“CHRISTIANITY without the supernatural Christ, is the sun without light or heat.”
HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION.
By Ellen G. White
BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
CHRIST saw that it was not possible for man to overcome in his own strength; therefore He came in person from the throne of glory, and bore the test that Adam failed to bear. In man’s behalf He resisted the temptations of the enemy, and made it possible for man, by faith in Him, to overcome in his own behalf. Satan knew that everything depended on the result of his effort to overcome Christ. He knew that if Christ bore the test that Adam failed of bearing, the plan of salvation would be carried out to its fulfilment, and his destruction would be certain. He saw that he must either conquer or be conquered. All the powers of the apostate were rallied against the Son of God. Christ was made the mark of every weapon of hell. Satan bent all his energies to the effort to cause Christ to swerve from his allegiance. From the desert to Calvary, the storm of the enemy’s wrath beat upon the Saviour; but the more mercilessly it fell, the more firmly did the Son of God cling to the hand of His Father, and press on in the blood-stained path. All the efforts of Satan to overcome Him only brought out in a purer light His spotless character.
In our own strength it is impossible for us to conquer in the conflict with sin. But Christ is acquainted with our necessities and our weakness. He came to this world as a man, and as a man lived a life of obedience. We shall never be called upon to suffer as He suffered; for upon Him were laid the sins of the whole world. That we might have eternal life, He endured reproach, mockery, insult, and a death of shame.
We need not expect to gain the victory over sin without enduring suffering, or to win the overcomer’s reward by feeble efforts. Think of how much it cost the Saviour, as in the wilderness He battled with temptation. For forty days He fasted and prayed. Weak and emaciated from hunger, worn and haggard with mental agony, “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.”
The Christian life is a life of constant conflict. It is a battle and a march. Every act of obedience, every deed of self-denial, every trial bravely endured, every temptation resisted, every victory gained, is a step forward in the march to eternal triumph.
There is hope for man. Christ says, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne.” But let us never forget that the efforts we make in our own strength are utterly worthless. Our strength is weakness; our judgment foolishness. Only in the name and strength of the Conqueror can we conquer. When we are pressed with temptation, when unchristlike desires clamor for the mastery, let us offer fervent, importunate prayer to the heavenly Father, in the name of Christ. This will bring divine aid. In the Redeemer’s name we may gain the victory.
As, seeing the sinfulness of sin, we fall helpless before the cross, asking forgiveness and strength, our prayer is heard and answered. Those who present their petitions to God in Christ’s name will never be turned away. The Lord says, “Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out.” “He will regard the prayer of the destitute.” Our help comes from Him who holds all things in His hands. The peace that He sends is the assurance of His love to us.
Nothing can be more helpless and yet more invincible than the soul that feels its nothingness, and relies wholly upon the merits of a crucified and risen Saviour. God would send every angel in heaven to the aid of the one who places his whole dependence on Christ, rather than allow him to be overcome.
If we accept Christ as our Guide, He will lead us safely along the narrow way. The road may be rough and thorny, and the ascent steep and dangerous; there may be pitfalls on the right hand and on the left. When weary and longing for rest, we may have to toil on; when faint, we may have to fight; but with Christ as our Guide, we shall not fail of reaching heaven. Christ Himself has trodden the rough path before us, smoothing it for our feet. The way is illuminated by Him who is the light of the world. As we follow in His footsteps, the path grows brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.
How They Became Convinced
[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.]
XXII.
I WAS reared in a minister’s home, father having preached for sixty years. All my people are Methodists. Mother dedicated me to the ministry the hour I was born. After a Christian experience of some years in young manhood, I drifted into infidelity. Twenty-five years ago I got hold of “Daniel and the Revelation,” by Uriah Smith and the wonderful fulfilment of prophecy cured me of my unbelief. In the same work I found the Sabbath question presented. The following texts contained the convincing argument on the question: Gen. 1:1; Isa. 45:18; Gen. 1:26; Heb. 1:3; John 1:3, 10; Heb. 1:1-3; Eph. 3:9; John 17:5; Gen. 2:7; Ps. 115:16; Eccl. 1:4.
