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The Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 15

THE TRIAL OF OUR FAITH

The Review and Herald

April 8, 1880

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 8, 1880

THE TRIAL OF OUR FAITH.

By Ellen G. White

BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
God leads his people on, step by step. He brings them into positions which are calculated to reveal the motives of the heart. Some endure at one point, but fall off at the next. At every advance step the heart is tested, and tried a little closer. If any find their hearts opposed to the straight work of God, it should convince them that they have a work to do in overcoming, or they will be finally rejected of the Lord.
This world is the place in which to prepare to appear in God’s presence. Individuals will here show what power affects their hearts, and controls their actions. If it is the power of divine truth, it will lead them to good works, and make them noble-hearted and generous, like their divine Lord. But, on the other hand, selfishness, covetousness, and pride will manifest themselves as the sure result of yielding to evil impulses.
All who become connected with the cause of God will have opportunity to know what is in their hearts. If they prize anything higher than the truth, their hearts are not prepared to receive Jesus, and he is consequently shut out. If individuals, when tested, refuse to sacrifice their idols, and overcome selfishness, pride, and evil passions, it will be said of them as of Ephraim of old, They are joined to their idols, let them alone; and the Spirit of God will leave them with their sinful traits unsubdued, to the control of evil angels.
Many who profess to be Christ’s followers are unwilling to closely examine their own hearts, to see whether they have passed from death unto life. Some lean upon an old experience, seeming to think a mere profession of the truth will save them; but God’s word reveals the terrible fact that all such are cherishing a false hope. It would be more pleasing to God if such professors of religion had never taken his name, since they are a continual stumbling-block to unbelievers, and evil angels exult over their crooked course. Such are a curse to the cause at home or abroad. They draw nigh to God with their lips, while their hearts are far from him. When those sins which God hates are subdued, then Jesus will come into their hearts, and they may commune with him; they may increase in divine strength day by day, and be able with holy triumph to say, “Blessed be God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The people of God should not imitate the fashions of the world. All who do this will gradually lose that peculiar, holy character which should distinguish them as God’s people. In these last days some of the fashions are shameful and immodest. If God’s professed people had not greatly departed from him, there would now be a marked difference between their dress and that of the world. We are living in a time when earth’s inhabitants are growing more and more corrupt, and the line of distinction must be more plain between them and the Israel of God, or the curse which falls upon worldlings will fall on God’s professed people.
The following scriptures furnish clear and unmistakable directions for those who would learn God’s will: “In like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.” 1 Tim. 2: 9, 10. “Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time, the holy women also who trusted in God, adorned themselves.” 1 Pet. 3: 3–5.
Young and old, God is now testing you. You are now deciding your own eternal destiny. Pride, fashion, empty conversation, and selfishness are evils which, if fostered, will increase, and choke the good seed sown in your hearts, till soon the word will be spoken concerning you, as was said of Eli’s house, that your sins shall not be purged with sacrifices nor offerings forever. Oh, that every lukewarm professor could realize what will be required of him, in order to pass the close and searching test of the Judgment. Dear readers, do not deceive yourselves concerning your condition. You cannot deceive God. Says the True Witness, “I know thy works.”
The sin of this age is disregard of God’s express commands. The power of influence in a wrong direction is very great. Yet there are those who recklessly place themselves in scenes of danger and peril, and expose themselves to temptations, out of which it would require a miracle of God to bring them unharmed and untainted. These are presumptuous acts, with which God is not pleased. Satan’s temptation to the Saviour of the world to cast himself from the pinnacle of the temple, was firmly met and resisted. The arch-enemy quoted a promise of God as security, that Christ might with safety do this on the strength of the promise. Jesus met this temptation with Scripture: “It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” In the same way Satan urges men into places where God does not require them to go, presenting Scripture to justify his suggestions.
The precious promises of God are not given to strengthen man in a presumptuous course, or for him to rely upon when he rushes needlessly into danger. God requires us to move with a humble dependence upon his providence. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. Nothing can be done prosperously without the permission and blessing of God. He can set his hand to prosper and bless, or he can turn his hand against us. “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.” We are required, as children of God, to maintain the consistency of our Christian character. We should exercise prudence, caution, and humility, and walk circumspectly toward them that are without. Yet we are not in any case to surrender principle.
Our only safety is in giving no place to the devil; for his suggestions and purposes are ever to injure us, and hinder us from relying upon God. He transforms himself into an angel of purity, that he may, through his specious temptations, introduce his devices in such a manner that we may not discern his wiles. The more we yield, the more powerful will be his deceptions over us. It is unsafe to controvert or to parley with him. For every advantage we give the enemy, he will claim more. Our only safety is to reject firmly the first insinuation to presumption. God has given us grace through the merits of Christ sufficient to withstand Satan, and be more than conquerors. Resistance is success. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Resistance must be firm and steadfast. We lose all we gain if we resist to-day only to yield to-morrow.

