1. In what time of the world’s history are we living?
“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Dan. 12: 4.
NOTE.— Following the evidence Biblically, from whatever standpoint we will, we are brought in every case to the same conclusion; namely, that we are in “the last days,” “the time of the end.” More than twelve lines of prophecy clearly show that we are nearing the end of earth’s history. A score or more of special signs, pointing conditions in the political, the social, the physical, the religious world, add their united and cumulative testimony that the end of the ages is upon us, and that the dissolution of earth’s present drama is soon to close in awful tragedy and sublime triumph—tragedy for the wrong, triumph for the right. And we may “know” this is so. Nay, more, the great Teacher has commanded us to know. “When ye shall see all these things, KNOW THAT IT IS NEAR, even at the doors.” Matt. 24: 33. And again and again His apostles have told us the same thing, as, for instance, “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day [the great day of God’s judgment] should overtake you as a thief.” 1 Thess. 5: 4. It is upon those who shall say “Peace and safety,” that “sudden destruction cometh,” “and they shall not escape.” Verse 3. God has done His part to enlighten us regarding “present truth;” are we setting it aside for “cunningly devised fables”?
Conditions of the Religious World
2. What is declared to be the condition of the professedly religious world in the last days?
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away.” 2 Tim. 3: 1-5.
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Rev. 3: 15-17.
NOTE.— Such passages might be greatly multiplied. It is a sad, sad fact that from all parts of Christendom goes up the cry that “The church has fallen, the beautiful church, / And her shame is her boast and pride.” Higher criticism has unsettled the faith of millions in the Bible, and the religious profession is all that marks the difference between professed Christians and the world. The POWER of godliness lies in the creative, regenerating energy of the gospel; but the basic facts of the gospel—the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection—are set aside, and evolution has come in to take their place. Pleasures, in a more refined form perhaps, but equally selfish and sensuous, are what the many are seeking as truly as the people of the world are seeking them. The same sins ascribed in 2 Tim. 3: 1-5, quoted above, are the sins which possessed the pagan world in the days of the apostle. See Rom. 1: 28-32. Jesus truly said of these days: “And because iniquity [lawlessness] shall abound, the love of many [the many] shall wax cold.” Matt. 24: 12. Division in belief, in great essentials such as the coming of the Lord, the nature of man, the punishment of the wicked, the reward of the righteous, the law of God, the Sabbath, and baptism, characterizes the professed church of Christ, till her creeds are as numerous as her costly towers, and the only successful efforts at union are brought about by the ignoring of great essential truths of the Bible.
3. What is bound to follow when such conditions exist?
“Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.” James 3: 16.
4. What is God’s desire concerning His children?
“That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.” John 17: 21-23.
God’s Desire Concerning Babylon
5. How does Inspiration designate the present divided condition in the religious world?—“Babylon.”
God does not use the term “Babylon,” meaning “confusion,” as a term of condemnation, but to show the division and confusion which exist among His followers who ought to be ONE.
6. What has ever been God’s purpose concerning Babylon?
“Take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed. We would have healed Babylon.” Jer. 51: 8, 9.
NOTE.— The origin of earthly Babylon (or Babel, meaning confusion) is found in Gen. 11: 1-9. It is here shown, in connection with the cuneiform records left us, that Babylon’s origin was in the perversion of God’s plan. To glorify Him is His purpose; glorify self, said Babylon. Scatter abroad is His command; keep together and make us a name, said Babylon. So they built a tower and glorified themselves, and called it Bab-il, the “Gate of God.” That was their means of salvation, instead of simple faith in God. But God called their effort, their plan, their perversion of His ways, Babylon, confusion. And the perpetuation of Babylonian ideas is the same to-day.
The Healing Message
7. What message has God given for the healing of present-day Babylon?
“AND I SAW ANOTHER ANGEL FLY IN THE MIDST OF HEAVEN, HAVING THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL TO PREACH UNTO THEM THAT DWELL ON THE EARTH, AND TO EVERY NATION, AND KINDRED, AND TONGUE, AND PEOPLE, SAYING WITH A LOUD VOICE, FEAR GOD, AND GIVE GLORY TO HIM; FOR THE HOUR OF HIS JUDGMENT IS COME; AND WORSHIP HIM THAT MADE HEAVEN, AND EARTH, AND THE SEA, AND THE FOUNTAINS OF WATERS.” Rev. 14: 6, 7.
