An event of some note is about to occur in Rome. President Loubet, of France, is to make his long-expected visit to the king of Italy, and state officials are busily preparing for his reception. The papacy holds coldly aloof. The French president, comments the Catholic Mirror (Baltimore), will be “the first head of a Catholic state to enter the Eternal City as the guest of the Houses of Savoy since the pontiff was despoiled of his rights. For over three years continual efforts have been made to obtain the acquiescence of the pope for this visit. This has been refused from the beginning, and it is refused now.”
The Vatican, says the Mirror, touching the reason of this refusal, will not change its fixed code of etiquette “just to oblige France. That country knows the rules of the Vatican quite well; that the heads of Catholic nations visiting Rome will not be received by the pope if they go previously to the Quirinal. For this cause the emperor of Austria and the king of Portugal carefully avoid a visit to the Eternal City. If M. Loubet does not choose to follow their example, he must take the consequences. If he visits the king of Italy, he will not visit the pope. He is the head of a Catholic country, and as such must fall into line with the requirements of Catholic custom.”
It was in 1870 that the pope was deprived of his temporal power, and this visit of President Loubet will be the first instance of the visit of the head of a Catholic nation to the Quirinal since that time. President Loubet has evidently decided not to be bound longer by the Vatican’s code of etiquette, and his example will perhaps be followed by other Catholic powers.
Newspapers of March 2 chronicle the death of Noah Raby, of Piscataway Township, New Jersey, who at the time of his death was nearly one hundred and thirty-two years of age. For many years past ‘Uncle Noah’ had been an inmate of the county poorhouse. His father was an Indian, and his mother a white woman. He was never married.
Mr. Raby’s memory went back to events connected with the Revolutionary War. The event that remained most firmly fixed in his early recollections, he said, was a speech he heard General Washington make at Norfolk, Va. The general was very earnest in his remarks, and at one point in his speech touched on the danger of politics getting into the pulpit, saying that if this should occur, there would certainly be very serious trouble.
What the father of his country might be moved to say if he could see what has gotten into the pulpit in these latter days, must be left to the reader’s imagination.
Atrocities and the Yellow Peril
“THE year 1904 promises to be a record-breaker for atrocities,” says the Northwestern Christian Advocate. In justification of this statement the Advocate then mentions two recent cases of lynching, in which negroes who had committed murder were burned at the stake, in one instance an innocent woman being burned with her husband. Very little mention of these affairs was made in the daily papers, for such occurrences do not excite the feeling now that they did a few years ago. It is quite conceivable that burning at the stake may soon come to be the usual form of punishment—and that, too, without a trial—for certain species of crime in some localities in this republic.
CONCERNING the “Yellow Peril” about which much has been recently said both in this country and in Europe, the Church Standard offers the following, which presents the subject in a new light, yet one which is strongly supported by facts:—
That is what Russia is fighting for, and what she hopes to gain—the conquest of China and the absolute control of the far East. Men talk of “the Yellow Peril.” They do not seem to see that it is through Russia, and through Russia only, that the yellow races might become a peril to the world at large. Give Russia control in China, and without spending one ruble of Russian money it might have at its command an additional army of a million men thoroughly drilled in all the arts of war and officered by Russians or other Europeans. With such a force in hand, Russia, half-civilized, half-savage Russia, with its ingrained despotism and hatred of the very name of liberty, would speedily be seen in her true colors as the enemy of the human race, commanding the obedience of mankind, with Vae Victis on its banners. That is the true “Yellow Peril;” not from a union of China with Japan.
Note and Comment
“THE Japanese dynasty,” according to the New York Christian Advocate, “is much older than the present Chinese dynasty. The present emperor is the direct descendant of the Emperor Jimmu, who ascended the throne 2,564 years ago; hence it is claimed by some that have made figures on the question, that this dynasty is older than any other dynasty that exists or ever did exist. The word ‘Japan’ comes from the Portuguese pronunciation of the Japanese characters Ni-Hon, this meaning the land of the rising sun.”
Taft on Protestant Mission Work
By L. A. S.
