L. R. Conradi: To-day I received some letters from our brethren in Russia. In them the brethren tell their experience of the last few months,—some in prison two or three times. One brother writes from near the Baltic Sea. He began to preach, and was fined five dollars. But as he would not pay the fine, he was put into prison, first for two days. He preached again, and they made it three days. He preached again, and they made it four days. The prison was a small place, and eight or ten persons were crowded in, and the air was terrible. But five cents a day was allowed for food. I have heard that you can live on ten cents a day; he had only five cents a day. But he found some better food.
They asked him, “Are you a criminal? Did you steal a horse?” “No.” “Why are you here?” “I am here for preaching the gospel.” “The gospel?” They began to laugh. He says there was in that prison room an old Bible. Part of the leaves had been torn out, and used for papers to make cigarettes. One young man brought the Bible to him, saying, “You stand here, and preach to us.” He began to talk to them, and in a little while they became interested; and when the fourth day came, and his deliverance was announced, he was not yet through answering all their questions. He said, “The time seemed so short to me. I did not know that I had had so little food, or anything of the kind.”
Another case: A brother wrote, the first of December, that he was imprisoned in the Caucasus. A few Christians were with the other prisoners,—Lutherans and Catholics. He says: “We received hot water twice a day, and five cents a day with which to keep ourselves.” As he took his Bible, and read it there in the prison, he thought of the words of our Saviour, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” And then he speaks of another text, Isaiah 25,—how the Lord was his refuge and strength.
There was a brother in the Catholic Church, a Russian, who heard the gospel. He took hold of the truth, and began preaching it. As he received the light, he preached it to those around him. The next thing he was exiled from the western part of Russia to the Caucasus. He had no work, had a large family, which he had left behind. He went from door to door trying to find employment. The people all knew he was an exile, and would ask him, “Why are you here as an exile? Have you killed somebody?”—“No.” “Have you stolen?”—“No.” “Well, why are you here?”—“Oh,” he said, “on account of my belief.” They were Catholics. “Oh,” they said, “you are a heretic. We do not want any heretics.” So he went from door to door, trying to get work and something to eat.
But what happened?—A German Baptist took him into his store, and talked with him. One of our ministers went there, and talked with this German brother about this last message; and as he read from the Bible, this Russian said, “You must have some good things; I would like to know them, too; tell me.” And so he was told about the Sabbath, and that the Saviour is coming. Then the German said to the other,—his partner now,—“We will keep next Sabbath.” “But,” the other said, “how about our business? I can not do it so quickly.” “Why,” the other said, “after I have left my home and everything, and now the Lord brings the truth to me, I must not stop short; I can not.” He kept the next Sabbath. He then began to preach, and in a little while twenty-five Sabbath-keepers were gathered together.
Then the Russian Church said, “We will stop that thing.” They banished all these men to the other side of the Caucasus Mountains, near the Persian border. I was there just at that time, and had a general meeting. The brethren told us their experience. One brother said there were the brethren in chains, ready to be taken away across the mountains. On the one side of the soldiers were the men, and on the other their wives and children. The soldiers would go up and down between them, and they could not say farewell to each other. It was a hard thing. In the midst of the winter they were to cross the mountains.
The priests said, “This thing will stop. There are only women left, and a few children. They can not do anything.” I asked the daughter of one of these exiled men, “Are you not discouraged? Your elders have gone, your preachers have gone, and everybody else.” “No,” said she; “God still lives.” [Voices: Amen!] “And,” she said, “if we ever go to work, we want to go to work now, and all they can do is to send us where our fathers have gone.” So they went to work, and in a little while there were twice as many as they had before. [Voices: Amen!] More than that. As the exiled brethren went down to the Caucasus and to the Persian border, do you think they kept quiet?—No; they began preaching, and in a little while quite a number accepted the truth.
