It is said that there are over one million Spiritualists in the United States and Canada. What a mighty host to be deceived. May the Spirit of God help us throw out a life-line that they may realize who is their real leader, and break with him ere it is too late. The Holy Scriptures, the Holy Scriptures, these are their only safe guide and safe guard.
God is love, truth, mercy, grace, and purity. He is long-suffering and forgiving. Satan is hatred, rebellion, falsehood, tyranny, impurity, unmerciful. He destroys the best, and moves upon his subjects to destroy the best. He is “a terror,” and soon will be “no more.” To which of the two masters would you prefer to give your willing obedience?
Christians are fighting not only evil in the flesh, but evil spirits in high or heavenly places. Eph. 6:12, margin. Satan occupies a field of his own, a field of deception. Here God permits His wonder-working power to beguile the unwary and fully deceive the lover of the lie. Matt. 24:24; Deut. 13:1-3. Spiritualists beware5of this terrible power with which you are toying. Yield not yourselves to this unholy embrace, this serpent-like allurement. You can break away through the power of Christ. Others have done it.
In a trial for murder at Pittsburg, Pa., recently, the prisoner made an extraordinary plea in defense. She was charged with having killed her own mother by shooting her with a revolver. At her trial she did not deny the shooting, but said that she did it “under orders from the spirits.” They commanded her to kill her mother, and in obedience to them she went to a drawer, took from there a loaded pistol, and went to her mother’s room. Her mother was asleep, but she awakened her and fired at her four times, each bullet taking effect. She added, her mother taught her to believe in Spiritualism.
Is this not sad fruit?
Satan caused innocent little children to be burnt alive to the gods of his own devising. Deut. 12: 29-31; 2 Chron. 33: 6.
Evil-spirit influence on mediums is weakening, enervating, and moulding. A lecture-medium after giving a long talk and many tests, was requested to indicate other spirit presences. She turned and with a wave of her hand, as if to add force to her words, said, “I can not now, I am too exhausted.”
One of the remarkable incidents in connection with the Mohawks’ [an alleged Indian spirit] influence over Mrs. Irene M. Dobson is the statement that “since he procured her as his medium, her profile has changed from the Grecian type to that of the Indian. She now has a rather prominent nose, high cheek bones, and a receding forehead.” Mrs. Boyer is one of those who have observed the change, who has never before heard of a case where the controlling spirit exercised a power sufficient to change the facial expression of the medium. In this instance, however, she says the change is most pronounced. The only solution of the transformation she is able to offer is that the spirit has exercised an almost constant control over the medium, and has infused all its characteristics into her.”—Chicago Inter-ocean, Dec. 22, 1901.
Would any sane person yield to a lowering like this? Away with such results! Many, doubtless, have become believers in Spiritualism because they were led to investigate spiritistic phenomena through ignorance of any danger to their best welfare. Desiring the truth, they thought the things they were investigating were leading to it. A perfect knowledge of the Bible would have led them away from such investigation and belief.
Man is on trial for a short period to form character. Before him is placed good and evil. A divine power of will is given him. He can choose a good Spirit control or the evil spirit control. God or Satan, one or the other will be identified with his will power. There is no neutral ground for character-building. You will turn out a saint by the power of the Spirit of Christ working in you willingly, or you will become demon-possessed by the spirit of Satan working in you willingly. Which will you choose? Before the one are trials of character-building here, overcoming evil with good with the blessed hope of carrying out the Creator’s will here and hereafter; or before the other is a careless-go-easy time here for a short space, then being ground to powder soon when the tables are turned. Let us cling to eternal truth; it is wisdom, it is our very life. God’s Word is a mine of life-preserving truth. You can have a title to the future blessedness through Christ, the only name given among men by which we may be saved.
W. T. DAWSON.
Religious Duties and Enjoyment
By Dr. Peters
WHEN your heart is in right relation with God, you will perform all your religious duties not because you must, but because you may. A want of religious enjoyment is an evidence of a departed blessedness. You have all the fears and none of the joys of religion.—Dr. Peters.
PEACE—INTERNAL, EXTERNAL, ETERNAL.
