Earlier text: THE GREAT COMMISSIONJerusalem was standing in all her pride and splendor. The pinnacles of her gorgeous temple sparkled amid the glories of an eastern sunset. Her palaces and halls echoed to the voice of mirth, and her dwellings were filled with wealth and luxury. The publican was feasting his guest on the fruits of extortion. The Pharisee was pompously praying at the corners of the streets. The common people, in busy crowds, were seeking pleasure or profit. The hum of business, the noise of mirth, the sound of the viol, the tabret, and the pipe, the ever swelling, ever varying music of city life, in its manifold strains of gladness and grief, were proof that the people there “regarded not the work of the Lord, neither the operation of his hands.” To one looking only upon the outward appearance, Jerusalem, thus filled with wealth and splendor, with joy and song, would seem to be fortunate and happy. The lover of nature, standing over against the city by the Mount of Olives would see in the magnificent view before him enough to kindle his whole soul with a glow of admiration. Yet when Jesus beheld the city, on his way thither, accompanied by a joyous multitude, he duly silenced their acclamations, and stood in mute sorrow, with his eye fixed on the scene. As he gazed, he wept. With tears of compassionate grief, he emphasized the exclamation, “If thou hadst known!” Thus while all was fair and auspicious to the eye of one looking simply on the outward appearance, Jesus saw below the surface of things an impending, fearful doom. The beautiful city was soon to be laid waste. Unutterable distress was soon to consume the people. Not one stone was to be left on another of that temple whose fame had filled all nations. The day of gracious visitation was just closing. The time of bitter desolation was just at hand, and she knew it not. Therefore, while others rejoiced in her apparent glory, Jesus, through tears of pity, said, “If thou hadst known!” Alas! too often it is thus with men as with cities. To us they seem fair and prosperous, and we call them fortunate and happy; when He who looks on the heart, and knows the end, discerns before them a doom most fearful. Mercies abused, ordinances despised, grace rejected, demand that mercy give place to wrath. The oncoming doom we see not. The rising storm of wrath we hear not. Often those who stand on the very brink of perdition so charm us with their outward graces, or kindle our admiration by their successes, that we cry, “Fortunate,” “happy,” while Jesus is saying, with pity in his heart, “If thou hadst known!” The young man is in the flush of a remarkable apparent success. Whatever he puts his hand to seems to prosper. Wealth, position, influence, worldly honors, these all come at his bidding, and he stands upon the summit of a worldly prosperity for which thousands count him happy. With all his other acquirements, however, he has not yet secured the one thing needful. He is too deeply immersed in business, too eager in the pursuit of honors, too restlessly ambitious of worldly success, to trouble himself about things unseen and eternal. He is grasping a monopoly worth millions, and has it fairly at hand! He is striving for a position in the ranks of men of renown, and has been welcomed to the high places of power! Success is written upon his escutcheon in characters that kindle admiration and envy. “Happy child of fortune!” cry the multitude who witness his progress and covet his apparent prosperity. But there is One who has other words to utter over this prosperous worldling. Jesus, knowing that death is at the door, that amid all this outward prosperity his gospel has been neglected, his cross despised, his grace slighted, looks with compassionate pity on this restless aspirant, and says, as when he looked from Olivet upon Jerusalem, “If thou hadst known!” That daughter of luxury and pride—beauty has clothed her with its charms. The dance borrows its chiefest spell from the fascination of her graceful movements. Taste throws all its attractions into the adjustments of fashion. Wealth scatters its glittering symbols over her person, and she goes forth among the votaries of fashion, joyous and blithesome, to kindle in all who behold her the wish for a like profusion of nature’s coveted gifts. Some admire, some envy, some covet, all exclaim, “How fortunate! how happy!” Yet, through these exclamations of friends and admirers, a voice is forced upon the ear of faith, having quite another tone. It is the voice of Jesus, who from his despised glory and rejected throne, seeing the arrow of the destroyer just entering that thoughtless heart, looks down in pity upon this lover of pleasure more than lover of God, and exclaims, “If thou hadst known!” O Christian, if we would hear it by faith above the din and bustle of these stirring times, no doubt the voice of Jesus would change our estimate of the real state of some men and women, of some towns and cities, aye, perhaps, even of some churches, whose outward prosperity is great. If we would see by faith, through the glare and splendor of that outward display, by which we are so easily misled, the face of Jesus, turned in tearful compassion upon worshipers where the form of godliness has parted company with its power, it would make us feel that, if to be a Christian is to be like Christ, then tears are quite as pertinent as smiles in our outlook upon a world neglecting its great salvation!—Christian Secretary. Cleanliness and Godliness.
