Earlier text: The Ottoman Empire Becomes an International Question“THE LORD gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.” Ps. 68: 11. To publish is to make known, to proclaim, not merely to print, as the word is now commonly used. But it includes the circulation of literature, one of the greatest agencies of making known the message. THE margin of the text gives the more literal rendering, “Great was the army of those that published it.” The word army suggests an organized, systematic, extensive work, carried forward by many companies, all working together. And our system of canvassing work, world-wide in its operation, fits the idea exactly. THE beginning of our book canvassing work has been thus stated by the secretary of our general Publishing Department:— In the year 1879 the word of the Lord came to the leaders through Mrs. E. G. White, stating that the time had come for advance steps to be taken in the publication of the message; that larger books should be prepared, illustrated, and put up in popular form; and that they should be sold from house to house by agents. Two years later, in 1881, at a camp-meeting held in the State of New York, plans for the development of the subscription book business were arranged by Brother George King, our pioneer canvasser, who recently fell with the harness on in New York City. Elder J. N. Loughborough tells of having seen this dear brother going from one to another on the camp-ground, with two little black-covered books under his arm. They were the first copies of “Thoughts on Daniel” and “Thoughts on Revelation,” as they were first bound up separately and sold as trade books. Brother King urged that these two books be bound together in one volume, and illustrated, and sold from house to house by agents. THAT started the work. In the REVIEW of March 28, 1882, Elder Geo. I. Butler wrote:— A beginning is now being made. We have one book prepared for this purpose. “Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation,” combined in one volume, is now being issued from the press especially to occupy this field. And again, in the REVIEW of April 11, Elder Butler urged the importance of this new department of work:— We are glad to hear good news from those who are engaged in this work. We look for a great sale of this book in the near future. It seems to us the time has come to sell thousands upon thousands of this most valuable and interesting volume. We expect steps will be taken at our Western camp-meetings to organize a canvass for this book. We hope to have some person present to give instruction upon the subject, and help those who want to engage in selling it. This is no mere money-making scheme, no speculation. With us it assumes the proportion of a religious duty to get the light before the world on the glorious subject of prophecy. It must be done. Our books containing light and truth must be put into the hands of the honest in all parts of the world. We want those who have thoughts of entering this branch of the work of God to make a note of this, and shape their business for it, and be present at these meetings. AND so the work has spread, until a great army is in the field, of various nations and tongues, placing the message-filled books in the homes of the people. Indeed, it has been no spirit of commercialism, no money-making motive, that has built up this system of work, but the one overwhelming obligation laid upon hearts to use every means possible, and to make every sacrifice, to hasten the message to the world, and win blood-bought souls to eternal life. LET us never forget that the same angels that Jacob saw in his dream descending and ascending between heaven and earth are still “all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.” In many an experience, believers have been conscious of the special presence of the Lord, and have realized in a very definite sense that angels were hovering near. Not long ago, a young brother in prison for the truth of God in a heathen land, and under sore trial, wrote joyfully that he had proved the truth of the promise that “the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.” He saw no angel forms, but he knew they were there, and he realized the power of God actually doing things in his time of need. The following story of deliverance is translated from German missionary records, having appeared in the Sontagsblatt für's Haus:— Missionary von Asselt, a Rhenish missionary in Sumatra from 1856-76, on a visit to Lubeck, related the following occurrence in his life:— “When I first was sent to Sumatra, in the year 1856, I was the first European missionary to go among the wild Battas, although