CHRIST is risen. O, how do these words change the whole aspect of human life? Christ is risen, and we have a thought to comfort in the gloom of adversity; a belief to raise us into the high privilege of the sons of God. In the valley of the shadow of death His brightness illumines every step. He will, in the hour of death, fling open the gate of everlasting life.—F. W. Farrar.
The New Covenant
By H. F. Courter
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make [complete, finish] a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in My covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people: and they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” Heb. 8:8-12, quoting from Jer. 31:31-34.
COMPARING this new covenant with the old covenant, we find some of the “better promises” spoken of in Heb. 8:6, to be: (1) The law written in the heart. (2) We shall not need to teach them to know the Lord. (3) Our sins and iniquities will be remembered no more. The second better promise can not be fulfilled until probation ends and the wicked are destroyed. See 2 Peter 3:13; Rev. 5:13. The third better promise can not be fulfilled until our names are passed in the investigative judgment, now going on in heaven.
Notice with whom the new covenant is made. Not with the Gentiles. No! no! It is made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”
Is there any hope for us, “Gentiles in the flesh,” to have any part in the blessings promised in the new covenant? — No, not without being as “wild olive-branches” grafted into “a good olive-tree;” or, in other words, being born again, and thus becoming a part of the true Israel of God. “Israel” means one who prevails with God. Gen. 32:28. Those who can trace their genealogy to Abraham are not all true Israel or Jews; for we read Christ’s words to the Jews: “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham.” John 8:39, last clause. Paul says: “He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; . . . but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly.” Rom. 2:28, 29. “Not as tho the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children; but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” Rom. 9:6-8. “Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh; . . . that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Eph. 2:11, 12.
In this quotation Paul wants the Ephesian brethren to “remember” the condition they were in when they were Gentiles. We see by this scripture the awful condition of a Gentile. Paul intimates by the words, “Remember, that ye being in times past Gentiles in the flesh,” that they are not Gentiles any longer. Listen to the next verse, for in it he tells how they became Israel: “But now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were afar off [that is, Gentiles], are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners [Gentiles], but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Eph. 2:13, 19.
In Rom. 11:13-26, we read of the grafting-in process. The Gentiles, represented by the “wild olive-branches,” and the Israelites according to the flesh represented by the “natural branches,” all have to be grafted into the “good olive-tree,” “and so all Israel shall be saved.” Thus we see how we can become a part of the true Israel of God, partakers of the promises, and sharers in the blessings of the new covenant. “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Gal. 3:29.
(2) That the new covenant and the everlasting covenant were the same, and were dedicated with the blood of the blessed Son of God, we learn from the following texts: “And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is the blood of the new testament [new covenant, Revised Version] which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Matt. 26:27, 28. “Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will.” Heb. 13:20, 21.
This blood that makes us perfect can be none other than the blood of Christ; therefore, these covenants are identical. Altho the new covenant, the everlasting covenant, was held out to God’s children from the beginning, it was not dedicated until Christ was nailed to the cross. The bow in the cloud was the “token” of this new or everlasting covenant to Noah. Gen. 9:12. Circumcision was the “token” of the covenant with Abraham. Gen. 17:7, 11. And the keeping of the Sabbath makes it the “token,” sign, seal, or mark, between God and the true Israel of God. “Verily My Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.” Ex. 31:13. “Ye shall keep My statutes and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you.” Lev. 20:8. All of true Israel are a sanctified, holy people. Heb. 12:14.
H. F. COURTER.
Elijah a Type of the Remnant Church
By J. L. Wood
INASMUCH as Malachi declares that God will send “Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of Jehovah,” and this must refer to a movement or a people of whom Elijah is a type, it may be well to study the parallel between the type, Elijah, and the antitype, the remnant church:
Elijah
Elijah was persecuted for fidelity to truth and righteousness.
His principal persecutor was Jezebel the wicked queen of Israel, who is mentioned by name as the type of the enemy of the saints. Rev. 2:20.
Jezebel’s persecuting power was exercised through her husband, Ahab the king.
Elijah fled from Jezebel and Ahab, into the wilderness, to a place prepared of God, where he was miraculously nourished. 1 Kings 17:5-9.
Elijah was “three years and six months” in the wilderness, and during that time there was no rain, and a great famine was in the land. James 5:17; 1 Kings 17:7; 18:2.
