ACQUAINTED with grief! Familiar and dear as is the sacred phrase, it struck me the other day with a sense almost of novelty as the pastor repeated it in his prayer. And then came the comfort, brought on the wings of the prayer which, rising heavenward from that hushed congregation, was answered in benediction as soon as the petition fell from the lips of the man of God. Acquainted with grief! Yes, there could be no question of that. The Saviour knows our trials, measures them by his own experience. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." The "foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Thronging on memory came passages like these, and then tenderly, as if spoken by an audible voice, followed that thrilling assurance: "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them." It is because he is acquainted with grief, because grief was his companion, known to him in its every phase, that he is able to help to the uttermost all who come to him.
We never give genuine help where we have no common ground of sympathy. We may pity, but we cannot comfort, those whom we view only from the outside, having nothing by which to gauge their suffering. There is a touching story told of a mother who sat in stony pallor beside the coffin of her babe. Not a moan escaped her; not a tear fell. Friends feared for her reason, and one and another talked, complained, scolded, recited the old platitudes, averred that the child was better off, that nobody knew from what trouble it was saved, and so on. All in vain. The icy hand was at her heart, and the fount of tears was locked. Presently there came over the threshold a simple working-woman, with hard hands and furrowed face—a woman who had left her mop and broom in the kitchen on hearing of the grief that had befallen her employer. The toil-worn, unlearned woman gathered the lady in her pitying arms, cradling her against her breast. "Dear heart!" she whispered, "I know all about it. I have lost five!" And that was the touch of nature which brought healing.
How could we love the Lord as we do if we did not know that he was our brother in sorrow, that, sharing our humanity completely, he felt with us in our dark days as well as in our bright? For, ignore it as we may, meet it calmly as we can, the fact remains that the dark days must come. They are sent for our discipline. They are robed in mist and cloud, and while we sit in their shadow their angels are busy in loosening the strings which bind us to the earth, and enabling us to wish for the better country, where
"Everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers."
That we are not so in love with the earth as never to be ready to leave it is perhaps due to the fact that one sorrow after another shows us Heaven's beauty as in revelation, and wooes us hither by giving us treasure there.
And when once our feet stand upon the eternal hills it will be our joy to meet the Lord, who, all our journey, over rough and smooth, helped us, acquainted like ourselves with grief.—Mrs. M. E. Sangster, in Christian Union.
CONSISTENCY.
WE are often puzzled and startled by the conduct of those in whose piety we thought we might place undoubting confidence, and whom we should have pointed out as Christian examples to others. Upon some occasions they exhibit such appearance of conformity to the world as would lead us to suppose they belong to it.
How desirable, therefore, that we should deal faithfully with ourselves, and see that Christian principles pervade our hearts, and form and fashion our whole lives! Let us cherish a tender conscience. Let us remember whatever benefits us for religious duties; whatever cools the fervor of our devotions; whatever indisposes us to read our Bible, or to engage in prayer; whatever we could not engage in with a perfectly clear conscience; wherever the thought of a suffering Saviour or a holy God—of the hour of death, or of the day of judgment, falls like a cold shadow on our enjoyment; the pleasures which we cannot thank God for, and on which we cannot ask his blessing,—these are not for us.
Let us never go where we cannot ask God to go with us. Let us never be found where we cannot act as Christ would have us. Let us pass each day as pilgrims consciously on the way to their heavenly inheritance. Let us press after closer communion with Jesus. Let the love of God reign in our hearts, and thus shall we be kept from a thousand snares, and become possessed of a peace and joy to which the worldling is a stranger.—The Witness.
ALL FOR ONE DOLLAR.
PROTESTANTS ought not to be discouraged in projects for great cathedrals, because they do not collect the funds with the same rapidity as Roman Catholics do for the same purposes. Protestantism itself received a tremendous impetus from the great financial success in selling indulgences for the building of St. Peter's. Our Roman Catholic neighbors in Canada offer the following inducements to liberality in cathedral building. Rev. Mr. Doudiet furnishes the following translation of an important document relating to a cathedral modeled after the great St. Peter's in Rome, and which has been in process of erection for many years:—
ST. PAUL AND MANNERS.