SECRETARY-OF-WAR Taft, recently governor of the Philippines, is quoted as having made some interesting statements at a recent social function in Philadelphia concerning Protestant mission work in the islands from which he has just returned. He is quoted as saying that the present is no time for proselyting, such Protestant missionary work as he would approve being confined principally to gifts of money. Of the friars he is quoted as saying, “Justice demands that we acknowledge our indebtedness to the friars and other priests of the Roman Catholic Church, who have given to the United States Christian material from which we can make a self-governing people.”
The ex-governor, as quoted, “did not think the time was ripe for proselyting,” but “believed that more good could be done for the Philippines by sending money for hospitals, schools, and churches.” Ninety per cent of the population, he said, lives in dense ignorance. He added also that the hygiene of the native “is dreadful.”
This speech will no doubt have the approval of Catholics, who from the first have upheld the friars, and sought to discourage the idea of Protestant missionary work in the islands. The Catholic regime in the islands appears to have the passive support of the government, and the Catholic Church may be counted on to use every means to secure the active as well as the passive support of the civil power. Protestants are told that the present is not a good time for Protestant missionary work, and the papacy may be counted on to see to it that no more favorable time than the present shall ever arrive. But the gospel of the kingdom must go to every people on the earth, and the appointed time has come for the last gospel message to be given. That message no power on earth can now stop. L. A. S.
Laborers Together With God
By Ellen G. White
MRS. E. G. WHITE
To My Ministering Brethren: I entreat you to rise to your high calling in Christ. The prayer of Moses, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory,” is recorded for our benefit. We need to present ourselves before the Lord every day, praying with earnest soul-hunger, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory.”
What was God’s answer to Moses? — “I will make all my goodness pass before thee. . . . And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”
It is the glory of God to be merciful, full of forbearance, kindness, goodness, and truth. But the justice shown in punishing the sinner is as verily the glory of the Lord as is the manifestation of his mercy.
“Thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” The Lord God of Israel is jealous for his honor. How, then, I inquire, does he regard the inhabitants of this world, who live in his house, and from his liberal treasury are provided with food and clothing, but who never so much as say, “Thank you,” to him? They are unmindful of his goodness. They are like the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, who were destroyed because they worked continually in opposition to their Creator.
Of the antediluvians we read: “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. . . . And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
Christ said, “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.”
God warned the inhabitants of the old world of what he purposed to do in cleansing the earth of its impurity. But they laughed to scorn what they regarded as a superstitious prediction. They mocked at Noah’s warning of a coming flood.
When Christ was upon the earth, he gave warning of what was coming upon Jerusalem because the people had rejected truth, despising the messages that God had sent. But his warning was unheeded.
The Lord has sent us by his ambassadors messages of warning, declaring that the end of all things is at hand. Some will listen to these warnings, but by the vast majority they will be disregarded.
When Lot warned the members of his family of the destruction of Sodom, they would not heed his words, but looked upon him as a fanatical enthusiast. The destruction that came found them unprepared.
Thus will it be when Christ comes. Farmers, merchants, lawyers, tradesmen, will be wholly engrossed in business, and upon them the day of the Lord will come as a snare.
“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch.”
To Every Man His Work
To every man there is given a work. This point I wish to impress on all. Each child of God has a work to do for him. But while some are engaged in giving the last message of mercy to our world, others are living in careless indifference to God’s requirements.
It is our duty to watch and pray and work. Our lives are not to be spent in idle expectation. Vigilant waiting and earnest watching are to be combined with faithful work, in expectation of the solemn events so soon to take place. The end is near. The commission given by Christ to his disciples is to be fulfilled. To all people the gospel is to be preached.
Upon every one who knows the truth for this time rests the responsibility of making it known to others. The servants of Christ are in a large measure responsible for the well-being and the salvation of the world. They are to be co-laborers with God in the work of winning souls to Christ.
