WHAT reason has the Seventh-day Adventist denomination for an existence? Why was it necessary, with the numerous churches and religious organizations on every side, to inaugurate a new movement, and add one more cult to those already in the field? Why could not the men and women making up the membership of this church have found in connection with other religious bodies abundant opportunities for the exercise of Christian activity?
We find an answer to these queries in the aim and character of this movement in which we are engaged. In God's order the time has come when this earth's history is about to close. The kingdoms of this world are soon to give place to the everlasting kingdom of Christ. “And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth.”
Fulfilling prophecies and signs — conditions existing in the social, political, industrial, and even the religious, worlds — plainly indicate that the time has been reached when events of a significant, startling, and most stupendous character are about to take place; that the long reign of sin is soon to be cut short, and that the generation now living will witness the appearing of Christ in the clouds of heaven.
A message, the burden of which is to call men's attention to these events, and bring about a reformation of life in all who will heed it, is due the world. As heaven's professed light-bearer, the great Christian church should be able to recognize the times and seasons, and sound the message of Christ's coming. But this it is not doing. The great Episcopal Church is not doing it, nor the Methodists, nor the Baptists, nor the Presbyterians, nor the Congregationalists, to say nothing of the smaller divisions of the so-called Protestant church, and the Greek and Catholic churches.
Some of these denominations have done excellent work in the past. Among their communicants to-day are many devoted Christian people. But their stereotyped creeds preclude the acceptance of advanced light. They have no place in their system of religious belief for the doctrines comprehended in this movement.
Nor, must it be confessed, would these churches welcome to their fellowship men and women who might proclaim the special truths of this message. For this there is a reason. The truths due the world to-day are diametrically opposed to much of the teaching and practise of these churches.
The message for this generation, to prepare a people to stand in the day of Christ's coming, is a message of reform. Its purpose is to call men back to the old, forsaken paths of truth, and to a higher and holier plane of Christian living. It presents Christ as man's all-sufficient sacrifice and Saviour; his ministry as the only means by which the merits of that sacrifice may be made available; his righteousness, obtained through faith, as the one source of eternal life; his coming as the realization of the Christian's hope. It enjoins the binding claims of God's great law, restoring to its rightful place the downtrodden Sabbath of Jehovah, and warning men of the false claims of the counterfeit sabbath, and of its enforcement by legal enactment. It brings to view the work of the investigative judgment, the final reward to be given to the righteous, and the punishment to be meted out to the wicked at the last great day. This comprehends, in brief, the special message for this day.
This message the great Christian7church itself needs. It has grown worldly and careless and indifferent. Form and ceremony, show and ostentation, rites and ritualism, have supplanted our simplicity and vital godliness. It has no time for the proclamation of God's special testing truths for this generation. In consequence, God calls into being a new movement for the giving of his message to the world.
This is why Seventh-day Adventists exist as a separate church body. They exist for the same reason that Noah was called to proclaim the impending doom in his day; that Jonah was sent to warn Nineveh of its overthrow; that John the Baptist was made the voice crying in the wilderness in preparation for the first advent; and that, later, upon Luther, Zwingli, and the Wesleys was placed the burden of a great spiritual awakening in the ages in which they lived. Heaven had truth to give to men, and it used those, humble though they might be, who were willing to become the messengers.
To act the part of heaven's messengers to the people of this generation, proclaiming the special truths now due the world, is the only excuse Seventh-day Adventists have for an existence as a separate denomination. They are not separate from their fellows as the result of whim or caprice or from selfish choice. The separation entails trial, opposition, misunderstanding, monetary loss, and great inconvenience. But they must be true to what they recognize as the call of God, at whatever cost or personal sacrifice. Nor can they cover up or compromise the distinctive characteristics of their faith. They may and should heartily unite with others in the promotion of every moral reform; they may join hands with those of other churches in combating great moral evils. All this is commendable and praiseworthy. But let not any union be formed, or any influence be allowed to control, which will lead to a compromise of the distinctive features of our faith. This does not mean that on every occasion we are to proclaim the second coming of Christ or some other peculiar feature of our belief; but rather that we shall not forget why we are Seventh-day Adventists, and so lose out of our lives the very spirit and inspiration of this message and this movement.
“The commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus”—this is the motto to be emblazoned on our standard. The spirit of this motto should ever be kept in mind, and all our plans and purposes, and our very lives themselves, should be molded by its influence.