After the three and a half years, 1260 days, when Elijah returned from the wilderness, the errors of Jezebel’s priests were manifested, the true God was honored, and copious rains followed. 1 Kings 18:41-45.
The king and the people at first rejoiced, and Elijah and his God were honored; but the spirit of Jezebel was unchanged. She still sought Elijah’s life, and he was again compelled to flee into the wilderness. 1 Kings 18:40, 45, 46; 19:1-4.
Elijah was accused of troubling Israel, but the cause of trouble came through Ahab and Jezebel in departing from the commandments of God. 1 Kings 18:18.
Elijah’s career ended by his being taken from the earth. 2 Kings 2:11.
The Church
The church was persecuted for fidelity to truth and righteousness.
The principal persecutor was the apostate church of Rome, which claims to be a “queen” and ruler over spiritual Israel. Rev. 18:7.
Papacy’s persecuting power was exercised through the Roman Empire to which she was joined.
The true church fled into the symbolic wilderness—or condition of isolation—to her place prepared of God, where she was sustained. Rev. 12:6, 16.
The church was three and a half symbolic years (a day for a year—1260 literal years) in the wilderness condition, during which there was a spiritual famine because of the lack of truth—the living water. Compare Rev. 12:6; 11:3; Amos 8:11.
At the end of the 1260 years the power of the truth and its witnesses was manifested (A.D. 1798); and since then the truth has flowed at the rate of millions of Bibles every year, refreshing the world and bringing forth fruit.
The Bible has brought such blessings that the empires of earth recognize the Lord’s hand; yet the principles of Papacy—Jezebel—in so-called Protestant sects compel the saints again to flee into the wilderness condition.
In the last days the Elijah class will be accused of troubling nominal Israel. But the real cause of trouble comes through the Jezebel class in departing from the commandments of God.
The saints will be changed and taken from the earth. 1 Thess. 4:16-18.
These are striking coincidents, and are not7accidental. And the fact that Elijah was to come before the great day, and that now we have found in the church itself the anti-typical Elijah to whom Malachi the prophet referred and of whom John the Baptist was also a type preceding the first advent, should be esteemed another evidence that the time is near—that the great day of the Lord is close at hand.
But, beyond this, there are in this type suggestions supported by other scriptures, designed to guide and to prepare the saints to act well their part, and to strengthen and sustain them in the stormy day just upon us.
We have no desire to draw before the mind a dark picture; we would prefer to think of the glory to follow the great day of wrath and the joys of the incoming kingdom rather than the afflictions and discouragements of the nearer future which precedes full sunrise. The present little season, before the storm-cloud bursts, is a most favorable time for the work of the Elijah class, and corresponds to the successful days of both Elijah and John. J. L. Wood.
Just as God Leads Me
By Anonymous
JUST as God leads me I would go; I would not ask to choose my way; Content with what He will bestow, Assured He will not let me stray. So as He leads my path I make, And step by step I gladly take, A child in Him confiding.
Just as God leads, I am content; I rest me calmly in His hands; That which He hath decreed and sent, That which His will for me commands, I would that He should all fulfil; That I should do His gracious will, In living or in dying.
Just as God leads, I all resign; I trust me to my Father’s will; When reason’s rays deceptive shine, His counsel would I yet fulfil; That I should do His gracious will, Before He brought me to the light, My all to Him resigning.
Just as God leads me, I abide; In faith, in hope, in suffering true; His strength is ever by my side; Can aught my hold on Him undo? I hold me firm, in patience knowing That God my life is still bestowing, The best in kindness sending.
Just as God leads, I onward go, Oft amid thorns and briers seen; God does not yet His guidance show, But in the end it shall be seen How by a loving Father’s will, Faithful and true, He leads me still.
— Anonymous.
The Worth of Little Deeds
Think of the mothers who live with their children and for them. They do no miracles, but their hands are ever performing the homely things of love. Think of the great company of Christian men and women who are not known beyond the little circle in which they live, who have no earthly honor, and who “leave no memory but a world made better by their lives.” They do no miracles, but their names are known in heaven.