twenty years prior, two American missionaries had come to them with the gospel; but they had been killed and eaten. Since then no effort had been made to bring the gospel to these people, and naturally they had remained the same cruel savages. “What it means for one to stand alone among a savage people, unable to make himself understood, not understanding a single sound of their language, but whose suspicious, hostile looks and gestures speak only a too-well-understood language,—yes, it is hard for one to realize that. The first two years which I spent among the Battas, at first all alone and afterward with my wife, were so hard that it makes me shudder even now when I think of them. Often it seemed as if we were not only encompassed by hostile men, but also by hostile powers of darkness; for often an inexplicable, unutterable fear would come over us, so that we had to get up at night, and go on our knees to pray or read the Word of God, in order to find relief. “After we had lived in this place for two years, we moved several hours’ journey inland, among a tribe somewhat civilized, who received us more kindly. There we built a small house with three rooms,—a living room, a bedroom, and a small reception room,—and life for us became a little more easy and cheerful. “When I had been in this new place for some months, a man came to me from the district where we had been, and whom I had known there. I was sitting on the bench in front of our house, and he sat down beside me, and for a while talked of this, that, and the other. Finally he began: ‘Now, tuan [teacher], I have yet one request.’ “‘I would like to have a look at your watchmen close at hand.’ “‘What watchmen do you mean? I do not have any.’ “‘I mean the watchmen whom you station around your house at night, to protect you.’ “‘But I have no watchmen,’ I said again; ‘I have only a little herdsboy and a little cook, and they would make poor watchmen.’ “‘Then the man looked at me incredulously, as if he wished to say: ‘O, do not try to make me believe otherwise, for I know better.’ “‘Then he asked: ‘May I look through your house, to see if they are hid there?’ “‘Yes, certainly,’ I said, laughing; ‘look through it; you will not find anybody.’ So he went in and searched in every corner, even through the beds, but came to me very much disappointed. “‘Then I began a little probing myself, and requested him to tell me the circumstances about those watchmen of whom he spoke, and this is what he related to me: ‘When you first came to us, tuan, we were very angry at you. We did not want you to live among us; we did not trust you, and believed you had some design against us. Therefore we came together, and resolved to kill you and your wife. Accordingly, we went to your house night after night; but when we came near, there stood always12 close around the house, a double row of watchmen with glittering weapons, and we did not venture to attack them to get into your house. But we were not willing to abandon our plan, so we went to a professional assassin [there still was among the savage Battas at that time a special guild of assassins, who killed for hire any one whom it was desired to get out of the way], and asked him if he would undertake to kill you and your wife. He laughed at us because of our cowardice, and said, ‘I fear no God, and no devil. I will get through those watchmen easily.’ So we came all together in the evening, and the assassin, swinging his weapon about his head, went courageously on before us. As we neared your house, we remained behind, and let him go on alone. But in a short time he came running back hastily, and said, ‘No, I dare not risk it to go through alone; two rows of big, strong men stand there, very close together, shoulder to shoulder, and their weapons shine like fire.’ Then we gave it up to kill you. But, now, tell me, tuan, who are those watchmen? Have you never seen them? “‘No, I have never seen them.’ “‘And your wife did not see them also?’ “‘No, my wife did not see them.’ “‘But yet we have all seen them; how is that?’ “‘Then I went in, and brought a Bible from our house, and, holding it open before him, said: ‘See here; this book is the Word of our great God, in which he promises to guard and defend us, and we firmly believe that Word; therefore we need not to see the watchmen; but you do not believe, therefore the great God has to show you the watchmen, in order that you may learn to believe.’” May none of us lose the blessedness and the comfort of the doctrine of the ministry of angels in this unbelieving age. God is the same living God as of old, and the angels of heaven are with us day by day. Biding God's Time
By F. M. W.