By H. A. St. John
Jesus left peace for all His disciples till the end of the world. He said, “My peace I leave with you.” Around about his followers there would be tribulation, trials, commotion, disturbance, turmoil, and war, but however much of all this there may be, it is all external to the Christian. In the world they may, and will, have tribulation, but in Christ, they may and will have a constantly abiding peace, which the world can neither give nor take away. It is an internal peace, which oceans, or floods, of external strife can not drown. It is a peace that rules the heart, and passeth all understanding. It is the peace of God. It is the only true peace—the only peace worthy the name.
But this internal peace is not all the peace that God has in store for His children. If this internal peace is received into the soul, and is there cherished, and permitted to abound more and more, constantly broadening, and deepening, and flowing on like a river, the time will come when God will banish all evil from the earth, sweep away, as chaff, all discordant elements, and restore to the earth the harmony and peace of Heaven.
Then will come the time when every power and every being in the universe of God will dwell together in the most perfect peace. Then the long-cherished internal peace of the redeemed will be enhanced, augmented, fortified, and re-enforced by an all-pervading external peace. Then, when the redeemed of the Lord shall have had their vile bodies changed, and fashioned like unto the glorified body of their Redeemer, according to the working whereby He will subdue all things unto Himself—then will they delight themselves in the abundance of peace internal, and peace external, ever sweeping over them in fathomless billows of love.
But this is not all. Unadulterated and unbounded internal and external peace is secured. Is it also assured?—Yes, praise be to God, it is all forever assured. It is written, that when the Prince of Peace shall sit upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth and forever, that of the increase of His government and peace there shall be NO END. Methinks that one strain in the everlasting song of the redeemed will be, peace, peace, wonderful peace, internal, external, and eternal peace, is flooding with glory my soul.
H. A. ST. JOHN.
THE GREAT PROPHET.
By Alexander McLaren
The loftiness and the limitations of “the goodly fellowship of the prophets” alike point onward to Jesus Christ. In Him, and in Him alone, the idea of the prophet is fully realized. The imperfect embodiments of it in the past are prophecies as well as prophets. The fact that God has “spoken unto the fathers by the prophets,” leads us to expect that He will speak “to us in a Son,” and that not by fragments of His mighty voice, but in one full, eternal, all-embracing and all-sufficient Word.
Every divine idea, which has been imperfectly manifested in fragmentary and sinful men and in the material creation, is completely incarnated in Him. He is the King to whom the sins and the saintlinesses of Israel’s kings alike pointed. He is the Priest, whom Aaron and his sons foreshadowed, who perfectly exercises the sympathy which they could only feel partially, because they were compassed with infirmity and self-regard, and who offers the true sacrifice of efficacy higher than the blood of bulls and goats. He is the Prophet, who makes all other means of knowing the divine will unnecessary, hearing whom, we hear the very voice of God speaking in His gentle words of love, in His authoritative words of command, in His illuminating words of wisdom, and speaking no less loudly and heart-touchingly in the eloquence of deeds no less than divine; who is not ashamed to call us brethren, and is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; who is like, but greater than, the great Law-giver of Israel, being the Son and Lord of the “house,” in which Moses was but a servant.
“To Him give all the prophets witness,” and the greatest of them was honored when, with Moses, Elijah stood on the Mount of Transfiguration, subordinate and attesting, and then faded away when the voice proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, hear Him,” and they “saw no one save Jesus only.”—Alexander McLaren, D.D., in S. S. Times.
How They Became Convinced
[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.]
XIV.
My parents were good, old-fashioned Methodists, zealous for all the light and truth they had, and carefully instructed their children to read the Bible, love God, and believe in His Son Jesus. With their family they regularly attended Sunday-school and services at the little village church. There, as at home, we were admonished, by both pastor and teacher, to sacredly observe the Ten Commandments, which God Himself had spoken from Sinai and written with His own finger on two tables of stone. Of course, like many good people yet to-day, we never once thought about the Sabbath, and altho the fourth precept positively states that, “The seventh day is the Sabbath,” yet we supposed we were keeping it even tho observing the first day or Sunday. How short-sighted it seems to me now we were then!