NOTE.— Angels of God heralded the gospel when Christ was born. God’s messengers of heaven coöperate with God’s messengers and servants of earth. Spiritual forces, clad in power and light, are coworkers with every true child of God. Heb. 1: 14. Spirits of evil are coöperating with all the forces of evil in the perversion and opposition of truth. (There will be many references to the above scripture.)
8. What is this message?
“The everlasting gospel.”
9. What is the gospel?
“The power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” Rom. 1: 16.
10. What is this power?
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [“there is a new creation,” A.R.V., margin].” 2 Cor. 5: 17.
NOTE.— Not in the fables of evolution, or the slow progress of ages of reincarnations, or the scientific “divine immanence” in every man, or in the dreamy vagueness of “Christian Science,” does God give us to hope, but in the CREATIVE POWER of His gospel is His reform message for this time founded.
11. How far will this message go?
To every part of the world’s Babylon, “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”
“Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name.” Ps. 96: 8.
NOTE.— It requires no spiritual perception to see that in the present plans and desires of men to save or comfort the sinful, the creature is glorified rather than the Creator. God is no longer to many a personal Father, but an abstraction. His word is no longer spirit and life, but a more or less fabulous tradition. The higher critics, Mrs. Eddy, the apostles of new thought, the speculators in evolution, are glorified, while the gospel message of the Bible is set aside. “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils,” and turn to the living God.
An Impending Judgment
14. What reason is given as to why we should fear God?
“For the hour of His judgment is come.”
15. What did Paul say of the judgment in his day?
“He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world.” Acts 17: 31.
“He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Acts 24: 25.
NOTE.— When the message of Revelation goes to the world, it will not be to proclaim a judgment afar off, one to come, but a judgment impending. This message began at the close of the prophetic period of Dan. 8: 14, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Those days ended in 1844. See “Signs of the Times” of September 2. The cleansing of the sanctuary represented Christ’s closing work, when “the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the prophets.”7Rev. 10: 7. The close of every probationary work is a judgment, and even thus the gospel shall close. Rom. 2: 16. That judgment will precede its execution at the second coming of Christ; for the righteous dead are not raised and then judged; but their cases are first examined, then adjudged; those “accounted worthy” have part in the first resurrection, and are raised immortal. Luke 20: 35; 1 Cor. 15: 51, 52. That investigation and determination of cases began in 1844, naturally with the first of the sleeping dead, and will proceed till the case of the last of the living is decided. That time we know not. “Be ye also ready.”
True Worship
16. What should we do in view of that judgment?
“Worship Him.”
17. What only is true worship?
“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Matt. 4: 10.
“Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” Luke 6: 46.
“If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” John 14: 15.
18. Whom are we to worship?
The Creator. “Him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”
19. What is the distinguishing mark between the true God and the false gods?
20. What special memorial of His creative works and sign of His re-creative, sanctifying power has the Creator given?
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord [Jehovah] thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20: 8-11.
“Moreover also I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.” Eze. 20: 12.
NOTE.— He only who recognizes the true power of the gospel, can be a true Sabbath-keeper. He only can know the true rest—wrought by the creative power of God—there is in Christ Jesus.
21. What, then, does that gospel message comprehend?
“All things that pertain unto life and godliness.” 2 Peter 1: 3.
NOTE.— Every positive truth of the saving, sanctifying power of God. It means the giving up of all human devices, the setting aside of all creeds, and the submission of every tradition of theory or practise to a “Thus saith the Lord.” “Old-fashioned,” “out-of-date,” “antiquated,” “the religion of a book,” “the worship of a book,” “Jewish,” and many kindred terms of reproach will be heaped upon it; nevertheless the religion of the Book is what regenerates and saves men from sin. It may be the weakness and foolishness of God, but it is stronger and wiser than men. 1 Cor. 1: 25-31.
What Rejection of God’s Message Means
22. How did ancient Babylon respond to God’s desire?
“We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go every one into his own country.” Jer. 51: 9.
23. How does modern Babylon treat God’s message, and what is the result?
“And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Rev. 14: 8.
24. What does God call those who unite with the world, and what is their attitude to Him?
“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” James 4: 4.
25. What is the duty of the Christian and the Christian church regarding the world?
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” 1 John 2: 15-17.