The Scriptures of truth represent patience and long-suffering as leading attributes of God's character. The Word of God says of those who will be heirs with Jesus Christ in the eternal ages,—that they possess the faith of Jesus. The faith of Jesus is something more than faith in Jesus. When we speak of the faith of Jesus, there comes to our minds the unswerving faith which he has exercised, not alone during his earthly existence, but through the eternal ages,—faith in the accomplishment of God's great purpose; patient waiting for the fulfilment of that purpose; long-suffering forbearance until time and circumstances shaped the conditions which his wisdom foresaw, and which his loving heart desired to have become an accomplished fact. The sublimest spectacle which the universe of God presents, and that which reveals the character of God in its nobility and dignity, is the long, patient waiting of God in the carrying out of the plan of salvation. For six thousand years, evil has been doing its deadly work. It has hurled its defiance in the face of God, done despite to his holy name, persecuted his followers, put to death his only begotten Son, and filled the world with sorrow, misery, and death. By one word God could have swept the terrible picture from existence; but for the ultimate good of his children, for the vindication of his own character, which has been assailed, and in order that sin might be forever put down in his universe, he has endured this terrible experience, patiently waiting until the time when the universe of God, including the saved of earth, having seen sin's great object-lesson worked out, would proclaim the Author of their salvation as their full, unbiased choice, the sovereign of their supreme affections. For this triumphant result, the great Ruler of the universe has endured and waited. In this he has become an example to all his children, and we should take the lesson to heart and profit by its teaching. In our finite understanding, how prone we are to forget, amid the trials and stress of mortal life, the lessons of biding God's time! We feel, as did Uzzah of old, that we must put our hand to the ark of God, and that unless we steady it, it will be dashed to ruin. We conceive plans which we feel should be put into execution. They may be just and right; but God in his overruling providence permits obstacles to interfere. Our plans fail to carry, we must seek other avenues for their promotion. How hard it is to wait and trust at such a time! We feel that reforms should be effected in the work of God. We see, perhaps, men holding positions who are unworthy of the trust committed to them. We may see measures advocated which in our inmost soul we feel to be wrong. At such times there comes the temptation to feel that if our plans and our view of things are not carried through, inevitable disaster will come to the work of God. This, indeed, might be true if the work were dependent upon men; but the great God of heaven has his hand upon the helm. He is guiding the ship; he is caring for the ark. The oxen may stumble, and the ark may shake violently, but angel hands are holding it. The stumbling and the shaking are only to test our faith in God's overruling providence, and to lead us to see that we are dependent upon the vitality of heaven and not upon the power of feeble man. Let us learn the lesson of patience in the work of God. If we see things that need correcting, let us judiciously and kindly seek, through proper channels, to bring about reform. This is our duty. We can not stand clear before God if we fail, to the extent of our influence, to correct evil when it comes to our knowledge; but having failed, and still believing our cause just, let us bide God's time. Let us not become over-anxious or too greatly burdened. The cause is the Lord's. He is leading the armies of Israel on to victory; he is the Captain of our salvation. His interest in this work and his love for his cause and people exceed our finite devotion. And if we faithfully do our part, we can trust him to conduct us and the expedition with which we are connected, safely through to the end of the campaign. David learned this lesson of patient waiting for God. He says: “I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.” There were other times in David's experience when he did not see the answer to his prayer; but he believed he would see it, and this kept him steady: “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” It was the faith on the part of David that God would work that kept his soul in hours of distress. Let this be our confidence in these times of stress and storm. In waiting and in confidence shall we be saved. If we do not see to-day the full fruition of our hopes, if at times our hearts grow weary with long waiting, we may be cheered with the belief that in God's own time we shall see the “goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Possessing our souls in patience, and keeping calm and steady, let us perform our work faithfully, standing nobly and truly at the post where God's providence has placed us, taking him as our blessed example in patience and long-suffering, and waiting for him in his own way to bring to pass his own divine purposes. Witchcraft and False Theocracies
By C. M. S.
