THE Council of the Vatican, in 1870, as an assemblage of the clerical dignitaries and deputies of a single sect, might have passed away with as little claim to general notice as a Presbyterian Synod or an English Convocation, and the civilized world might have heard with a smile that it had created an infallible oracle of morals and faith, and endowed with divine attributes a pope of unspotted renown. A new Buddh, or another Mikado or Grand Lama, would have made little difference to the exterior denominations. But, unhappily, the Vatican Council had an important political aim. It was the gathering of a band of politicians as well as clerical leaders. It was to decide the conduct of the great host of papal voters in all future elections in Europe and America. It was to determine what degree of allegiance they were to pay to their native sovereigns or rulers. It was to form them into one vast political party, organized with unexampled rigor united in a single aim in every land, and ruled by an infallible Pope at Rome.
Certainly there is no political faction, nor ever was, so powerful or so remarkable as that guided by Pius IX. We must admit the foresight of the fierce leaders of the ultramontanes in seizing upon the control of so vast an organization, and aiming at the government of the world by universal suffrage. They had only to proclaim the Pope infallible, and the mandates of the Vatican might be executed in the elections of Germany and New York. The prelates are converted into the servile agents of a political despotism, who cheerfully do the work of their masters, and instruct their people how to vote in London, Cleveland, or Lorraine. The infinite throng of Roman priests in Europe and America are the most successful of politicians. The humble Catholic laity have nothing left them but to obey the voice from Rome. If they murmur they are at once virtually excommunicated, like Lord Acton or his small band of allies. Armed with the horrors of Inferno and the bliss of Heaven, the priests and prelates drive their voters to the polls, and should they shrink from the indignation of their fellow-citizens, and the rage of those they have robbed and betrayed, they may hear the voice of Rome crying to them like Mohammed to his soldiers, "Hell is hotter!" and press forward. Fanaticism has been transferred everywhere to the political canvass and the ballot-box, and it is a question whether the world is to be ruled by the visions of Mary Alacoque and the Lady of Sallett, by Mannings and Antonellis, or by the voice of wisdom and of knowledge.
To the Vatican Council this singular political crisis is due. Millions of zealots in Europe and America now obey the decrees of an infallible Pope, who before 1870 might have exercised some of the privileges of private judgment. A fierce and almost desperate faction are urging the church of Rome to a contest for the political control of the world. In Germany, in Italy, in France, the papal party votes with a solid and dangerous unity. In England Dr. Manning has already formed his Celtic followers into a distinct organization; they rule already in Ireland; and in our own elections the enemies of knowledge, impelled by a voice from Rome, vote with rare unanimity for the peculators, the public robbers, the ruffians, or the traitors who have sold themselves to a foreign rule. We propose, therefore, to describe briefly this last assemblage of papal bishops, and trace from Dr. Schaff's work and other sources the nature of the political principles which it everywhere enforces.
The Vatican Council was summoned to meet at Rome in 1869, chiefly to determine the doctrine of papal infallibility. The Protestants and the Greek Church were invited to share in its deliberations. But the Patriarch of Constantinople and the other Oriental bishops rejected with some show of contempt the invitation of the Roman prelate, who, they held, had no right to summon a general council without their assent, and whom their predecessors had long ago deposed and excommunicated; and the Protestants were even less ready to admit the authority of one who claimed to be the head of the Christian Church, and whose garments were stained with the blood of their martyrs. The Council was therefore composed wholly of the adherents of the papacy. But the attendance of these was sufficiently large. Of 1037 persons entitled to be present, 764 appeared. Asia, America, and Europe were represented. But of the members of the Council, Italy furnished 276, and of these 143 belonged to the former Papal States, and were all under direct control of the Pope: France, with a larger Roman Catholic population than Italy, sent only 84, Germany 19, Great Britain 35, Spain 41, the United States 48; and more than one-half of the members were entertained at the Pope's expense during their stay in Rome. Yet a more imposing assemblage of prelates and dignitaries was never seen. Its numbers were greater than in any of its eighteen predecessors. The Eternal City was thronged with cardinals, patriarchs, primates, and a crowd of spectators and attendants filled Rome with animation, and poured a stream of gold into the hands of its not unwilling people. They might scoff in secret at the famous dogma, but were ever ready to admit that it was not unprofitable as a speculation. But the Rome of 1870 was a center of ecclesiastical tyranny, and, maintained by the arms of France, the Pope was enabled to enforce his temporal authority by a rigid severity. The press was silenced; the people and even foreign visitors were held in awe; informers and spies visited every company; no free discussion was permitted; and shut up as if within a prison and a fortress, amidst the clash of innumerable bells and the dull roar of the canon of St. Angelo, the Council began its sessions in the Basileca of the Vatican on the 8th of December, 1869—the festival of the Immaculate Conception.