26. To whom alone is God’s church lawfully united?
“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you.” Jer. 3: 14.
“I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord.” Jer. 31: 32.
“I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2 Cor. 11: 2.
27. What does God call a union of His church with the world?
28. What has always been the tendency of the church which became backslidden from God?
“Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of Me; and that cover with a covering, but not of My Spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at My mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!” Isa. 30: 1, 2.
“Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord!” Isa. 31: 1.
NOTE.— Egypt and Assyria are types of civil powers. The principle is the same, whatever the nation or government.
29. What will be the final result of such union?
“Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.” Isa. 30: 3.
“Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the Lord shall stretch out His hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.” Isa. 31: 3.
30. What will inevitably follow when modern Babylon chooses her own way instead of God’s way?
“Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.” Rev. 18: 2-5.
[The next reading is on the third part of God’s great reform message, Rev. 14: 9-14.]
What Will You Do with the Bible?
By David J. Burrell
THIS question is of supreme importance to those who profess to follow Him. As to others, they are at liberty to believe what they like; but those who call themselves disciples of Jesus have no alternative but to renounce Him or to accept what He says. His court is the court of last resort for them. It is just as well to remember this in these controversial times. There are teachers and teachers, but there is only one teacher for Christians. When Hillel and Shammai have spoken their last word, we await His “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” Any man is at liberty to quit Christ; but no man can cleave to Christ and withhold aught of loyalty to Him.— David J. Burrell, D.D., LL.D.
Character Is Built in Everyday Life
By Maltbie B. Babcock
Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character on New Year. The workshop of character is every-day life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is lost and won.— Maltbie B. Babcock.
The Day Dawn
By Ada K. Habershon
THERE are some who think that the world is gradually growing better and better, till, through the triumphs of the gospel, a millennium of blessing will be introduced; but this is not the teaching of the Bible. As well might we say that we could bring about the day dawn by making the night bright.
“If we lighted a thousand candles,
The night would be still the night.”
Nothing but the sunrise of His coming will usher in the day.— Ada K. Habershon.
The Great Red Plague
By Editor
By the Editor
The writer of this article is not a physician, nor a specialist. He has had no experience in the things of which this paper treats, save that of common observation. But he profoundly believes that he ought to raise his voice, and echo on the warnings which have been raised and are being voiced by professional men, well-known physicians, state boards of health, and various other organizations. The safety of women and children, of girls and boys, demands the utterance.
He believes that the diseases of which this article treats, both of which he has classed under “the great red plague,” should be called by their right names, and the public made intelligent concerning their malefic power and ravaging inroads. Where human life and well-being are at stake, it is not a time to let false modesty or prudery hold back the warning. Through all the years, prudery and physicians’ secrets have been doing this—keeping back vital and all-important information and warning. Because of this, the evil has flourished. Worse than smallpox or diphtheria or scarlet fever, worse than cancer or pellagra or sleeping sickness, worse than pneumonia or cerebro-spinal meningitis or cholera, worse than bubonic plague or leprosy or the dread white plague, tuberculosis, worse than the black death which slew twenty-five millions in Europe in the fourteenth century, are the venereal diseases, the diseases of vice, syphilis and gonorrhea, the first of which has been denominated the great red plague. They are worse because they work in secret, with but little known open manifestations, and secure their victims unwarned, enchaining them with a fearful malady, perpetuated and incurable.
Of the first-named of these, Nelson’s Encyclopædia says:
“Syphilis, a specific, highly contagious, but non-infectious disease, communicated by contact of the virus with a breach of surface, or transmitted hereditarily.”
From its attack may follow “nervous diseases such as general paralysis and locomotor ataxia.” The same authority thus defines the second:
“Gonorrhea, a contagious disease caused by a specific micro-organism, the gonococcus. . . . It is extremely difficult to cure, and often causes blindness through accidental infection.”
Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, of Portland, Oregon, said at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco August 16, 1913:
“These diseases are the greatest menace to the white race to-day. They cause sterility, blindness, insanity, deformities, and sorrows untold.”