There are in Russia one hundred and thirty-five million people. Some may say, because the country is so large, it is thinly populated; but I will give you a little idea about Russia. When you cross the German border, Russia is as thickly settled as New Jersey. If you go a little farther, it is as thickly settled as New York and Pennsylvania. And when you go a little farther, and from there to the Siberian border, it is settled about like Iowa. And when you get into Siberia, it is about as thickly settled as Montana. The southern part of this Siberian country is a good country, just as good as the West was in the United States before it was settled.
To-day, as the Siberian railroad goes across there, hundreds and thousands of Russians arebrought into that country, and are settling along that railroad, all the way to China. There is a mission field. And not only Russians, but Germans and others, are going into that country to develop it. It is just as good a country as you have here. The railroad is being built for six thousand miles. I met a man who told me he had been twenty-one days on the railroad coming from Siberia. There is a mission field in Russia, and we ought to look to that vast mission field.
In Brazil
W. H. Thurston: For the last seven years I have been laboring in South America. Of course any country where the work has not been started, may be called a neglected field; but South America is so called from a spiritual standpoint, in view of the fact that while there are two hundred and sixty-five missionary societies operating in the world, only sixteen have attempted anything in this land.
Brazil is the country in South America to which I wish to call attention to-day. Brazil occupies nearly half the continent of South America. It is divided into twenty states, and is called the Republic of the United States of Brazil. It claims the largest number of navigable rivers of any country in the world, has nearly four thousand miles coastline, and an area of three million five hundred thousand square miles. Brazil is nearly as large as the United States, and has a population of sixteen million.
We have not thought to ask any great things for Brazil at this Conference, but we have a few requests to make. Realizing the great work yet to be done in preaching this gospel of the kingdom in all Brazil, as well as elsewhere, it has been our hope and prayer that this Conference will result in a great impetus to the missionary spirit and zeal of every one of us as well as of all our churches, and that we may move on with greater earnestness and rapidity to all the world.
The laborers in Brazil send greetings to all265assembled, and each one is praying for the success of this Conference, and that all may have the fullness of power, standing where God would have us, and that more laborers may be called to the great work abroad.
We are carrying on evangelical work, medical missionary work, and religious liberty work as fast as we can, but we have no organizations for those branches. Every one of our laborers is an evangelist; every one a medical missionary; every one a religious liberty man, and every one is a Sabbath-school worker. We all work together. We all labor together, one man in Christ. We have no difficulty whatever. It is a blessing to see all this work prospering, growing, and moving with rapidity.
We have, as I have stated, fifteen churches and ten companies; and wherever we have organized churches, we have begun from the first to educate them to be missionary workers—to go out into the field, to sell books, distribute tracts and papers and periodicals, and spread abroad the light they have received. I am glad to say that there is this desire among all the churches, and that every little while there comes a call for a minister, where the people have become interested through our reading-matter, and want a minister to come and baptize. Perhaps the call comes from another district, five or ten miles from any settlement or church of our people; and is for some one to come and organize them into a church so that they can be counted in with us, organize with us, and then go to work systematically.
Just before I came away, a call came for a minister to go to one of our churches where there was a great interest among the Germans and the Brazilians. They wanted a minister who could speak both German and Brazilian, so he could labor for both peoples. Several were awaiting baptism. This work is reaching out everywhere.
We design our school to be a mission school, a self-supporting school, to train and educate laborers for the great harvest-field in Brazil. And I do not doubt that we shall be able to spare some from there to at least one other country. Portugal has the language we have in Brazil, and we have thought that we could train laborers in this school in Brazil to open up the work in Portugal. I do not know whether any of you have ever thought of that or not. But the thought has come to us that it might be a good plan if Brazil could raise up laborers to carry the truth to Portugal.
While our boat was lying at Lisbon, I looked over that great city, the place where one of the signs of the second coming of Christ was fulfilled, and realized that there is not a voice in that city to sound the Third Angel's Message. If we can raise up laborers in Brazil, and train them, to go to Portugal to start the work there, we shall be only too glad. And at the present time it seems to me that it is the will of God that this should be done.