In these texts I learned that Christ was associated with the Father in creation, and that He, Christ, was the maker of all things. Mark 2:27. Gen. 2:1-3 showed me the steps taken and materials used to make the holy day. Exodus 16 forever settled the question as to whether the Sabbath was “the seventh part of time,” or a definite day. I found the universal command in Ex. 20:8-11, and the Sabbath a test upon Israel in Jer. 17:24-27. 2 Chron. 36:17-21; Nehemiah 13; the prophecy of Jer. 31:31; Ps. 40:6-8; Gal. 3:29, and Matt. 5:17, convinced me that Christ came to live in harmony with, and to do the Father’s will (Matt. 7:21). The covenant made (Matt. 26:26), ratified (Gal. 3:15; Heb. 9:16, 17), to my mind left no place for a change this side the death of the Testator. The Sabbath recognized in prophecy (Matt. 24:20), and enjoyed by the seer of Patmos (Rev. 1:10), seemed the only day that had any claim to my devotions. The declarations of Christ (John 4:34; 5:19; 9:4; 17:4; and 19:30) declare a finished work and an unrepealed law, which in the ark was underneath the mercy seat from which was dispensed mercy above law to the violators thereof. With this view of the earthly and a glimpse of the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 8 and 9, also Rev. 11:19), and the declarations of the apostles (Rom. 7:7; 3:31; 7:12; and James 2:10-12), there came the settled conviction that the moral law is the foundation of God’s moral government, and as stable as Deity Himself. I confessed my sins in March, 1881, and in April went to a church some ten miles away, where Elder A. M. Mann buried me with Christ,—from which burial (by the grace of God) I was resurrected to a new life. I attended the Ohio camp-meeting in August, and in September began to preach the precious message the Lord had given me, and from that day until this my confidence has never wavered, but my faith is stronger and hopes brighter than when I first believed. D. E. LINDSEY.
Clyde, Ohio.
Songs of Joy and Praise
By Dr. Wilson
THE Bible is a book of joy and song, and every page bears some words of praise and encouragement. While Paul was a great theologian, he was also a singer, and his songs are notable for the joy and faith they inspire. We all know of the “Sweet singer of Israel,” and have been moved to rapture by his songs of joy and praise.—Dr. Wilson.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY.
God is one, His life is one, but the manifestations of that life are many. Galaxies of suns shine and roll in the azure vault of heaven by the power of the same life that causes the little violets and forget-me-nots to bloom and exhale their perfume on the ambient air.
This is a characteristic of the work of God in His church, and with and through His church for others. While all believe the same Word, hope in the same Gospel, are baptized into the same Spirit; while “all speak the same thing” and “are perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment,” as regards God’s blessed truth, and the one purpose of His work, yet is there difference in their work. All have not the same model for the manifestation of the life in them. There are reasons for this: (1) Character is not formed by mechanically following some particular pattern of lines and rules, of angles and curves, of squares and circles; (2) The work of God would be hampered, crippled, narrowed, by all following the same model. Let us study these thoughts further:—
1. Character is not formed by practising formal rules. A cold, dead building may be laid out in that way. But from the day it is completed it begins to deteriorate. It has no life within itself. It may be grand, beautiful, useful; but it would be an unnatural parent who prefers the building to an undeveloped child, coarse, awkward, homely tho the child is. The building is all there is. Change and fluctuation may effect its market price, but it grows not in actual value. But the child is a bundle of undeveloped possibilities which if rightly directed may be of infinite worth. The child eats material food, and grows. The mind feeds upon intellectual food, is placed on constant strain to grasp the manifestations of life and action, and the mind expands and grows. The heart, the soul, feeds on the things of God, and grows and bears fruit to God’s glory.
The important thing for the individual soul is to leave dead forms and to seek God’s life, to receive God’s life. But are we to ignore God’s law, to ignore Christ’s example?—not at all. Submission to God’s law as it is in Christ Jesus places us in the normal current of God’s life. When Jesus said to the young man, “If thou wouldst enter into life keep the commandments,” He did not mean that life might be earned by a mere legal conformity to law. He did mean that when the soul yielded to do, not only what a world-blinded mind might now see in the law, but what it would continually see, it thereby yielded itself to life’s control, and placed itself in that relation to God where His life could flow in and cause the soul to grow and develop.
