Earlier text: God's WillThe Industrial Conflict in the Light of Revelation.
By George W. Rine
MAMMONISM IN THE LAST DAYS.
THE exact root-meaning of the word mammon has never been positively determined. But many scholars maintain that it was the name of a Syrian god which the people worshiped when they were desirous of riches. Whatever its original meaning may have been, Christ, during His ministry on earth, used the term as the name of a real idol, namely, the apotheosis of money. With an emphasis and iteration born of deep anxiety, our Lord warned men against the dangers of mammon-worship. He characterized such worship as absolutely opposed to the worship of God. Observe the stern directness with which He declares that "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye can not serve God and mammon." Matt. 6:24. On another occasion, in His teaching, Jesus called devotion to money not simply mammon, but unrighteous mammon. Luke 16:11. The use of money is involved in so much unrighteousness, so much money is obtained by iniquitous methods, that, in a sense, the very metal is tainted. Christ would have every soul realize that all the aspirations and labors of men have, consciously or unconsciously, one of two objects: devotion to God or devotion to mammon—the worship of the Creator or the worship of the creature. In the case of most men the attempt is made to devote themselves to both the service of God and to the amassing of wealth. Jesus most emphatically declares this to be impossible. The one is diametrically opposed to the other. The worship of mammon—material things—is our unrighteousness; the worship of God is our righteousness. Hence, in the very nature of things, one can not devote himself to money-getting and to the service of God at the same time. One can not be a Christian and idolize riches. A human life consumed in the laying up of material treasures is branded by our Lord as wholly sinful. In truth, the Master goes so far as to actually command men not to lay up material wealth. Let us hear Him: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also." How rigorously our Lord here interdicts the laying up of wealth as an aim or purpose in life! His mandate is absolutely unqualified. It is startlingly stern and direct. He knew how preternaturally prone the human heart is to entwine its affections about the treasures of sense and time. To secure houses and lands, to become merchant princes and captains of industry, was the aim and ambition of most men nineteen centuries ago as it is to-day. Such as succeeded were honored and applauded; such as failed were ignored and socially ostracized. See Luke 14:12. This worldly spirit pervaded the synagog as it does the modern church. To Jesus all this was abhorrent. He set His face against it. His followers must not live that way. He gives us to understand that he who lives for riches must, simply must, perish spiritually. "Where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also." Having one's treasures on earth, one's heart will inevitably be there also, and grow carnal and earthly. Having one's treasures in heaven, one's interests, affections, and hopes are there likewise. Having our hearts set on the imperishable treasures of heaven, we grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. Jesus did not ignore the fact that food, raiment, houses, and other creature comforts are indispensable. To provide for them is not only right and proper, but a moral duty. It is when we are not content with enough, and become greedy for superfluous wealth, that our efforts to accumulate become sinful. Since in most communities men are honored according to the measure of their wealth, the temptation to make money-getting the supreme aim in life is almost irresistible. To do this is to effectually bar the soul against spiritual influences. That this is true is shown by the following statement in the parable of the sower: "The deceitfulness of riches chokes the word, and it becometh unfruitful." Matt. 13:22. Note further: "Verily I say unto you, It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." The same awful truth is illustrated by the parable of the rich man who tore down his barns and built larger ones, and stored them with his goods. The man is then represented as saying: "I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?" And, having told the story, Jesus solemnly adds: "So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." This poor fool lost his soul, lost eternal life, lost the measureless and imperishable riches of God, because of his devotion to his goods, his lands, and his building enterprises. Is there any wonder that the Master added this ringing caution: "Take heed, and keep yourselves from all covetousness." And then, through His servant Paul, He positively affirms that all covetousness "is idolatry." This being true, can we wonder at the absolute impossibility of serving God AND mammon? There is no other sin that Jesus so sharply and insistently places in direct and utter opposition to the worship of God. And does not both past and current history justify Him in the enforcement of this truth with such relentless emphasis? Have there not always been, and are there not now, a thousand times as many devotees at the shrine of mammon as at the altar of God? Do we not find our own hearts drawn out to the treasures of this world, with well-nigh irresistible spontaneity? Only the boundless power of God can save any of us from this almost universal species of idolatry. Mammonism in the Time of the First Advent.