At the age of ten years, just before my father died, a minister who believed in and observed the commandments of God, including the seventh-day Sabbath, began Gospel meetings near our home under a large tent. We children were allowed to attend these meetings, and then I heard for the first time an exposition of the holy Sabbath in its fulness; and tho young I was deeply convinced of my duty toward God, as I listened to the Word explained as I had never heard it before. This was particularly true respecting the law of God, which I had been taught to reverence and obey. Those impressions were of the genuine type, born of the Spirit of God, and they have remained with me from then until now; they have grown into living principles, and to-day are a part of my very life and being. Most certainly, then, it was the preaching of the law and its immutability and binding obligation upon all who would receive Christ, that led me into the glorious light of the holy Sabbath—the day ordained and blessed of God in Eden (Gen. 2: 2, 3), the fourth precept of the moral law (Ex. 20: 8-11), the day Christ and the apostles not only reverenced and observed but by precept and example also declared (See Luke 4: 16; Matt. 24: 24; Luke 23: 56; Acts 13: 42, 44; Acts 17: 2; Heb. 4: 4-11), and the day upon which all flesh will come to worship before God in the earth made new (Isa. 66: 22, 23). Blessed law! Blessed Sabbath day! S. G. HUNTINGTON.
Gall, O.
XV.
THIRTY-TWO years ago, at the age of twenty-two, it was my privilege to attend, through mere curiosity, a meeting, held in a country schoolhouse in western Ohio by I. D. Van Horn, a Seventh-day Adventist minister.
On entering the schoolhouse I saw a chart with strange pictures printed on it, that I had never before seen. It made such an impression on my mind that I can look back thirty-two years and see its very location on the wall, as it were but yesterday. When the minister spent one hour in explaining the symbols I felt my first strong desire to study the Bible. The symbol represented in the second chapter of Daniel was more impressive than all others. It created a desire for more knowledge both in profane and ecclesiastical history. And after thirty-two years’ experience, twenty-five of which have been spent in the ministry, I can say that that chapter has never lost its freshness, and I am always glad when it falls to my lot to present it to others. This desire created in my mind has caused me to go on in the investigation of God’s truth to the present day.
I can say at this time I am living in a strong hope of a soon coming Saviour, and a bright prospect of a crown of glory that fades not away. G. G. RUPERT.
Keene, Texas.
XVI.
In my early childhood I had little or no religious instruction. My parents were not Christians, and we lived most of the time on the frontier. When about twenty years of age I became convicted of sin, and, after a struggle, yielded myself to the claims of God. I united with one of the popular churches, but later I became discouraged because I knew so little of the truth, and because of the lack of harmony among brethren. After counseling with others, I determined to seek the Lord anew, and, in doing so, I promised the Lord that, if He would teach me His truth by the Bible and the Holy Spirit, I would, with His aid, walk in all the light He would show. A short time later, I went to visit some old friends, and they began to give me papers and tracts to read, but I had but little interest to read them, until the lady gave me “Thoughts on Revelation,” which I read three times through before I could be satisfied. Then I said, “It is the truth,” and felt I must obey. My relatives and church friends were all opposed, and I tried to get help and counsel from my pastor and others, but to no avail. The command of God in Ex. 20: 8-11 kept ringing in my ears, and I could get no peace of mind, until one Sabbath morning in the little Sabbath-school I told the brethren I had determined, with God’s help, to keep the Sabbath, let come what would. As I sat down, the dear sister who had loaned me the book and papers, handed me her open Bible, pointing to Isa. 58: 13, 14. This was a great comfort and help to me. And altho twenty years have come and gone since then, those verses, with the commandment, have stood out in my mind like letters of gold. I call them my verses, and have often given them to others, and now give them to the public, trusting that some tempest-tossed soul may find in them the same help that I have found. J. W. BOYNTON.
Ponoka, Alta., N. W. T.
Religion Shown in Life
A MAN has no more religion than he acts out in his life.—Beecher.
DEMONSTRATED FAILURES.
By G.