No man can attain Christ’s character or his conception of Christ’s character, by following any set of rules, however high morality they may express. At the most he can but build a dead form which will immediately begin to deteriorate. But if he receive the life of Christ, if he feed upon the Word of God, that life, that Word, will develop within him a warm, living, responsive character, according to the Master’s desire. The seeds of the violet will always produce violets. The seeds of the maize will always produce maize. So the incorruptible seed of the Word of God will, if received and given free course, always produce Christ-like characters, pleasing to God. This seed will not grow something else. It will not develop an anarchist, who will seek to destroy God’s government. It will not develop a traitor who seeks to undermine God’s law by substituting human expedients for its holy precepts. It will not develop abnormalities. If the true life is within, if there is a good spiritual appetite to feed upon the Word, a character will be grown against which God’s law will bring no condemnation. Rather, the law will witness to its righteousness. Rom. 3: 21, 22.
At best we see so little of Christ Jesus by anything we may read. We must know His life and His power, as developed in His people, as yielded to us. We must experience His creative power in transmuting our own lives into new forms hitherto undreamed of, leading us into paths never known before. In all this His life controls, not ours. We can make but cold, hard, dead forms; He makes living temples, living stones, living trees, which never cease to grow and bear fruit.
2. The work of God is ever hampered and crippled by following the same model. And yet this process has been most frequently followed by those who profess the name of the living Christ. Missionary A, a man of indefatigable zeal, indomitable perseverance, and unfaltering love for souls, enters a field and achieves success. His methods may not be invariably correct. There may be branches which should be lopped off, greater nourishment should be given to some roots, but nevertheless, he has been pre-eminently successful in winning souls. God has blessed him, not because of any model, but because the man was yielded to God and God used him.
Missionaries B and C and D, whose work is merely nominal, hear of A’s success, and determine to visit his field. They see what before they had heard. They note the smoothness of the working of the machinery of this field, and the large results obtained with little expenditure of means and time. They study methods and plans, and fail to see the larger life and power back of them all—the great bulkhead of living waters which turn the wheels and supply not only the energy, but the oil. They see the methods, the plans, adapted to the fields and the men, outgrowths of the work, manifestations of its life, and not steel barriers to hold or control or limit it; and they conclude about as follows: Now if we could adopt his methods, his plans, we, too, would have success. And so the naked forms, the rules, the plan of the organization of his work are adopted in an entirely different field, by different men among different peoples, and great success is hoped for. Our evangelists will run in shoes made upon his last, and surely they will have success!
But what is the result?—In this one respect it is better perhaps, it breaks some of the ice-bound fetters of old, but the general result is the same. The form is there, but not the power, the life, and the work drags on as before, until some other missionary’s example is followed with the same result. O, the sadness of it all! It is not God’s way of doing. He works from life, and the life is essential and primary. The forms are secondary, and may be left to the divinely directed, creative life. That life may develop a new form, new plans, new methods, far better adapted to the particular field in which the worker is placed.
Sometimes one worker falls into a similar error. He holds a series of meetings. Feeling his own nothingness he earnestly seeks God, places himself where God can use him, and his work is attended with glorious success. He goes to another field. He longs for success there. He looks back to his former success, thinks it all over, and concludes that if he only follow the same order, plan, method, his work will be a success in his new field also. He goes to work, and his work is a comparative failure. He used the dead form instead of letting the Master of Life use him. The Master might have developed the same form, the same plans, and the same methods; but the development should have been left to the Great Director and not confined to His finite servant.
And is not this the teaching of the Word? Take the following for instance: “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren,” writes an apostle, “I would not have you ignorant. . . . Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit [which furnishes the life]. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord [who directs]. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all.” 1 Cor. 12: 1-6.
These are suggestive thoughts for this time. May God’s abundant life be received by His people of whatsoever name, because they are submitted to the law of His life; and may He develop in them the greatest aptitude to learn His way, and the mightiest effectiveness in His service; and to His name will be all the glory.
HEATHENISM AWAKING.
By S.
Some mention has been made of the awaking recently manifest among heathen cults, Mohammedan and Buddhistic. A new power seems to have been given them, a new animation infused into them, that is in perfect harmony with the increased power manifest in other things opposed to the Gospel and life of Christ—all pointing to an inevitable climax, a climax clearly indicated by the Gospel which they oppose.
They are sending out missionaries to other countries to establish centers of Buddhistic or Mohammedan influence among peoples upon whom the light of the Gospel has long been shining; and they are meeting with considerable success, because of the drowsiness and apathy of many who profess to believe the Gospel of God, as well as the desire on the part of many who do not know Him to hear and investigate some new thing.