Notwithstanding all the advantages of soil, climate, location, and commerce, which Palestine enjoyed at the time of our Lord's earthly ministry, the masses of the people were wretchedly poor. We read of debtors going to prison, of creditors discounting bills, and of a woman whose whole living was only two mites. In one of the Master's parables, every one except the king is bankrupt; the steward is in debt to the king, the servant to the steward. The question of what to eat and to wear created much anxiety. This was true not only of those who dwelt amid the desolate crags of southern Judea or among the wind-swept hills of Perea, but also of those in prosperous Galilee. Judging from the Gospel narratives, the rich were cold, selfish, proud, hard, pitiless. They dressed in purple, and fared sumptuously every day, refusing to give even the crumbs from their groaning tables to the beggars that lay at the gate. By the roadside and at the door of the temple sat blind and lame people, begging for alms. Philo, a writer of that day, complains bitterly of the indifference of the wealthy to the poor. He indignantly declares that the rich were appropriating the "whole of nature's liberality themselves and giving no share of their wealth to any one." In courts of law a poor man's case was given no attention. We remember that Jesus himself tells us of a widow whom the judge shamefully neglected, obviously because she had no bribe to offer, until her importunity won where the righteousness of her cause was impotent. The very fact that a man was poor branded him in the eyes of the money-changers as a sinner. To these brutal devotees of the money tables, poverty was the visible evidence of the frown of God. To the magnates of our day, indigence is the outward mark of incapacity. Poverty spells impotence. "Rabbi," asked one of the disciples, "who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?" Poverty, blindness, disease, or accidents, it was thought, were all the fruits of sin. The wealthy Pharisees had failed to learn the lesson of Job's suffering. Eliphaz asks Job the contemptuous question: "Whoever perisheth, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off? According as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow trouble, reap the same." His friends Bildad and Zophar said virtually the same; but God declared that their reasonings were wrong. But the wealthy of Jesus' day had not grasped this truth, and so the poor had to bear in addition to the distress occasioned by their oppression and want, the imputation and suspicion of guilt. Wealth, then, as it is to-day, was congested, and controlled by a few. There was abundance, but it was not accessible to the common people. The pauperized masses dwelt in the shadow of the millionaire classes. On the one hand was luxury and revelry; on the other, destitution and wretchedness. Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness contrasted strangely with despair, hunger, and corroding anxiousness. The rich despised and neglected the poor; the poor feared and hated the rich. It has already been shown that the same conditions, only in a manifoldly greater degree, obtain in our day. As it was in the days of the first advent of the Redeemer, so it is to-day, when His second advent is so imminent. I need not repeat that this is essentially a money-loving age. The greatest peril of our day, as it was in the days of Jesus, is the insatiable lust for gold. On the authority of our common Lord, I repeat, that there is nothing6 more perilous than to become absorbed with the idea of getting rich. You recall the fact that there were only a very few rich men whom Jesus could reach, whom He could save, while here on earth. We can count them on our fingers. There were Nicodemus, Zacchæus, and Joseph of Arimathæa. But the common people, the poor, heard Him gladly. The rich were infatuated with their possessions. Covetousness "is idolatry." They would serve mammon, and hence could not serve God. Trusting in their gold, their birth, their authority as the evidence of their acceptance with God, they rejected their Messiah, their Saviour. Of course there was no other name that could save them. Their "house was left unto them desolate," and they perished miserably by the Roman sword. O, it is not safe to surrender one's self to the bewitching power of gold! "They that are minded to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare, and many foolish and hurtful lusts. . . . For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil; which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things." Trusting in Money Rather Than in God.