PROF. LYON PLAYFAIR recently delivered a long address on sanitary reform before the Social Science Congress at Glasgow. In the course of his remarks, he said: “It is not a pleasing task to dwell on the habits of the population even in our country, in past times. Go back only to the time previous to the Reformation, and you can have no difficulty in understanding why luxury and squalor produced the plagues of the times of the Tudors and the Stuarts. High above all other dwellings were the castles and the monasteries, but the cabin of the peasant was worse than any now found in the furtherest isles of Scotland. It was made of reeds and sticks plastered over with mud. In these wigwams, lived an ague-stricken population. In the towns, the mechanics lived in rooms without glass windows, slept on straw beds, and worked in workshops unheated by coal fires. Even in well-to-do houses, rushes covered the earthen floors, and got saturated with scraps of food, which remained to putrefy under a new layer of rushes scattered over it, so that the ‘petremen’ came to dig saltpeter out of the floors. Filth, instead of being abhorred, was almost sanctified. The monks imitated the filthy habits of the hermits and saints of early Christian times; for the early fathers commended them. Even St. Jerome used to praise the filthy habits of hermits. He especially commends an Egyptian hermit who only combed his hair on Easter Sunday, and never washed his clothes at all, but let them fall to pieces by rottenness. St. Anthony never washed his feet. St. Thomas à Becket, when martyred, had under garments in a state which makes one shudder at the remembrance. And so the monks, up to the time of the Reformation, and indeed in part up to the present day, thought or professed to think, that by antithesis, pollution of the body indicated cleanliness of the soul. Practically, indeed, it helped to it; because the odor of sanctity which infested these old monks and hermits helped to keep them apart from the temptations of the world; for the world scarcely cared to come into too close contact with those odoriferous saints. But this association of filth with religion was unhappy in its consequences; for men ceased to connect disease with uncleanliness, and resorted to shrines and winking virgins for cure of maladies which were produced by their own physical and moral impurities. Under all these influences, plagues were very destructive in England.” In an article which we printed a few weeks ago, we drew a comparison between the municipal indebtedness of this country and that of Great Britain. This comparison may now be extended still further. The average municipal indebtedness of twenty English cities smaller than London is about $30 per capita. But the minor American cities, with about the same population as these twenty English cities, owe about $92 per capita. The contrast is presented in still another form. The report of the Local Government Board in Great Britain shows that, deducting the British national debt, there is a total local indebtedness of $360,000,000, or about $11 per capita. Take the same local indebtedness in this country, including everything except the national debt, and we have:— State debts................................. $382,970,517
County debts............................... 180,000,000
Municipal debts............................ 769,000,000
Total...................................... $1,331,970,517 This is a local indebtedness of about $30 per capita for all the people in this country, or about three times as great as the local indebtedness per capita in Great Britain. The strain in this country is still more notable when we count the interest paid. The interest on the local indebtedness probably averages 7 per cent., which would make it $93,000,000 annually, while the interest on the British local indebtedness does not exceed $15,000,000 a year; so that, while the interest on our national indebtedness is more than $20,000,000 less than Great Britain pays on its national debt, the total interest we pay every year on all debts is from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 more than Great Britain pays on its total indebtedness. The statement of local indebtedness does not fully set forth the full measure of recklessness and extravagance that characterize our municipal governments; for notwithstanding the startling increase of local