In the South
J. E. White: Seven years ago last January, Brother Palmer and I went to a meeting at Atlanta, Ga. We went because we had made up our minds that we were going to have missionaries among the colored people in the South. We had found that first Testimony that had been sent in regard to the work in the South. We had read it, and we had talked with Dr. Caldwell, who had been working there; and we made up our minds that the Lord could use us in that kind of work.
We began to inquire about how the work was to be done. I was anxious to hear what instruction was to be given in regard to the work. Elder Kilgore spoke to the brethren, and said, “Here is Brother White, who has something to say to you in regard to the work among the colored people in the South.” You can imagine how I felt, when I myself had come there for instruction. I found that the brethren there had not been in the work. They had not been working for the colored people, and they had no instruction to give. Well, we talked it over with them, and learned all we could. We walked up and down the streets of Atlanta, and saw the colored people as they lived, and gained all the ideas we could. And yet when we went to the South, we knew practically nothing in regard to the situation there.
In the South there is a great work to be done for both white and colored. In regard to the colored people, it was told me that they were very ignorant, that many of them could not read; but the condition of the poorer white people astonished me.
In regard to the condition of the colored people of the South, I can touch on only a few points. We find the South not only a world of its own, but the colored population is a world within a world. It is rather more so than before the Civil War, because in those times the colored people were grouped around the “great house,” as it was called. In the country, there was the great house of the owner of the plantation; and around this great house were settled the colored people who worked the plantation. The people who owned or superintended them, were more or less associated with them. Before the war, the colored people in many instances, so far as I can learn, went to the same churches that the white people attended, having seats set apart for them in the gallery, or at the rear. Here they were privileged to listen to the same teaching that the white people listened to. But since the war, they have had churches and pastors of their own. What kind of preaching do they have? There are hundreds of colored preachers in the South who can not read a word from the Bible.
The colored people are intensely religious, and must have some kind of service and some kind of a preacher. So they picked out certain men who had a peculiar gift in prayer, or in exhortation, and engaged them as preachers. Around Vicksburg, Miss., a great many sermons are preached from the “Gospel Primer.” They take those simple stories into the desk, and those who can, read enough to get the point of the stories before their audiences.
In the South there are between seven and eight millions of these colored people who have no refining influence over them, because they have no associations with those who have had the opportunity of education, culture, and refinement. For that reason they are an entirely separate people from the white population. They are a superstitious people. You could not expect anything else. When we began holding meetings on the boat, the people who came once would always come again, and a story was started that the people who came onto the boat were “hoodooed;” so it was said to them, You must not go into that boat; for if you do, they will hoodoo you, and you will have to go again, because you can not stay away from it. But the truth they heard there won them. It was the gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity that had a controlling power to bring them back again.
We need schools in the South, not only to teach these people to read, but to teach them how to work, to teach them trades, the uses of implements, and how to farm. We need a literature for them.
THE KEEPING OF THE COMMANDMENTS
The Second Commandment
“I AM the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. . . .
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything 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: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” Ex. 20: 2, 4–6.
As already stated, Gregory II was pope when the great controversy over the worship of images was raised, by the efforts in the East to abandon it.
This pope Gregory made himself chief champion of the images and their worship. In 730 he wrote in defense of image worship, to Emperor Leo the Isaurian who was trying to destroy the images.
Since the cause of image worship prevailed, and was established as a part of Catholic faith, this letter of Pope Gregory II is important as giving the principles and arguments upon which that worship rests.
To Emperor Leo, the pope wrote:—
Ten years by God’s grace you have walked aright, and not mentioned the sacred images; but now you assert that they take the place of idols, and that those who reverence them are idolaters, and want them to be entirely set aside and destroyed. You do not fear the judgment of God, and that offense will be given not merely to the faithful, but also to the unbelieving. Christ forbids our offending even the least, and you have offended the whole world, as if you had not also to die and to give an account.