Once, when the Son of God walked among men, there came running to Him a rich young man, who knelt down and eagerly asked, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Our Lord first told him that it was necessary to keep the commandments, and named some of them. The young man protested that he had kept them from his youth up, and then inquired, "What lack I yet?" Jesus answered, "One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me." The young man, however, proved to be an unwitting idolator. He was wedded to his money. His heart was with his treasures. He was self-deceived in maintaining that he had kept the commandments. He was systematically trampling underfoot the very first commandment. Before God and above God he placed wealth. His actions attested his supreme devotion to gold; for it is written, he "went away grieved; for he had great possessions." The Lord then spoke to His disciples of how hard it was for rich men to enter the kingdom of heaven. The disciples being astonished at this, their Master explained by saying: "Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God!" Mark 10: 17-24. That small word "trust" is the cue, the very principle involved. It is not the having of riches that makes one an idolator, but the trusting in them. We can not trust in gold and in God at the same time; for either we will love the one, and hate the other; or we will hold to the one, and despise the other. Whatever is supreme in our affections is, in spite of ourselves, our god. O, how many of us feel that we should be safe if we were only rich! How many of us would make riches our defense, our refuge, if we could! To most of us, lands and houses and bank deposits are, in times of stress and trouble, more than the changeless promises of God. Such feeling, such convictions, show unmistakably that we are not willing to commit our keeping, our destiny, to God. They show that we feel safer surrounded by stocks and bonds than by the exceeding great and precious promises of God. How often we hear it repeated that this is an age of unrest, of misgivings, of fear and anxious forebodings. It is because we are afraid to trust in the keeping and saving power of God. Either our love of money or our mad passion for acquiring it separates us from Him who pleads that we should come unto Him that He may give us rest, even rest unto our souls. We are afraid to seek first the kingdom of God, and to trust Him to supply all temporal needs. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee; because he trusteth in Thee." Isa. 26: 3. We read a verse like this and say, "How beautiful! how precious is this promise!" But by our actions we declare, "I don't believe it; it isn't true." A Corroding Sin of To-day.
"In the last days . . . men shall be lovers of pleasure," "lovers of money." 2 Tim. 3: 1-4. This is the cardinal sin of to-day, the chief menace to the soul. It is the sin that lies nearest the root of the universal unrest and social disorder of our time. It is destroying faith in man, and when that is lost, faith in God is impossible. Is there any wonder that Jesus asked the sorrowful question, "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" It was the strongest possible way of declaring that there would be but little faith among men at His second coming. The prevalence of mammonism effectually precludes faith in God. This is the fatal mistake that so many of the rich are making in these last days. They make gold their defense, their refuge. Divine Wisdom foresaw that they would do so. In the second chapter of Isaiah, the prophet deals with events that are to take place at the time when the Lord is about to arise to "shake terribly the earth." See verses 5 to 22. In verse 7 the prophet exclaims, "And their land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasure." However, the supremely sad fact regarding those who possess these "treasures" is that the final destruction of so many of them will be compassed by their devotion to their money. This awful fact is distinctly affirmed in verses 20 and 21. Thus: "In that day men shall cast away their idols of silver, and their idols of gold, which have been made for them to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the caverns of the rocks, and into the clefts of the rugged rocks, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake mightily the earth." 'Drown Men in Destruction and Perdition.'
In Ezekiel 7, verse 19, the Holy Spirit repeats essentially the same awful incident: "They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an unclean thing; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of Jehovah; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels; because it [money] hath been the stumbling-block of their iniquity." Is it not clear from the foregoing that these possessors of silver and gold trusted that their treasures would "be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of Jehovah"? But on the contrary their very riches wrought their irretrievable destruction. Hence, like Judas, when they see how covetousness, how the love of money, has barred them from the attainment of eternal life, they hurl their gold and silver from them in utter agony of despair. Again: in Zephaniah 1: 14, the prophet says: "The great day of Jehovah is near, it is near and hasteth greatly; . . . the mighty man crieth there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wastiness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess." And then, in the 18th verse, he declares respecting these "mighty men:" "Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy; for He will make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land." The citation given above, from Ezekiel, shows that it was devotion to silver and gold that proved the undoing of the souls there referred to. For it (gold) was "the stumbling-block of their iniquity." It obtruded itself between them and God, as was the case with the rich young man who came running to Jesus. They served mammon, and so could not serve God. In the supreme crisis their idol failed them; yea, not only failed them, but was itself the "stumbling-block," the instrument of their everlasting undoing. Doubtless it is hard for a rich man to surrender himself, with his riches, to God. But it is not impossible. Rich men have surrendered, and believed unto eternal life. There is nothing impossible with God. He is no respecter of persons. He loves all men equally. Of Zacchæus it was said that he was very rich. Yet so completely did Jesus save him that he declared his purpose of devoting one-half of his wealth to the relief of the poor. As a publican, Zacchæus had been a grasping, conscienceless tax-gatherer. He had defrauded many. Yet so thoroughly was covetousness banished from his heart, that he determined to make fourfold restitution to all whom he had defrauded. Our Lord died for rich and poor alike. He has saved not a few men of wealth, and doubtless He will save many more. I have a conviction that rich people deserve more sympathy, more Christian kindness, than they commonly receive. They have more to forsake, more to give up, than we poorer ones. But to them, as well as to us, the promise is, "My grace is sufficient for you." GOD LOVES YOU.