GOD'S TEMPLE.

I stood before a portal wide Within which flowed a human tide; I trod the marble portico With footstep hesitant and slow, And, awed and wondering, entered where The penitent doth kneel in prayer.
The midday sun's bewildering glare Could never find an entrance there,— Ever a tender twilight gloom Pervaded all the lofty room, Save where the altar candles shed A faint and flickering light instead.
Paintings and sculptured saints of eld On every side I then beheld,— A tender radiance, soft and mild, Illumed the Virgin and the Child, And shrouded nuns and maidens fair Bowed in deep adoration there.
Is this “God's temple,” made with hands, Adorned with spoil of many lands, Where chants of praise and hymns of prayer Rise on the incense-burdened air, Where all combines with practiced art To please each sense and touch the heart?
And doth he dwell within these walls More than in Nature's leafy halls? And is his presence only found Within the church-bell's solemn sound? With heart sincere, thus questioned I, Where is the house of the Most High?
'Tis not in rooms reserved for prayer, Though oft we feel his presence there, 'Tis not in church with fretted dome, Though there he loves to meet his own— In howling wild or busy mart, God's temple is the human heart. —Selected.

Ventilation Helps the Word Have Free Course

—Listen to a man praying, in the thick, stifling, stupefying carbonic acid gas of an unventilated church, “that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified.” How can it have free course unless it has pure air to sail in? When the preacher is gasping and choking, and the congregation nodding and sleeping, how can the gospel have free course? It can scarcely get out of the preacher’s throat, and who ever knew it to get into a sleeper’s ears, much less into his heart? Open the doors and windows, and let the pure air of heaven first have free course and be glorified, by waking up the people and blowing the carbonic fog out of the preacher’s brain, then the word will be likely to get a chance at the people’s hearts.
—Selected.

The Small Discipline of Restraint and Self-Control

—Just a little repression, a keeping back the little retort, a refraining from the little sarcasm, not participating in that little tea-table gossip. Well, it requires effort, but the sum of it, rightly put forth, is the strengthening of character and the increase of your own self-approval. Try it.

IMMATERIALITY

By Roswell F. Cottrell

IS IT PROOF OF IMMORTALITY?