VI. National Religion.
Every religion in this world, excepting the religion of Jesus Christ, is a religion of human works, an effort of man to save himself from destruction, an effort in some way to curry favor with some real or imaginary deity. The very thought of adopting any religion implies a conscious lack of natural merit, which must be overcome by some means. It is also true that every religious individual desires to see other people adopt his religion. Attempt to disguise it as he may, every religious man is logically a proselytist. If sincere, he deems his religion better for all mankind than any other, and he will favor whatever means his religious conviction will allow to induce others to adopt that religion. To this end he will use whatever power his religious conviction will suggest or endorse. If his religion be of Jesus Christ, he will use only the power of the Holy Spirit, which operates through the Word of God. If his religion be of works, he is cut off from the power of the Spirit, and shut up to human power.
Of the religion of works the most potent power is the power of civil government; therefore, when the Christian Church began to apostatize, it gradually lost the power of the Spirit, and began to feel after the power of the government. While the Spirit was the acknowledged guide of the professed disciples of Christ, the civil government was a means through which they were persecuted. Paganism had the favor of the government, and its votaries were not persecuted. So when influential Pagans became connected with the Christian Church, they conceived the idea that it would be a good thing to compromise7a little, gain favor with the powers that be, and avoid persecution. In this way they finally gained sufficient influence to “convert” the emperor. Constantine was sagacious enough to see the superiority of the Christian religion over Paganism, as also the growing influence of its adherents. As a matter of political policy he deemed it wise to formally adopt the Christian religion.
But the more power the church gained in the government the more she lost of the power of the Spirit. It was not many years after the government officially espoused the Christian religion, and the church began to utilize national power, that the church commenced persecuting those who were opposed to a union of the Church with the State. It was not many years until the professed Christian church, with its newly acquired national religion, was anathematizing those Christians who maintained allegiance to the commandments of God. This national religion, popularly styled “Christian,” developed into the Papacy, which is briefly described in 2 Thess. 2:7–10. And following this consummation was the Dark Ages—twelve hundred and sixty years of papal persecution, with all its indescribable horrors.
Now, if national religion had any merit at all, certainly a national Christian religion ought to be as much better than all others as Christianity is better than all other religions. And if the power of civil government had any potency as an auxiliary force in the propagation of the Christian religion, certainly the strongest civil power the world has ever known would be the most potent of all. So there could be no better or fairer test of the fruit of national religion than that of the best religion on earth nationalized by the strongest political government on earth. But the Lord Himself, in portraying this fruit in advance, pictures it as a “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” Matt. 24:21, 22. Thus was this national “Christian” religion so especially hostile and tyrannical toward even the elect of God, the history of its work fully verifying the Lord’s forecast.
But some will say that was the Papacy, which was not a fair representation of Christianity. True, but the Papacy was itself the fruit of nationalized Christianity—that is, Christianity so far apostatized as to seek the power of civil government as an auxiliary. The Christianity of Christ and His apostles never could be nationalized by any worldly power; it could not be induced to give up the greater power of the Spirit for the lesser power of the world. Nor could any world-power be induced to adopt the religion of Jesus Christ. No world-power attempting to carry out the Golden Rule, or standing on the doctrine to “resist not evil,” or “to love thy neighbor as thyself,” could long maintain a position among the nations of earth. Any religion that could be nationalized by any civil government must needs be a religion of physical force. The nations of this world are seeking only such alliances as will add to their physical power, directly or indirectly.
But we are not left without demonstration of the failure of national so-called Protestantism. A protest of Bible Christianity against national religion—a nationalized religion professing to be Christian—was the origin of Protestantism. Luther was the human leader in the Reformation, and always resisted the union of Church and State, or national religion. As long as this position was maintained the Reformation was a power for good, and the influence of those times is still manifest to some extent. After Luther’s death, however, a Lutheran Church was organized, and in time was nationalized. It is the national religion of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; but it is generally conceded that its only power is the power of the governments behind it.