But there are more personal ways in which we may compromise this message. We may do it in our own lives, in our personal relationship to our fellows. In affairs of business, in honesty of deal, in our relation to society and the pleasures of the world, in the manner in which we discharge our obligations to our neighbors and to our own families, we are commending to our fellows the movement we represent, or casting discredit upon it.
By the manner in which we allow the truth to sanctify our lives we are determining whether the ordinary, superficial standard of Christianity seen about us shall be the gage of our experience, or whether we shall manifest a devotion and zeal proportionate to the character of the work we are called to do. By our daily lives we shall answer the question which many are asking to-day, “Is this great advent movement now encircling the earth in God's order?” May we give a true and affirmative response to the question, and demonstrate to every onlooker, not only by theoretical arguments, but above all by Christlike, Spirit-filled lives, that in God's order and providence there is a heaven-ordained reason for the existence of Seventh-day Adventists as a separate denomination, and that in that existence they are meeting, both severally and collectively, heaven's high and holy purpose. We may do this through the grace and wisdom which heaven will impart.
F. M. W.
At the National Reform Convention
By C. M. S.
A Dangerous and Untrue Hypothesis and How It Works Out
It is difficult to conceive of a movement more solidly and persistently set against the American principles of government than is that being conducted by the National Reform Association.
It no longer issues a denial when charged with the attempt to establish a theocracy in America.
It openly avows its determination to rewrite the Constitution of the United States, and by so doing to give an entirely different basis for all the laws of the nation.
It ignores those just principles of government, that it is the minority that needs protection, rather than the majority; and that, therefore, such a check as a national constitution is essential that the strong may not tyrannize over the weak.
It creates an arbitrary definition of church-and-state union, and denounces such a union, the while it works to bring about the same condition under a different name.
It makes the state a religious being, a moral entity with a soul to be saved, a person held directly accountable to God, needing to offer worship to God as an individual does, having a conscience which it must maintain even if to do so it must crush the deepest convictions of any or all of its subjects.
Under its proposed régime, the rights of no individual would be secure; for the state is everything, and the individual has no rights which the state is bound to respect. Under that program, the state has but to declare that its religious rights are infringed by the religious practises of its citizens, and their rights at once cease to exist. The state has only to declare that its conscientious convictions are out of harmony with the conscientious convictions of any number of its subjects, and at once the conscientious convictions of its best-meaning subjects are a misdemeanor or a felony.
All that and much more of a similar character is mapped out on the program of the National Reform Association. It is all the outgrowth of that pestilential theory that the state is established by God for the upbuilding of Christ’s kingdom in the earth. On that postulate hangs the whole bloody mantle of persecution. That theory makes the work or calling of the magistrate as sacred or holy as that of the evangelist. That public official becomes the arbiter of every man’s religious rights, the censor of every man’s conscience, the court of last resort in the decision of every religious controversy.8
On such a postulate hangs the whole Russian system of oppression and persecution toward its own subjects and of intolerance toward the religious exercises of visiting foreigners. Pagan Babylon, Persia, and Rome acted upon it when they trampled upon every right of the people of God. Papal Rome acted upon the same principle. She was the state as well as the church. She had conscientious convictions; and as the state has rights which it is bound to maintain, as against the so-called rights of any or all her subjects, she ground into the earth all who had conscientious convictions and dared to let the fact be known.
Just as soon as the rulers of the state become possessed of the idea that the state is established for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God on earth, they begin to use the only power the state possesses — force — to carry on that work. But force is the bitterest foe of the gospel. Force and the gospel are diametrically opposed to each other. They are not servants of the same master. One wins through love and conviction to willing acceptance; the other drives, compels, to an unwilling obedience. One entreats with loving pity and compassion; the other threatens with forbidding face. One binds with cords as strong as those which hold the spheres in place, but as invisible and as soft as the winds that kiss the apple blossoms in the spring; the other binds with chains that can never hold the soul, but can only mar and bruise the body and clank in hateful monotone at every step of the suffering captive. No, they are not products of the same workshop; they are not servants of the same power; they are not employed in the interests of the same kingdom; they do not produce results that can be gathered into the same storehouse. God established and commissioned his church to carry on the work of his kingdom on the earth; he never commissioned any other organization to do that work; and when the state undertakes it, she not only does so without warrant, but she tramples upon the most vital interests of the kingdom she professes to serve. There is no lesson of history plainer than this, none more vital, and none which is more sadly neglected by the great religious organizations of the world. God has himself condemned it in these words: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”
The National Reform idea puts the government where Roman Catholics put the Pope. Said Dr. J. S. Martin: “The civil ministers stand between God and the people. They represent the people before God, and they represent God before the people.” Under that conception, the state is put in the place of God, and such a state would thus become a part of that great “mystery of iniquity” against which the inspired apostle warns the church of God.