BY ELD. R. F. COTTRELL.
It is argued that thoughts, being immaterial, cannot proceed directly from a material organization, but must be the product of an immaterial entity in man. They forget that it is just as difficult for Almighty Power to connect that immaterial man with a material organization, as it is to connect immaterial thoughts directly with that organization. It is certain that mind and matter are connected; but who can tell how? I will here quote a sober argument from one of our immaterialistic friends, which he gave in the form of a syllogism, “for the benefit,” as he says, “of any who may wish to combat it.” It is as follows:—
“1. Substances, all of whose phenomena are different, are themselves different; “2. The phenomena of matter and mind are different; “3. Therefore matter and mind are different.
“Whatever, then, matter is, mind is something else, or not matter.
“Now, since the major premise is based on a law fundamental in all philosophy, if the reasoning be faulty, it must be in the minor premise. Are the phenomena of matter and mind different, then? If you affirm that they are alike, then you and I will go to the laboratory and test their qualities. I will take an apple, and you shall take a thought. If the apple and the thought are alike, i. e., if they are both matter, then the same test will apply to both; they will have the same qualities. Now begin. I hold the apple up between my thumb and finger. Now you hold your thought up between your thumb and finger. I press the apple, and find it hard. Do so by the thought. I see the apple; it is red and round. What color and shape is your thought? I bite the apple; it is sour. How does your thought taste? Smell of it; is it fragrant? Now I let go the apple, and it falls to the floor; it is heavy. Now let go your thought; is it heavy? O Materialist, your materialism is heavy. It will fall, whether you let go or not.
“We have now tested the truth of my minor premise. Thought is a phenomenon of the mind. Color, form, etc., are phenomena of matter, and they are as unlike as things can possibly be; and therefore mind and matter are as unlike as they can be; and therefore materialism, which affirms that mind is matter, is as untrue as it can be.
“That part of man, then, which thinks, and feels, and wills, not being matter, is consequently neither dependent upon matter for existence, nor subject to any of the laws which govern matter. Physical dissolution, then, of the body, can affect only the body, having no effect whatever upon the mind, in respect of its essential essence or qualities. What it was before the death of the body, it must remain after that event—essentially a thinking, willing, and feeling entity.”
A vastly large conclusion to draw from so small premises. My pony’s thoughts are different from his body; they do not present the same phenomena. And sometimes when he comes to cross-roads, he chooses and wills to take the road that he thinks leads toward home. Yet I never thought of inferring such astonishingly large conclusions from these facts. Our friends of the opposite side of the question, always forget to take the thoughts of the inferior animals into the laboratory for a test. They leave out of the controversy the wisdom and power of God, which can as easily connect with matter immaterial thoughts as an immaterial soul; and they pursue a course of reasoning which, if valid, would make it just as necessary for horses and dogs to have immaterial souls to connect their immaterial intelligence with their material bodies; and if immateriality is a proof of immortality, man, who boasts of his immortality, is, in this respect, no better than the brute.
The world by wisdom does not yet know God. All that we know of the mysterious connection between mind and matter, or concerning a future life, is what he has seen fit to reveal to us in his word. And since our wisdom or folly cannot improve this revelation, we shall do better to accept of it as it is. That word tells us plainly that man, who was made of dust, on receiving the breath of life, became a living soul. Of the immaterial, immortal soul it says nothing. On the contrary, it calls man mortal, with no part excepted, but promises him a future life by means of a resurrection of the dead, and immortality on condition of his seeking for it in the way of faith and obedience. Our philosophic friends may imagine that they aid the belief in a future life through the resurrection, by proving that man is immortal independent of it; but the effect of their reasoning must be to weaken faith in it, by making it appear that there is no need of it; that man is immortal without it, and can feast his “immortal mind” on all the joys of Paradise, should his corruptible “clay tenement” never be brought up from the dust. And it is having this effect. Thousands upon thousands are coming to deny the resurrection and reject revelation, as the legitimate fruit of their faith in the natural immortality of man. Did our Christian friends realize the real tendency of their efforts in behalf of natural immortality, they would drop their vain philosophy, and maintain the faith of a future life through the resurrection of the dead, instead of asserting that there can be no resurrection of an individual, if he is really and wholly dead. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with them that God should raise the dead? But they virtually deny his power to endow animated matter with thought, and positively declare that he cannot raise the dead, if consciousness has ceased, and all this in the face of innumerable facts of the cessation of consciousness, while the person was living.
But while we mourn over the fact that our friends are unwittingly aiding the cause of spiritualism, the present and most popular form of infidelity, and therefore the most dangerous, they, in turn, feel deeply over our supposed tendency to ancient, materialistic, Epicurean infidelity, a thing that has had its day and run its race, is unpopular, and is now discarded even by Satan himself; he having discovered a more plausible form of deception for this age, suited to the prevailing philosophy.
Who are in danger of being deceived? Where lies the truth? Not in human philosophy or wisdom, either ancient or modern, but in the word of God. May Heaven aid the honest inquirer to lay aside human wisdom, and receive that word in its native simplicity, harmony, and beauty, and thus escape the subtle snare which Satan has been so long weaving for this last generation.
We, as a people, cannot answer for others, but our materialism never “affirms that mind is matter;” and we doubt very much the propriety of packing us in the same box with infidels, and then condemning the lot.
But to discover the fallacy of my friend’s reasoning, I inquire, Do thoughts think? I remember of reading in the old spelling-book, “Thinkers think thoughts.” Thinkers and thoughts are two things. Take, then, to the laboratory a thinker, i. e., one who thinks, and you will find him possessed of as many palpable qualities as your apple. Is it the mind that thinks? But what is a man’s mind but his thoughts?
We have no controversy with our friends of the opposition in respect to there being a difference between mind, or thoughts, and matter. We do not claim that mind is matter; and those who would fairly oppose our views should cease to misrepresent us. The connection between matter and mind is a mystery, which neither our friends nor ourselves are able to explain. Neither do we know how matter can be endowed with animal life; but we know that life is connected with material organizations, and that matter thus endowed is vastly superior, in its susceptibilities, to dead matter. This our friends seem entirely to forget. Their philosophic reasonings concerning matter, all relate to dead matter. Dead brains cannot think. So they come to the conclusion that immaterial thought can have no connection with matter, but must be the product of an immaterial soul which comes in between the mind and matter, and does the thinking; making a chain of two immaterial links and one material. They are not aware that it is just as difficult to connect this middle link, this immaterial soul, with matter, as it is to connect immaterial thoughts with the same; and yet they hold that this soul is connected with matter, and they have never been able to discover one that was not.
The fallacy of the argument is this: Assuming the very point to be proved; namely, that immaterial thoughts can proceed only from an immaterial entity, they imagine the point is proved when they make it appear that thoughts are immaterial. They make thoughts and thinkers the same thing, as though thoughts could think, or produce themselves; and they then gravely conclude that the dissolution of the body can have no effect whatever upon these immaterial things, but that they must continue to think to eternity. And all this in contradiction of the experience of thousands whose thoughts have been cut off, for considerable periods of time, so that they were not conscious of life and being.
The thoughts of horses and dogs, whatever they are, are equally immaterial; but this does not prove that they have a separate, immaterial, immortal entity, which is destined to exist as long as eternity endures.
When will those who talk of philosophy learn true wisdom? When will they see that their wisdom is folly?