The principal exponent of this national religion is Germany, yet with all the influence that such national religion could wield, the government was unable to resist the power of Rome in the national politics. Even the great “iron duke,” Bismarck, had to give way to the Papacy in certain measures affecting her interests. Now note particularly, when the Reformation was without national alliance or feature, it made positive headway in Germany against the Papacy with strong national backing and temporal power; but professed Protestantism, in the form of debilitated “Lutheranism” nationalized, is obliged to yield before the Papacy shorn of its temporal power. And all the “Protestant” governments of Europe (excepting Sweden), with their national religions, have so far lost their Protestant principles as to keep at the Vatican, or periodically send to the Vatican, some kind of diplomatic representative to keep up friendly relations. All this because of the peculiar notion that at some time Rome’s friendship may be of some temporal benefit, or that her enmity may prove a detriment to their temporal welfare.
God gave Israel the true religion, but when the masses regarded it as a formal rather than a heart work, and made of it a national rather than an individual matter, there was a disastrous failure. Their national religion ran the natural course of religion depending for its momentum on human power—it ran into dead formality and intolerance. The failure of national religion in Israel’s hands is conceded on all sides. Yet even more striking was the failure of the Christian religion when it degenerated into the national religion of Rome, and of Protestantism when it became the national religion of the governments of Europe. And in the face of all these failures, we have the manifold, multiform elements of so-called National Reform stretching every nerve for the establishment of a national religion in this country. Beware of it. It is a thrice-demonstrated failure.
G.
“OUR FATHER.”
Do NOT put God far away. Do not conceive Him to be an impersonal nothing. Better to limit His sphere as did the ancient pagans, and leave Him a limited, living something, than to follow Theosophic and “Christian Science” fallacies and make of God (always in your own mind, of course) an impersonal nobody, everywhere in general, but nowhere in particular.
To some extent, at least, nature is an expression of God its Author. But nowhere in nature is there an exercise of energy, a display of force, a manifestation of power, that does not have its initial movement in a great center. Marconi, at an electric center in Cornwall, Eng., set in motion vibrations which extended in all directions, over 2,000 miles, and these vibrations were caught and read on the Newfoundland Coast, 2,000 miles distant. That was the radius of the circle which was cognizant to the imperfect senses of man through his imperfect machinery. The energy of the electric discharges at Cornwall may have extended much farther. So much finite man accomplishes with forces he so little comprehends. Can not the infinite God who dwells in the heavens, whose throne is over all, who controls all, the center of all nature, communicate with every part of the universe, and thus make present His power and intelligence?
Jesus Christ came to represent God the Father. He was before He came to this world, before He gave Himself in that far-off beginning; He was with the Father “as a master workman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.” Prov. 8: 30. Of the Son of God it is said that He was “the effulgence of His [the Father’s] glory, and the very image of His [the Father’s] substance.” Heb. 1: 3. Jesus came to this world from God. When Jesus left this world, He returned to God. He told the weeping Mary, “I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” “The Ancient of Days did sit; and behold one like unto the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him.” Dan. 7: 10-13.
Now is all this language (and there is much more) intended to deceive? If there were no personal God, if His government had no center, no throne, surely God could have told His children that, as easily and as clearly as have Theosophists, Christian Scientists, or Theistic Evolutionists. But He has not spoken as have they. His Word tells us that God is: that He has an abiding place, the throne of the universe; that for a little while sin has forced Him to hide His glory from mortals lest they die; that from the great Center of life, and love, and knowledge, and power, pulses out to all parts of the universe the life and love and knowledge and power of God. He thus is everywhere present, everywhere potent, everywhere love and life to all who are His.
When He in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead came to earth, the same power rested upon Him. The Roman centurion sent for Jesus to come and heal his servant. He recognized the God-power. He said to Jesus, “I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof; but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” Jesus spake the word, and miles away the servant was healed. Far away as well as near He is the same mighty God; but He was also the same personal Jesus, the beloved of the Father, the expression of a loving Father’s love for His alienated children.