During the course of his address on August 13, Dr. Martin gave several illustrations to prove that this is not really a Christian nation; and yet he frequently quoted, approvingly, expressions from State courts and the United States Supreme Court declaring this to be a Christian nation.
On August 15, in an address on “The Source of the State’s Authority,” Dr. Martin took the position that the state has absolutely unlimited authority in the earth, deriving that unlimited authority directly from God, though the exercise of this unlimited authority is manifested through the people. That is but a modern echo of that old pagan slogan, “Vox populi, vox dei” (The voice of the people is the voice of God). When, therefore, the majority of the people pass a law affecting the religious rights or duties of the individual citizen, that is God speaking, and the individual must obey, must bring his conscience into line with the voice of the majority of the people; and if he fails to do this, the state is there with sword and shackles to force obedience or punish obstinacy. And after twenty centuries of gospel light, such theories as this can still be soberly advocated, even in America, and by men ordained to the gospel ministry!
In the same address, the speaker declared that the state has unlimited authority to “determine what in human conduct is enforceable by law;” that “what the state shall enforce by law is not a matter of political expediency, but of moral responsibility, and this decision the state is under obligation to make under the law of its divine character and ruler.” That would put the individual completely under the control of the state in religion as well as in civil affairs. It would make the state the god of the individual, and rule God himself entirely out of his universe. The code of the state laws would then become the bible of the people; and as the people themselves make the laws, they would make their own bible. As the laws they make would express the divine will, they would justly look upon themselves as the mouthpieces of the Almighty. Into such absurdities and inconsistencies and wicked assumptions are men led, once they adopt the pernicious idea that the state is established to advance the kingdom of Christ in the earth.
One of the laments of the institute was this: “We have no clearly defined system of morals.” One could not but inquire what the Bible is in the world for, and what basis ministers have for their moral teaching.
Concerning the demands for a Sunday law, the speaker made this peculiar statement: “The civil sabbath law — its object is twofold. It is to secure to the man who wants to worship on that day the right to worship, likewise to secure to each individual his right to rest one day in seven.” That statement is peculiar in that while the law is called a “civil sabbath law,” yet it is admittedly enacted for a religious purpose — the purpose of worship. But it would not do for the advocates of a Sunday law to admit that they were asking for the passage of a religious Sabbath law. Such manipulation of words to hide a real purpose ought to convince every true Christian that the cause which makes it necessary is an unworthy one.
Twenty centuries before the advent of the National Reform Association, pagan Rome was teaching that the individual existed for the state; that the state was bound to maintain its own rights “as against the so-called rights of any individual or class of individuals.” And she excluded nothing in either religious or temporal affairs from the all-absorbing application of that pronouncement. Papal Rome followed in all the century-old grooves of that principle and practise. No matter what sphere the state invaded, it at once drew into its insatiable maw all individual rights, and made the practise of those rights by individuals a matter of the state’s sufferance, to be granted or forbidden as the state might elect.
Against that doctrine the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Constitution of the United States in its present form are a perpetual protest. George Bancroft, the historian, is right when he associates the two in this declaration:—
Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the new nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained in Judea. It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the federal government the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the sanctuary of the soul; and not from indifference, but that the infinite spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power.—“History of the Formation of the Constitution,” book 5, chap. 1.