By Rev. John T. Wilds
"Weary, tired, gloomy, glad, or cheerful, look up and smile. God is love. God loves you. Think over these things with something more than thought," one told me. God is nearer to our souls than our own bodies. "Jehovah thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty One who will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love; He will joy over thee with singing." Zeph. 3:17. A root set in the finest soil, in the best climate, and blessed with all that sun and air and rain can do for it, is not in so sure a way of growth to perfection as every man may be whose spirit aspires after all that which God is ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the sun meets not the springing bud that stretches toward him with half that certainty as God, the source of all good, communicates Himself to the soul that longs to partake of Him. Be quiet; look up; smile back to God His love-smile. We are all of us the offspring of God, more nearly related to God than to one another, for in Him we live and move and have our being.—Rev. John T. Wilds. The Wheels That Do Not Creak
"WHEN you fret and fume at the petty ills of life, remember that the wheels which go round without creaking last the longest." "Our deepest sorrows affect the temper less hurtfully than do our minor disappointments." THE CHURCH OF GOD. NO. 5.
NOT long after the days of Pentecost did the called-out congregations of God retain their primitive faith and purity. In his first letter to the brethren in Thessalonica, the apostle gives fervent thanks to God as he remembers their "work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ," and this not as estimated by men, but "in the sight of God and our Father." 1 Thess. 1:3. The secret of this faithfulness is revealed in the next chapter, "because, when ye received the Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." In that Word received by faith was the potency of its Author, Jesus Christ. It was to this same Word of God that the apostle commended the elders of Ephesus: "And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified." Acts 20:32. By the Word were the members of the church called out; by the Word were they cleansed and sanctified, by the sincere milk or strong meat of the Word are they fed and do they grow; and by the same Word are they kept. What wonder, then, that the dying charge of the old apostle to Timothy, and through him to all Christian ministers was: "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts they shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables." 2 Tim. 4:1-4. But even to those apostolic congregations came the apostasy. After admonishing the elders of Ephesus to "feed the flock of God," Paul declared: "I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them." Acts 20:29, 30. Another apostle, writing years after, bears the sad message to the church at Ephesus, that she had left her "first love," and had fallen from her high estate. Rev. 2:4, 5. Paul asks the Galatians who had bewitched them, and declares that through the false teachers they were turning "back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again. Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you." Gal. 4:9-11. In other words they were turning back through vain philosophy to their former worship of "them that by nature are no gods" (verse 8), and therefore they began to practise the "days" and "times" of their heathen ancestors. To the Thessalonicans, whose faith the apostle so highly commended in his first letter, he declares that error had crept in among them, and that they were to beware of that "mystery of iniquity" which was already at work in the congregations of God. 2 Thess. 2:1-7. James intimates that hearts had been blinded by riches, and that strife for higher place had entered among the believers. John, in his first epistle, writing near the close of the first century, declares that the teaching of false spirits and antichrists was already abroad. And Peter in his second epistle warns of the false teachers who would soon come in among the children of God. And the apostasy came. Half-converted heathen philosophers crept into the church. The Word of God was interpreted after the subtle disquisitions and sophistries of these teachers, until the Gospel had become well-nigh buried under a heap of heathen superstitions and traditions. Then creed power came in to limit the Word, and bind in dead forms the living truth. The teachings of noted doctors were crystallized into a system. Men endeavored to mark out the teaching of the apostles. Different schools had different conceptions, and the war of creeds raged for centuries. Not having the Word of God to support the creed, their devotees turned to the state and sought the support of the civil power to suppress "heresy" and to promote the "truth." Hence came the Dark Ages and all its horrible persecutions. For often the "whitest of the saints of God" were prosecuted and persecuted as heretics, and the worst of error was held by the civil law to be truth. Every species of iniquity was sanctioned by an apostate church, and the true congregation of God was hidden and hunted, according to the prophetic word, in "the wilderness" (Rev. 12:6, 14), while her rival, the apostate church, was riding in gory triumph in the seat of civil power, dominating thrones and dominions, satiated with fornication, and drunken with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus (Rev. 17:3-8). The prophecy clearly portrays both congregations, both churches, both synagogs. Its unerring finger points to no body of men, triumphant over all wrong, clothed