“We Preach not Ourselves, but Christ”
The fourth chapter of Second Corinthians contains a lesson that should be carefully studied by all. “We preach not ourselves,” Paul says, “but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
Those who minister in word and deed are to exalt Christ. If their hearts are filled with the love of the Saviour, their lives will reveal that love. Through them it will speak in its tenderness. But self too often interposes between the soul and God. It is made so prominent that perishing souls can not see Jesus.
When the lips of a speaker move under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the words of God find utterance in warnings, in reproofs, in appeals. This power is not of the speaker. It is a power given him by God, that he may reach those who are dead in trespasses and sins, and arouse them to see the need of receiving power from above. God works through his faithful servants, who do not shun to declare the whole truth in the power of the Spirit. Their work bears his indorsement.
God’s messengers are to hold aloft the standard of truth until the hand is palsied in death. When they sleep in death, the places that once knew them know them no more. The churches in which they preached, the places they visited to hold forth the word of life, still remain. The mountains, the hills, the things seen by mortal vision, are still there. All these things must at last pass away. The time is coming when the earth shall reel to and fro, and shall be removed like a cottage. But the thoughts, the purposes, the acts of God’s workers, although now unseen, will appear at the great day of final retribution and reward. Things now forgotten will then appear as witnesses, either to approve or to condemn.
Love, courtesy, self-sacrifice,—these are never lost. When God’s chosen ones are changed from mortality to immortality, their words and deeds of goodness will be made manifest, and will be preserved through the eternal ages. No act of unselfish service, however small or simple, is ever lost. Through the merits of Christ’s imputed righteousness, the fragrance of such words and deeds is forever preserved.
Trusting in Christ
In order to fight successfully the battle against sin, you must keep close to Jesus. Do not talk unbelief; you have no excuse for doing this. Christ has made a complete sacrifice for you, that you might9stand before God complete in him. God is not pleased with our lack of faith. Unbelief always separates the soul from Christ.
It is not praiseworthy to talk of our weakness and discouragement. Let each one say, “I am grieved that I yield to temptation, that my prayers are so feeble, my faith so weak. I have no excuse to plead for being dwarfed in my religious life. But I am seeking to obtain completeness of character in Christ. I have sinned, and yet I love Jesus. I have fallen many times, and yet he has reached out his hand to save me. I have told him all about my mistakes. I have confessed with shame and sorrow that I have dishonored him. I have looked to the cross, and have said, All this he suffered for me. The Holy Spirit has shown me my ingratitude, my sin, in putting Christ to open shame. He who knows no sin has forgiven me. He calls me to a higher, nobler life, and I press on to the things that are before.”
Christ Our Efficiency
“God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
Man is here cautioned against boasting. Christ is his efficiency. God uses human beings as his instrumentalities, to do his work. Our capabilities and talents are all to be held in trust. They do not originate with us. They come from God, and are to be consecrated to his service. To the one who does this the Lord will give higher abilities.
The humility that bears fruit, filling the soul with a sense of the love of God, will speak for the one who has cherished it, in the great day when men will be rewarded according as their works have been. Happy will be the one of whom it can then be said, “The Spirit never stirred this man’s soul in vain. He went forward and upward from strength to strength. Self was not woven into his life. Each message of correction and counsel he received as a blessing from God. Thus the way was prepared for him to receive still greater blessings, because God did not speak to him in vain. Each step upward on the ladder of progress prepared him to climb still higher. From the top of the ladder the bright beams of God’s glory shone upon him. He did not think of resting, but sought constantly to attain to the wisdom and righteousness of Christ. Ever he pressed toward the mark of the prize of his high calling in Christ.”
This experience every one who is saved must have. In the day of judgment the course of the man who has retained the frailty and imperfection of humanity will not be vindicated. For him there will be no place in heaven; he could not enjoy the perfection of the saints in light. He who has not sufficient faith in Christ to believe that he can keep him from sinning, has not the faith that will give him an entrance into the kingdom of God.
The Lamp
By Sarah Pratt McLean Greene
HAST thou a lamp, a little lamp,
Put in that hand of thine?
And did He say, who gave it thee,
The world hath need this light should be,
Now, therefore, let it shine?