Our Lord, as He declared, ascended into the heavens. He is there locally; but like the eternal Father He is everywhere present by the great streams of life, by the Spirit, the Comforter. And He consoled His disciples by the promise of this Presence in these words: “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear witness of Me.” And so again He declares, “If a man love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
The infinite, eternal God is. He is somewhere as well as everywhere. This may be localization, but it is not limitation. It meets the child’s longing nature which the Father has given; and which is implanted in the hearts of all His creatures. Wherever He is, the child of God may know that the Father’s presence is there to protect, to teach, to guide; but that very presence speaks of the Father’s presence in the Home-land, the sometime Home-coming, the looking upon the Father’s face. “And they shall see His face; and His name shall be on their foreheads.” Rev. 22: 4; 14: 1.
A CATHOLIC PLEA FOR THE DEATH PENALTY UPON HERETICS.
By E.
There was a spirited discussion recently in the German Reichstag in the matter of Catholic teaching upon the question of the right of the church to put dissenters to death. The discussion was brought into the Reichstag in consequence of the arguments of the Jesuit clergyman, Father de Luca, who, says the Kreuz Zeitung, of Berlin, “advocates, as is well known, the punishment of heretics by death.”
The Catholic party had been defending one of its measures in the Reichstag, when one of the opposing legislators introduced the teachings of de Luca. Dr. Spahn, a Catholic senator, replied that he did not believe Father de Luca’s book contained any such teaching. The Catholic paper, Kölnische Volkszeitung, responds: “Dr. Spahn’s doubt is not well founded, for Father de Luca categorically advocates punishing heretics with death;” and then proceeds to quote from de Luca’s book the following:—
(1) The secular power, upon the church’s order and authority, must inflict the death penalty upon heretics, from which penalty they may not be exempted after having been handed over to the secular arm; (2) this penalty is incurred, not only by those who abandon the faith when adults, but even by those who are baptized, yet grow in heresy with their mother’s milk and persist in it; (3) this penalty, where received, is to be extended to all the lapsed, or, if they wish to return to the faith, then to all who are pertinacious after an admonition.
This is plain, unequivocal, and does not admit of being explained away. It has reference to “heretics” in our own day. It does not have reference to the past, but to the present, and the expounder of this doctrine means that it shall be applied now to those who may be adjudged heretics; for this same German Catholic paper goes on to say:—
Father de Luca, however, advocates the death penalty for heretics even in our own day, as he emphatically states in another place (page 142).
The Kölnische Volkszeitung, tho a Catholic paper, does not approve of the Jesuit’s teaching, even tho this Jesuit draws that doctrine from an earlier Catholic theologian. It says: “We could wish, in the interests of the Jesuit order, that Father de Luca had met with adequate criticism in the Civiltà Cattolica, or some other organ of the Jesuits. It must be clear to friend and foe that the Jesuit order does not stand for such doctrines and does not tolerate them in its bosom.” But the writings of Father de Luca did not meet with criticism in the organ of the Jesuit order, and that order continues to tolerate in its bosom the one who has given voice to the doctrine of “death to the heretics.” It is, therefore, evident that this is their faith and would be their practise had they the power now.
Concerning this same question, the Roman Catholic paper, Tablet, published in London, quotes a passage from the writings of Thomas Aquinas, “the illustrious Roman Catholic scholar and saint,” as follows:—
With regard to heretics two elements are to be considered, one element on their side and one on the part of the church. On their side is the sin whereby they have deserved, not only to be separated from the church by excommunication, but also to be banished from the world by death. For it is a much heavier offense to corrupt the faith, whereby the life of the soul is sustained, than to tamper with the coinage which is an aid to temporal life. Hence, if coiners and other malefactors are at once handed over by secular princes to a just death, much more may heretics, immediately they are convicted of heresy, be not only excommunicated, but justly done to die. But on the part of the church is mercy in view of the conversion of them that err, and, therefore, she does not condemn at once, but “after the first and second admonition,” as the apostle teaches (Titus 3:10).
It should be said in passing that the verse referred to in Titus says nothing whatever in regard to the corporal punishment of men for unbelief. God has nowhere put into the hands of men any such authority over the beliefs or opinions of men. To Him alone they must render account, and he who attempts to exercise any such function is attempting to usurp the prerogatives of God, attempting to put himself in the place of God, as the apostle tells us the “mystery of iniquity” would do.