So we do not have to do miracles in order to commend Christ to others. Our lives may be very simple. We may not be able to do anything great or startling. We can not give much money. We can not speak eloquently. We can not go as foreign missionaries. Some people have the impression that because they can not do miracles of service, they can not do anything to add to the honor of Christ’s name. But the smallest, beautiful thing we do for Christ makes Him a little more glorious as men see Him. John did no miracle, but he did a work which left its impress on the world for all time to come. There are many people who can not do great things, and who think therefore it is not worth while for them to try to do anything. But it is the plain people that can not do miracles who are really saving the world. Here and there are a few men with distinguished genius, remarkable men, who do great things. But it is the million saints of the household, of the lowly places, who to-day are shedding the love of Christ abroad among nations, and who will wear the brightest crowns in glory. — Sunday School Times.
“Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”James 1:15.
NOTE.— Death is as fully the result of sin as the seed is the final result in the life of the plant.
4. Is man, then, a free moral agent?
“Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.”John 5:40.
NOTE.— If one continues to take slow poison, death is certain at last by a great physical law, but the free moral agency of the victim has not been infringed; he might have refrained from taking the poison and thus avoided its effects. Man can not of himself refrain from sin, but Christ freely offers the ability to refrain, and hence the argument applies. Man’s liberty is to choose his master.
5. Does God desire the death of sin’s victim?
“I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God; wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”Eze. 18:32.
6. Is the death of the sinner an arbitrary decree?
NOTE.— The cause of sin is unlawful desire, desire traveling in paths it ought not, which results in taking what does not belong to it. When applied to property, this is stealing; when applied to life, it is murder. It is apparent that to prevent the sinner’s death it would be necessary either to give him life while continuing in sin, or upon his turning away from sin. To give him life while in sin would be to immortalize sin. For example, for God to make a murdering man immortal would be for Him to guarantee murder to continue always, and thereby place His fair creation in the eternal jeopardy of fiends. It would place the awful peril and suffering upon the innocent, instead of upon the guilty originator, where it belongs. The one act of man’s murder, or any number of them, limited to time as at present, is as nothing to the thought of God’s eternalizing it. Sin has no reason for its existence. It is inexcusable. If it could be excused, it would cease to be sin. It is the outworking of a principle at war with the great law of love which is the foundation of the divine government.
7. What has God done that man may escape sin and its consequences?
“God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”John 3:16.
8. How much did Christ suffer for sinners?
“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.”Isa. 53:5.
9. What course may the sinner take?
“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”Prov. 28:13.
Christians Opposing Christ
By C. H. Spurgeon
FRIENDS, can you bear the thought that you may have helped to drag others down to hell? Christ has loved you and pardoned your sins; and will you push others downward? And yet, if you are inconsistent, and especially if you are cold or lukewarm in your religion, you are doing it. “Well,” says one, “I don’t do much good, but I do no hurt.” That is an impossibility. You must be either doing good or evil. There is no border-land between truth and sin; a man must be either on land or in the water; and you are either serving God or serving Satan; each day you are increasing your Master’s kingdom or else diminishing it. I can not bear the thought that any of you should be employed in Satan’s camp.
I behold a mournful spectacle. There is King Jesus marching at the head of His troops; and can it be that some of you, who profess to be His followers, are on the other side; that, professing to be Christ’s, you are fighting in the ranks of the enemy—carrying the baggage of Satan and wearing the uniform of hell, when you profess to be soldiers of Christ? I know there are such here; God forgive them! God spare them! And may the deserters yet come back, even tho they come back in the chains of conviction. May they come back and be saved! O brethren and sisters, there are enough to destroy souls without us—enough to extend the kingdom of Satan without our helping him.
“Come out from among them; touch not the unclean thing; be ye separate.” Church of God! awake, awake, awake to the salvation of men! Sleep no longer; begin to pray, to wrestle, to travail in birth; be more holy, more consistent, more strict, more solemn in thy deportment! Begin, O soldiers of Christ, to be more true to your colors, and as surely as the time shall come when the church shall thus be reformed and revived, so surely shall the King come into our midst, and we shall march on to certain victory, trampling down our enemies, and getting to our King many crowns, through many victories achieved.—C. H. Spurgeon.