You wrote: “We may not, according to the command of God (Ex. 20:4), worship anything made by the hand of man, nor any likeness of that which is in the heaven or in the earth. Only prove to me, who has taught us to worship (σεβέσθαι καὶ προσκυνεῖν) anything made by man’s hands, and I will then agree that it is the will of God.” But why have not you, O emperor and head of the Christians, questioned wise men on this subject before disturbing and perplexing poor people? You could have learnt from them concerning what kind of images made with hands χειροποίητα God said that. But you have rejected our Fathers and doctors, although you gave the assurance by your own subscription that you would follow them. The holy Fathers and doctors are our scripture, our light, and our salvation, and the six synods have taught us (that); but you do not receive their testimony. I am forced to write to you without delicacy or learning, as you also are not delicate or learned; but my letter yet contains the divine truth.
God gave that command because of the idolaters who had the land of promise in possession and worshiped golden animals, etc., saying: “These are our gods, and there is no other God.” On account of these diabolical χειροποίητα, God has forbidden us to worship them. . . . Moses wished to see the Lord, but He showed himself to him only from behind. To us, on the contrary, the Lord showed himself perfectly, since the Son of God has been made man. . . . From all parts men now came to Jerusalem to see Him, and then depicted and represented Him to others. In the same way they have depicted and represented James, Stephen, and the martyrs; and men, leaving the worship of the devil, have venerated these images, but not absolutely (with latria), but relatively. . . .
Why, then, do we make no representation of God the Father?—The divine nature can not be represented. If we had seen Him, as we have the Son, we could also make an image of Him.
This is precisely the reason that the Lord gives in His word, as to why He allowed no manner of similitude to be seen. Read that word again: “Ye 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.” Deut. 4:15, 16.
Thus the Lord allowed no similitude to be seen, expressly that the people should make no image, and because the people were so idolatrous that, had they seen any similitude, they would certainly have made a graven image.1
Yet Pope Gregory II plainly says of God: “If we had seen Him, . . . we could also make an image of Him.”
This is only to say that he and those of that way are in heart as idolatrous as were the people at Sinai.
Pope Gregory says also, “We have seen the Son,” and thus can make images of Him, and, “If we had seen God the Father, as we have the Son, we could also make an image of Him.” But since God allowed no similitude to be seen, “lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image,” and since this word of Pope Gregory’s shows that he and those of that way are as idolatrous as were those at Sinai,—this, then, shows that the use of images of Christ in the Catholic Church is as essentially idolatrous as was ever the use of any images in the world.
Further, the pope wrote:—
You say: “We worship stones and walls and boards.” But it is not so, O emperor; but they serve us for remembrance and encouragement, lifting our slow spirits upward by those (persons) whose names the pictures bear, and whose representation they are. And we worship them not as God, as you maintain; God forbid! For we set not our hope on them; and if a picture of the Lord is there, we say: Lord Jesus Christ, help and save us. At a picture of His Holy Mother, we say: Holy God-bearer, pray for us with thy Son; and so with a martyr. . . . It would have been better for you to have been a heretic than a destroyer of images.
But that is only the argument of open pagan idolaters. They know that the image itself is not their god: they say only that the image represents the god; it serves to aid the mind in rising to the true idea and worship of the god, of which the image is the representative and remembrancer.
The war against image worship continued till A. D. 789, when Irene came to power as the guardian of her son Constantine VI. She entered diligently upon the work of re-establishing image worship.
She opened correspondence with Pope Hadrian I, who “exhorted her continually to this.” In his argument promotive of image worship the pope used Heb. 11:21,—Jacob blessed both the sons of Joseph, and “worshiped upon the top of his staff,”—and made it support image worship by casting out the preposition, so that it should read, “worshiped the top of his staff.”—Bower’s “Lives of the Popes,” Hadrian, par. 40. And so it reads in the Catholic Bible to-day.