The assertion was made in the previous article that had there been no New England theocracy, there would have been no execution of witches in New England. Having established their governments upon the theocratic basis, what more logical than that the colonists should make the code of the Israelitish theocracy their code? They did follow the logic of their hypothesis in that respect; and because God had said to the rulers of the theocracy which he established, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” the rulers of those colonies considered that to be Jehovah’s mandate to them also; and they acted accordingly. From their theocratic hypothesis, it became their bounden duty to root out witchcraft as soon as they were convinced that it existed among them.13 But they reckoned ill-advisedly. Jehovah had specifically ended the theocratic system, and had declared it should be no more until he himself should bestow the rulership of this world upon his Son. While the theocratic plan of government was in operation under Jehovah’s direction, there was no possibility of injustice being done in the matter of the detection and punishment of those who had given themselves to Lucifer to do his bidding. The One who made the law knew how to guard every individual from any unjust working of that law while it was in operation under his direction. He who gave his people the test by which to know a true prophet (see Num. 24:4) would not leave his prophets to the guidance of their own imaginations in detecting the necromancer, the wizard, and the witch. But the false theocracies of Europe and New England had no such guaranty against injustice and oppression. Their establishment as such was a defiance of the mandate of Jehovah, by which theocracy had been discontinued. When men attempt to operate a divine institution without divine sanction, and in opposition to divine pronouncement, there is sure to be disaster. When the agents of that false theocratic system known as the Papacy began the terrible business of extirpating witches, they opened up a field of operations in which a confederacy of human ingenuity, imagination, superstition, and spite, sharpened and abetted by the cunning malignity of Satan himself, was to run a merciless course in two hemispheres, but chiefly in the mother lands. Of this, James Russell Lowell says:— Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing difference of belief, and the first systematic persecutions for witchcraft began with the inquisitors in the thirteenth century. It was then and there that the charge of sexual uncleanness with demons was first devised. Persecuted heretics would naturally meet in darkness and secret, and it was easy to blacken such meetings with the accusation of deeds so foul as to shun the light of day and the eyes of men.—“Among My Books,” page 130. Thus does John M. Taylor, in his monograph on “The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut,” speak of the origin of witchcraft persecutions:— Modern scholarship holds that witchcraft . . . was first exploited by the Dominicans of the Inquisition.—Page 10. That it was exploited by them, there is no doubt, and the foregoing quotation from James Russell Lowell gives a very cogent reason for the exploitation; but that it did not originate with them is proved both by the testimony of Holy Writ and by the oldest human records extant. The code of Hammurabi (the Amraphel of the Old Testament, Gen. 14:1), which was dug out of the necropolis mound of ancient Susa in Elam in 1901, proves the existence of witchcraft in that early age, and gives the rule for determining the guilt or innocence of the accused as well as of the wizard who accused him. The bull of Pope Innocent VIII, issued in 1489, made a belief in witchcraft a fixed part of Catholic faith. On the title-page of that document is this significant legend: “Not to believe in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies.” With such a declaration from such an authoritative source, it is little wonder that a belief in witchcraft and in the necessity for its extirpation at the hands of those who were ruling over the bodies and souls of men, should have taken such strong possession of Christendom. And wherever a belief in prevalent witchcraft has been coupled with a belief in the baleful error that the civil power must look after religion, there has been just such trouble as that which harried New England in the witchcraft days, and polluted her annals with the blood of the innocent. Says Taylor, in “The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut,” pages 26, 28:— Hundreds of innocent men and women were imprisoned or fled into exile or hiding-places; their homes were broken up, their estates were ruined, and their families and friends were left in sorrow, anxiety, and desolation; and all this terrorism was wrought at the instance of the chief men in the communities, the magistrates and the ministers. The ministers stood with the magistrates in their delusion and intemperate zeal. As the New England colonies had brought their church and state ideas with them from the Old World, so brought they their ideas of witchcraft and the remedy for its extirpation. In the year 1541, by a statute of Henry VIII, witchcraft was made a felony. Canon Linden, an eye-witness of the dreadful deeds committed at Trier in 1589, says:— In Bamburg and Wurzburg, Geneva and Como, Toulouse and Lorraine, and in many other places in Italy, Germany, and France, thousands were sacrificed in the names of religion, justice, and law, with bigotry for their advocate, ignorance for their judge, and fanaticism for their executioner.