Although more than once the declaration was made at this institute that “we do not believe in a union of church and state,” yet through all the teaching given ran the principles of that union of civil and religious things. Said Dr. Wilson: “We center the idea of citizenship in Jesus Christ. This person of Jesus Christ is religion; this person of Jesus Christ is the state.” If this theory does not unite church and state, it has never been united in the history of the world.9
It is, of course, called a union of religion and the state; but the union of religion and the state was what pagan Rome thought she was getting when she outlawed Christ and all his followers if they should teach the worship of any new gods. Religion and the state were the two things papal Rome thought she was uniting when she made the state the obedient tool of organized religion, and outlawed all who practised any religion other than hers. Germany thought she was uniting religion and the state when she took the best religion she knew, Lutheranism, and made it the spouse of the state, while she practically confiscated the religious rights of all who were not religious in that particular way. Religion and the state were what England thought she was uniting when she created a religious system of her own and confiscated the religious rights of Roman Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, and others. She called the organized manifestation of her religion a church; but it is not what a thing is called, so much as what it really is and what it does, that counts. The early colonists surely thought they had a union of religion and the state, and would have hanged those who asserted the contrary. Russia is admittedly a country of church-and-state union; and but very few would dare risk their freedom in Russia by asserting that Russia does not have a union of religion and the state. The proposition would be contradicted by every member of the Orthodox Church, from the czar to the poorest peasant. To teach that a union of religion and state is not a union of church and state is to spin a thread of logic too fine for anything but the fabrics of dreamland to hang upon.
Dr. Martin declared: “The state is not infallible; it might make mistakes.” Dr. Wilson declared: “This person of Jesus Christ is the state.” Then we have a Saviour who is fallible, who may make mistakes, and who, because of his mistakes, proves himself no savior at all. It is impossible to conceive how the kingdom of Christ can be advanced by such logic.
Dr. Martin had declared that the Constitution of the United States was drawn up under the intoxicating influence of the infidel philosopher, Rousseau. Dr. Wilson declared it “must have been given to us from some inspired oracle,” and that “the religion of Jesus Christ actuated the founders of the nation. They were all more or less influenced by this great truth as we find it in the Christian religion.” Yet the same speaker declared that through French influence a great blunder was made, and “the name of God and of Jesus Christ as the ruler of nations was left out.” Thus we find that “the religion of Jesus Christ,” actually present and actuating “the founders of the nation,” was less potent than the influence of a French philosopher three thousand miles away, and that, too, before the days of telepathy, wireless telegraphy, or “malicious animal magnetism.” We find that an absent French philosopher is more potent and effective than an inspired oracle. Into what quagmires of inconsistency will a false hypothesis lead thinking, reasoning human beings, once they have committed themselves to it! This particular hypothesis, untrue and dangerous, is that the state is established and designed for the work of building up the kingdom of God in the earth. But it is a fundamental principle of the National Reform propaganda. C. M. S.
A Foretaste of Stormy Times
By W. A. S.
How quickly scenes may change from apparent calm to sudden storm was illustrated by the recent industrial crisis in staid and steady England. Men were astonished to see how violence was let loose almost without warning. At the time of the Liverpool disorder, Elder D. C. Babcock and wife were sailing from that port, on their return to West Africa from the European council. After some delay and changing of boats, they got away safely. Elder Babcock writes:—
You will find a picture of the scenes in “Great Controversy.” Thousands of soldiers and policemen were hurrying hither and thither to quell the outbreaks and save property. Violence was on the right and left. Pools of blood, last Sunday, marked the Lime Street station as a real battle-field. More than fifty were lying on the ground wounded, and physicians and helpers were busy among them, ministering to their needs.
One thing I especially noticed was the strange appearance of men's faces. With many it was a vacant look, others seemed almost insane. Perplexity was written everywhere. Every moment the voice of the prophets and the words of the spirit of prophecy were ringing in my ears. I thought, If this is a foretaste, what will the closing scenes be?
And these things, in the light of prophecy, are truly but a foretaste. Well may we pray the Lord that the winds of strife may be held as we hurry forward with the message for the time. W. A. S.
The Harvest Ingathering Campaign
By Arthur G. Daniells
For the past three years our people in the United States and Canada have been engaged in what we have been pleased to call the Harvest Ingathering campaign. Each year some 600,000 copies of the REVIEW AND HERALD have been distributed, and approximately $100,000 above all campaign expenses has been gathered in for our mission work in the fields abroad during the three years, or about $33,000 each year, a sum sufficient to pay the salary of forty-five or fifty missionaries.
Think what this means to our mission fields. In many of these dark places we have laborers struggling alone, far from home and loved ones, to advance this message. By means of the Harvest Ingathering campaign we have been able to send into these fields, either to open new mission centers or to strengthen those already opened, nearly fifty missionaries, and to support them. This is certainly a great help in meeting the demands made upon us to answer the many urgent calls that come to us from all parts of the world. And the funds to do this have come, not from the already heavily taxed income of our people, but from those who are not directly connected with us. A very small effort on the part of each has made this result possible.