indebtedness, taxation has likewise increased at a frightful rate. A statement of fifteen cities (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Jersey City, Louisville, Newark, Cleveland, San Francisco, Providence, Albany, Milwaukee) shows that the taxable valuation of property has increased nearly $1,000,000,000 the last five years, and the tax levy in those cities, which was $64,000,000 in 1869-70, was $97,500,000 in 1874-5. It only remains to be stated that in not one of those cities was the debt reduced within the time mentioned, so that the increase of taxation was devoted, aside from the payment of interest on the bonded debt, to the payment of current expenses and local improvements. In 1870 the whole sum raised by State, county, and municipal taxes was about $280,000,000, and the most careful estimate now places the revenue exacted from the same sources at $363,000,000 annually. This is over and above the increase of debt. Deducting the State taxes, the county and municipal governments raise $295,000,000 a year, and have added $130,000,000 to their indebtedness within five years. According to this, our local government really costs, in taxes and increased debt, $380,000,000 annually, or more than the entire annual revenue of Great Britain for all purposes, which is $376,000,000. We commend this exhibit to the earnest consideration of our readers, as presenting the most serious problem of popular government. —Chicago Tribune. [Republished in the REVIEW by request.] I do not like to hear him pray
Who loans at twenty-five per cent.,
For then I think the borrower may
Be pressed to pay for food and rent.
And in that Book we all should heed
Which says the lender shall be blest,
As sure as I have eyes to read,
It does not say, “Take interest!” I do not like to hear him pray,
On bended knees about an hour,
For grace to spend aright the day,
Who knows his neighbor has no flour.
I'd rather see him go to mill
And buy the luckless brother bread,
And see his children eat their fill,
And laugh beneath their humble shed. I do not like to hear him pray,
“Let blessings on the widow be,”
Who never seeks her home to say,
“If want o’ertakes you, come to me.”
I hate the prayer, so long and loud,
That's offered for the orphan's weal,
By him who sees him crushed by wrong,
And only with his lips doth feel. I do not like to hear her pray,
With jeweled ears and silken dress,
Whose washerwoman toils all day,
And then is asked to “work for less.”
Such pious shavers I despise!
With folded arms and face demure,
They lift to Heaven their “angel” eyes,
Then steal the earnings of the poor. I do not like such soulless prayers—
If wrong, I hope to be forgiven;
No angel's wing them upward bears,
They're lost a million miles from Heaven! Golden Promises for Believing Hearts.
“ONLY believe,” and not only the gates of the celestial city open to receive us, but even here we shall rest in the shadow of a great love. But dangers stand thick on every hand suggests Faint-heart; how can we help being anxious? Only believe. “The Lord is a shield to them that put their trust in Him.” Silver-tongued temptation may assail us. “He is able to succor them that are tempted.” What if poverty be our lot? “The Lord knoweth the poor.” What if riches are our portion, and we are encumbered with many cares? “Give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven.” We may be homeless. Our Lord “had not where to lay his head.” Friendless. “There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Afflicted. “He bindeth up the broken-hearted.” Unjustly accused. “The Almighty shall be thy defense.” The night cometh. “He that keepeth thee will not slumber.” Accidents may befall thee. “The Lord will preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” Pain and sickness. “The Lord will make all thy bed in sickness.” The infirmities of age. “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.” There are heavy burdens to be borne, perchance incessant daily toil. “There remaineth a rest.” Wearisome nights may be appointed to us. “He giveth songs in the night.” Death will surely come. It knocketh alike at the lordly palace and the lowly cottage. “It is well with the righteous.” “Death is swallowed up in victory.” To the believer every providence is but another stroke of the chisel upon the marble rock, shaping it for its position in the heavenly temple.—American Messenger. Self-Sacrifice.
