The first thing our parents lost in Eden was their confidence in God. The adversary told a lie about the Creator, and they believed it; and this destroyed confidence in him who alone can uphold and keep. If they had retained their confidence in God, they would have lived to all eternity, and all their posterity with them. The pivotal point on which everything balanced was confidence. This being destroyed, everything was disordered, and only ruin could result.
If sin had never entered, nothing but courage, hope, good will, and joyful expectation would ever have prevailed in the human mind. These states of mind help to conserve life in the human soul and body as truly as sun energy, air, and water generate plant life in the soil. Man does not live by bread alone, but by the words of confidence, hope, courage, good will, and joyful expectation found in the promises and precepts of God's Word.
A single thought can bring the crimson flush to the cheek; another thought can give it the pallor of death. Other thoughts can cause the body to shiver with a sudden chill, while others can produce the flush of fever. The whole being sometimes trembles under strong emotions. Many a soldier can testify to the cathartic and diuretic effects of the terror of the first battle he entered. The heart action is often greatly disturbed by powerful adverse emotions.
A thought will cause tears to flow. A thought will wreath the face with smiles. In the presence of danger, thought will cause superhuman feats of strength. Again, fear thoughts often leave the muscles and nerves limp and powerless. Every little while we hear of some surprise thoughts having relaxed the muscles and nerves so that severe hiccuping has instantly ceased.
Then may not thoughts cause vital organs to blush or blanch — to congest or become depleted of blood? May not the circulation be hastened or hindered so as to vitally interfere with the health of the body?
Unbelief, fear, hate, and anxiety are the fruit of doubt, as surely as courage, good will, and joyful expectation are the result of confidence. And these adverse moods work nothing but ruin and death.
He who goes forth with joy and gladness to the tasks of life, will return in the evening with little loss of energy. He who goes forth with agonizing fear and forebodings will return exhausted. Men and women often spend more energy in hating the tasks of life than they do in their actual physical performance. Care and worry corrode and weaken the delicate mechanism of the mind as truly as acids corrode and ruin the strongest metals. Worry brings sighs and groans, and lessens the capacity of the breathing organs. It destroys the appetite for food and water, and robs its victims of sleep, until they look haggard and pale. If they continue on this downward road, the entire vital machinery becomes disordered, and they fall victims to some dire malady, or end their days in a lunatic asylum.
If the agony of some terrible sorrow or disappointment suddenly overtakes the individual, collapse and prostration instantly follow, and sometimes sudden death. The entire supply of vitality has been exhausted, and no energy is left to keep the heart and lungs acting. In any of these cases, if courage and confidence can be restored before the final collapse, the body will rally and get well. A person who is a victim of a shock from the agony of disappointment or sorrow may be almost instantly restored by a hopeful telegram which brings what purports to be good news. After the restoration, it may be learned that the telegram had no shadow of truth in it. Yet the confidence and courage and hope it inspired worked curatively until the lie was unmasked and the confidence again destroyed. From this it may be seen that any assurance or doctrine, no matter how false or deceptive, may work curatively if it only seems to generate hope and confidence.
This enables us to see that there may be a system or many systems of mind cure which are absolutely godless. They cannot raise the dead nor secure permanent results, but they do get temporary results which sometimes appear very satisfactory, and to those who have given them little or no attention, the results may seem almost or quite miraculous. A sudden restoration of confidence and hope may almost as immediately restore as a sudden loss of confidence may prostrate. It takes only a fairly clever presentation to convert such into marvelous cases of so-called divine healing. But cures through confidence which rest on a false foundation will always be disappointing, because they can be only temporary. Any object of confidence may furnish temporary relief to those who rest on them. The coin may contain some gold, yet it is a counterfeit, because it is not what it professes to be. The genuine coin has real value.
Human assurances often fail. Doctrines prove false and unsatisfactory. The heathen god loses his power over the devotee once he is enlightened. The enchanted, mystified followers of Christian Science, after the blaze and glamour are gone, find in their hearts an aching void, and they seek yet again for something more substantial on which to pillow their disappointed hopes and rest their unsatisfied desires.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Religious Skeptics
By F. M. W.