In addition to their foreign propaganda they are also at work stimulating their followers at home; and in doing this, have found it to their advantage to copy, to a certain extent, the institutions which Christianity has established in their midst. They have copied the missionary institution in so far as they can apply it to their own cause. In Japan, and possibly in other countries, they are now operating an7institution patterned exactly after the Young Men’s Christian Association. The design of this is to offset whatever good is being accomplished by the Y. M. C. A. in an evangelistic way, and also to be a headquarters for young men, where they can be instructed in Buddhistic principles. This performs the double object of keeping their young men away from Christian influences, and of strengthening them in the heathen religions of their fathers, making it much more difficult for them to be reached by Christian evangelists, and hedging up the way to many a heart.
Satan has never been at work harder than he is right now to nullify every Christian effort, as well as to make strenuous efforts of his own along lines of his own invention. In fact, he is increasing his energies as the climax approaches, and we see his workings in different guises on every hand. He is not only lulling to sleep the millions of heathendom, but he is also throwing the spell of his enchantments over the millions of Christendom. In the words of Scripture, “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” They who yield to his enchantments are lost. In one refuge alone there is safety, and that is Christ. As Satan has taken and will continue to take every possible advantage in the way of means and methods to carry on his work of soul destruction, so he will take advantage of every unguarded moment of our life to slip into the citadel of the soul and reign there for his own ends.
This awaking of heathenism is but the outward manifestation of Satan’s increased and increasing activity as the day of the Christian’s emancipation draws nigh. Let us take warning by his activity and flee, before it is too late, to the refuge prepared in Christ. S.
Just one word more, had you not both better come into the creation-Sinaitic-Calvarian camp of Sabbath-keeping? It is the only safe place.
“BE THOU CLEAN.”
By G.
“AND, behold, there came a leper and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” Matt. 8: 2, 3.
The ordinary man will hardly dare to touch a leper. Persons afflicted with infectious or contagious diseases are usually isolated, and precautions are taken to prevent others coming in contact with them. In the contact of diseased persons with others, the disease—such as leprosy, smallpox, plague, etc.—is generally supposed to have the greater influence, and to infect those who have not been previously subjected to its effects. For this reason, lepers are not permitted to reside, or to mingle in any way, with other people. In olden times, they were compelled to remain away even from their friends, and, on the approach of any one not so afflicted, they were to give the warning, by crying, “Unclean, unclean.”
But when the perfect One, the pure and holy One, touches the unclean, the influence is just the reverse. That which is unclean, imperfect, must yield. When Christ touched the afflicted, no matter of what disease, there was no danger to Him; on the contrary, there was healing to the afflicted person. Even the dead were restored to life by the divine touch. He came to earth, where the leprosy of sin was epidemic, where every part was impregnated with sin. He received sinners, and ate with them, put His hands upon them, and allowed them to embrace Him. Yet He proved to be immune from the terrible curse. No environment, however corrupt, could inoculate Him. Neither mind nor body could be corrupted. He overcame the world.
And such is the province of the disciple of Christ. He has nothing to fear, for his Master overcame the world. It is possible to overcome by the same power by which Christ overcame. The psalmist says: “Tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.” Christ overcame because the law of God was in His heart, and consequently there was no guile in His mouth. It was by this means that He could wield the stronger influence in any conflict with sin or its consequences. So the disciples of Christ are set in the world not to be overcome, but to be overcomers; to wield the greater influence in every environment where duty calls. “Ye are the light of the world,” says the Master, and light always dispels darkness. “Ye are the salt of the earth,” He adds, and the virtue of salt is to preserve from corruption.
No one need to go through the world afflicted with the leprosy of sin, no matter of however long standing; for if he will apply to the great Physician, who never lost a case implicitly entrusted to Him, the leprosy will surely be healed. His ever-ready answer to the cry of faith is, “I will; be thou clean.” “Him that cometh unto Me, I will in nowise cast out.”
G.
TENDING DOWNWARD.
By S.
A WRITER in Watchword and Truth, who styles himself, “a harassed pastor,” lays bare a condition which he finds prevalent in the professed church that is surely in harmony with the spirit of the times. The world is racing away from God; the church is dancing in the same direction. This “harassed pastor” declares that in his parish nearly all patronize the dance, even the officers of his church. One of the latter, an elder, who had been taken to task for attending a dance with his family when revival meetings were in progress in his church, “boldly declared that if he had to choose between the church and dancing, he would choose the dancing.” And the pastor goes on: “Somehow those revival meetings did not seem to revive anybody.” With that kind of example from the church elders, and that spirit in the elders and the lay members, it is difficult to see how it could. That was not the kind of revival they were looking for; it was certainly not the kind of revival they were working for; and if they were praying at all, it certainly could not have been for that kind of work.