—“The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut,” p. 10. From court to court throughout the towns and villages of all the diocese, scurried special accusers, inquisitors, notaries, jurors, judges, constables, dragging to trial and torture human beings of both sexes, and burning them in great numbers. Scarcely any of those who were accused escaped punishment. Nor were there spared even the leading men in the city of Trier. For the judge, with two burgomasters, several counselors and associate judges, canons of sundry collegiate churches, parish priests, rural deans, were swept away in this ruin. So far, at length, did the madness of the furious populace and of the courts go in this thirst for blood and booty, that there was scarcely anybody who was not smirched by some suspicion of this crime. Meanwhile notaries, copyists, and innkeepers grew rich. The executioner rode a blooded horse, like a noble of the court, and went clad in gold and silver. His wife vied with noble dames in the richness of her array. The children of those convicted and punished were sent into exile; their goods were confiscated; plowmen and vintner failed.—“The Witchcraft Persecutions,” Pages 13, 14. Cotton Mather, as if to justify the course of the Massachusetts theocracy in its dealings with witches, tells, in his “Wonders of the Invisible World” of “certain strange doings in Sweedland in the years 1669 and 1670.” He states that there were discovered no fewer than threescore and ten witches in one village, twenty-three of whom were condemned to death. “The rest were sent to Fahluma, where most of them were afterward executed.” Fifteen of this company who suffered death were children. Thirty-six other children, who were considered less guilty, “were forced to run the gauntlet, and be lashed on their hands once a week for a year together.”—“Wonders of the Invisible World,” pages 170, 171. James Howell, in his “Familiar Letters,” published in 1646, says:— We have multitudes of witches among us; for in Essex and Suffolk there are above two hundred indicted within these two years, and above the half of them executed. At this time it was declared that Scotland was swarming with witches, and that persons of good quality were executed daily. Scotland set its seal on witchcraft as a crime by an act of its parliament as early as 1563, amended in 1649. The ministers were the inquisitors and persecutors. They heard the confessions and inflicted the tortures, and their cruelties were commensurate with the hard-and-fast theology that froze the blood of mercy in their veins.—“The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut,” page 21. The New England persecutions for witchcraft were but an echo of what had occurred and was occurring in the Old World, and they were superinduced by the same conditions,—a union of church and state. The clergy of New England were as prominent in it as were the clergy of Old England and Scotland. Cotton Mather is pictured on horseback at the execution of the Rev. George Burroughs, who was hanged for alleged witchcraft. During Mr. Burroughs’s speech and prayer on the scaffold, the people were so affected by his words that it was feared some of those present might interfere with the execution. To forestall such action, some of Mr. Burroughs’s accusers declared “the black man stood and dictated to him.” In a14 work entitled “Salem Witchcraft in Outline,” we read concerning this execution:— As soon as he was turned off [hanged], Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a horse, addressed himself to the people, partly to declare that he (Mr. Burroughs) was no ordained minister, and partly to possess the people of his guilt, saying that the devil had often been transformed into an angel of light; and this somewhat appeased the people, and the executions went on.—Page 132. There were others executed on the same scaffold with this minister of the church gospel. The prominence of Mr. Mather in these executions did not in the least add to his popularity among the common people. Says the historian Fiske:— One of the effects of the witchcraft episodes at Salem was to cast discredit upon the clergy, who still represented the old theocratic ideal which had founded the commonwealth of Massachusetts. . . . To some extent Cotton Mather was made the chief butt of popular resentment because he and his father especially typified the old theocratic state of things.—“New France and New England,” pages 197, 198. The same author makes the following interesting observations upon the connection between theocratic rule and witchcraft:— As literature and art have had their golden ages, so the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were especially the sulphurous age of the witchcraft delusion. It was the period when the Church of Rome was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with heresy, and obnoxious persons suspected of heresy could sometimes be destroyed by a charge of witchcraft, when there was no other method of reaching them. Thus the universal superstition was enlisted in the service of a militant and unscrupulous ecclesiastical organization with effects that were frightful. . . . It was already noted in Cromwell’s time that independency in ecclesiastical matters seemed to be attended by a diminution of activity in the world of witches.—Id., pages 141-144. The same observation fittingly applies to colonial days. The release from the bondage of the witchcraft delusion was synchronous with the growth of that spirit of revulsion from ecclesiastical control in civil things which resulted finally in the overthrow of the ecclesiastical establishments. The separation of church and state, the abandonment of the false-theocracy idea, cured the witchcraft delusion in New England; and that separation and that abandonment are the only certain preventive of a recurrence of that delusion. In view of that fact, the people of this nation should look with no little concern upon the declared purpose of certain powerful organizations to resurrect theocracy in this land. Any theocracy that men may establish will be a false theocracy, and the result of its establishment would be certain disaster. Cause of Spiritual Decline
By F. M. W.