IT is not surprising to see openly avowed infidels attack the Bible record and call into question the statements of Holy Writ; but it is painful to see a great Christian church, a church which in the past has stood stanchly for some of the fundamental principles of Scriptural teaching, by its official action place its indorsement upon these attacks against the Scriptures of Truth. This it appears, according to current reports, has been done by the New York Presbytery in its recent licensure of four graduates of the Union Theological Seminary.
Of these four candidates the Christian Observer of May 26 states that “not one was ready to accept the fact of the virgin birth of Jesus, and some, if not all, avowed their disbelief in the resurrection of the body of Jesus from the tomb of Joseph. . . . Only one of them seemed to hold clearly and loyally to the doctrine of the deity of our Lord. The others were actual Unitarians, whether aware of the fact or not. One openly and uncompromisingly avowed himself a Universalist. . . . Yet by an overwhelming majority the presbytery overruled all protests of opposition, and resolved to admit these men to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church.”
The overruled minority of the presbytery, not content to let the matter rest, but feeling that this action of the majority was clearly a denial of the honored faith of the church, made an appeal to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It will be interesting to learn what action the General Assembly took upon this vital question. It is indeed a vital issue, affecting not alone the local presbytery in New York which first dealt with it, but the entire Presbyterian denomination as well. Commenting upon the issue before the assembly, the Christian Observer says:—
Our great sister church in the North faces therefore the question of the essential importance of the relative worthlessness of the cardinal doctrines of the virgin birth, the vicarious death, the actual resurrection, and the divine nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, the reliability and authority of the Holy Bible, and the supremacy of the Presbyterian standards as a test of the soundness of her teachers.
On an issue like this no compromise is possible or honorable. There must be the maintenance of the truth or the surrender of the truth. If it is allowable and ecclesiastically authorized to teach Unitarianism and Universalism and rationalism in the Presbyterian Church, then the church should change its name, and not pervert a noble, historic title. It should repudiate its confessional symbols, and cease to require its candidates for ordination to declare with all the solemnity of an oath that they believe them. It is a sad commentary on the ethics of “modern theology” that the New York Presbytery proposes to require these men to avow publicly that they receive the Scriptures as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The mental reservations of Jesuitism could not be more dishonest or disgraceful.
This action of the New York Presbytery is but an indication of the times. The fact that a so-called theological seminary could graduate for the ministry young men of such loose and liberal ideas regarding the cardinal doctrines of the Scriptures shows the dangerous mold of religious teaching in some of the great theological schools of the present day.
How can the church of Christ expect to evangelize the world when it admits to holy orders young men who have no faith in the only power which can bring regeneration to a fallen race? How can these young men, or any others who reject the doctrine of the deity of our Lord, who scout the idea of the resurrection of Christ and other cardinal doctrines, go forth as Heaven’s ambassadors? Truly they would be blind leaders of the blind.
In these days of growing skepticism, those who accept the Scriptures of Truth as the word of inspiration need as never before to show in their lives and in their teaching the power of the gospel of Christ, the only means by which men may obtain regeneration from sin and life in the world to come. F. M. W.
Signs of the Approaching End
By W. A. S.
Part 1. Events in the Fall of Jerusalem
CHRIST had spoken of the coming desolation of the sacred temple. The disciples were astonished. “Master, see,” said one, “what manner of stones and what buildings are here!” The Saviour replied:—
“Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” Mark 13:2.
A Question Answered: “What Shall Be the Sign?”
As soon as they were alone, on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city, the disciples came to Jesus, saying:—
“Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Matt. 24:3.
At the disciples’ question, the Saviour’s prophetic vision looked forward through the coming years and centuries. Replying, he described the fall of Jerusalem; foretold in a sentence the experiences of his church through dark centuries to follow; then described the coming of the latter days, with signs showing his second advent near at hand; and, finally, pictured the scenes of his own glorious appearing in the clouds of heaven. The fullest record of the discourse is found in the twenty-fourth of Matthew.
A Striking Parallel
The first portion of the prophetic discourse (verses 4-14) deals with general conditions that were to prevail both in the last days of the Jewish state, and, on a yet larger scale, in the course of history leading to the last days of the world. There was so close a parallel between these times that Christ, in one description, answered both questions asked, When shall these things come upon Jerusalem? and What shall be the signs of the end of the world?