That is the teaching which is being brought to the attention of the world at the present time by these discussions in public places and public prints. Just what the purpose of its promulgation is at the present time we are unable to state. But the world is drifting faster and faster toward the principles of Catholicism. They are coming more and more to dominate the affairs of men and nations. There are some spectacular setbacks, as seen in France; some energetic protests still, as seen in the “Los von Rom” movement in Austria; but the drift of the tide is toward the Vatican, in the circling whirl of whose great maelstrom the kings of the earth are yet to be grasped and held. Is it the purpose of God’s enemy to bring these doctrines before the world until the people cease to look upon them as the terrible and repulsive things they are? It may be; who can tell? The people are to come to that place where they will allow themselves to be dominated by that power, and where they will support that power in its war against the remnant who are left in the earth keeping the commandments of God. They will come to that place where they will “cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Rev. 13:15. They do not come to that place all at once; and the putting forth of these doctrines at this time may be one of the agencies Satan is to use in bringing that thing to pass.
That is the doctrine held by that church to which the kings of the earth shall “give their power and strength” (Rev. 17:3, 4) in the last conflict against God’s kingdom and God’s children. It is a very appropriate doctrine for that church which the prophet saw “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” Rev. 17:6. Do you not see any significance in its promulgation at the present time? E.
“IS THERE NO BALM IN GILEAD?”
Panaceas—Physical, Political, Social, Moral.
THERE are many. Just before this writing we picked up a paper which declares in an advertisement that Dr. Blank, of Blank City, “has surely discovered the elixir of life; that he is able, with the aid of a mysterious compound, known only to himself, produced as a result of the years he has spent in searching for this precious life-giving boon, to cure any and every disease that is known to the human body.”
Every sensible body laughs at the foolish claim, yet many will be deceived. Still that claim is no greater in its unreasonableness than are those put forth by various politicians who advocate a system which is a sure cure for all the ills which afflict or affect the body politic. It is “Socialism,” or “Single Tax,” or the “Initiative and Referendum,” or “Municipal Ownership,” or “Abolition of Trusts,” or something else, which of itself may be good enough, but which is utterly insufficient to meet the needs of a selfish humanity. Politics will never cure the ills of earth. Religious panaceas are about after the same sort. Some dose of something is expected to accomplish the work. Some one part of Christ’s teaching is segregated, cut off from the great fruitful tree of life, and warranted if shaken well and taken in proper doses to cure all ills. But it does not, and men become disappointed in “Christianity,” supposing they have had it.
It is an age of nostrums and isms that fail and will fail, and in their sea of failure thousands of human craft will go down to ruin. Thousands more will reap sad disappointment.
And yet there is a “balm in Gilead;” there is a “Physician there.” That balm is the blessed Gospel of the Word of God; that Physician is the personal Jesus, the Anointed of God, the center and circumference of the Gospel. There is in Him the cure for all earth’s ills. He does not heal en masse, as some of our modern physicians, religious and political are attempting to do; but He heals each individual soul who comes to Him of however sore sickness he may have. He asks no price; His healing is free. All that He requires is that the sick soul who comes shall yield all into His hands and accept Him for all that He would be—perfect healing. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” This is the prescription. If the sick one loves the disease more than the healing, there is no hope; but if he truly would be healed, there is hope for the worst case.
The one disease which affects the world is the leprosy of sin. Every other evil is the fruit or consequence of this. No human remedy can cure it. No human physician can heal. But Christ Jesus heals the leprosy. He touched the loathsome carcass when on earth and it became as the flesh of the little child. He touches now the loathsome sinner, so unclean that he loathes himself, and the touch of the Master burns out the virus of sin, and creates new tissue of righteousness.
But he who loves sin retains the leprosy. Whatever its form it must be given up, loathed, put away in heart and mind, and the soul must be opened to all the light and life and blessing of God.
He who knows Christ Jesus by experience as the all-healing Physician will need no political scheme, no social régime, no religio-political laws to keep him. The Ten Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, the Gospel of Christ will prove all sufficient. Human panaceas will be lost sight of in the all-sufficient efficiency and overshadowing glory of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.