But since the image worship had been abolished by a general council, it was only by a general council that image worship could be doctrinally restored. It took considerable time to bring this about, so that it was not till 787 that the council was convened.
This council, called also the seventh general council, was held at Nice, in Asia, especially for the prestige that would accrue to it by the name of the Second Council of Nice. It was held Sept. 24 to Oct. 23, A. D. 787. “The iconoclasts appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents; the scene was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian, and the Eastern patriarchs; the decrees were framed by the president, Tarasius, and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of three hundred and fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the Fathers and councils of the Church.”—Gibbon, “Decline and Fall,” chap. xlix, par. 17.
The closing words of the decree of the council are as follows:—
We are taught by the Lord, the apostles, and the prophets, that we ought to honor and praise before all, the holy God-bearer, who is exalted above all heavenly powers; further, the holy angels, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, the holy doctors, and all saints, that we may avail ourselves of their intercession, which can make us acceptable to God if we walk virtuously. Moreover, we venerate also the image of the sacred and life-giving cross and the relics of the saints, and accept the sacred and venerable images, and greet and embrace them, according to the ancient tradition of the holy Catholic Church of God, namely, of our holy Fathers, who received these images, and ordered them to be set up in all churches everywhere. These are the representations of our incarnate Saviour Jesus Christ, then of our inviolate Lady and quite holy God-bearer, and of the unembodied angels, who have appeared to the righteous in human form; also the pictures of the holy apostles, prophets, martyrs, etc., that we may be reminded by the representation of the original, and may be led to a certain participation in His holiness.
This decree was subscribed by all present, even by the priors of monasteries and some monks. The two papal legates added to their subscription the remark that they received all who had been converted from the impious heresy of the enemies of images.—Hefele. The council was not content with this formal and solemn subscription. With one voice they broke out into a long acclamation, “We all believe, we all assent, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the Church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of the world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the like, anathema upon him! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with them who do not worship images! Anathema upon Theodorus, falsely called bishop of Ephesus; against Sisinnius, of Perga; against Basilius, with the ill-omened name! Anathema against the new Arius Nestorius and Dioscorus, Anastasius; against Constantine and Nicetas (the iconoclast patriarchs of Constantinople)! Everlasting glory to the orthodox Germanus, to John of Damascus! To Gregory of Rome everlasting glory! Everlasting glory to the preachers of truth!”—Milman, “History of Latin Christianity,” book iv, chap. viii, par. 27.
In the West, Pope Adrian I accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils. For the honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman Church, it is somewhat unfortunate that the two princes [Constantine and Irene] who convened the two councils of Nice, are both stained with the blood of their sons.—Gibbon, “Decline and Fall,” chap. xlix, par. 18.
Thus it was that image worship was established as a part of the faith of the Catholic Church, and that it is as clearly idolatry as ever was anywhere, the whole record, as well as the Scripture, shows.
Hypocrisy in Popular Christianity
The emptiness and hypocrisy in much of the popular Christianity of to-day are clearly recognized in a recent article from the pen of Oliver C. Miller, of Washington, D. C., chaplain in the United States army. He exclaims: “Only think of the fashionable church-goers who have for long weeks fluttered, butterfly-like, about the ballroom, lingered till midnight over the card table, or gazed with delight upon the fleshly scenes of the stage, reveled in all those things that feed the desires of the flesh, until they have become so wearied in body and sick in soul that they must rest for a while, forsaking the world, in a formal way, for a season [during Lent], clasping the gilded prayer-book with jeweled fingers, and going in solemn and awful mockery before the altar of the Lord!”
TRUE FAITH AND TRUE GIVING
By P. T. Magan
THE remnant people have always believed that the time would come when all that they had of lands and of money would be laid upon the altar of God as a sacrifice for His cause. They have ever taught that when the time of trouble arrives, all their wealth and possessions would have been used for the advancement of the message that proclaims the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of glory. This belief has amounted almost to a cardinal principle of faith. It has been a sweet thought to many a soul that the time would come when God's people, alone in the forests and among the rocks of the mountains, would receive their bread and their water direct from their Maker.