The prophetic word foretold the rise8of false Christs, the coming of wars, famines, and earthquakes, “in divers places.” The believers saw these things fulfilled in that generation before Jerusalem fell; but as we read the prophecy, we see the wider application and yet larger fulfillment through the course of history since that day, these things increasing in the earth as the end draws near. Before the end of the Jewish state, the believers carried the gospel to all the known world of their day. See Col. 1:23. In these latter days we are seeing the yet wider proclamation of the gospel, as foretold in the fourteenth verse: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
Jerusalem’s Last Days
We may note most briefly some of the events of Jerusalem’s last days. Christ had forewarned the believers:—
“Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.”
Having rejected the true Christ, the nation was open to deception by the false. We catch just a glimpse of the fulfillment in the book of Acts. But in secular history the full story is told. Ridpath says:—
Never was a people so turbulent, so excited with expectation of a deliverer who should restore the ancient kingdom, so fired with bigotry and fanaticism, as were the wretched Jews of this period. One Christ came after another. Revolt was succeeded by revolt, instigated by some pseudo-prophet or pretended king.—“History of the World,” Vol. I, page 849.
During the Saviour’s life and ministry a divine hand had held the elements of violence in check to a great extent; but as the light was rejected more and more, the spirit of evil had its way unrestrained. Dr. Mears well describes the changed conditions in these words:—
The narrative of the evangelists presents a tranquil scene, a succession of attractive pictures, in striking contrast to the bloody and tumultuous events which crowd each other in the pages of Josephus.—“From Exile to Overthrow,” page 256.
Thus the events led rapidly on toward the day of Jerusalem’s fall, so long foretold by the prophets.
The Sign to the Believers
The disciples had asked for a sign; and Christ gave to the believers a sign by which they might know when the time to flee out of Jerusalem had come. Here Luke’s Gospel gives the fullest record:—
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.” Luke 21:20-22.
The unbelieving of Jerusalem and Judea could not conceive that their city, so long protected and favored of God, could be destroyed. Not even the appearance of the Roman armies could shake their blind self-confidence. But at the first sight of the encircling armies, the Christians knew that the time of flight was at hand. But how to flee was the question, with the compassing lines drawn close about the city. Moreover, the Zealots, the furious war party in power, would be little likely to allow any number to pass out to the Roman forces.
Just here God’s providence made a way of escape. Cestius, the Roman commander, after having partially undermined one of the temple walls, suddenly decided to defer pushing the attack. “He retired from the city,” says Josephus, “without any reason in the world.” (See “Wars,” book 2, chap. 19.) And the Zealots flew out after the retiring Romans, furiously attacking the rear guards.
Then those watching Christians knew that the time for quick flight had come, according to Christ’s prophecy uttered thirty years before. They fled out of the city and out of the country round about.
Through all the years, Christ’s prophecy had exhorted them, “Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day.” Matt. 24:20. The prayer was answered, for it was in the autumn and on a week day that the flight was made. Watching for the sign, and instantly obeying, they were delivered.
Thus it was that when the Romans returned later to the siege, never to give over till the city fell, none of the Christians were overwhelmed in its destruction. Even so are we to watch the signs of our own times, that we may escape those things that are coming upon the earth, and be ready to “stand before the Son of man.”
The Prophetic Word Fulfilled
Christ had declared that the temple, the pride of the nation, would be utterly destroyed. In the last siege, the Roman commander tried to spare the magnificent pile. When the Jews made it their chief fortress, because of its massive strength, Titus remonstrated with them, saying:—
If you will but change the place wherein you will fight, no Roman shall either come near your sanctuary nor offer any affront to it; nay, I will endeavor to preserve you your holy house whether you will or not.—Josephus’s “Wars,” book 6, chap. 2.
But the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. The people seemed possessed with fury. The hardened Roman pagans were astonished at their suicidal rashness. Titus’s efforts to save the temple failed, and it went down in ruins as Christ had foretold.
The disciples of Christ had called his attention to the immense blocks of stone that composed the temple walls. “See what manner of stones,” one said. When Titus examined these same stones, after the fall of the city, he is said to have declared:—
We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications.—Id., book 6, chap. 9.
Rather, we would say, in the light of Scripture teaching, the destruction that came upon the city was but the fruit of its own way. God’s guardian care had long protected the city of David. When his protection was finally thrust aside, and the people put themselves in the power of the great destroyer, divine justice could no longer save the city from the judgments that were bound to fall upon persistent transgression against light.