in sacerdotal robes, demanding and receiving homage from saint and sinner alike, as the true church. Her type is a woman fleeing, wandering, bereft of children, hunted and persecuted. Consonant with the Word these are the evidences of her divine relationship. Blinded, weakened, ignorant of God's law as was Israel when Josiah came to the throne, trampling in her ignorance God's broken law beneath her feet, scattered throughout Babylon, torn and peeled, the called-out one, like her Lord, has had no beauty that the world desired. But when the world had become so burdened with apostasy and wickedness, when God could endure apostasy no longer, when the world itself could bear it no longer, from different directions in the enshrouding darkness voices were heard proclaiming anew the Word of God. John of Wyclif, Huss of Bohemia, Jerome of Prague, were among the earliest. Luther the monk, Zvingle the soldier, Tyndale the scholar, were among the stalwarts which followed. These were God's heralds and soldiers of the Great Reformation. In the Roman Church faith had come to mean the body of doctrine, salvation was by works, tradition was superior to the Bible, man had usurped the place of God. The Reformation brought in a new, yet eternal, principle. The Word of God was exalted. Faith became a living, personal thing, a channel of life between the soul and God. Union with the civil power was repudiated, and Christ and His Word were exalted. The Reformation of the XVI. Century was the breaking of the long night of the Dark Ages. What a flood of light swept over the world! How education and progress revived! What mighty strides were made toward liberty in government! Directly and indirectly the Reformation aroused the world. But the light again grew dim. [Of the last Reformation, our next.] A MISAPPREHENSION OF SCRIPTURE.
By Editor
A PROMINENT religious journal, the Christian Herald, in an editorial on "The Game of War in the Far East," closes an otherwise timely paragraph with an allusion to a scripture which is being continually misused to-day. We notice it only because so many have come to believe that the scripture in question teaches what it does not teach. The paragraph reads:— The world makes its boast of the advance of civilization; but the boast is ill-timed when hosts of men, armed with the deadliest weapons that can be made, confront one another on sea and land, intent on battle, and with murder in their hearts. Lust of territory and power still holds its throne in the breasts of potentates and statesmen, and produces its awful results in death and desolated homes. Not for such a condition did Christ come to teach men that God was their Father and they were brethren. After nineteen centuries the lesson has not been learned, and we fear will not be learned until He comes, whose right it is to reign, who shall judge among the nations, and at whose word they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and not learn war any more. It would be interesting to know where the authority is to be found for the statement that there would come a time when the Redeemer would come and command the nations to "beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and not learn war any more," and they would obey Him. It is not in the Bible—it is not in the text there indirectly quoted, tho preachers and editors have been teaching it for years. A reading of the context will show the most casual student that the language there used is a prophecy of what the people will be saying and teaching. The context plainly states that it is; but men have been trying to put that language into the mouth of the Lord. The text in question is found in Isa. 2:2-5, also in Micah 4:1-5. It states that at a certain time the people will be saying that the Lord is going to judge among the nations; that the people will be saying that men shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, that the people will be saying that the nations will learn war no more. But the Lord is not saying that, and will not say it; for it will not be true. As long as "nations" exist there will be jealousies, bickerings, and wars; and it matters not how much talk there may be about converting implements of war into implements of peaceful pursuits, the "nations" will not disarm, and the hearts of men will not be changed save by the converting influence of the Spirit of God. In no place in the Word of God is it stated that God will command the nations to learn war no more. He has set before the people of this world during all these years the better way, and has left it with them to choose. Nevertheless, there is coming a time when wars shall cease. It will be when sin has been wiped out of this world. At that time the "nations" will be broken in pieces as a potter's vessel. The only way that He will rule over the "nations," as such, will be with "a rod of iron." Ps. 2:8, 9. That means punishment, and that punishment is followed by the setting up of His everlasting kingdom—one kingdom, not "nations;" one Ruler, not many. That is the stone that was "cut out of the mountain without hands" (See Dan. 2:44, 45; Ps. 110:4-6), which is to displace all the "nations," and fill the whole earth, and continue throughout all eternity. Over against what the people will be saying in these times, the Lord, through the prophet Joel, tells us what the true condition of these times will be. Read it in Joel 3:9-17. War, strife, persecution, and desolation are the portion of this old earth till sin and sinners are removed in the fires of judgment. NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S ATTEMPT TO PERPETUATE BABYLON.
