will pray. Jesus would have us live as gentlemen and ladies. Christ was no loafer. If you have no job, try hard during the next two weeks to find one. Lend a hand in loving service to those who need you. Now, the real Christian will do all these things, and he will not do them as a two weeks' experiment either. The truly converted man understands, when he accepts Christ as his Saviour, that all that and much more is involved in his allegiance to Christ. To teach professed Christians to adopt that standard of life for two weeks, is to teach them that they can drop the undertaking at the end of that period if it is not to their liking—and still be Christians. This is merely playing fast and loose with religion. No man has a right to limit the term of service in the Christian warfare. It is not two weeks or two years—it is a life, a life of toil, of hardships often, of sacrifice always.

A Candid Admission

The manner in which the Roman hierarchy believes in a separation of church and state in this country is explained by a Catholic writer in the Pioneer Press, of St. Paul, in pointing out what he calls a basic error in the Lutheran letter of protest to President Roosevelt. He says:—

Applying their conclusion as to general Catholic teaching, they absolutely ignore that necessary and fundamental distinction made by Catholic theologians in treating this subject of the mutual relations of church and state, the consideration, to wit, whether the state under discussion happens to be a Catholic or non-Catholic country.

For the Catholic country, this writer admits, all the Catholic teaching about the inseparableness of church and state is distinctly true. But he insists that it is beside the point for the Lutherans to class America with Catholic lands. As the United States is a non-Catholic country, the Catholic Church could not apply these doctrines here. In other words, Rome believes in the separation of church and state in all Protestant or heathen countries. She believes in the union of church and state in all countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion. She believes in the separation of church and state in this country now; but when she succeeds in making America Catholic, as she has declared her intention of doing, she will believe in the union of church and state. To unite church and state here now would be, she feels, to give an advantage to some non-Catholic “sects.” That she does not want or believe in. To unite church and state when she has made America Catholic, will, she feels, give her an advantage over all the “sects.” That is what she does want and does believe in. When Catholic priests declare their belief in a separation of church and state, it is always that kind of separation. Let not Protestants be deceived by such declarations. Rome has not changed, and will not change.

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