The lesson is one of those written “for our learning upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Jerusalem, in that generation of great light and high privilege, fell because it knew not the time of its visitation. Still Christ’s sad lament bears its warning to the ears of men: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace.” Luke 19:42. W. A. S.
Beginning the Day With God
No day can be truly successful unless it is begun with prayer to God. He alone knows what the day holds in store. Knowing this, he stands ready to fortify his children against every onslaught and attack of the enemy.
In the busy rush of life's duties one is sometimes tempted to feel that he cannot afford time to pray. Rather, he cannot afford not to pray. Our times are in his hands. It is in his power to shape and control the events of our lives as he will. With his help we can accomplish much more in the shorter time left after the season of communion.
Better go without physical food, better miss important engagements with our fellows, than to miss the regular appointment which should be maintained with God in the early morning. Let us take time to be holy.
A Blessed Assurance
By C. M. S.
ONE of the most blessed promises to the Christian, sorrowing over the wreck of human hopes and the desolations and miseries of war, is this:—
“For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and there shall be heard in her no more the voice9of weeping and the voice of crying.” Isa. 65: 17-19.
The Almighty purposes to put the sorrowful experiences of his people as completely out of their minds as he will have put their transgressions out of his mind. We do not understand it now; but we look with the eye of faith for the soul-satisfying experiences of that re-created and re-beautified home of the redeemed concerning which Inspiration has declared:—
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” I Cor. 2:9.
What a contrast there will be for the redeemed between the restfulness of that world and the turmoil of this; between the beauties and glories of the saints’ eternal home and the ugly and terrifying desolations of this present world; between the blessed assurance of eternal life in such a land and the dread of dissolution in this valley of the shadow of death. Out of these woes and into that blessedness; out of this strife and into that peace; out of this uncertainty and into that blessed reality,—such is the comforting assurance of the Christian’s hope; and never does it seem so precious as when the conflicts and distresses of this present world take on their most fearsome aspect. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” Ps. 56: 3. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid: for Jehovah, even Jehovah, is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation.” Isa. 12: 2. C. M. S.
No Foundation for Peace
By C. M. S.
WHAT strange contrasts this earth of ours presents! The gospel of love is finishing its mission in the world in the face of a storm of ruin and death such as had never raged on earth before. The ministrations of mercy and the agencies of death and destruction are seen on the same field at the same time. The warring nations scatter terror, starvation, and death among the unarmed, the infants, and the aged; and amid this work of desolation and terror is seen the kind hand of charity giving bread to the hungry and alleviating distress. One wounds, and the other binds up; one smites, and the other mollifies with ointment; one causes hunger, and the other feeds the hungry.
And this is the age of peace congresses, of peace parleys, of peace treaties, of The Hague peace tribunal, of militarism to prevent war, of big navies to protect all the nations from the horrors of conquest. This is the age in which the nations would not dare to go to war because of the fearful machinery dedicated to the business of slaughter; the age which had made war impossible because soldiers would not dare to face the modern weapons of death; the age in which considerations of humanity were too strong to permit such slaughter as modern war would entail; the age when so many of the rulers and statesmen were Christians that a declaration of war by any of them would shock the conscience of united Christendom.
But the bubble has burst; and humanity has come to realize that its trust in the elimination of war through the dissemination of culture, enlightenment, and international business and economic relations was a broken reed. Humanity leaned upon that reed and was wounded for trusting.
However, the proponents of the universal peace idea are already recasting their creed and framing another groundwork for trust in the reality of their dream of peace. It is now seriously declared that the horrors and miseries and expense of the present war will cause the world to be so sick of militarism that the nations, in self-defense against another deluge of blood, will form some kind of parliament of the nations that will settle all differences for the future, and insure amity and peace throughout the world.
This hope rests on the same foundation as those rested upon that have come clattering to the ground during the present great war. It is a foundation of sand. There is nothing in that foundation to stand the strain of the superstructure. The heart of man will never be so purged of greed, distrust, and selfishness that every man will look first to others’ interests and secondly to his own. The truly converted heart has a basis of peace; but it is an individual peace, and can be had even amid war’s alarms or the flames of the auto-da-fé.