By Bessie Chandler
I SAW not long ago a peculiar seal-ring, one that a mother had had made as a birthday present for her son, who was away at school. It was a blood stone, carved with the device of two mailed hands, one reaching to the other a cup, and around this an inscription, which was Greek to me.
"What does it mean?" I asked, after a little study. "Is it the 'cup of water in the name of a disciple?'"
The mother laughed. "Not exactly," she said. "But it is a cup of water—the cup that Sir Philip Sidney gave to the dying soldier on the battle-field. You remember the legend. The motto you will find in the twelfth chapter of Romans, tenth verse—'In honor preferring one another.' I had it engraved in original Greek, so that everyone couldn't read it, for this is between my boy and me. St. Paul has always been my teacher of good manners, and I thought this ring would please Tom, and at the same time remind him of some of the things that I cannot say to him now."
"Will you tell me what you mean about St. Paul and good manners?" I asked.
She smiled a little and said, "Why, I wanted above all things, as I suppose every mother does, that my boys should be well-bred, courteous, polite—in a word, gentlemen. But I soon found out that the continual teaching them to do, or not to do, each particular act was never going to make them what I wanted. It must be deeper than that; and after a while I came back and rested on the Bible, and especially on St. Paul. Did you ever read this twelfth chapter of Romans with reference to manners? No guide to etiquette, or rules for deportment, could do as much for one as that. My boys and I finally took the one broad rule: 'Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another.' That, in its broadest sense, includes everything. The talking to disagreeable people, the being cordial and hospitable, the trying to entertain others, and give them pleasure with any talent we have, are all, I think, being kindly affectioned. And 'in honor preferring one another' may mean everything, from the offering a chair to the giving up of life for another."
"I think I learned this," she went on, "once when it was my lot to live for a time in a little Western village, with what you would call very common people. Uncultivated they certainly all were, but I saw there what a perfect substitute true Christianity is for good manners, as society calls them. There were some people there who never offended. Quaint and amusing they might be in their ways and expressions, but never rude, never curious or prying or conceited. They were always considerate and thoughtful, always full of some kind-hearted plan for other people's pleasure. They were kindly affectionate, and preferred one another. I remembered all this when I came to the training of my own boys, and so far St. Paul has been my authority on manners. I do not say that through him I can teach my boys to use the right fork for oysters, or to make a faultless bow, but I do say that I can teach them to be so manly, so gentle, so thoughtful of others, and unassuming about themselves, that, even if they blundered in every small social matter, they would still be undeniably gentlemen. The small matters of etiquette are mostly mechanical; they can be easily learned outside, even if they are not in our own home; but it is with the great underlying principle, 'in honor preferring one another,' that the true training must begin."
SPIRITUAL TREASURE.
For the low sum of One Dollar in favor of the Cathedral of Montreal, the purchaser will have the benefit of the following advantages: 1,048 Masses a year for four years; 145,133 Communions; 323,808 Ways of the Cross; 515,464 Rosaries; 16,372 Masses heard; 4,300 Strings of Beads of the Sacred Heart; 4,600 Offices of the Holy Virgin; 720 Breviaries of the Precious Blood; 100 Salve Regina, chanted by the Trappists, and several thousands of other prayers, such as "Remember . . ." "Pater," Ave, etc., and once a week the spiritual profit of 7,000,000 of Ave Marias by the confraternity of that name.
Seen and approved,
EDWARD CHARLES,
Bishop of Montreal.
We do not believe that Protestants generally have any conception of the actual prevailing sentiment among Romanists as indicated by such an offer as this. But this does not distinctly set forth the engagements which are most abhorrent to the Protestant mind, and which are made less prominent in America, than in other lands. Romanism in these United States vastly modifies its outward manifestations in order to lessen the antagonism between it and the intelligence of the community.—New York Observer.
The Nature of Duty
NOTHING is duty which it is impossible to accomplish.