Easy-Chair Religion
THERE is one religion of toil and another of talk. The easy-chair is an ideal pulpit for a lazy man. It is pleasant to feel that we are regenerating the world whilst we are taking our ease. It is pleasant and—useless. The easy-chair seems to breed wisdom. The man who never fired a gun or marched a mile can tell just where Napoleon and Wellington blundered. The man who never drove a spike, or pulled a lever, or handled a brake, can tell the world just how a railway ought to be run. And the man whose voice is seldom heard in prayer, whose hand has forgotten how to give, and who never touches the church burdens with one of his fingers, is sure that he knows full well what the church needs, and he can give advice to every one, from the preacher to the sexton. If churches could only be run with good advice! But, alas, it takes more than that!—Christian Guardian, Toronto.
Make It Yours
SURELY if the great warrior-king of Israel needed to pray this prayer,—
“Show me Thy ways, O Jehovah,
Teach me Thy paths,
Guide me in Thy truth, and teach me,”
we, in this uncertain, doubtful, and degenerate age, would do well to repeat often from the heart the inspired petition.
It is a prayer inspired by the Spirit of God to meet the needs of men. It is therefore a prayer to be answered to every soul who will pray it with a true heart. There are many longing for the right way. There are many more who are astray, and willingly astray. They are lost in the great, dark forest of the world’s pleasures, pursuits, madness, sin, and crime,—plucking its poisoned flowers, quaffing its intoxicating draughts, despairing over its delusive phantoms, which lure but to deceive, forgetful of God and good. Yet God does not leave them. He even permits them to reap the disappointing fruit of sin that they may turn from it. His messengers call, so often unheeded, to deaf and dull ears, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” And God, by the very troubles and pains and woes of earth, calls its children to come to Him and find rest.
Would you turn from Pleasure’s paths, sinner? Would you know the ways of the Lord, wretched one? Pray, then, the inspired prayer, “Show me Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths.”
Ask with a true heart. God does not mock His children. His promises are Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus. He holds out no phantom hopes. He cheats us not by illusion or counterfeit. He brings us the real. He presents the goal of our hopes, “a better and an enduring substance.” He asks us not to follow “cunningly devised fables.” No, God does not mock us; let us not attempt to mock God. If we come with a prayer-lie upon our lips, we shall be deceived; for we can not deceive God. And so the Lord does not bid us not to deceive Him, but, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Gal. 6:7. It is as absolutely impossible for us to find the true way or to get true returns from the sowing of a prayer-lie as it is to get wheat from the sowing of cockle. Let the prayer be prayed in truth with all the heart.
If we ask with all our heart for God to show us His ways, it means that we give up our own ways. No true heart asks to see God’s ways and to learn God’s paths that he may compare them with his own, like a piece of machinery he takes on trial. He can not see them in that way. We can only know God’s paths by walking in them, even as we can only know food by eating it. Therefore he who truly asks to be shown and taught the ways and paths of God, asks that he may walk in God’s ways. He chooses God’s ways in preference to his own. He prefers the Lord’s paths to all other paths.
“Show me Thy ways, O Jehovah,
Teach me Thy paths.
Lead me IN THY TRUTH, and teach me;
For Thou art the God of my salvation.”
Ps. 25: 4, 5.
Such a prayer, by whomever offered with all the heart, will be heard and answered of God. He who offers it may be in the jungles of Asia, the deserts of Africa, the prisons of Siberia, the slums and dives of our great cities, the streets or marts of sin, anywhere or anywhen; God will hear. Let him plead God’s mercy; for His ways are merciful. Let him say, as God has taught us by His Spirit:
“REMEMBER, O Jehovah, THY tender mercies and THY loving-kindnesses;
For they have been ever of old.
Remember NOT the SINS of MY youth, nor MY TRANSGRESSIONS;
According to Thy loving-kindness remember Thou me,
For Thy goodness’ sake, O Jehovah.”
Verses 6, 7.
And He will answer, for He taught us the prayer. More than that, He says He will. Thus the blessed psalm continues:
“Good and upright is Jehovah,
Therefore WILL HE INSTRUCT sinners in the way.
The meek will He GUIDE in justice;
And the meek will He TEACH HIS WAY.”
Verses 8, 9.
And all can be meek. All can yield their selfish, disappointed ways. All that God asks is humility, meekness, teachableness, sincerity. And he who comes in such a Spirit will find that
“All the paths of Jehovah are loving-kindness and truth, unto such as keep His covenant and His testimonies.” Verse 10.