Says Charles Stedman Bull, A.M., M.D., of New York (“Medical Record” of January 7, 1911):
“I think we will all agree that the gravest, by far the most serious, consequences of syphilis are those due to heredity. One of the greatest of social dangers is the high rate of infant mortality among the children of syphilitic parents; but a greater one is the disastrous results of heredity in those who live to maturity. Many of them pass through a stunted childhood into a still more stunted manhood or womanhood, to become a permanent charge upon their family or upon the state. The position assumed and maintained by the state and municipal authorities toward the so-called ‘social diseases’ is eminently false, and has largely to do with the wide-spread ignorance, on the part of the public, of the far-reaching disastrous effects of such diseases. It should be the duty of the medical profession to demand from the authorities the right of the public to protection from these diseases as from any contagious disease, and for three reasons: (1) that the innocent may not suffer; (2) that the state may not be compelled to support stunted children; (3) that racial degeneracy may be avoided.”
How Wide-Spread
These diseases are not confined to a corner, tho not observed. It is possible to hold them in check for a time, so to the ordinary observer, and even to the physician, they are not manifest. Their outbreakings are hidden under the name of some common skin eruption or ordinary disease. The victims themselves do not cry like the ancient leper, “Unclean, unclean,” and there is no professional warning to the public.
We recall a woman so affected that an ordinary layman suspected it when he saw her fondling his children. But her physician—a good man—gave no warning till the father demanded information for the sake of his baby boy. Then it was given in a covert way.
The Indiana State Board of Health declares, in a recently published “Health Circular,” that from 8 to 18 per cent—8 to 18 in every hundred—of young men in the United States contract syphilis, and THAT 80 PER CENT of the males between the ages of 18 and 30 years contract gonorrhea. Some hospital authorities say 70 per cent, some 85 per cent, of abdominal and pelvic SURGICAL OPERATIONS on women are the RESULT OF GONORRHEAL INFECTION, “in many cases ignorantly transmitted by the husband,” in “some cases long after he may think himself free from the disease.” The same circular says that the same disease is responsible for 20 TO 30 PER CENT OF BLINDNESS. Formerly it was charged that 80 per cent of blindness was due to this disease, till the discovery of the Crede method of applying a solution of nitrate of silver to the eyes of the new-born. Practically every prostitute is affected.
The same circular recites that in an Indiana school thirteen boys were contaminated by one girl. A little while ago a mayor in an Indiana city called a meeting of the fathers to place before them the alarming extent of the disease among the boys.
A letter from a physician of thirty-seven years’ practise in the Middle West to the writer not long ago, declares that he found that “most of the finest women” were infected by these diseases by their husbands, and his practise was among “the better classes.” He further says, “In the place where I have practised for thirty years, not a SINGLE MALE OF SIXTEEN YEARS WAS FREE FROM GONORRHEAL INFECTION—NOT ONE!”
We can not quote all the burning words of this physician, who speaks from first knowledge.
The Indiana “Health Circular” says:
“Our best physicians are thoroly alarmed over the vast extent of venereal infection. The great cities, themselves rapidly becoming venerealized, are serving as centers for the distribution of infection to the population outside the cities, that previously has remained comparatively free from contamination, and from which the nation in the past has drawn its reserve strength.”
Incurability and Effects
“There are some well-meaning people who still cling to the old-fashioned moralist view that venereal affliction is the just punishment of those who violate the seventh commandment, and therefore nothing should be said or done. The weakness of this view is that the evil worked is not confined to the transgressor. The infection is often brought home and transmitted to innocent wife and child. It will hardly be contended that the Supreme Intelligence ever intended a human being should contract a loathsome disease and then infect the innocent.”
Syphilis was once thought to be curable through mercurial treatment. But since the germ has been discovered, hope has declined. “THE GERM has been found in the brain and other parts of the body TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE INFECTION HAD BEEN CONTRACTED.” The Wassermann reaction test applied in 254 cases of insane in Mount Hope hospital, near Baltimore, all of whom had denied all syphilitic infection, Dr. Sylvanus Stall tells us, showed that 86 per cent had been infected. The same test showed that 85 per cent of a hundred prostitutes in Europe had been infected, tho only one showed outward manifestations. Like a hidden fire in peat bogs it slumbers for a time awaiting favorable conditions for its outbreak.
We are told that this “disease is responsible for an asserted 90 per cent of locomotor ataxia, a large per cent of insanity, for a great number of still-born children, and for a heavy percentage of premature deaths in children, for apoplexy, paralysis, and sudden death, long after the disease is supposed to have been eliminated. Insurance actuaries hold that on an average syphilis shortens life one third.
