Jesus often saves despite error, but never because of it. Neither Abraham nor Jacob was saved because of his polygamy, but in spite of it. Polygamy is wrong in God's sight, and was then, but His servants then served Him with full purpose of heart, tho they saw not all things clearly. A faithless blunder seemed to force Abraham into polygamy in order that he might have an heir. Laban's dishonesty in dealing with the scheming supplanter compelled Jacob to take two wives in order to get the one he bargained for. The sins, the blunders, were the results of faithlessness. They were not objects in life. They were incidents doubtless bitterly repented of. But in Mormonism polygamy is an object, not an incident. No one is saved by Sunday keeping, but in spite of it. It never is helpful or useful to believe a lie, and whatever is contrary to God's truth is a lie. But there are many Sunday keepers saved, not because of Sunday keeping, but in spite of it. They are saved because the heart is true, and even in the doing of error it is true still, for it is the loyal, faithful heart that God wants. “For the eyes of Jehovah run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.”
Good, if It Is the Real Kind.
Prof. Masumi Hino, Kioto, Japan, dean of the theological department at Doshisha University, asks the question in an article in the Missionary Review of the World, “Ought Japan to become a Christian nation?” And he draws a comparison between Christianity and the three other great religions of Japan,—Shintoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Shintoism he likens to an infantile religion, with its eight million or more gods, and tells us that “a baby's dress, however handsome and useful it might have been in its day, can and shall no longer be used for a full-grown man.” Patriotism is not sufficient religion. Confucianism has trained the Japanese people in moral life, and they owe it much, but it does not meet the people's yearning after the eternal values. Beautiful as this world may be, the people long for something beyond it, and Confucianism as an institution has already gone out of the life of the Japanese people, and many look upon it as a sort of philosophy, rather than a form of religion.
Buddhism, he holds, next to Christianity, is the most developed religion of the world, but it is too negative, contemplative, static, and deeply pessimistic. It does not insist enough on the ethical life of man. The individual has no reality except as a model, accidental being. There is a lack of vitality in Buddhism. Even its view of immortality is based upon the pessimistic view of life, and stands at present in the popular mind for death rather than life. He compares it to a disappointed poet creating an ideal world in religion, but lacking in vitality and tact; and then he concludes that the only religion there is that can meet the Japanese longing is Christianity.
Japan wants a religion that is good all round, and Christianity meets it. It has proved itself to be life and power. It is not in its dotage, as Buddhism seems to be. It recognizes the individual. It is not a shallow religion with a cheap gospel and a skin-deep theology. It is an aggressive, a missionary religion, and the only religion that seems to have vitality enough to meet the spiritual needs of the present and coming generations. Ultimate victory is sure.
There ought to be hope for Christian missionaries in this world, if the Christian missionaries are not looking for a state religion or for mere ethics. Christianity meets the need of the world everywhere, but it will fail to meet it if it is considered simply in its form. The power of Christianity is in its divine life, in its God-bestowed righteousness,
In the Balkans
The Literary Digest of September 6 says: “The Turkish and Greek papers, both adversaries of Bulgaria, have at length come out with a defense of the Turkish occupation of Adrianople. That Turkey is justified in snatching the city from Bulgaria is maintained on several grounds.” Summarized, these are as follows:
(1) It helps to preserve the balance of power in the Balkans, giving the Turk a right position as a ruling race with the other four Balkan States; (2) The city and province of Adrianople are inhabited by Mussulmans, not by Slavs. (3) If Turkey were to evacuate Adrianople, the whole Moslem world would rise up in revolution.
The keeping of the Treaty of London is counted absurd. We are told that “the powers should recollect that treaty breaking is ‘the badge of all their tribe.’” A prominent Turkish paper appeals to the people of the Adrianople region, and declares that Turkey is willing to abide their decision as to whether she shall rule or not. It declares that Bulgaria would not get five per cent of the vote. This same journal, the Sabah, warns the Christian peoples: “There is peril in the awakening of the Moslem world,” if roused by injustice to fury, “the Moslem subjects of England, Italy, and France, and Moslem friends of Germany become exasperated into revolution and armed resistance.”