And dost thou say, with bated breath,
It is a little flame;
I'll let the lamps of broader wick
Seek out the lost and cheer the sick
While I seek wealth and fame
But on the shore where thy small house
Stands dark, stands dark, this night,
Full many a wanderer, thither tossed,
Is driven on that rock and lost
Where thou hast hid thy light.
Though but a candle thou didst have,
Its trimmed and growing ray
Is infinite. With God no light
Is great or small, but only bright,
As is his perfect day.
The world hath sorrow, nothing more
To give or keep for thee;
Duty is in that hidden flame,
And soaring joy; then rise for shame
That thou so dark shouldst be.
Rise, trim thy lamp — the feeble past
Behind thee put and spurn.
With God it is not soon or late,
So that thy light, now flaming great,
Doth ever fiercer burn—
Fierce with its love, and flaming great
In its humility,
Shunning no soul in sinful need,
Fearing no path where he may lead,
Glowing consumingly.
— Sarah Pratt McLean Greene.
The Coming of the Kingdom
It should not be forgotten that he who utters the petition taught us by our Lord, “Thy kingdom come,” is by it logically committed to a Christian life. That kingdom will not come by slow, insensible changes independent of conscious volition. Whatever we have seen of God’s kingdom so far emphasizes our Lord’s declaration that it is the reward of force. Every triumph of righteousness has cost blood, and has been won by men who counted not their lives dear. Error has never given up the ghost because pricked with a pin. The man who is not prepared to do something to bring in God’s kingdom has no moral right to pray for its advent. Every step of its progress is marked with the blood of the bravest. It cost the life of half the “Mayflower” passengers to plant the seed of civil freedom in American soil. It cost tens of thousands of lives to make the whites of this nation free, and hundreds of thousands of lives to raise labor from the degradation of the slave pen to the responsibilities of citizenship. The kingdom of God can not be established or widened in any community by men in their slippers or women wholly devoted to their clubs. It will take prayer and labor and self-denial, and sacrifice of much that is held most dear, to bring that kingdom in for which we pray. A life divided between business and amusements never yet brought in God’s kingdom anywhere; and God’s people are called, especially now at the beginning of a new year, to decide whether they will cease to offer the petition or do something to make the prayer effective. — The Interior.
Scientific Idolatry
By L. A. Reed
L. A. REED
THERE is that in man which tends to carry him away from God. Forever there is a downward pull that, without conscious effort on his part, will carry him into the deeps of woe. There is a mighty tide that flows darkly to the shoreless sea of despair. The carnal mind is not subject to God, neither indeed can be. Rom. 8:7.
Ever since the time when man hid from God amid the trees of the garden, he has sought to avoid the searching eye of the Sinless One. And though God comes seeking him, and, with a voice of pity and compassion, asks, “Where art thou?” man still seeks in vain to hide his life from the scrutiny of God.
Ever since evil came into the world, there have been substitutes for God. In every age there has been a strong tendency for man to exalt something into the place that belongs alone to the Creator. Ages ago it was all the fashion for humanity to worship some visible form instead of the invisible God. When the children of Israel had reached the foot of Mount Sinai, so strong was this tendency with them that God wrote on imperishable stone: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”
And when God spoke these words while “the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven,” he intentionally did not appear in visible shape to their eyes. Moses, reminding them of the occasion, says, “Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. . . . Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for10ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female.”
By this we see that God designedly allowed them to see nothing of himself, lest they should make this appearance the foundation of a new form of idolatry; “lest,” as the Scripture says, “ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure.” It would be gross idolatry for them to use for religious purposes a likeness even of God. And so the Lord avoids presenting to them any likeness, similitude, or tangible manifestation of himself.
But the principle goes even further. God avoided giving them any visible token of himself, not alone to keep them from making images, likenesses, or similitudes; but it was also to prevent them from using, for religious purposes, the things that were already made, even though these had been created by God himself. They were to take heed to themselves and make and worship no images; but they were also to take heed to themselves lest they worship those very things of creation which are the manifestations of God. “And,” says Moses, “lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath imparted unto all nations under the whole heaven.”