The Medical Society of Chicago, comprising 2,000 physicians, has organized the Chicago Society of Social Hygiene. It was organized to impart information concerning these fearful diseases and for protection of wives and children. Its president is Professor Charles R. Henderson, of the University of Chicago; its first vice-president is Bishop Charles P. Anderson, of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. Its other officers are prominent men in that great city. The society has issued four circulars on self, home, family, and community protection. They call these plagues “an insidious and prevalent form of murder and robbery; namely, the contamination of wives and children through the venereal diseases of husbands who suppose themselves cured before marriage. Through these diseases, many wives and more children are destroyed outright, and many more are robbed of their birthright to health of body and mind.”
The society charges that a considerable percentage of the idiotic, imbecile, and insane in our charitable institutions, a curse to themselves and a burden to the community, are there through the heritage of these diseases.
A Hoped-For Remedy
The incurability of syphilis, and the dread effects which follow, have led physicians and11bacteriologists to put forth special efforts to discover the germ and find a cure. When Professor Ehrlich announced, in 1910, a remedy made up of a combination of drugs, there was great hope that a sure cure of the dread disease had been discovered. It was called “bioxydiamidoarsenobenzol,” later “606,” later still “arsenobenzol,” and now “salvarsan.” Immorally inclined thought it was possible to indulge lust with impunity. But William M. Leszynsky, M.D., of New York, neurologist to the Harlem and Lebanon hospitals, in a paper read before various medical societies, and printed in the “Medical Record” of February 18, 1911, says, “It is well known that SYPHILIS IS ONE OF THE MOST INFECTIOUS CAUSES OF ORGANIC NERVOUS DISEASES.” He discusses the “salvarsan” remedy, and declares “that we now possess a new and valuable remedy against SOME of the MANIFESTATIONS of syphilis” (capitals ours); but, he says, it “is positively injurious in advanced cases of chronic nervous disease, and that the heralding of the remedy by unauthorized persons as a ‘positive cure’ was premature.” He further tells us that certain cases are not only “not benefited by the use of ‘salvarsan,’ but that in some cases deleterious results have supervened.” Professor Ehrlich “distinctly and emphatically warns against using it in persons afflicted with any organic lesions, especially of the liver, kidney, heart, or circulatory system (aneurysms). In the case of the tuberculous, the senile, and heavy drinkers, the remedy should not be used.” There are not many left that need it.
The Paris correspondent of the New York “Medical Record,” under date of February 15, 1911, speaks of the experience of Ehrlich himself: “After treating seven syphilitics who had been refractory to mercury with 606, he followed them after the injection and was able to see that the amelioration, often miraculous, did not last more than seven to fifteen days in the seven cases, and a month in others. In all seven patients, recurrence occurred for the most part as serious as before the treatment.”
Little therefore can be hoped for from the wonderful discovery. It is like Koch’s and Friedmann’s tuberculosis specifics. Their praise and potency were heralded too soon. As stated in the “Medical Record” of December 17, 1910, “It will require years of observation and many more tests for a positive assurance of a permanent cure.” In the meantime the great red plague continues its ravages; and the diseased, the halt, the maimed, the blind, the immoral, the degenerate, the hidden lepers of society, multiply.
Its Spreading Power
The contagiousness of the disease is thus set forth by various authorities:
L. Duncan Bulkley, A.M., M.D., New York City, in his book “Syphilis in the Innocent,” states that the disease can be acquired from—“kissing, biting, scratching, use of spoons, knives, forks, cups, glasses, tobacco pipes, cigars, cigarettes, troches, candy, underclothing, masks, towels, sponges, tooth-brushes, syringes, the implements used by glass-blowers, assayers, weavers, musicians, cooks, furriers, upholsterers, shoemakers, and servants.”—Indiana Health Circular.
Nelson’s Encyclopædia says:
“Too much stress can not be laid on the contagious nature of a syphilitic patient. His blood, secretions, and discharges may communicate the disease to those around him. Razors, pipes, tumblers, spoons, handkerchiefs, clothes, are contaminated by the use of them, and his kiss is more dangerous than the leper’s.”