"NEBUCHADNEZZAR the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits; he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon." Dan. 3:1. The reader will remember that the image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (chapter 2), had only the head of gold, and the Lord's interpreter, Daniel, had told him that this head of gold stood for the kingdom of Babylon. The other parts of the image—of silver, brass, iron, and iron mixed with clay—signified successive kingdoms that should come after Babylon's demise. While Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to accept the interpretation because he had agreed to do so if the dream were told to him correctly, he evidently thought that, after all, the prophecy might be headed off. While he praised the God of Daniel as "a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a Revealer of secrets," it remained a fact that he had physically overcome Daniel's people, and had taken the vessels from the house of their God and placed them in the house of his gods. When it came to physical power, appearances were still with Babylon. With the king, conceding the meaning of a dream did not mean that the import of the dream might not be thwarted. Nebuchadnezzar did not intend that his people8 should be allowed to conceive the idea that Babylon could be defeated or supplanted by any other power. So he proposed to set up a tangible, material image, representing the future history of the world (as the dream image did), but that it should be all gold, indicating the enduring, invincible character of Babylon. The image seen in his dream had been seen only by himself and Daniel—and that in vision; but he would set up one plainly visible to the people, and make it an object of worship. If an image of Babylon could be ingratiated into the hearts of the whole people as a god, religious fervor, combined with patriotism, would tend to permanently establish the kingdom. From a human standpoint, the scheme had at least the merit of shrewdness. "Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up." And when they had all responded to the call, they "stood before the image" and heard a further decree from the king. "An herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up; and whoso falleth not down and worshipeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace." Herein is the real spirit of all national religion, of all religious legislation; and the apostate Christian church—composed of the Papacy and its imitators—is well named Babylon in the prophetic revelation of conditions in later ages. See Rev. 17:5; 18:1-5, 21. But the command had a widespread effect on the vast multitude; for as soon as they heard the signal, down they went on their faces. But there was a small minority in that great convention that dissented. It was a very small minority, only three persons, perhaps a very small fraction of one per cent.; but they prevented unanimous assent to the addition of this new deity to the national religion. Of course this was very offensive to the dignified majority. In their minds it was both irreligious and unpatriotic. Their feelings were so wrought up that they spoke to the king about it. They said, "O king, live forever." Then they told him that certain Jews—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—whom he had set over the province of Babylon, had disobeyed his decree. They said, "These men, O king, have not regarded thee; they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." Then the spirit of selfish ambition, combined with the coercive spirit of national religion, aroused the anger of the king. "In his rage and fury" he commanded that the dissenters be brought before him. On their appearance in the presence of the king, he expressed great surprise that they had disregarded his decree, and proposed to give them one more opportunity. He said, "If ye . . . fall down and worship the image which I have made, well; but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace." Then he boastingly added, "Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" But the men who trusted in the God of heaven, the God whom Nebuchadnezzar, on a former occasion, had so highly extolled (ch. 2:47), were not to be frightened by the king's threat. They answered: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." Here was a direct refusal on the part of God's accepted servants to obey a state law, the effect of which would contravene the law of God. Next week we will note their vindication by the interposition of the Lord Himself. In these days when national reform by religious legislation is being so strenuously advocated, this lesson is worthy of earnest consideration.