Thank God, these days will yet come, and those who are true and loyal will have part in this sweet and trustful experience. It is written of the remnant people: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Now giving is organically connected with commandment-keeping; and this experience of giving all that we have, is the perfection of commandment-keeping.
Once, when a rich young man came to Christ to talk with Him about the better world beyond, the following conversation took place:—
Rich Young Man: “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?”
Jesus: “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”
Rich Young Man: “Which?”
Jesus: “Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Rich Young Man: “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?”
Jesus: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
The vital point in the mind of the rich young man was what he should do in order to obtain eternal life. The answer of the Master was expressed in one brief sentence: “Keep the commandments.”
Now all that is necessary in order to obtain eternal life is to keep the commandments. The commandments were ordained unto life; and the perfect keeping of them will insure to any man eternal life and all its glories. The Saviour, at the request of the rich young man, enumerated some of the commandments, which are to be kept. The rich young man professed to have kept these from his youth up, and inquired, “What lack I yet?”
He was asking what he lacked in commandment-keeping, because how to keep the commandments so as to be sure of eternal life was the question under discussion. What lack I yet in commandment-keeping? he asks. To this the Lord replied: “If thou wilt be perfect,”—in commandment-keeping,—“go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
Now the giving of all that we have to advance the cause of God in the earth, is the perfection of commandment-keeping. It is one of the supreme tests of true commandment-keeping.
When the Saviour gave this definition of perfect commandment-keeping, He did not give an arbitrary definition. Christ is the Perfect Commandment-Keeper. He had no other god before the true God. He never bowed down to images of wood or stone. He did not take the name of the Lord His God in vain. He remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy. He honored His father and His mother. He267did not kill; He did not commit adultery; He did not steal; He did not bear false witness; and He did not covet. And high above all these, He did leave all the hoarded wealth of eternity; He did sacrifice all His property in paradise, that He might come to earth and save lost man. He, as it were, sold it all for the benefit of the poor whom He wanted to save. And this was the perfect commandment-keeping of the Perfect Commandment Keeper.
This same test of selling all that they have for the benefit of a poor lost world will yet be applied as a test of the genuineness of the commandment-keeping of those of whom it is written: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” It takes genuine faith to do this. It takes the faith of Jesus, to give all that we have to the cause of God.
In the second letter to the Corinthians it is written: “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.”
The Lord Jesus Christ was rich; and He who was rich gave away all his riches, and for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. There is a wonderful thought wrapped up in this verse. It is easier for a poor man to give of his means than it is for a rich man to give of his. Through all the ages the work of the gospel has been supported much more by the small gifts of the poor than by the great gifts of the rich. Many a rich man is willing to give if his giving will not impoverish him; but to give so that his riches will not only be sensibly affected, but until he himself becomes poor, is a test most supreme. The literal meaning of the word translated “poor” is destitute, yet this is just what the Master became. He was rich, and for our sakes He who was rich became destitute. In these last days this great test will come to the rich among Seventh-day Adventists. It will come also to the poor. It will come to all alike. Shall we have perfect commandment-keeping?
Again: Christ not only gave all that He had, but He gave it for a purpose for which men find it harder to give than for any other. Many a time I have heard men and women say: “We hate to give our money to pay debts: we hate to pay for dead horses. If it were some new enterprise, we should feel much more kindly disposed toward it. Your institutions were all clear from debt once, why didn’t you keep them so?”