Those days are past, but something of the fashions of those times still lingers. There may be those who are still worshiping the sun, or the moon, or the stars. In so doing they are violating this very same principle. Idolatry assumes many forms. It is as insidious as is its author. It is as varied in its forms as are the temperaments and environments of men.
As we have seen, it is idolatry to have gods that have been fashioned by the hand of man. But the Scripture also shows that it is idolatry to have, as gods, the sun, moon, or stars, in fact, anything that in the mind of man takes precedence of God.
Some men may pride themselves on the fact that they do not as the heathen did. They may boast that they are wise above the worshiping of wood or stone or the shining hosts of heaven. And yet these same men, even more persistently than the heathen, seek to conduct God, so to speak, to the borders of creation, and bow him out of his own dominions.
Ages ago an idolatrous city built an altar to the Unknown God. And in these later days Herbert Spencer has written volumes, attempting to show that God is unknown and unknowable. And in these same books of his we find countless things which to him are fully sufficient for the work of creation. Without hesitation we are frank to say he has worshiped and served the creature (created things) more than the Creator.
La Place invented the nebular hypothesis in order to account for the creation of the universe without the necessity of God. He told Napoleon that he had no use for the hypothesis of a god. And yet this was the very thing that he did need; for, after a hundred years, scientists, many of them undevout, find that his hypothesis is utterly incapable of explaining the origin of the universe. Says Asa Gray, himself a scientist of no mean reputation: “An excellent judge, a gifted adept in physical science and exact reasoning, the late Clerk-Maxwell is reported to have said, not long before he left the world, that he had scrutinized all the agnostic hypotheses he knew of, and found that they, one and all, needed a God to make them workable.”
Some men deal with the things of nature, realizing nothing of God, explaining the various phenomena of nature by such terms as force, law, affinities, attractions, repulsions, media, fortuitous concourses, physical bases, and the like. And one who is thought to be a scientific guide has sought to account for the origin of things as being “a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations.” It is difficult to put this into plain English; for actually it amounts to very little.
Said Cecil Rhodes, the late magnate of South Africa: “I believe in Force Almighty, the ruler of the universe, working scientifically through natural selection to bring about the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the unfit.”
The ostrich seeks to hide from its enemy by shoving its head in the sand; and so men seek to avoid the real Cause of things by hiding behind mental conceptions and impossible things. After all, it is but a species of idolatry; for it places nature and force and law and other things in the place of God.
Nature still speaks of her Creator; but men are dull of hearing. It is said that there is a marble tablet in the wall of the observatory at Williams College upon which are chiseled the words from Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things; that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” This is a call from God which man will do well to consider. A noted scientist once said, “The undevout astronomer is mad.” And it is indeed strange that one can study the machinery of the heavens and be unimpressed.
Says David, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?” While sailing down the Mediterranean beneath the glories of the evening skies, some of Napoleon’s officers engaged in dispute, and denied the existence of a Creator. Finally the great general, wearied with their babble, pointed upward to the numberless stars above them, and said, “All very well, gentlemen, but who made all these?” They looked and were silent. When the French infidel said to the Vendean peasant, “We will pull down your churches, destroy your pictures, and demolish everything that reminds you of God,” the peasant replied, “But you will leave us the stars!”
Now, as of old, “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. . . . There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.”
“In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
‘The hand that made us is divine.’”
Called to Service
Now, just now, is our time of probation, wherein we are to prepare for heaven. Christ gave his life that we might have this probation. But so long as time shall last, Satan will strive for the mastery over us. He works with power to lead men to become absorbed in money-getting. He invents many kinds of amusement, so that their minds may be engrossed with worldly pleasure. He would have them forget all about the inward adorning,—the adorning of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. He is determined that every moment shall be filled with efforts to carry out ambitious projects or to amuse and gratify self. He is determined that men shall find no time to study the Word of God, no time to realize that they have been bought with a price, even the blood of the Son of God.