By Jos. Clarke
In the daily history of our race much that is beautiful and noble is continually taking place, which, if written down, would keep many pens and presses constantly employed. Low as we have fallen, as a race, there is yet something left of the original excellence and virtue of our first parents. Men in their efforts to assist one another often bring themselves into strait places, and without a word of complaint they risk life itself, and fortune, when it is called for, in saving a fellow-man from misfortune or peril. This principle is of itself noble and divine, and is admired of God, angels, and men. When it is sanctified and strengthened by the Spirit of God, it elevates the human to the divine nature to such an extent as to bring the possessor into a very close relationship to the inhabitants of Heaven, and to the Saviour, who laid down his wealth and his life for man. Soldiers sometimes put themselves in the most dangerous positions to save a fellow soldier; and the same is true of sea-faring men. They will do and dare anything to save life; and sometimes the most valued men have lost their lives to obtain even the body of a fallen comrade on the battle field. A very striking case of regard for the life of a fellow-man, even an enemy, was recently related by a brother in our meeting. During the late rebellion, a wounded rebel lay in agony and blood, groaning with pain, and crying most piteously for aid. He lay midway between the two lines of battle, and it seemed like instant death for any one to venture out to assist him. His rebel comrades dared not venture amid shot and shell to rescue their wounded fellow soldier; but the Union soldiers could not hear his cries unmoved; so two brave men crawled upon the ground to the wounded man within ten rods of the rebel line, and dragged him to a safe place in the Union army. By the good providence of God, they escaped unhurt, and the rescued man recovered and joined the ranks of the Union army. The circumstance, remarked our brother, shows that by kindness we may win even our enemies to the side of truth. We should show kindness not only to our brethren, but to all men with whom we may be associated in life, even our enemies, and thus souls may be saved. Many know just how to accumulate wealth for self, but have never learned to pay out for the public good. If a soldier will risk his life for another life, how much more should Christ’s soldiers risk means, and time, and talent, in the grand and important enterprise of saving souls! JOS. CLARKE. Judging Piety Beyond Loud Public Zeal
Do not measure the piety of a man by the strength of his lungs. The One Great Cause.
By James White
WE SHOULD ALL LIFT TOGETHER.
It is a common maxim that in unity there is strength. And in no book is this sentiment more strongly expressed than in the Book of God. Thorough organization, order, and unity, strongly mark the movements of the people of God in the Jewish age. And there is not one word in all the New Testament to show that Christ changed the order of things in this respect. Our Lord prayed that his people might be one, as he was one with his Father. And Paul exhorts the church by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all “speak the same thing,” and be “perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment.” And there has been no time since the introduction of sin and disorder into our world when union of effort in the cause of God, on the part of the Lord’s people, was more necessary than at the present time. In fact, it must be evident to the candid reader that at the time of the general apostasy, confusion, and perils of the last days, union of effort becomes a duty in a stronger sense than at any previous time. The cause in which Seventh-day Adventists are engaged, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in America, or in Europe, is the one great cause. The time has come for united, liberal and energetic action. Eld. Andrews must have a press at his command in Europe, and help to make it efficient. Our school at Battle Creek is worthy of the patronage and support of all our people. The several committees of our State Conferences should encourage those young men to attend school who should give themselves to the work of the ministry. Both young men and young women should be studying those languages necessary to make them helpers in the work among the people of different languages. It is true that the times are hard, which makes greater economy necessary. But with an interest in the cause proportionate to the importance of this time, almost any obstacle can be overcome. Almost any sacrifice can be cheerfully made by those who are imbued with the spirit of the last message. Ample provisions should be made at Battle Creek for those whose means are limited to board