A REVIEW OF PAINE'S “AGE OF REASON.”

By Alonzo T. Jones

BY ELD. A. T. JONES.
(Continued.)
As Part First of the “Age of Reason,” which we have just been examining, was written to show that there is no need of a revelation, so Part Second was written to show that the Bible is not true. And as we showed conclusively that his arguments in Part First demand a revelation, we shall find also that Part Second fails to disprove the truth of the Bible. In Part First he said he had no Bible. But now he has a Bible and Testament; he says, on page 64, “They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and a Testament.”
The first thing that we find worthy of note in this connection is on pages 73, 74: “I come now to speak of historical and chronological evidence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology. I begin with the book of Genesis. In the 14th chapter of Genesis, the writer gives an account of Lot’s being taken prisoner in a battle between the four kings against five, and carried off; and that when the account of Lot’s being taken came to Abraham, he armed all his household, and marched to rescue Lot from the captors; and that he pursued them unto Dan.” “I now come . . . to show that there was no such place as Dan till many years after the death of Moses; and, consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the book of Genesis.”
“To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to the 18th chapter of the book called the book of Judges. It is said (verse 27) that they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that were quiet and secure; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burned the city with fire; and they built a city (verse 28) and dwelt therein, and called the name of the city, Dan, after the name of Dan their father; howbeit the name of the city was called Laish at the first. Therefore the writer of the book of Genesis must have been some person who lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan, and who that person was nobody knows; and consequently the book of Genesis is anonymous, and without authority.”
Now, it is an historical fact that there was just such a place as Dan, not only at the time when the book of Genesis was written, but at the time that Abraham pursued after the kings and rescued Lot. Josephus says: “When Abraham heard of their calamity, he was at once afraid for Lot his kinsman, and pitied the Sodomites his friends and neighbors; and thinking it proper to afford them assistance, he did not delay it, but marched hastily, and the fifth night fell upon the Assyrians, near Dan, for that is the name of the other spring of Jordan.”—Antiquities, book i. chap. x. sect. 1. Therefore, this argument of Mr. Paine’s is false. Jordan comes from the words “zhar-dan,” which signify “the river of Dan,” first mentioned in Gen. 13:9-11.
On page 74 he again says: “There is a striking confusion between the historical and the chronological arrangement in the book of Judges. The five last chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be 28 years [It should be 286—a typographical error, I suppose.] before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the 13th, 195 before the 9th, 90 before the 4th, and 15 years before the first chapter.”
Here is a shameful fraud. The date at the head of the last five chapters of Judges, beginning at the 17th, is B. C. 1406, while the date at the head of the first chapter is B. C. 1425. Anybody who knows enough to subtract one number from another, can see that the difference between 1425 and 1406 is 19. And therefore, so far from the last five chapters being placed “fifteen years before the first chapter,” they are placed nineteen years after.
Mr. Paine was not an ignorant man; he professed to understand the sciences, especially astronomy. Nor can this discrepancy be excused by saying that the chronology has been changed since his day; for all his other figures are correct, except the 195, which should be 197. Then what can we say of this but that it is the invention of a shameful fraud, and is palmed off upon the credulity of those who are greedy to swallow anything that is opposed to the Bible. But, above all, what shall we say of those profoundly learned (?) infidels who have read and studied, printed and re-printed, the “Age of Reason,” for nearly a hundred years, and hurled it against the Bible; yet have never read, or compared it, with the Bible sufficiently to discover a fraud so glaringly apparent that the veriest school-boy could see it, who would take the pains to make the comparison. And this is the kind of reasoning (?) that is to overthrow the Bible! We showed in the former part of this review, that they who reject the Scriptures, reject reason; and in this, and many other instances which we shall find before we get through, it is verified.
On page 90 he condemns the books of the Kings and Chronicles, because the one does not repeat everything recorded in the other. Keep this in mind; we shall have use for it soon.
On pages 96 and 97, speaking of Ezra and Nehemiah he says: “But even in matters of historical record, neither of these writers is to be depended upon. In the second chapter of Ezra, the writer gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number of souls of each that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem.” “The writer begins his enrollment in the following manner: Chap. 2:3: ‘The children of Parosh, two thousand an hundred seventy and two.’ Verse 4: ‘The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two.’ And in this manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore. But whoever will take the trouble of casting up several particulars, will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error is 12,542.”
Then, after speaking of Nehemiah’s record, chap. 2:8, etc., in the same way, he says, “These writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for anything where truth and exactness is necessary.” But is his statement concerning Ezra’s account true? Is there an error of 12,542? If it be true that there is such an error as that, we might well doubt. But it is not true. See Ezra 2:2, 3: “The number of the men of the people of Israel: the children of Parosh,” etc. Nehemiah the same. Neh. 7:7: “The number, I say, of the men of the people of Israel was this: The children of Parosh,” etc. So the truth is that the number of men was 29,818; and then (verse 66) with the women and children, “The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore, besides their manservants and their maidservants.” Had he told the whole truth, he could have shown no objection to the books; but in harmony with the rule that he has adopted, he leaves out just enough to make the account falsify itself.