We quote again from the Indiana “Health Circular”:
“Whichever way we look we see disease, sorrow, and disaster, as the result of sexual error. It fills the streets with unambitious, venerealized men, the penitentiaries with hopeless, syphilized criminals, fills our insane asylums, our institutions for the blind, homes for imbeciles and other delinquents, hospitals and divorce courts. It is probable with the venereal scourges gone there would be little need of the physician as we know him to-day, for many human ills would likely vanish as if by magic with the social diseases eliminated. But whether or not, there would be such a reinforcement of resisting power to the human body, freed from the venereal taints, that future generations would be largely immune to the diseases that now prey on and destroy the members of the human family.”
Shall information the public needs as to these fearful dangers be withheld under the old traditional convention of the medical secret? Some doctors do not so believe. This is what A. J. Rongy, M.D., gynecologist in Lebanon Hospital, New York, and attending surgeon in the Jewish Maternity Hospital, says in the “Medical Record” of February 18, 1910:
“Egbert H. Grandin, in his appeal for the safeguarding of marriage from venereal disease, said: ‘Until the so-called “medical secret” is relegated to the ash heap of other superstitions, marriage can not be safeguarded against the venereal diseases. This secret was born to protect the guilty at the expense of the innocent. Therefore, too, it makes of the physician an accomplice. Let us see how it works. Examples fortify facts. A young man, about to enter the state of matrimony, consults me because he has acquired the clap [gonorrhea]. I warn him against marriage until cured. I tell him of the dangers to health, to life, to which he, in all probability, will otherwise subject his wife. Possibly my interests are keener because I have reared this girl from birth. He declines my advice. The medical secret bars me from telling the parents, or the girl herself. I morally condone a crime. The pure girl, in loving faith, must link her destiny with the impure. A married man comes to me with the infectious lesion of pox [syphilis]. I warn him conscientiously of the danger he is to his wife and to others. He may not heed me. Usually he is too much of a moral coward to tell his wife. Because of the “medical secret,” I can not. The trusting wife must be inoculated by the “fond” husband.’ Have there ever been truer words spoken? I believe it is the duty of the medical man individually, and of medical societies in particular, to raise this question as a matter of public protection. The general public must be made familiar with existing conditions. They have a good deal at stake; and if a proper campaign of education is carried on, it will be finally crowned with success.”
There are many others like-minded. But how can a society or generation be reformed when the greater part are more or less secretly affected by the very thing which demands publicity? It is at the very best a dark outlook. Politics neither can nor will cure it. Nothing but the healing, regenerating power of Christ applied individually to the moral leprosy of the human heart can effect a change. But the infidelity of the age, the science that is powerless to cure the physical ills, is used to take from humanity the world’s Saviour and Healer. But these awful conditions confirm mightily the words of Jesus when He said, looking to these days:
“As it was in the days of Lot [Lot lived in Sodom], . . . even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed.” See Luke 17:28-37.
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw good.” Eze. 16:49, 50.
The passing revelations of deeds open and secret reveal to us the awful condition of a large part of humanity. Will we heed God’s warning, or will we go madly on to destruction as did the rich and pleasure-loving, lust-loving Sodom of old?
We appeal to men who have yielded to sin and vice, to come to Christ, the Master of all the potencies of good, and become men indeed, for their own soul’s sake, for their children’s sake, for humanity’s sake.
We plead with the mothers for their sons’ and daughters’ sake, teach them purity and strength of manhood and womanhood.
We appeal to young men and young women to rise above, strike clear of, the fierce devilish undertow of sin which is sweeping so many into the eternal depths of misery, infamy, and destruction.
We appeal to Christian ministers to let God’s law have its place in their preaching, without which a spiritless, perverted gospel but heals the hurt of the daughter of God’s people slightly. That gospel saves from sin, and sin is the transgression of the law. The gospel, if it saves at all, saves to obedience.
We appeal to the sinner, whoever he may be, however low he has fallen, to come to Christ, who is able to save. He will do for you as He did for the sinners of Corinth, as He is doing for sinners to-day. Take this message home: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU: but ye are WASHED, but ye are SANCTIFIED, but ye are JUSTIFIED in the NAME of the LORD JESUS, and by the SPIRIT OF OUR GOD.” 1 Cor. 6:9-11.
German War Air-Ship Destroyed in North Sea Hurricane
The German war air-ship met a hurricane September 9, 5,000 feet up, over the North Sea, and was destroyed, the loss of life estimated at sixteen.