themselves. And earnest effort should be made to induce promising young men to prepare for the ministry. Those who have not paid their pledges to our school should redeem them as soon as possible; and those who have not taken stock in the school, who are able to do so, should come up to the help of the Lord in this duty. Eld. Canright, in a recent number of the REVIEW, made a statement of the work to be done among the churches in Michigan. We trust that he and other live ministers will not overlook the importance of our school. Here is also work for the Presidents of the several Tract and Missionary Societies, to collect pledges, and obtain new stock for our College. The Pacific press must be sustained very much by eastern brethren until the patronage upon the Pacific Coast shall be sufficient to sustain it. The Tract and Missionary work must be prosecuted with greater earnestness than ever before. If money is scarce, labor is the more plenty. It is missionary work that is wanted from house to house, to hunt up and labor with those who should receive our paper. The REVIEW is our church paper, and as such it should go into every believing family. The SIGNS OF THE TIMES is our pioneer paper, adapted to the condition of the people who have yet to learn our faith. Let it be circulated in all the States. Let it go to other nations wherever the English language is read. Do our people wish to send a paper to their friends in America or elsewhere in the world, adapted to their condition and wants, which will set before them the reasons of our faith in the least objectionable manner possible? We say to them, By the grace of God, our paper shall be such a paper. We also urgently call the attention of the Tract and Missionary workers to the SIGNS OF THE TIMES as worthy of their most vigilant efforts to give it a wide circulation. There is money in the missionary treasury at Battle Creek, which has been waiting there for five years to be called out to give the publishing work a good start in Europe. When more is needed, a thousand ready hands will cheerfully cast in more. And the Guiding Hand has seemed to be with the effort to establish the press in California. In the most beautiful and healthful city in the State, we have a commodious building nearly paid for, good printing material, excellent presses, and a car-load of paper upon which we do not owe one dollar. And we are within forty minutes’ ride of the great city of San Francisco, where supplies of printers’ material and stock can be obtained on short notice. Paper is cheap, and freights on it are low. And postage on the SIGNS OF THE TIMES is only two dollars per 100 pounds’ weight. We cannot expect a more favorable time to send out the light than now, nor a more favorable point from which to let it shine out than Oakland, California. We have no extremes of cold and heat here. We have neither snows and ice of winter, nor prostrating heat of summer, to hinder the work of publishing here. And we feel confident that the kind hand of Providence has placed us here, under the most favorable circumstances, to let our light shine out to the world through the columns of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. And we ask of our people, both from individuals, and from the Tract and Missionary Societies, an extensive circulation. We have no doubt that it would please God that 20,000 copies of the SIGNS should go out from the California press each week. We appeal to our friends everywhere to help us to let our light shine out to the world. Both Mrs. W. and the writer feel that we have an especial work to do at the present time. We have a testimony of truth from the word of God to bear to the world through the press, and we ask our people to help with their means, and with their efforts to extend the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. Sketches of the life, and experience, and labors of Mrs. W. will be given in the SIGNS by the writer, beginning about the first of December. That will be the best time for new subscribers to commence. There are so few full-paying subscribers for the SIGNS that it is absolutely necessary to put the price at $3.00 a year, in order to be able to send it out, postage paid, to many thousands at half price. Those who are poor can have our papers free. And those who are not poor should be willing to pay an extra dollar, and cheerfully take another paper, to help us in our work just now. Extra papers are excellent to hand to one’s neighbors and friends. In carrying forward that which the cause demands on the Pacific Coast in the year 1875, the writer expends of his own means the sum of $2,500. We do not ask for a corresponding sacrifice on the part of all who are able to give of their means, but we do appeal to all to act a liberal part. J. W. The Signs of our Time.