But one says, “I can not keep His covenant, I can not keep His testimonies, His law.” Yes, you can if you desire so to do above all things else, and will yield yourself wholly to do it. Listen: Every precept of God is an enabling act to him who yields to do it. There is power in the word to accomplish its command. Only let the living word into the heart. Let Christ come in through His word with His own life, and you will find that all God’s ways are “ways of pleasantness,” and all His paths are “paths of peace.”
What Do Your Children Read?
NEXT to human associates, nothing is more potent in molding the characters of the youth — our children — than what they read; and in many cases what they read is primary in its influence. There are indifferent parents and indifferent associates. Their influence is neither very good nor very bad. They live sort of selfishly honest lives, have a desire that their children shall grow up well, believe that they themselves did, and conclude, of course, that their children will. Their influence over their children is positive in neither a moral nor an immoral direction; it may be said to be unmoral.
It is to this class (among which are many professed Christians) that these words are addressed. How many times do we see the children of such parents among the low, the vicious, the criminal. What is the cause?
In the first place, it is indifference on the part of parents. The training of their children, which should be the first thought, is generally the last consideration. More attention is often given by the farmer to his colts or calves than to his children. Oftentimes more attention is given by mothers to the peddling of neighborhood and church gossip than to their children. If the little, inquiring mind comes with a question or a trial which might take a little time to answer or smooth away, which would prove a valuable lesson to the parent, he is told to “go out and play,” or “Do not bother me now.”
In such ways as these the indifferent parent turns the child away from what ought to be his true source of knowledge, to those which are generally questionable, and oftentimes fatally destructive. One evil is always wrought, the child loses confidence in the parent. And many times a greater evil is done in indirectly sending the child to those sources of information which fill the mind of the child with moral poison. In a few years the erstwhile innocent little boy is a mental and moral wreck, and parents, and acquaintances like-minded, wonder why it is so. But it is so, and so because of the selfish do-nothingness of parents.
Not long ago a little girl — a mere baby — was sent to a state reform school. Her sister, older, yet a child, shot her lover, and then attempted to commit suicide. One discerning writer then remarked that these girls were the victims of the indifference of parents. He was probably right.
We are living in a most intense age. All the world and all its classes are brought together by railway and telegraph and printing-press; and yet it is possible for us to choose our associates and the associates of our children if we will give the subject the thought and the energy and the decision and the expense which its importance demands.
We should first of all see not only that our children do not have evil associates and companions, but good ones. And to insure this, we ourselves should associate with our children so fully, so absolutely, so confidentially, so helpfully, so companionably, so purely, that they would measure all others by us, and reject what did not meet their standard.9
We should not only see that our children do not read bad books of light and trashy literature, of fiction and folly, of crime and brutalism, but we should provide them with good books and papers,— useful, interesting, and such as will materially assist in good character-building and usefulness in the chosen profession or vocation of life.
As the foundation book of all, take the Bible. Read it with them. Make it interesting to them by taking it into your own life. Encourage them to form a library for themselves. Books on the teaching of God in history, in nature, in science and art, are all useful.
Much more might be said. We feel intensely in earnest over the matter. We would that we could arouse parents everywhere to the infinitely important duty which God has laid upon them of the training of their children, important elements of which are their companions in persons and books. Our children are forming characters for eternity, for death or for life; what are we doing about it?
To Save from Sin
By R.
GOD has done everything to prevent sin. Before it came, He gave man all that heart could really wish, thus leaving no desire unsatisfied and therefore without excuse for illegal satisfaction. And furthermore, He gave faithful warning of how sin would come, and why temptation would be presented, and what yielding to it would entail. And then when sin had eventuated, God exhausts the resources of infinite love, wisdom, and power, and engages all heaven in unremitting labor to save all from sin and death who can possibly be reached by the gracious overtures of Divine Love.
R.
God Independent of Creation
By R.
We are not at all in sympathy with that teaching which seeks to merge God into nature. Any teaching that does this is pantheistic.
God is not nature and nature is not God. The two can not in any case be used interchangeably.
God’s handiwork in nature is not God Himself in nature. God’s power in nature does not identify God Himself with nature.
Nature has its own individuality and God has His distinct personality.
We have found an evil power in nature. If God and nature are to be identified and made one, then God and this evil power (which is a part of nature) must be identified and made one. We are shocked by the idea.
But we must not identify even the good in nature with God. While God would have us know that all good is from Him, that He is responsible for it, and that His is the power which works it out for us, He wishes us to distinguish between Him and the means through which it comes. And we should also make a distinction between God and the power of God.