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. NO. 2.
By Editor
"REMEMBER the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." Although this is the plainly expressed command of God, and although there are multitudes who profess to obey it, yet there is just ground to fear that of this multitude those who do really obey it are few. Of course those who profess to obey it by keeping the first day of the week do not obey it at all. This is certain because the Lord's own word in explanation of this is that "the seventh day is the Sabbath." All who keep Sunday therefore must be set down at once as not obeying the command to "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." But after dropping all these, it yet remains that there is just cause for fear that of those who really observe the seventh day, the true Sabbath, there are few who really obey the command to "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." In fact we very much fear that of these there are many who don't even try to obey it.
What! keep the seventh day, the true Sabbath, and yet don't try to obey the commandment that says, "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy"? Yes, that is what we very much fear is the case with many even of Seventh-day Adventists, because they try to obey something that is not the commandment. They misread the commandment thus: Remember the Sabbath-day and keep it holy, and then try to keep that instead of the real command of God, "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." This we fear because we have so often heard it thus read wrong; and we cannot see how that a person who habitually reads or quotes it wrong can obey it right. At the best they can only live up to the conception of the commandment which they have in their own minds, and if their conception of the commandment is incorrect, it can only be that obedience according to that incorrect conception is defective also. The obedience is in the right line, of course, and it is right as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough to meet the requirement of the commandment. We have actually heard Seventh-day Adventist ministers quote that commandment, over and over, as though it was written, Remember the Sabbath-day and keep it holy. It fairly seemed as though they really supposed that to be the idea of the commandment.
It may be supposed that the difference between "to" and "and" is so slight as to make not so much difference as we would seem to insist is there. True, the difference is not so great as to make the words opposites, but it is sufficient to involve a very important principle in the keeping of the commandment. The truth is that in that little word "to" lies the very gist of the commandment. Webster defines "to" thus: "The preposition to . . . indicates motion, course, or tendency toward a time, a state or condition, an aim, or anything capable of being regarded as a limit to movement or action."
Now let us read the commandment in the light of this definition: "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." What does "to" mean? Motion, course, or tendency toward (1) "A time." What time is the object of this "to"? The Sabbath-day. (2) "A state or condition." What is the state or condition which is the object of this "to"? A state or condition of rest—"in it thou shalt not do any work." (3) "An aim." What is the aim? "The Sabbath of the Lord thy God." (4) "Anything capable of being regarded as a limit to movement or action." What is the limit of the movement or action allowed under this commandment? The seventh day, which is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. Our movement or action is limited to six days by the regular recurrence of the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord. Therefore the Sabbath of the Lord fully meets the requirement of the word "to" in the commandment, as being the object of our motion, course, or tendency under the guidance of God, in that it is "a time, a state or condition, an aim," and "a limit" to our "movement or action." And that it may ever be held in view as such is the purpose of God in commanding all men to "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy."
When, therefore, does the obligation of this commandment begin? when should we begin to obey it? Whenever conscious motion or tendency toward it begins, certainly. And right here is where we can detect the difference between the "to" that is in the commandment and the "and" that is put into it by those who misquote it so. When the sun has set and the Sabbath is past, Saturday evening, many think they have no more to do with the Sabbath, at any rate until the next Friday—the preparation day—comes, and then that it is mostly the women in the house who are to act in view of it in baking and boiling that which shall be necessary on the Sabbath to follow, while out on the farm the remembrance of it does not begin till toward the middle of the afternoon, or perhaps not till about sunset; then the putting away of the teams and all the preparatory chores follow sunset, and so are done on the Sabbath. Now if the commandment read, Remember the Sabbath-day and keep it, such a course might be considered obedience to it—except of course in the case of those who do their closing work of the week on the Sabbath itself—but so long as the commandment reads, "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," in no case could any such course be considered obedience to it. Because unless we remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, we cannot keep it holy. Unless we remember it as it comes, we cannot keep it when it comes. Therefore, when the sun has set and the Sabbath has passed away, just then begins our motion and tendency toward the Sabbath-day, and just then begins the obligation to "remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy;" just then must begin or rather must not cease our obedience to this commandment.