By James White
THESE are fast times. More history is now made in one year than was made in the days of our grandfathers in ten. The world is moving rapidly. And there is a general expectation that some great event is at hand. Some still persist that we are soon to enter upon the golden age, and that the dawnings of the temporal millennium are even discernible; and they console themselves with the delusive hope that this is the next great event. But the plainest facts, both of prophecy, and in the history of the church, especially for the last thirty years, are against the supposition that the world will soon be converted. Apostasy, infidelity, and crime, mark the course of the nominal churches for the last thirty years, as they have rapidly glided down to, and onward with, the world in the broad way to ruin. That which constitutes a sign of the times, in a scriptural sense, must be a matter of prophecy. The prophetic pencil gives a sketch of what shall take place in the political and religious world near the end. Time shows the fulfillment. The student of prophecy compares the prophetic sketch with the facts of the history of our time, and, finding a perfect agreement, he knows that the end is nigh. The apostle Paul has given a perfect photograph of our time in these words:—“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away.” 2 Tim. 3:1-5. Perils in matters of religion and morals are upon us. The last days have come. The present condition of the religious world constitutes a sign of the end. And the moral stupor and blindness on the part of the nominal churches as to the real condition of things is alarming. The mass of professors of the Christian faith are rapidly passing to the fatal point—“When they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them”—and they seem wholly unconscious of the fact. The slumbering churches who are dreaming of peace and safety and future glory for the church in this mortal state are saying in the language of the prophet, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Micah 4:2, 3. This is a prophecy of the popular sentiment of the church in the last days. Please turn and read Micah 4:1-5, and note the fact that this is just what the popular churches are saying, and that, too, at the very time when the nations are making the grandest preparations for war the world ever knew, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord by the prophet Joel: “Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.” Joel 3:9-12. These two prophecies, by two of the prophets of God, Micah and Joel, both point to the same time, and yet they are directly opposite. One speaks of peace, and the other, of war. But the word of God is not yea and nay, by any means. The attentive reader will see that one is a prophecy of what men would say in the last days, while the other is what God says would be just before the last great day of battle. Modern spiritualism, which had its birth only twenty-seven years since in the little village of Hydesville, N. Y., already embraces its millions, and boasts of its giant strength. Its bold apostles laugh at the sober wisdom of the great of past time, and the credulity of the good who have suffered for Christ; and very knowingly talk of progress. Progress, indeed! But which way? It will amount to quite a sum in the end whether, with the blessed Bible in our hands, and the Spirit of God upon our hearts, we progress toward Heaven, or whether we, under the influence of the spirits of darkness, put the Bible away from us, and banish God, Christ, the Judgment, and the reward of the pure and the good from our thoughts, and make rapid progress toward perdition. This ism, deceptive in its character, flattering in its promises and hopes, terrible in its tendencies, and powerful upon the minds of those who fully yield to it, is fearfully described upon the Sacred Page, as constituting a sign of the near approach of the day of God. The spirits of spiritualism are described in Rev. 16:14, 15, as the “spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” The coming of the Son of God and the Judgment of the great day constitute the great events of the near future. And the world-wide manifestations of demons whose visitations are in the names of the dead, are among the most prominent signs of our time. That the second coming of Christ is to immediately follow the deceptive power of spirit manifestations is plainly affirmed by the inspired Paul. When speaking of Christ and of his coming, he says: “Even Him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thess. 2:7-12. The mass of spiritists have cast aside the Bible, and, feeling free from the restraint of the word of God, they have fast fallen into moral corruptions. But there are a few who may be called Christian spiritists, who are restrained for the present by the Christianity of the Sacred Scriptures. These are exceptions, while the majority are the rule. The word of God speaks in unrestricted terms of the rule. After Paul in his epistle to Timothy gives a photograph of our times, in his description of those who have a form of godliness in the last days, in which he speaks in general terms of eighteen distinct sins, he speaks more definitely of those who fall under the power of this most terrible ism in these words: “For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth; men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further; for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.” 2 Tim. 3:6-9. Their day is coming. Their manifestations were to be just before, and a sign of, the end. Their career is short. The end will come when they shall proceed no further. The apostle Jude distinctly describes this corrupt state of things just prior to the coming of Christ and the Judgment of the great day, when the Lord shall punish this blaspheming people for their ungodly speeches and deeds: “But these speak evil of those things which they know not; but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.” “These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear; clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.” “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.” And the apostle Peter, looking forward to the moral corruptions of our times, faithfully describes the spirit and conduct of the mass of modern spiritists in these burning words: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you; whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls; a heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children.” “These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.” “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” 2 Pet. 2:1-3, 14, 17-22. These closing words of the apostle deserve especial notice. They speak of the most terrible apostasy of which men have been guilty. They had once escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord; but like the filthy dog, and the swine, they accept, in turning from the Christianity of the Bible to149 the corruptions of spiritism, that which they cast off, and from which they were washed when they first gave themselves to the Lord. And to what immeasurable depths some of these have sunken below common sinners! “It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness.” J. W.