The Christian Herald of January 25 publishes a series of letters picturing the conditions of the Christian church in various localities. Some of these strike a hopeful note. Others tell all too plainly of the spiritual declination which is evidently settling down upon the great Christian church. One reader expresses his deep concern in the following words:— I am acquainted with a few of the churches here and several in neighboring villages. My acquaintance does not inspire me with great gladness of heart. Taking the members within reasonable distance, one or two miles, of each place of worship, the attendance is usually very small. The almost complete absence of children and young people from the morning and evening services is painfully evident. The preaching, in some particulars, is pleasing, but largely professional. It lacks evangelical teaching and subduing earnestness. Sin has scarcely any existence in these days. God has ceased to be angry with the wicked, because they are not to be found, save in the slums and heathen lands, and there, moral responsibility does not count. The doctrines of repentance, justifying faith, the new birth, the witness of the Spirit, and full salvation, are seldom if ever preached. I have heard many sermons and addresses, but never once, if I were an anxious soul seeking salvation, could I learn from any one or all of them, how I could find peace with God. If such hymns as “Rock of Ages,” “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” or “Just as I Am,” were sung, I might have had a chance, but those hymns are being displaced by modern jingles. If, with few exceptions, the people do not come to church, may not the minister as a pastor take some of God’s saving messages to them in their homes or elsewhere? I fear this is not done. The clubs, the guilds, the brotherhoods, the leagues, the social functions, the committees, must be attended, with many other minor things. No time, and not much desire, is left for the proper work of a pastor. Membership of the church is a serious problem. Some are members because their parents were; some because they were baptized; some because they were confirmed; others because of worldly gain; others because it is respectable. The minister’s plea is, “We must keep up the membership,” forgetting the possibility of falling into sin by counting the people, and by sanctioning many of the devices to raise the necessary funds. When an ordinary physician discovers the disease, he knows the remedy. Will he apply it? It means trouble at the beginning. Will he make the sacrifice? No more unconverted men for the ministry or for office in the church. The ministry is not a profession, as is medicine or the law. No more fixtures for life, nor even for five years, except there be a fortnight Sunday interchange with another minister. More time with God and the Bible, and in visiting from house to house. “I seek not yours, but you! Give me souls or I die!” This sad lament is going up from many burdened hearts to-day. God has many true children in the great churches of the land. They see the low spiritual condition existing in their denominations, and long for a revival of spiritual power. To these the message of this generation is sent. If these faithful ones can but see, in the sad conditions around them, the fulfilment of the Scriptures of truth, and the signs of the times in which we are living, they will be led to look for relief to the only thing in which relief will be found, and that is the coming of the Lord. Let us hasten the call for the gathering of Israel. Poodle Darlings
By F. M. W.
THE American home is being undermined by women who leave the care of their children to servants, and bestow their love and affection upon poodle dogs. This, at least, is the idea of Mr. G. W. Norris, representative from Nebraska. Mr. Norris says:— Poodle dogs are usurpers, and should be returned to their proper place in the home. The kind of dogs seen on Connecticut Avenue in Washington are a disgrace to the nation, occupying the place they do in the lives of supposedly good citizens of the republic. The dogs themselves are to be pitied; but the women who pet them, to the exclusion of their children, are despised. Mr. Norris describes in the Washington Post an incident which he recently witnessed in the city of Washington:— While I was passing in front of a residence that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, an elaborately dressed woman came out. She carried in her arms a costly poodle; and as she stepped into her carriage, two of her servants, wearing high silk hats, bowed almost to their knees. One assisted her to enter the carriage, while the other draped her dress about her feet. A moment later a colored servant came out, wheeling a baby-carriage, and I crossed the street, and learned that it held the woman's little son. That the woman held the poodle where her child should have been, while she gave the little one over to the care of a servant, seemed inhuman to me; but finally I decided that the poodle was more to be pitied than the child—it was in worse company. The sad thing about the whole incident was that a mother could go smilingly away from her baby, while she cuddled and patted the insignificant little dog at her side. Poodles are all right as pets for children, and, incidentally, for older persons. Personally, I love them, as I love all dogs. But before they are allowed to take the place of children in our homes, I would rather see every poodle in the nation killed. The only kind of home which is worth while is the home where the mother gives her first and best thought to her children. Too often in America to-day rich women care nothing for their offspring, but would rather bestow their foolish affection on pets that really amount to nothing. They seldom see their children, and give no time to training them. No one can deny that the criticisms15 of Mr. Norris are just, as applied to this growing, ridiculous evil. These are days when, according to the prophetic Word, many will be without “natural affection.” Pride, selfishness, and personal convenience are the things considered chief and foremost in the minds of those who know not God. With the thousands of homeless and destitute little ones on every side, whose solitary condition should appeal piteously to every generous heart, there is little excuse to permit the brute creation to usurp the place in the affections designed of God for the unfortunate members of the human family. F. M. W. SPEAKING of the active propaganda now being carried forward by the Mohammedan religion, Prof. Joseph Crome Hartzell, of the American Methodist Church, states: “That faith is making more conquests daily among the heathen than all the Christian denominations together.” The activity of this false religion should be an appeal to Christians everywhere to spread abroad among the nations the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A Compromise With Catholics