On page 98 he says of the book of Job: “The astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek, and not Hebrew names; and as it does not appear from anything that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews knew anything of astronomy, or that they studied it, they had no translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the names as they found them in the poem.” It is true “that the Hebrews had no translation of those names into their own language;” for the very good reason that they had names for them in the Hebrew 844 years before Cadmus introduced letters into Greece, and 1934 years before the Greek language was complete. In Hebrew the name of Arcturus was Ash, of Orion Cesil, and of Pleiades Cimah. See Job 9:9, margin.
Mr. Paine does not say plainly, but he insinuates in this, that the book of Job was not written in Hebrew, but in Greek; and by this he would convey the idea that the book was not written as anciently as the Bible chronology places it. He says further of it on page 99, “It contains no one historical circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine its place in the Bible.”
Admitting, for the sake of the argument, that there is no “historical circumstance or allusion that would determine its place,” yet had he honestly allowed and investigated the claims of the book, he would have found astronomical allusions, by which, had he been as accomplished in the science of astronomy as he seems to indicate on pages 44 to 49, he could have fixed to a certainty the date of the events recorded in the book of Job. I quote from Horne’s Introduction, “Analysis of the Book of Job:”
“Dr. Hales has adduced a new and more particular proof, drawn from astronomy, which fixes the time of the patriarch’s trial to 184 years before the birth of Abraham; for, by a retrograde calculation the principal stars referred to in Job by the names of Chimah and Chesil, or Taurus and Scorpio, are found to have been the cardinal constellations of spring and autumn in the time of Job, of which the chief stars are Aldebaran, the bull’s eye, and Antares, the scorpion’s heart. Knowing, therefore, the longitudes of these stars at present, the interval of time from thence to the assumed date of Job’s trial will give the difference of their longitudes, and ascertain their positions then, with respect to the vernal and autumnal points of intersection of the equinoctial and the ecliptic; which difference is one degree in 7½ years, according to the usual rate of the procession of the equinoxes. ‘In A. D. 1808, Aldebaran was in two signs, 7 deg. east longitude; but since the date of Job’s trial, B. C. 2338 added to 1800, makes 4138 years, the procession of the equinoxes amounted to 1 sign, 27 deg., 53 min., which, being subtracted from the former quantity, left Aldebaran in only 9 deg., 7 min. longitude, or distance from the vernal intersection, which falling within the constellation Taurus, consequently rendered it the cardinal constellation of spring, as Pisces is at present. “‘In A. D. 1800, Antares was in eight signs, 6 deg., 58 min. east longitude, or 2 signs, 6 deg., 58 min. east of autumnal intersection; from which subtracting, as before, the amount of the precession, Antares was left only 9 deg., 5 min. east. Since, then, the autumnal equinox was found within Scorpio, this was then the cardinal constellation of autumn, as Virgo is at present. “‘Since, then, these calculations critically correspond with the positions of the equinoxes at the assumed date of Job’s trial, but disagree with the lower dates, of the age of Moses, and still more of Ezra, furnishing different cardinal constellations, we may rest in the assumed date of the trial as correct. Such a combination and coincidence of various rays of evidence, derived from widely different sources, history, sacred and profane, chronology, and astronomy, and all converging to the same common focus, tends strongly to establish the time of Job’s trial as rightly assigned to the year B. C. 2337 (2130 of the common computation), or 818 years after the deluge; 184 years before the birth of Abraham; 474 years before the settlement of Jacob’s family in Egypt, and 689 years before the exode, or departure from thence.”
On page 102 he says of the book of Isaiah: “Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history, in two or three of the first chapters, it is one continued, incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff.” I only give this as the most decent specimen of some of his reasoning (?) which I do not notice at all.
On pages 104, 105, he says: “The king of Syria and the king of Israel made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies toward Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says, chap. 7:2, Their hearts were moved ‘as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.’ In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord, that these two kings should not succeed against him. . . . But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah, we have only to attend to the sequel of this story, which is related in the 28th chapter of Second Chronicles; and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, as Isaiah had pretended to foretell in the name of the Lord, they succeeded! Ahaz was defeated, and destroyed; a hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women, and sons and daughters, carried into captivity.”
This is sufficiently astonishing to overturn a dozen books, if it were only true. But I say emphatically, It is not true. Proof: 2 Kings 16:5: “Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him.” This was in the year B. C. 742; but as Ahaz would not be reformed by this signal manner in which God had helped him, but continued in his wickedness, the next year, B. C. 741, these same kings came against him, defeated him, slew 120,000 of his people, and carried captive 200,000.
Now Mr. Paine had no excuse for this either; for he admitted before that he had a Bible with the “chronology printed in the margin of every page” (page 73). Therefore the margin of his Bible showed, at Isaiah 7, and 2 Kings 16:1-7, the figures B. C. 742, while in the margin of 2 Chronicles 28:1-19 were the figures B. C. 741.
Here we are forced to one or both of the following conclusions: either Thomas Paine did not understand the Bible, or he falsified the record. And it is my opinion, that, under the circumstances, both conclusions would be justifiable.
(Concluded next week.)