In addition to this, we have placed each year hundreds of thousands of copies of our church paper, filled with information concerning our work, in the hands of the people, many of whom knew but little concerning this movement, or had been allowed to get their information concerning it from those who perhaps were prejudiced against us. Thousands have been visited personally, and many have received favorable impressions concerning our work, and have willingly contributed something toward its support. No doubt there are many among all these thousands who will yet embrace the truth, and give all their energies to its advancement. The excellent and far-reaching results of this effort can not be estimated now. Only in eternity will they be fully known.
Besides this, the influence of this campaign upon our own people has been of great value. Our churches need personal missionary service more than preaching. By means of this campaign, churches have been revived and strengthened. New life and spiritual power have come to those who, in the fear of God and for love of the truth, have taken part in this work.
We are now fast approaching the time of another Harvest Ingathering campaign. The last two months of this year have been set apart to this work. Instead of using the REVIEW AND HERALD, we shall use that excellent pioneer journal, the Signs of the Times. The publishers, in connection with our Mission Board, have been working untiringly to get the issue ready, and a most excellent number has been produced. If this work is taken hold of as it should be, there is no reason why we may not place at least one million copies of this paper in the homes of the people, and gather in for our needy mission fields a much larger sum than we have in any previous year. Certainly none of us can be satisfied with our former efforts.
Our church officers and laborers have a special responsibility in this matter. You are called to stand as leaders in the church for such a time as this. Your work is to see that in the church over which you are called of God to act as overseers, the matter is definitely placed before the brethren and sisters, and a campaign organized that will enlist every available member of the church. Then when the campaign is organized, you are not to drop the burden and think your work done, but see that the plans laid are made effective. This you can best do by leading out in the work. Let the leaders set the pace, and the church will follow.
I would that I could say something to arouse our people to action at this time. We have not pushed this matter as we should. Some have done comparatively nothing. Here is a golden opportunity to do something for God. I hope none will be idle now. Effort, not money, is what is called for in this campaign. What excuse will you be able to give if questioned at the tribunal of the universal Judge as to why you sat idly by while your comrades in the faith were active in the campaign? God will never excuse idleness and indifference. Remember Meroz. A bitter curse came upon those people, not for what they did, but because while their comrades were engaged in the battle, they did nothing.
O for more of the spirit of the great Missionary! When Jesus saw the multitude10without a shepherd, he was moved. He was not simply touched, he was moved. He wept over impenitent Jerusalem. If something of this same spirit could take possession of us in this campaign, I am persuaded a great work for God would be accomplished.
Dear brethren and sisters, think of the shortness of time. Remember that on October 22 sixty-seven years of the ministration of our High Priest in the most holy place of the sanctuary will be finished. He will soon lay down his priestly censer forever. Then the door of mercy will be closed, and divine judgment visited upon the impenitent. Think of this!
The destiny of this world is soon to be settled. The lengthening shadows warn us that the sun of human history is nearing the horizon, and the time to work is soon to end. We should show by earnest work that we believe this solemn truth.
But looking out into the world, we see fields of grain—millions of lost souls—ripening for the harvest, but unwarned and unprepared for the end. The line of laborers which reaches out into many of these fields is very thin. We must send help. There are some Macedonian cries to which we have long been unable to respond. If all our people will but rally in this Ingathering campaign, a great work for God can be done, and a large sum gathered in for our mission work, thus enabling us to respond to some of the many calls which are waiting. Shall we not bestir ourselves as never in the past?
The great missionary, Martyn, once said: “I have been long in kindling my torch. Now let me burn out for God.” Shall we manifest some of this zeal?
A. G. DANIELLS.
Note and Comment
A Sign of the Times
An exchange gives a vivid description of a scene, enacted in India, of the burning alive of a child widow. It raises the question: “Is there anything similar to this in terribleness to be found in this country?” It would seem from the events of the last few months that we do not have to go outside of the United States to find this Indian scene duplicated, and that, too, with a spirit of malignity compared to which the Indian burning becomes almost a virtue. We refer to the burning alive of a Negro at Coatesville, Pa., August 13. How terrible the power of evil that could so fill the minds of the entire community as to lead them to rise up as one man and inflict upon a human being, even though he was guilty of the crime charged, such terrible sufferings, thrusting him back again and again into the burning fire as he tried to escape from his pain and anguish.