In fact, the obligation of this commandment, and the duty of active obedience to it, never depart from us in any minute of life, any more than any other one of the sacred ten. Obedience to this commandment is not at all confined to the hours of the Sabbath-day itself, but it attaches to every conscious minute, and enters into every act and plan of life. Never are we free from the obligation to "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." It is the "time" toward which we are constantly moving during the hours and days of the week, and we must remember it. Its rest is the "state or condition" which follows the labor of the week, and we are to remember it so, when that labor begins at the beginning of the first day of the week, the first laboring day. To be not inconsistent with the keeping of the Sabbath holy must be the aim of all labor, and all plans of the laboring days as the days go by. And, finally, its sacred threshold it is which marks the limit of our movements or action of labor. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath-day, is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work. And this must be remembered at the very beginning of the work of the six days, and all through them, remembering the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.
Thus the obligation of the commandment covers the whole week—during the six working days remembering the Sabbath to keep it, and then when the Sabbath has fully come, to keep it. It is because of this important principle that the Hebrew idea of the Sabbath covered the whole week, and by which the days of the week, instead of being called first day, second day, etc., of the week, were called day one of the Sabbath, day two of the Sabbath, and so on to day six of the Sabbath, and then Sabbath: thus throughout the week keeping over before the mind the Sabbath, which is really the aim and object of the week, and which is so set before the minds of all men in the commandment of God, "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." The person who so far forgets the Sabbath-day during the week, as to involve himself in work, or in plans that will distract his mind from the proper contemplation and worship of God on the Sabbath, disobeys the commandment of God—he does not "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," consequently he cannot remember it and keep it holy.
As God designed the Sabbath of the Lord to be the sign of the true God, the Creator of all things, and the memorial of his created works, so in his commandment to "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," he designed to keep ever in the minds of men the remembrance of himself and of his wonderful works. Therefore, "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy" "then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord."
J.
NOT "A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT."
THE State of Louisiana has, in common with many other States, been doctoring its Sunday laws, and now has a law requiring that, with certain exceptions, all places of business shall be closed from 12 o'clock on Saturday night until 12 o'clock on Sunday night. A case recently came before the Supreme Court of Louisiana, in which the law was claimed to be unconstitutional. The court held the law to be valid, and the following is a portion of the opinion delivered by the Judge:—
"We take occasion promptly to say that if the object of the law were to compel the observance of Sunday as a religious institution, we would not hesitate to declare it to be violative of the above constitutional prohibition. It would violate equally the religious liberty of the Christian, the Jew, and the infidel, none of whom can be compelled by law to comply with any merely religious observance whether it accords with his faith and conscience or not. With rare exceptions, the American authorities concur in this view. . . . The statute is to be judged of precisely as if it had selected for the day of rest any day of the week, other than Sunday; and its validity is not to be questioned, because in the exercise of a wise discretion, it has chosen that day which a majority of the inhabitants of this State, under the sanctions of their religious faith, already voluntarily observe as a day of rest."
The New York Independent quotes this, and adds the following words of approval:—
"This is an exceedingly lucid statement of the theory which underlies all legislation that requires the suspension of ordinary labor on Sunday. The object is not to enforce religious observances of any kind, but simply to establish a uniform day of rest for the general good of the whole people; and this is no interference with the religious rights of anybody."