SPEAKING of the action of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in excluding all mention of Protestant missions in papal fields, the Western Recorder of February 2 says:— We had never expected to see the day when a body of Protestants would apologize for the Reformation, and discredit and dishonor the life of Luther and countless others who went to their graves in a warfare against the sins of Romanism. The very word Protestant was first given to those who protested against the infringements of Roman Catholicism, and yet in spite of this we have seen a Protestant conference agree not to mention the work which Christ called them to do in papal fields. We have read with unspeakable horror of Henry IV, standing bareheaded and barefooted in the courtyard at Canossa for three whole days, waiting to be admitted to the presence of Pope Gregory VII. But this was an episode of the eleventh century, which, if possible, has been surpassed by the spectacle of a Protestant conference prostituting itself to the papal propensities of the Anglican Church. We had much hoped that some of our Baptist delegates who attended this conference would express their disapproval of at least this feature of the proceedings, but thus far they have preserved a sphinx-like silence. We would gladly welcome any such avowal of disapproval, and promise to it the widest possible publicity. Their silence can only be construed as a tacit indorsement of this deplorable occurrence, which, in our judgment, will do much to retard Protestant missions in Latin countries. To us, we know, the call of the hour is to hasten the witness of this last message to every nation and tongue. There is no other call, no other business under the third angel's message. And the situation in the world, with its open doors and its gathering storms, cries to us to bend every power to the work. The following summary of the findings of the First Commission of the Edinburgh World's Missionary Congress, shows how the situation appeals to the missionary bodies of the world. And to us these things should mean more than to any other people:— 1. The commission, after studying the facts, and after taking counsel with the leaders of the missionary forces of the church at home and abroad, expresses its conviction that the present is the time of all times for the church to undertake, with quickened loyalty and sufficient forces, to make Christ known to all the non-Christian world. It is an opportune time. Never before has the whole world-field been so open and so accessible. It is a critical time. The non-Christian nations are undergoing great changes. There have been times when the church confronted crises as great as those before it now on certain fields; but never before has there been such a synchronizing of crises in all the world. It is a testing time for the church. Nothing less than the adequacy of Christianity as a world-religion is on trial. This is a decisive hour for Christian missions. The call of Providence to all our Lord's disciples, of whatever ecclesiastical connection, is direct and urgent to undertake without delay the task of carrying the gospel to all the non-Christian world. 2. The utter inadequacy of the present missionary force to discharge effectively the duty of world-wide evangelization is evident. The present mission staff in the foreign field is not sufficient even to compass fully the work already in hand; much less is it prepared to accomplish any adequate expansion. On almost every field the efficiency and lives of the workers are endangered because of this effort to accomplish a task altogether too great for their numbers. The present status in some fields represents practically a deadlock; in many other fields there is no evidence of notable progress. A new gun, the use of which may mean the revolutionizing of the most modern methods of war on land, and which for lightness, power, and general effectiveness is said to be the most terribly destructive weapon ever invented, is now being manufactured at the arsenal in Springfield, Mass. This gun, weighing less than twenty pounds, and manipulated after the fashion of an ordinary fowling-piece, will pour out a stream of bullets, when in action, at the rate of 400 shots a minute. WITH the discovery of radium there now comes forward a new claim for the age of the earth. Prof. Thomas C. Chamberlain, head of the department of geology of the University of Chicago, computes the age of the earth as four hundred million years. Other geologists, doubtless quite as eminent, will find positive proof for a widely different computation. After all, the approximate age indicated by the Scriptures of truth commends itself to humbler and more sober-thinking minds. THE remedy for the lack of success on the part of the church to-day is in the revival of old-time gospel preaching. This is the thought expressed by the Western Recorder of February 2:— The remedy for any apparent lack of success upon the part of our twentieth-century Christianity lies not in the abandonment of our time-honored doctrines, but in a more faithful and vigorous presentation of them. The world's only saving power is the gospel of Christ, and for it there is no substitute. Only he who declares to the people the whole counsel of God may hope for the largest results in his work, and will be able to say, as did Paul, “I am pure from the blood of all men.”