This scene in Pennsylvania was duplicated a few days later at Purcell, Okla., where it was said “three thousand men, women, and children stood by, shouting their approval” of those engaged in burning alive a Negro fastened to a tree.
Says the New York Weekly Witness: “One can easily imagine the fiends in hell shouting themselves hoarse over such a spectacle as this.” But when we contrast this spirit with the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus, and many of these men and women engaged in these two affairs were professed followers of the Lord, what a striking contrast indeed is shown! When such revolting ordeals can be enacted in a civilized community, it surely shows that we have fallen upon evil times, and that the spirit of evil is fast possessing the hearts of men.
True Sabbath Observance
WHEN so much is being said by the great religious journals of the land regarding Sunday enforcement, it is refreshing to find occasionally a paper which takes a right view of the question of Sabbath observance. This is done for the most part by that excellent journal, the Sunday School Times, in its issue of August 12. Speaking of “The Spirit of Sabbath Observance,” the editor says:—
The Sabbath is never going to be observed aright so long as it is made a time of restraint or compulsion. God meant it to be the day of days, marked by the spirit of freedom and exceptional privilege. But to observe it in that way may call for a revolutionary change at the very roots of our being. Questions that keep coming from readers of the Sunday School Times show how far from the right attitude are many in our land today.
The editor then proceeds to dilate upon the spirit of Sabbath observance and the blessings which may be obtained from devoting time to prayer, meditation, and the study of the Word. He feels (of course wrongly) that for the good of the nation, it may be necessary to establish certain compulsions and prohibitions as a part of the Sabbath-keeping of the nation, but recognizes that these, after all, do not constitute true Sabbath observance:—
Real Sabbath observance goes hand in hand with the life of surrendered abiding. It may be necessary to establish certain compulsions and prohibitions as a part of the Sabbath-keeping of the nation, or State, or town, or of the younger members of the family while in training. But such enforced regulations will never bring one into the true spirit of Sabbath observance. Nothing but Christ as the whole life will ever do that. But when one has entered upon the freedom with which the Son sets men free, then the Sabbath becomes the day when one can follow with least resistance the impulses and desires of his own will.
The Bible in Public Libraries
As illustrating the extent to which the Bible is used in connection with public libraries, it is stated that in 1907 Mayor Gaynor visited the public library of Great Barrington, Mass. He called for a Bible to verify some quotation which he desired to use. He was greatly surprised to find no Bible in the library. Afterward he donated a copy to the institution, and wrote on the fly-leaf, “I have found a great many libraries which lacked a great many books, but never before have I found one like this that lacked the Great Book.” Fourteen years later, in July of this year, it is stated that he visited the same library and called for the Bible which he had donated to the institution, and found, according to the records of the library, that the book had never been called for.
From this incident, of course, we can not judge of the use of the Bible by the people of Great Barrington. Doubtless the majority of the people in that town, the same as those of every community, have Bibles in their own homes. It is to be believed they consult them more often than the one which Mayor Gaynor placed in their library.
Exclusive Friendships
It is best to be broad and generous in our sympathies. We may have special friends, but we should not have exclusive friends. We may share with a few tried acquaintances our secrets, to certain ones we may seek for counsel and advice in the hours of need; but our sympathies, our efforts, should go out to all. We are debtors to all men. Speaking of exclusive friendships among girls, the Independent of August 31, in “Advice of a Father to a Daughter,” says:—
Now, there are two things you should avoid in making friendships—narrowness and intensity. I know some girls who are seclusive, shutting themselves up in their friendships; they are also exclusive, shutting other girls out. This is bad. Women are in more peril of social narrowness than men. They ought, therefore, to seek to cultivate breadth, generosity, and inclusiveness. Have many friends, “and more and more and more.” Narrowness leads to a more serious defect; namely, too great intensity in friendship. . . . When the pressure is removed, as the pressure must finally be, some one is, for a time, more or less hurt. . . . Keep your friendships sane, healthful, healthy, helpful, natural.
The spirit of the world to-day is the formation of associations, clubs, cults, and cliques. This spirit is contrary to the spirit of the gospel. Let us stand so related to all men that we may become, as far as possible, a helpful influence in every life.