AN ENEMY HATH DONE THIS.

By C. N. Stuttle

BY C. N. STUTTLE.
If a man steal our purse, or burn our buildings, or circulate false and evil reports concerning us, we say, He is our enemy. As recorded in Matthew 13, Christ said of the man who sowed good seed in his field, that while he slept an enemy came, and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
So we endeavor to sow good seed in the hearts of the children, and train them to walk in the fear of the Lord and in the paths of virtue, sobriety, and truth; but how many enemies they meet who sow in their young hearts, by words of profanity or vulgarity, or by circulating vile reading matter, seeds of evil, which may bear a harvest of unhappiness and misery sufficient to embitter their whole after lives. This man may be one of our most respected citizens; he may be a member of the church; yet is he not as much of an enemy as the man who maliciously burns our barn or steals our purse! The latter would be dealt with by the vigorous hand of the law; the former is unpunished in this world, yet a fearful retribution awaits him hereafter. Can we not forgive the former, wholly and freely? but how hard to forgive him who has corrupted the very souls of our children!
Christ still further says that a man planted a grain of mustard seed, which is the least of seeds, and it sprang up and became a tree, so that the birds lodged in its branches. So a word, spoken in the presence of a child, may cause its ruin; it may leave an impression which will never be forgotten.
Reader, are there not some things stamped upon your memory which you would gladly forget? Do not cast the seed of corruption by the wayside, in the workshop, or in the place of business. If you value eternal life, “keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.”
Vernon, Mich.
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