The present war has stirred up more hatred between nations than any that has ever been carried on in this world. Each of the embattled nations finds in the conduct of its foes a course against which it protests with bitter vehemence, and this feeling is extending to many of the neutrals also, because of interference with what the neutrals consider their rights. This war is setting up people against people, nation against nation, and is sowing broadcast the seeds of hatred and distrust, and the harvest is as certain as the sowing. It does not make for future peace. It does insure future war. There may come a period of comparative tranquillity, or seeming peace; but the issues raised by this war require an Armageddon, and the world is sweeping toward that event with marvelous velocity. The cry of peace will ring through the world again; but that cry will be hushed in the fearful tumult of earth’s last great war. C. M. S.
The Philippine Islands
By Arthur Grosvenor Daniells
Our visit to the Philippine Islands was more than an ordinary occasion. While it was one of real pleasure and encouragement to the visitors, we believe it will prove to have been one of great importance and value to the cause of God in the Far East.
It had been arranged that Elder R. C. Porter, president of the Asiatic Division Mission; Prof. H. R. Salisbury, president of the India Union Mission; Elder J. E. Fulton, president of the Australasian Union Conference; and Elder J. M. Johansen, manager of our Australian publishing house, should join me at Manila, to study how the forces in the territory represented by these brethren might co-operate more closely in pushing the work of God forward in this vast mission field. For weeks we had been giving this matter prayerful study, and while we were together in council we enjoyed much of the presence and blessing of the Lord.
The field represented by these brethren stretches eastward from Persia to the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean; and southward from Siberia to New Zealand and Tasmania, in the antarctic regions. In this great stretch of territory there are living ten hundred million human beings—two thirds of the entire population of the world. The vast majority of them are groping in the superstition and darkness of heathenism. Hundreds of millions have scarcely heard of the Saviour who died for them.
The task laid upon the leaders of our work in this field is so great that they constantly feel overwhelmed by it, and many times depressed. The great masses of people are so closely united, and the condition and problems to be dealt with are so similar, that there was a strong conviction that the cause would be greatly benefited by a closer and more definite co-operation on the part of these large divisions. This co-operation, it was believed, could be brought about by a conference of the men in this field upon whom the responsibilities of leadership have been placed. When this council closed, we felt that the great Counselor had been with us, guiding in the laying of plans which, if carried out, will strengthen the administration of the work throughout the field, and thus bring greater results from the expenditure of time, labor, and money. The definite plans agreed upon have been forwarded to the members of the General Conference Committee for their study and counsel. The suggestions which receive the approval of the committee will be published in due time.
We found much to cheer and encourage us in the Philippine Islands. Elder Finster, superintendent of that field, had brought to Manila the native evangelists,10Bible workers, and canvassers for a workers' meeting during our visit. Instruction in different lines of service was given these workers each forenoon during the week. Including the young people employed in the printing plant, there were about forty workers present. They were very responsive to the instruction given, and unitedly renewed the consecration of their lives to God and the work to which he has called them. In all my travels I think I have not met a more earnest, active, self-sacrificing body of young people than these Filipinos. Surely God's grace has wrought great changes in them, and now he is using them in the proclamation of his message to the Filipino people.
Five of the young men of the best education and largest experience are giving their entire time to evangelistic work. At the time of our visit some of these brethren were holding tent meetings in two places—Manila and Baliwag. The latter place is quite a large railway town about sixty miles north of Manila. They were having encouraging success. Forty-six had been baptized in Manila, and about twenty-five others desired baptism, but were being held back until they could be given fuller instruction regarding the Christian life. The evening meetings in that city were attended by many more than could get inside the tent.
We spent one day visiting our brethren and sisters in some of the towns and villages north of Manila. As it was impossible to reach all these places by train, Brother Finster secured a large automobile and took seven of us to visit four different places.
The first was a church of fifteen members at Bukawe, about twenty miles north of Manila. The way this little church was raised up is an example of missionary zeal that should characterize our people the world over. One of our Filipino brethren who was teaching in the public schools in Manila settled his family in this village. There was no one in Bukawe acquainted with our message, so this brother devoted all the time he could to missionary work—visiting families, distributing literature, and holding Bible studies. By these efforts an interest was awakened, which led Elder Finster to send one of the young evangelists to the village to hold public meetings. The result was the organization of a church of sixteen members.