The condition as seen by that pastor, is not confined to the young; but “the way parents—church members, too—flock with their children to the dancing-school instead of to the Sunday-school, is appalling;” and that condition, as we know it, is not confined to the church of that “harassed pastor,” but is seen in the great fashionable churches of the land. The saddest part of it is that it is seen in many churches whose pastors are not at all harassed by it. Some have even gone so far as to organize dancing classes in their church, and give the same their patronage and encouragement, for the purpose of making the church popular with the young people—a puerile and wicked excuse, when dancing masters themselves, as well as men and women who have forsaken the passion-maddening whirl of sin, have denounced the practise for the pit of iniquity, which it is. When the giddy whirl is on, reason and modesty take wings, houses of shame gloat over their prospects, and the devils laugh. If the statement of the matron of a “rescue home” be true, that “seven-tenths of the girls received here have fallen through dancing and its influence,” such churches and such church leaders have a fearful account to settle at the bar of God. If the statement of the chief of police of New York be true, that “three-fourths of the abandoned girls of that metropolis were ruined by dancing,” then the parents who are encouraging, by permission and example, their children to patronize the dance, are taking upon their own heads a fearful responsibility. It is nothing less than the blood of their children who perish, soul and body, in the toils of that insatiate monster.
These are conditions which exist in numerous portions of that body which professes to be the church of Jesus Christ to-day; and there is no strong, vigorous protest against it. The pastor above quoted puts it: “Brains appear to be running out of heads, and grace out of hearts, down into heels.” Certainly the movement is downward. The whole tendency of the practice is downward, and the tendency in the church and the individual that fosters it is bound to be downward also. As the spirit of inspiration puts it: “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” That is, the love of the many for the things of God; and that is just what is happening in these iniquity-breeding centers, that once were and should be now centers of spiritual life and light. But that condition has been faithfully predicted by the infallible Word. We have been told that it would come; and we have also been told what we should expect when that condition of things was dominant in the world. Christ Himself, when asked for signs of His coming and of the end of the world, referred to just such conditions as these as signs of that event. His own declaration is that last quoted above; and He goes on to say in the very next verse: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Matt. 24:13.
Paul, in writing of the times and conditions just prior to Christ’s return, says, “In the last days perilous times shall come.” We are in those perilous times now, and they are becoming more perilous as the church allows herself to be enamored of the amusements and follies of the world. The apostle outlines the various forms of ungodliness that would be manifest in these times, and then says, “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse.” (See 2 Tim. 3:1–13.) In no field does the evil-minded man and the seducer find so fruitful a harvest as in the parent-patronized and church-fostered dance.
These conditions are signs of the end. Would that those who are encouraging them could see the end to which they lead; the event which they portend; and the fearful responsibility that rests upon them in the matter. The light has been given; there is no need for us to remain in darkness as to the meaning of the conditions. Their course is downward; ours must be upward. The ruin of that course is bound to come; but it is not necessary that a single soul should be overwhelmed in it. S.
DR. GAMBLE’S “THIRTEEN-INCH ARGUMENT.”
Our contemporary, the California Christian Advocate, has the following:—
Dr. S. W. Gamble, whose lectures on the Sabbath so charmed and so thoroughly convinced the California and Southern California Conferences, has consented to remain some months on the Coast, and conduct a campaign on the Sabbath question. Dr. Gamble will find a spirit of co-operation and a cordial welcome. He has invented a thirteen-inch argument, which will pierce the armor of the most approved of Saturday-sabbath arguments yet found. In fact, his outfit not only carries big guns, but is well adapted to ramming the sides of “Seventh-day-ism.”