It may seem very presumptuous for a non-professional man to criticise the opinion of so great a person as a Judge of a Supreme Court, but nevertheless we have no hesitation in saying that the opinion quoted is nothing but sophistry, and such sophistry as could be dealt out only by an adept in the art. This we think can easily be made apparent; and it is the more necessary that this should be done, because the Sunday-law mania has now become quite prevalent, and just such sophistical arguments as those quoted above will be relied on in securing the enactment of those laws. These arguments will be used for the reason that they are the best that can be offered in favor of an unjust law, and also simply because they have been used before. Even the Louisiana judge himself did not pretend to originate them, but contented himself with giving the view in which nearly all "American authorities concur." If American legal business were not becoming more a matter of precedent than of common sense, Sunday laws could never be enacted; but the idea seems to be that whatever has been done ought to be done, and precedents for oppressing people under the guise of charity are not wanting.519
The claim is made that the Sunday law does not compel the observance of Sunday as a religious institution, and that therefore it cannot be contrary to a constitution which forbids religious tests for office or citizenship. But the fact is, Sunday is primarily a religious institution, and its observance cannot be enforced except as such. It cannot be separated from its religious (not sacred) character for the purpose of special legislation concerning it. It matters not what such legislation is called, whether a police regulation, or a law in the interests of the workingman, it is legislation concerning an institution of the church.
To make it evident that Sunday laws are laws in behalf of religion, three things only need to be borne in mind: 1. Sunday rest originated in the church. Catholics universally claim the church as the sole authority for Sunday observance, and many Protestants agree with them in this. The Christian at Work says: "We rest the designation of Sunday solely on the church having set it apart of its own authority." But if the claims of those who say that Christ and the apostles set the day apart as a day of rest, were true, that would make it emphatically a church institution. 2. The observance of Sunday is generally considered by church people as the essence of religion. In the Sunday law contest in California five years ago, the Christian Advocate spoke of Sunday as "the foundation of our holy religion." Regarding Sunday rest as the memorial of the resurrection of Christ, they think that without it there would be no evidence of the truth of the gospel. 3. The churches and the churches alone are at the bottom of all Sunday legislation. No one ever heard of such a thing as a Sunday law being proposed by anybody except a zealous churchman or a deputation of ministers. It is true that, by pretending that Sunday laws are in the interest of labor, they are inducing labor and socialistic organizations to clamor for such laws, but these organizations come in only as allies to the church. Everyone who knows anything of the history of Sunday legislation, knows that it is always instigated by the churches.
Now in the face of these things, to say that Sunday laws do not compel men to observe Sunday as a religious institution, is not only sophistry, but it is positive untruth. Since the day as a day of rest is nothing else but a religious institution, how can it be enforced as anything else but a religious institution? It cannot be enforced as something which it is not. True, it is said that when the State enforces the observance of Sunday, it makes it a civil institution, merely a legal holiday. Well, nobody contends that the State law makes Sunday a religious institution; it is that already. We freely admit that the State law in its behalf is only a civil ordinance, for the State could make nothing else but a civil ordinance; but, mark it well, what we do claim, and what all candid minds must admit to be the truth, is that a State-Sunday law is a civil ordinance enforcing the observance of a religious institution.
Some years ago the city of San Francisco had a notorious mayor, who engaged in certain transactions that were inconsistent with his official position. His defense was that he did those things as an ordinary citizen, and not as mayor. It requires no argument to show the absurdity of such a statement. The man was mayor, and he could not separate himself from his office within the time for which he was elected. But this is just on a par with the argument that Sunday legislation is not the enforcement of a religious institution. If the friends of so-called National Reform admit such a plea, they must be prepared to see it carried out to its legitimate conclusion. They must expect to see the vilest rakes elected to office in their model government, under the plea that they are not bad citizens, but are simply bad men.
If anything further were needed to show the flimsy character of the arguments by which Sunday law advocates attempt to make it appear that they are not working for an ecclesiastical establishment, it may be found in the last sentence of the judicial opinion first quoted. Said the judge:—
"The statute is to be judged of precisely as if it had selected for the day of rest any day of the week, other than Sunday; and its validity is not to be questioned because, in the exercise of a wise discretion, it has chosen that day which a majority of the inhabitants of this State, under the sanctions of their religious faith, already voluntarily observe as a day of rest."