It is directly charged, according to the Literary Digest of September 15, that Germany is secretly supporting Turkey, and one German paper, the editor of which, Prof. Schiemann, is near to the kaiser, declares that European opinion is in favor of the Moslems’ holding Adrianople, and even in a wise way pushing beyond the Maritza River into Thrace. Even the London Spectator admits that “it is pretty clear that the continued occupation of Adrianople will not in itself lead to armed coercion by Russia,” if the Turk does not push farther.
Later: A despatch from Constantinople, of September 15, says:
“It is officially announced that an agreement on the principal points of the frontier question was reached to-day by the Turkish and Bulgarian peace delegates.
“By the new treaty Bulgaria will lose the greater part of Thrace, guaranteed her by the Treaty of London. Turkey will take Adrianople, and, it is believed, will have Kirk-Kilisseh, east of the Maritza River, and a considerable tract west of that river.”
The world is becoming more and more divided over the new dances that have taken a large number of the people by storm, and there have been some very severe and just criticisms. Others contend that they are in reality the “unconscious expression of suppressed religious emotion;” and in a way that is true, if you go back to nature religion, and the worship of nature. Francis Toye, writing in the English Review, declares that the characteristics of ragtime are absolutely identical with those of the hymns formerly “sung by the Negroes in the white heat of religious fervor during some protracted church or camp-meeting,” in which the whole person is yielded to bodily emotions. He calls it hysteria—“a particular semi-religious hysteria, nearer to madness than any other.” He goes on to say that he had personally taken the trouble to learn the effects of the ragtime, and sought some of his more intelligent and disreputable friends who frequent the haunts where nothing but ragtime is played, and all except one, he says, “are emphatically of the opinion that since the introduction of ragtime, people are much more given both to excitement and drink.” It has about the same effect as the drinking of intoxicants. The Paris Petite Journal declares that the origin of the “tango” is in what is called the “frog quarter” of Buenos Aires, and in this section “brothels, dance halls, and drinking resorts are constructed of flattened oil cans and preserved meat tins. The quarter is devoted to the lowest forms of vice, and the ‘tango’ is only the dance development of the cautious, tiger-like, pliant, and treacherous steps of the disreputable frequenters of the barrio.” George Gibb Turner, of McClure’s, carries the “turkey trot” back to the old Negro dances. He calls it “a curious recrudescence” originating from the same source as the gambling game “craps,” and found its main origin in the crude and heathen sexual customs of Middle Africa, afterward passing through the centers of prostitutes in large cities, where the contributions of city savages from Paris to San Francisco have been added to it. It is easy and exciting, and therefore thousands of people who never learned the older dances have picked this up. In fact, there seems to be a regular mania which has obsessed thousands with these low, immoral dances. Never before, says Mr. Turner, has dancing been such a provocation to immorality.
Christ Saves the Individual Through His Word
Jesus Christ stands for the individual. He respects the man. His commandments come home to the heart of the individual man. His promises are conditioned on the living faith of the individual soul. He saves mankind by saving the individual. He does it through the church, but after all, above the church—by the Word. More than creed, more than church, more than pope or council or conference or presbytery, is the Word of His truth.
The Perturbed Earth.
The cartoonist Reynolds, of the Portland Oregonian, represents the earth as “slightly overheated,” surrounded by clouds or explosions of fads, discontent, luxury, anarchy, and war. The face of the whirling earth is a picture of misery. This present portrayal of conditions in cartoon is one of a thousand ways in which Christ’s words are verified:
Signs in the Sun, Moon, and Stars
which Christ's words are verified.
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Luke 21:25-27.
Secretary Lane Recovering From Heart Failure
Secretary-of-Interior Franklin K. Lane was affected by heart failure recently in Oakland. He has been doing altogether too much. He is one of the most inveterate workers and ablest members of President Wilson’s cabinet. The one thing that he demands of all who apply to him for political jobs is efficiency. Certainly the whole country will hope that he will soon recover.
Incendiary Fires and Insurance Fraud in New York
Fire Chief Kenlon of New York declared before the recent meeting of visiting firemen in that city that one fourth of New York’s fires are incendiary, set generally to collect insurance.
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