Well, once upon a time to a man and a woman there was given a beautiful estate, the title was clear, and the estate was in first-class condition; there was plenty of gold on top of the ground, enough so that they could build houses with it and pave streets with it if they wanted to; silver by the ton was easy of access; the most precious gems were there in abundance: of fruit and grain and vegetables, of stately trees and fragrant flowers, of noble rivers, purling streams, babbling brooks, and effervescing springs I need not speak; they were all there in the greatest variety and profusion. The estate, moreover, was well-stocked with horses and cattle and sheep; the lakes and rivers were full of fish, and beautiful birds were in the air. It was a great estate, the like of which no man or woman on earth has seen from that day to this; it would seem impossible that any man having clear title to such an estate as this could ever get in debt or come to want; but, strange to say, this man and this woman sold the estate. We sometimes talk of people selling things for a song—but they didn’t get that much for it. They mortgaged it to the devil, and he foreclosed on them, and they got nothing for their equity. Have you ever heard of that man and that woman and that estate? of how they went into debt, and the sad, sad times that they and all their sons and daughters have had ever since?
But, oh, let me tell you, when the great God and the dear Lord Jesus Christ heard what this man and this woman had done, they said, We will give all that we have, and we’ll give it to pay this debt that the men and women of the earth have incurred. We will redeem them; that is, we will buy them back, both them and their estate. Jesus Christ said, I will be the world’s Redeemer; that is, I will be the buyer-back of the world: I will buy back for humanity that which they have lost. I will give all the hoarded wealth of eternity for this great object.
And from that day to this, all that God and all that Jesus Christ and all that the angels of heaven have done is to give blessedly and unselfishly all that heaven has to give, and to give it to pay A DEBT.
The great sacrifice of heaven is about to yield its fruit. Thank God, many of us are to live to see the glorious end, and the still more glorious beginning. And to-day God calls upon those who expect to see this grand, grand sight to cast into the treasury of sacrifice all that they have, that it may become a part of the gift of heaven, a part of the sacrifice of eternity, and that they with Him may share in the work of redemption.
Our colleges, our academies, our Scandinavian institutions, and our foreign missions cry out for help. In giving to them, we give to God, and gain for ourselves the blessed heaven-sent GIFT OF GIVING.
P. T. MAGAN.
Church Entertainments Condemned
Commenting upon the popular “church entertainments” of the day, the Christian Advocate (New York), the leading Methodist paper of the United States, says that they are “but a sample of the degradation to which some societies in all churches have fallen. . . . In one Methodist church in the far West, at the last Christmas festivity in the nineteenth century, ‘Belshazzar’ was advertised to ‘spread an elaborate feast to his lords.’ In connection with the performance three young men were actually to appear in the fiery furnace. Twelve prizes were to be given to the queen’s maids. The king and his lords were to lead the guests to supper at 6 P. M., and the feast was to continue until ten, when the maids would come royally robed. After this the furnace would be heated, and the three men were to be represented as burned in it. . . . A more sacrilegious performance could hardly be imagined. Many of the worst foes Christianity has to encounter are its professed friends. By their conduct Christ is wounded in the house of His friends. Unless public enlightenment puts a stop to such things, within ten years, in many places it will become a serious question with all religious and thoughtful parents whether they can safely allow their children to go to Sunday-school or to a church where such vulgarity and irreverence are allowed.”
Stealing, Robbing, and Begging
Stealing, robbing, and begging are fruits of the same limb. In doing any or all of these, a person is obtaining something otherwise than through its appointed channel. It is natural to give, it is the highest order of nature to give; but in this highest order there is a system: there are appointed channels through which everything is given. The teachings of the gospel always have been to direct men's minds to these appointed agencies through which God ministers His blessings. The tendency and effort of the world has ever been to get these blessings some other way.—Gospel Farmer.
Progress Selling Christ’s Object Lessons
By P. T. Magan
In reading our State papers we see many items of interest concerning the work being done in selling “Christ’s Object Lessons.” Then, too, a large number of the letters coming to this office contain words of good cheer and encouragement in regard to the progress of this work. We have found so much pleasure in reading these experiences that we have decided, from time to time, to cull extracts from both letters and papers, and give the readers of the Relief of the Schools department an opportunity to rejoice with us in the knowledge that there are many in our ranks who are loyal to the King, eager and willing to serve Him.
P. T. MAGAN.