"A wise discretion," indeed! The State has chosen the day which a large majority of its inhabitants, under the sanctions of their religious faith, voluntarily observe as a day of rest, and, at the instigation of that majority, has undertaken to enforce its observance as a day of rest, and yet this is no more in the interest of religion than if Monday or Thursday had been chosen! Such a monstrous assertion needs but to be quoted to be refuted. A man must be sadly blinded to put such a statement forth as a sober legal argument, and men must be pre-determined to have Sunday laws or they could not be deceived by it. Suppose that the State had, in the exercise of its "wise discretion," chosen Saturday instead of Sunday; would there not have been protests without number? Indeed there would. People would call it a law in the interests of the Jews and other Sabbatarians, and no argument could convince them to the contrary. "But," says one, "such a law would really be unjust to the great majority who observe Sunday as a day of religious rest." Indeed! Then by the same token a law enforcing Sunday observance is unjust to those who observe Saturday, or who do not choose to observe any set day. The discriminating reader can see that it is the word "majority" which catches the judicial fancy. It seems to be the idea that Sunday legislation cannot be wrong, because the majority favor it. As much as to say that a thing is necessarily right if it is proposed by a majority of the people. But no majorities can ever make a wrong right, and State laws in behalf of an establishment of religion are always wrong. The question whether or not Sunday ought to be observed as a day of rest, does not enter into the case at all. We believe in the God of the Bible, as the majority of people in this country profess to do, but we should emphatically protest against a State law to compel all people to recognize him as such.
Here is a point that should not be lost sight of: If Sunday laws are not for the purpose of compelling the observance of Sunday as a religious institution, for what purpose are they? The claim is that they are in the interest of humanity, so that laboring men may have the rest which their physical nature imperatively demands. Very well, thus we suppose it will be admitted that it is within the province of the State to compel men to observe the laws of their being. Now it is just as certain that man's physical nature requires that he should take a definite amount of sleep every twenty-four hours, far more imperatively than it demands that he shall rest one day in seven. Will our Sunday-law friends admit that the State has any right to decide how many hours a man ought to sleep, and to enact a law compelling every man to sleep at least seven hours out of every twenty-four? Unless they are ready to advocate such a measure as this, let them say nothing more about enforcing Sunday rest on the basis of the necessity of man's physical nature. We have presented this view of the case before, but we do not expect ever to see Sunday-law advocates attempt to meet it.
Now one word concerning the Independent's statement that Sunday legislation "is no interference with the religious rights of anybody." We say that it is a positive and unjust interference with the religious rights of everybody who conscientiously observes any day other than Sunday. Here are laboring men who believe that when the fourth commandment says, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work," it means just what it says. They are conscientious in their observance of the seventh day of the week; and the needs of their families demand that they should spend the other six days in labor, as the commandment allows. According to the fourth commandment, it is their religious privilege to labor six days of the week, just as much as it is their religious duty to rest on the seventh. Therefore if the State steps in and compels them to rest on another day also, no matter on what grounds the rest is enforced, their religious rights are interfered with. And if those men shall be punished for continuing to make Sunday one of their six working days, their punishment will be an act of religious persecution. No assertions to the contrary can change the truth of this.
From the very nature of the case, Sunday legislation must interfere with the religious rights of some. For, Sunday as a day of rest is beyond dispute a religious institution; legislation enforcing its observance is legislation enforcing an establishment of religion; and when any religious tenet is enforced, the religious rights of all who do not hold that tenet must be interfered with, and oppression must result.
We hope that the people in those States that still allow full liberty of conscience, will take the time and trouble now to become well informed concerning the arguments used in behalf of Sunday laws, and will learn how to expose their fallacy, so that when the Sunday-law mania shall seize their State, as it surely will, they will not allow their liberty to be taken away without making a well-directed, intelligent protest. w.
WHICH OF THESE IS NOT SPIRITUALISM?
By Editor
HERE is one statement:—
"There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as death, in the popular signification of that term. Death, so called—the death of the human—is a veritable birth into a higher life. It is a change in the condition consequent upon outward dissolution. . . . The real man survives the process intact, and still exists in full life and consciousness, upon a plane beyond, far beyond, the reach of fire and flood."
Here is another:—
"At the death of the outer body, the true life of the inner spirit commences."