After a pleasant hour with these dear friends, who seemed so glad to have a visit from brethren who had come from such distant fields, we drove to Mololos, twenty miles farther north, where we have a church of thirty-three members. As it was midday when we arrived, the brethren and sisters had a well-prepared dinner ready for us. When this was over, we had a good meeting. About a year ago this congregation erected a neat church building; but soon after its dedication, it, with many other buildings in the town, was burned to the ground. This was a sad blow to these poor people. But their courage is good, and they are preparing to rebuild.
We next hastened to Narzagaray, thirty miles distant. Here we have a church of fifty-two members. Twenty-five others are awaiting baptism. The chief of police and one or two members of the town council are members of this church. These persons were all brought into the truth by the labors of two of our Filipino evangelists. Before they were baptized, Brother Finster visited them and instructed them for church membership. It is surely a great blessing to our cause in foreign lands to have native workers who can raise up good, substantial churches. This meeting was held in the open air, as there was no building at our command large enough to hold the audience. There is an excellent interest here, and the outlook is promising. It is a genuine Filipino town, fifteen miles from the railroad. So far as any of us can judge, this shows what can be done in many other towns in these islands. Everything impresses the brethren in these fields that just now is the time to press our work with all zeal and devotion here.
Our next meeting was held in Baliwag, a good railway town fifty or sixty miles from Manila. A short time before we were there, Brethren Bibiano Panes and Guillermo Dionicia began a series of tent meetings. The people were deeply stirred by the meetings. The attendance grew until there were more people standing outside of the tent than could possibly be seated inside. But just as they had succeeded in securing this large attendance, Brother Panes, the more experienced preacher, was taken very ill with appendicitis, and had to be taken to the hospital in Manila. He was operated upon while we were there. This was a sad blow to the beginning of the greatest movement we have so far seen in the Philippines. I spoke in this tent to a large, appreciative audience. As I looked into the earnest faces of these people who seemed so deeply impressed, my heart yearned to stay with them and unfold to them the purpose of God regarding the salvation of lost men and women as it is revealed in his inspired Word. But I was obliged to hurry away, probably never to see them again.
At 10 P. M. we started for Manila. The road was good, the moon was bright, and our automobile seemed in excellent trim for speed. We pulled up to our mission home at midnight, having traveled one hundred and fifty miles, and having held five meetings during the day.
This journey was a revelation of the density of the population in the island of Luzon. During a large part of the way we passed through village after village so close together that much of the time it seemed like one continuous village. The sad part of it all is that tens of thousands of these people have no spiritual light or guide. For hundreds of years they have been led by a church that has held them in the chains of spiritual darkness. But the cheering and impressive feature is their readiness to accept light and truth. Now is the time to exert ourselves to the utmost to save them, and the Lord is going before us to prepare the way for a great work.
Here is an incident that surely gives evidence of this. Some months ago a man in a town some distance from Manila dreamed that he saw the law of God as it was written on the tables of stone. A circle of light shone around the fourth commandment. In reading the commandment the man was impressed by the word seventh, and was greatly perplexed because he was keeping the first day. The day following this dream he was so troubled that he hunted up the law as given in the book of Exodus, to see if the commandment really said, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” He found that it read just that way. As this increased his perplexity, he decided to go to the pastor of his church for an explanation. The question seemed to be new to this young native minister, and he was soon in as deep perplexity as the man who came to him. This minister had heard that Brother Finster kept the seventh day, and decided to visit him. He did so, with the result that he began to keep the Sabbath. He and his wife have both been baptized, and he is now preaching the third angel's message to the Filipinos. This is Brother Dionicia, who, with Brother Panes, was holding meetings in the tent we visited at Baliwag.
There are many impressive, convincing evidences in these mission fields that the Lord is able and now ready to “do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act,” foretold by the prophet Isaiah. The question of greatest concern is not whether God's love and grace can reach the hearts of these people over whom the superstition and darkness of heathenism have so long reigned, but whether his people are willing and ready to go to the limit of possibility in co-operating with him in his soul-saving work. We are made to believe they will by the statement, “Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power.” Ps. 110:3, R. V. This is preeminently the day of God's power in saving this lost world.
Next week I shall tell of other encouraging features of the work in the Philippine Islands. A. G. DANIELLS.