Satan uses his influence to drown the voice of God speaking to the soul; and the world acts as if under his control. Men have chosen him as their leader. They stand under his banner. They will not come to Christ that they might have life. Infatuated with schemes for pleasure and amusement, they are striving for that which will perish with the using.
At this time the message of mercy and warning is to go forth to awaken the world from its sleep of death. A work is to be done to-day that will live through the eternal ages. As watchmen entrusted with a special message, we are to keep before the people the nearness of the end. “Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”
The fast-fulfilling signs of the time declare that the great day of the Lord is right upon us. In that day shall it be said of any of us, “This man was called by God, but he would not hear, he would not give heed. Again and again the Spirit moved upon his heart, but he said, ‘Go thy way for this time; and when I have a more convenient season, I will call for thee.’ This man saw the Saviour’s sacrifice in a beautiful light; but some matter of minor importance came in, and his heart was captivated. When the Spirit spoke again, the call was not respected. Every gracious, heavenly influence was dismissed”?
Not One Thing Hath Failed
By T. E. Bowen
T. E. BOWEN
Joshua was about to die. Faithfully he had served the Lord. He was prominent in Israel early in life. God had even directed Moses to associate him with his own work and share with him his responsibilities. At the death of Moses, Joshua was selected by the Lord to lead the children of Israel into their promised home.
Joshua was a man of unflinching faith in God. He had great confidence in that God who could divide a sea, after spoiling the mightiest of earth's nations, and through the opening that delivered the captive seed of Abraham make a trap to finish, as it were, despoiling the mighty men of Pharaoh. Joshua was a young man in this host that passed through the Red Sea. He also witnessed the mighty acts of God in Egypt. He heard Moses and Aaron recount to Israel how God purposed to lead them into a land of their own, a land he would give them for an everlasting possession. He believed that what God had promised he was able also to perform.
At the time of his death he gathered the elders of Israel unto him, and began to recount God's wonderful dealings with his chosen. As he reviewed it all, and saw what had really been done, he said: “Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth: and ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof.”
This is a wonderful testimony. Israel had said they could not go in to possess the land. Caleb and Joshua said they could, with the good hand of their God upon them; and God was pleased with their faith. This is shown by the fact that he permitted this servant to live and see all the good promised Israel come to pass.
In this dying testimony of the only man then living (except, perhaps, Caleb) who could span the entire history from the leaving of Egypt unto the settling of the tribes in their inheritance, is some most excellent counsel, and that, too, applicable to the Israel of to-day, who soon hope to enter upon the real rest of which that inheritance was but a type. Joshua said: “I am old and stricken in age: and ye have seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of you; for the Lord your God11is he that hath fought for you. Behold, I have divided unto you by lot these nations that remain, to be an inheritance for your tribes, from Jordan, with all the nations that I have cut off, even unto the great sea westward. And the Lord your God, he shall expel them from before you, and drive them out of your sight; and ye shall possess their land, as the Lord your God hath promised unto you. Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left; that ye come not among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to sware by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them: but cleave unto the Lord your God, as ye have done unto this day. For the Lord hath driven out from before you great nations and strong: but as for you no man hath been able to stand before you unto this day. One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you. Take good heed therefore unto yourselves, that ye love the Lord your God. Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they unto you: know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.”
What a grand picture is here held up for Israel to view of the goodness of the Lord God of Abraham! How sad to think that the evil here mentioned came upon them, and that the remnant of these nations became a trap, a snare, and thorns to them simply because they did not take good heed to cleave unto and love the God that had been so good unto them. One could chase a thousand, and no enemy, however strong his boasts, could stand before that people whose God was the Lord, so long as they served him with all their hearts and obeyed him implicitly.