Here is another:—
"Hence the dark hearse, the black pall, the bitter lamentation over the grave, which shows that it is not realized that death is only a glorious birth."
And another:—
"But hark! a voice comes from beyond the grave to tell us that death is not our foe; that he is the messenger of life and joy; that he is the grand accoucheur of the soul, and comes to usher it into light and life eternal."
And then here is another, the very latest production on this subject that we have seen:—
"One of our dear Sabbath-school pupils has graduated into the higher school. The great Teacher has promoted her to the celestial sphere where the freed spirit shall never tire as it soars into the knowledge of the infinite, which only God and the angels can reveal to her. Death, whom we call the great destroyer, set free from flight this immortal soul after a struggle of only nine days with the fair form which held it to earth. . . . Ah! death has proved to her the genius of the fountain of eternal youth."
Now can anyone tell which of these quotations speak the language of Spiritualism and which do not? We cannot. And yet all but the last were written by avowed Spiritualists, by people who make no pretensions to anything else, while the last is from a strictly evangelical—heaven save the mark—paper. The first quotation is from the Spiritual Telegraph; the second from Andrew Jackson Davis's "Healing of the Nations;" the third is from Dr. Hare's "Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated;" the fourth is from a lecture on Spiritualism by Joel Tiffany; and the last is from the official organ of the Presbyterian Church of East Oakland, a paper entitled the Christian Home, in an editorial notice in the issue for August, 1887. But not one of the first four is a whit more impregnated with Spiritualism than is the last.
The fact is that to-day the churches are to Spiritualism the basis of its strongest hopes. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is the sole foundation of Spiritualism, and in the estimation of the evangelical (?) pulpit to deny the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is to proclaim yourself an infidel if not an atheist. The churches lay down the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and Spiritualism builds upon it and destroys its multitudes. The pulpits defend it by such arguments as that "matter cannot think, nor move, nor feel;" and then the so-called "Christian Science" stands upon the doctrine, and accepts the arguments, and carries them in their logical conclusion into practice, and deludes its thousands into the belief that it is really so, and into the expectation of thereby surviving all that is, in their8estimation, miscalled disease. Then too there comes the New Theology, of probation after death, because it cannot admit the justice of an eternity of torment, upon those who have lived and died without a knowledge of the gospel; and all that the orthodox can do against these and numberless other heresies springing from the same source, is to make ineffectual attempts to stem the tide of evil, because she herself stands upon the doctrine of which the evils and heresies are only the logical outcome.
Let the truth of the word of God be preached as it is, that "The dead know not anything, . . . also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun" (Eccl. 9:5, 6). "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish" (Ps. 146:4); and Spiritualism can have no place. But as long as the pulpit tells the church and the world that the dead are conscious and know all about us, and are hovering round us, just so long is Spiritualism going to seize the logic of it and do its best to show both the church and the world that through it the channel of communication is open. And when the pulpit presents the proposition, it will find that the logic that leads to Spiritualism will prove a thousand times stronger than will be any attempt that the pulpit can make in opposition to the logic of its own proposition.
Let the truth of God be preached and believed that man is mortal, and that immortality is the gift of God alone, and that alone through the faith of Jesus Christ; that man is made of the dust of the ground and will never be anything else except through an abiding faith in Christ;—let this be preached and believed, and the so-called Christian Science can have no place. But so long as the pulpit furnishes the arguments, so long this Christian Science, that is neither Christian nor science, will use the arguments which the pulpit furnishes.
Let the truth of God be preached and believed, that the dead know not anything, and that without a resurrection from the dead even they "which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished" (1 Cor. 15:16-18), and that will annihilate at once the New Theology with its question of probation after death.
Let the truth of God be preached and believed that "the soul that sinneth it shall die," and "the wages of sin is death," and that will annihilate forever the horrible doctrine of an eternity of torment, and with it will be annihilated the infidel charge of cruelty and injustice against God, who is supremely just and who is Love itself.
And so God charges men: "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 . . . with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come ["will come?" it has come] when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they 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.