Good, we are glad of the agitation. When the smoke clears away (for Dr. Gamble does not use smokeless powder, the main part of his materials are gathered from the worn-out theories of musty medievalism), it will be found that the Sabbath cause has not been injured, nor the Sabbath ranks deprived of one believer in the Word of God. His “thirteen-inch argument” may do for those who are more anxious to find an excuse for Sunday-keeping than they are to know what the Word of God teaches, and what Jesus our Lord practised. Dr. Gamble will find some day, we pray that it may not be too late, that he has not been firing against man-made armor, but against the breastplate of God’s eternal righteousness, forged by the obedience of Jesus Christ. The main effect of the firing will be in the recoil. Dr. Gamble and his followers seem to have obtained such a tremendous sense of the importance of man-made theories and assumptions that it has blinded them to the truth of God. Both Sinai and Calvary are hidden from him by the fogs of his own generation. And, worst of all, he is blinding others as well as himself.
Upon Dr. Gamble’s crusade the Pacific Christian remarks:—
We are not particularly in sympathy with “Saturday Sabbath keeping,” except that we concede the sincerity of those who keep that day. And we know of no other kind of Sabbath keeping anywhere taught in the Bible. Our Adventist friends keep Saturday as the Sabbath, because they believe the Ten Commandments are forever and eternally an expression of divine authority. And the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath of the Lord, if the Decalogue is still in force. The Word of the Lord says so. And Saturday is the seventh day of the week.
The theory of our “Christian” friends is that there is no Decalogue, that the unchangeable God found that He had made a mistake, that our great Example fell into the same error, and did not learn it till after the crucifixion! Fire away, brethren, but look out.
THE SEVENTH DAY.
SATURDAY is not the Sabbath. No true Sabbath-keeper holds it to be. In a general way he speaks of it thus sometimes, but always incorrectly.
“The seventh-day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” “From even unto even shall ye celebrate your Sabbaths.” “At even when the sun did set.” The day begins at even, the evening begins with the setting of the sun. The seventh-day begins at sunset of the day commonly called Friday, and closes at set of sun of the day commonly called Saturday. It is identical in time with about one-fourth of Friday and three-fourths of Saturday. Its name is not Saturday, but Sabbath.
Apostasy not only sought to change the worship day in the week, but the time of beginning the day. It has sought to set aside the day around which and in which cluster the great facts of creation, with all their blessed assurances and hallowed associations of a finished work, and to transfer them to a day which calls to mind chaos, and at the most only a first step in light toward a glorious completion. Apostasy has sought to remove the sacredness of the day by placing its beginning and ending in night when the great world is asleep.
How different, how much more blessed is God’s way! The Sabbath, which every day of His week has recalled, comes at the close of a period of labor, pervaded by the spirit of rest which permeates the septenary cycle. We greet that hallowed period at its beginning with songs of praise, with instruction from God, with humble refreshing prayer to the Creator and Recreator, to Redeemer and Friend. We seek our physical rest in its hallowed bosom. We awake to its refreshing fulness in the morning, and enjoy its sacred associations to its close. We bid it adieu with praise and prayer, and enter upon the duties of a new week fortified by the Spirit of the Sabbath.
Who would not prefer God’s way to the way of the apostasy?
Question Corner
By Editor
[From time to time we will reply under this head, if deemed advisable, to such candid inquiries as may be sent us. Correspondents wishing a reply to their questions must give their full name and address, not for publication unless they wish, but as an evidence of good faith on their part, and to give us opportunity to reply by letter if deemed best. It is always well to inclose stamp. Let the questions be short and pointed, and such as may be answered in limited space. The questions will be numbered continuously]
Read the context, beginning with verse 13. The Lord is presenting a contrast in human language between the conditions in the earthly Promised Land, brought about by Israel’s apostasy, and the conditions in the new earth. The apostate will perish and the good will remain. Even the earth will be made new, and the former afflictions will be forgotten. In that land, and among God’s people, there will be no more an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days. The condition of babyhood and old age will pass away forever. “The child [subject to death] shall die an hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be destroyed.” When?—Evidently at the close of that comparatively little season of Rev. 20:3, 5, 7-10. That little season of Revelation 20 is the hundred years of Isa. 65:20. During that time all who have rejected the Gospel during this time of probation will demonstrate to the universe God’s goodness and justice in leaving them to themselves and the destruction they have chosen. Beyond that destruction lies the new heavens and earth.
Germany’s War Burden.
The official gazette of Germany shows a deficit of about $1,000,000 between military estimates and expenditures, and $500,000 deficit in naval expenditure. The total income of the nation in 1901 showed a falling off of $1,750,000, and the total expenditure increased by about $1,050,000. The deficit for the financial year is given as $12,000,000. And so the war burden grows heavier and heavier in a time of peace. “And what will ye do in the end thereof?”