Upon us the end of the world is come, and great is our need of this genuine faith in God and his power. All that he has promised will be performed. The same Captain that led Joshua has charge of the closing conflict against the hosts of sin and darkness. Unto him has been committed all power. Our success lies not in numbers, in riches, nor in anything we of ourselves can do, but in humbly walking with Christ, and letting him fight the battles for us. Our part is to take heed not to copy the sinful ways of the world, not to become entangled in alliances with it, and to take good heed to love the Lord our God, and obey him in all things. This is our glory. God will see to it that the people who thus honor and serve him not. Shall we not be faithful now? Can any who have seen the wonderful providences of God in leading out a people in these last days, a people to keep the commandments and have the faith of Jesus, turn away from him now just before the fulfillment of the rich promises? Would not this certainly be foolish? What can be compared to the exceeding great and rich reward promised? May God grant that nothing shall eclipse this; and, too, that nothing shall cause us to cast away our confidence—faith—in this closing work of God; for in this lies the “great recompense of reward.” Not one good thing promised by the Lord our God will fail to come to pass.
Make Haste
“Some years ago,” says Dr. Bonar, “when traveling through Palestine, we were nearly benighted. We had left Hebron in the morning, and had come leisurely along, passing through Bethlehem, and visiting the gardens of Solomon on the way. The sun began to get low ere we caught our first glimpse of Jerusalem, and, on reaching the plain of Rephaim, we had to increase our speed. In a little time the sun set, and we saw a man come out from the Jaffa gate and stand upon a hillock, shouting with all his might, as if forewarning of danger, and gesticulating wildly, as if to call our attention to what he was announcing.
“‘What is the man saying?’ we asked our guide. “ ‘He is shouting, “Yellah! Yellah!”’ “ ‘What does that mean?’ “ ‘Come along! Come along!’ “ ‘We now found we were about to be shut out, and this messenger had come to warn us that the gate was about to be closed. We made haste, as we did not at all relish the thought of being kept all night outside the walls. We were just in time, no more. We entered, and the gate closed behind us. ‘The door was shut.’ Matt. 25:10.
“‘The lesson we learned was ‘Make haste!’—a lesson which some of us never forgot. So near being shut out of the earthly Jerusalem! What if it were to be not almost but altogether shut out of the heavenly city! No time to lose. Too much lost already!
“‘A few days after, a similar incident occurred, which furnished another lesson. We had been wandering all the afternoon on the Mount of Olives, not heeding the time. But at last we saw the sun going down. We hastened to the nearest gate, on the east side of the city. It was closed. There was no admittance. We hastened round the walls to the other gate, which we knew to be kept open a little longer. When we reached it, we found ourselves excluded. The gate was shut. We were told, however, that possibly the gate-keeper might relent and let us in. Alas! the keys had gone to the governor.
“‘What were we to do? It was suggested that a piece of silver might soften the guard’s heart, and bring the keys back again. So we thrust a suitable coin in at the keyhole and waited. In a few minutes the gate opened, and we passed in. The bribe had prevailed. But our admission was against law.
“‘The lesson for us was, ‘Be on time.’ The gate stands open. The entrance is free. The way is plain. Lose not a moment. Upon one lost moment eternity hinges; and ‘it is no trifle to lose eternity.’”—Common People.
Two Thanksgivings
For all the past, my tender Father, God,
I thank thee: for the joy, the love,
the pain,
The rapture of the soul, the thinking
brain;
Yea, for the smiting of thy thorny rod,
I thank thee, as a child would grateful
say
Grace after meat before he went to
play.
And for my future, cloud or sunshine
sent,
Alike slide down from heaven’s high
battlement;
I fear not, but as patient pilgrim waits
Outside the portals of some city’s
gates,
I linger for thy opening hand to show
The unknown paths down which my
footsteps go.
I thank thee, Lord, for all that is to
come—
I say this grace before my meat, and then
am dumb.
—The Churchman.
“I Shall Not Want”
By Mrs. John R. Mott
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
I shall not want rest. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”
I shall not want drink. “He leadeth me beside the still waters.”
I shall not want forgiveness. “He restoreth my soul.”
I shall not want guidance. “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
I shall not want companionship. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”
I shall not want food. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”
I shall not want joy. “Thou anointest my head with oil.”
I shall not want anything. “My cup runneth over.”
I shall not want anything in this life. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”
I shall not want anything in eternity. “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”—Mrs. John R. Mott.