All this is because God has a personality which can not be merged into any of the means through which He works.
Personality is the most powerful factor in the universe. It is different from everything else and can not be merged into anything else.
I touch you with a stick. It is true to say I touch you; yet it was the stick through which I worked, and you distinguish clearly between me personally; that is, my personality, and the stick by which it is done.
So we are to distinguish between the personal God and any means that He may use anywhere at any time. If we say that God is in nature or at work in nature we mean that His power is there and directly at work there and that in this sense God is there, but we do not confuse God with His power or with nature in which His power works.
And so we do not separate God from His act, not at all. It is God who does the work, yet He personally is utterly separate, distinct and independent. My work is not I, God’s work is not He; that is, in the individual, personal sense.
The record of the Scriptures show that God was before creation and that He is independent of it.
He was before creation; for we read,— “Before the mountains were brought forth, or even Thou hadst formed the earth or the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God.” Ps. 90 : 2.
He is above nature and independent of nature, for we read: “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thine hand: as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.”
Nature may change and perish, but God remains the same. He does not enter into nature’s shifting changes.
And He will continue to be God even if there is no creation. Earth may pass away, but His word can not pass away. “They shall perish; but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; . . . but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.” Heb. 1: 11, last part of 12.
Thus do the Scriptures show the mighty independence of God over nature and over all His works.
Every false interpretation of nature fails on one or the other of these two points, in denying either that God was before nature or that He is independent of nature.
Evolution, for example, does not concern itself with causes. It does not explain causation. It reasons on the basis of an-already-existing creation. So far as its testimony is concerned, there was no creation, and matter is eternal. The fact that it does not acknowledge the creation and denies the clearly marked-out act of the creation makes it false science.
These are the thumb-marks of error as shown by evolution.
And Christian Science avers that there is no matter and hence no material creation; and that the real man and world are spiritual, coexistent with God, and hence eternal. According to this the universe has existed always with God. This is but one form of pantheism, which is the doctrine that seeks to identify creation and the Creator.
And this is the thumb-mark of error as disclosed by Christian Science.
And pantheism itself—the doctrine that God and nature are one—not only preaches the coexistence of nature and God, but in its worst forms it makes God a part of nature and sinks Him in the gulf of His own creation by merging Him into the universe. It claims that God is an all-pervading essence, a spirit, existent throughout the universe, and that all things are but a part of Him.
And so here also we discover the thumb-marks of error in the speculation called pantheism.
But the Bible teaches that God was before His works. The world and the universe were created by Him. He was and is before all things and hence is independent of nature and infinitely greater than nature. R.
Eternal Vigilance
By R.
SOME grow tired of this constant urging to vigilance: vigilance of the rights of men to prevent curtailment of liberty; vigilance in business to secure success; vigilance in personal education and training to reach the aim worth while; vigilance in matters of health to prevent disease and death and guarantee strength and happiness; vigilance in the realm of the soul lest the enemy of all righteousness cause us to fail in the great battle of life. If we do not appreciate the crying need of vigilance, it may be well for us to read these words from Mr. Chesterton:
“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone, it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white, you must be always painting it again. . . . This which is true even of inanimate things, is in quite a special and terrible sense true of all human things.”
The admonition of the Master is, “Strive,” because many would merely “seek to enter in and shall not be able.” The parable of the talents, and especially of the fate of him who left his gift alone, hidden in the earth, points to the moral of vigilance as the price of progress and acceptance, and of letting alone, leading to the awful fate of decay, wickedness, and rejection.
The old Book says that the diligent man shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men. And it also says that what our hands find to do we should do with our might for death will bring an end of all endeavor, and it comes to us all too soon.
The wise man says, “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.” And the picture was not meant alone for the keeper of the fields; it is a parable of the life and the soul. Letting the life alone will bring it into the same pitiable plight. The thorns, the nettles, and the broken-down defenses of the soul in this picture, are all too apparently apt and significant. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” R.
God’s Work to Save Souls
By R.
In the closing days of time; when the nations are contemplating how each will be able to destroy the most lives in the shortest time by most approved processes and appliances in order to maintain governmental existence, the great God of the universe is doing all that infinite love, wisdom, and power can do to save as many souls as possible. And this is the great difference between earthly governments and the governments of God. R.