Its sittings continued late in October of the next year. An oath of secrecy was imposed upon each member, and the deliberations were held in private. The subjects of debate were proposed by the Pope, and the Jesuits guided the decisions of the Council. Nor did they probably forget that three hundred years before, at the Council of Trent, Lainez, Salmeron, and LeJay had fiercely and boldly pressed the acceptance of the doctrine of infallibility, and had only yielded to the influence of the temporal powers in a partial defeat. What the sixteenth century had feared to promulgate, the disciples of Loyola now flung in the front of the civilization of the nineteenth, and demanded from every Roman Catholic a confession that the Pope of Mary Alacoque, of the Lady of Lourdes, was infallible and divine.
Yet among the opponents of the doctrine were arrayed many—perhaps nearly all—of the best and most powerful intellects of the Roman Church. The German, French, and American bishops wrote and spoke boldly against the assailants of their order, and argued against infallibility with the freedom of a Dollinger. The learned Hefele, familiar with every council, Dupanloup and Darboy of France, the active Strossmayer, Kenrick of St. Louis, and Connolly of Halifax, led on a united and powerful party, who assailed the theory of the Jesuits at every stage. The long and tedious sittings were often made scenes of wild disorder by the furious bigotry of the supporters of infallibility. Their opponents were, heretics, their own arguments invectives and almost blows. Once several bishops sprang from their seats, rushed to the tribune, and shook their fists in the face of Strossmayer, who was speaking. He was driven to his seat in the uproar. An American prelate compared the disorder to that of his native Congress with unpatriotic candor. The arguments of the infallibilists were sometimes at least amusing. One French bishop argued that the Pope was infallible because Peter was crucified with his head downward, and was loudly applauded. Another stated that the Sicilians had sent a special deputation to the Virgin Mary to ask if Peter was infallible, and that she had told them that she remembered having been present when Christ had conferred upon him that privilege. To these arguments there could be no reply, as they are beyond the range of reason.
The doctrine of infallibility was carried in the Council by an immense majority, the minority were terrified into complete submission, and the learned Hefele and the eloquent Strossmayer, the American, French, and German prelates, yielded up their consciences and their convictions to the fear of the fanatical and the ignorant. The penalty of excommunication and deposition was alone boldly defied by the honest Dollinger and his learned disciples. Meanwhile great changes were passing over the face of Europe, and the clash of arms might soon penetrate within the closed doors of St. Peter's. The Pope and the Jesuits felt that it was time to fling down their apple of discord into the heart of the nations while the French armies were making ready to cross the Rhine; and on the 18th of July, amidst ominous clouds and a blinding storm of rain; amidst constant flashes of lightning that shot into the unnatural gloom of the great church, and gleamed over the golden tomb of St. Peter; and amidst claps of thunder that made Rome tremble to its foundations, in a darkness so deep that the Pope was obliged to use a candle to enable him to read the decree, the doctrine of infallibility was proclaimed amidst the shouts and clappings of the whole assembly, and Pius IX. became the Buddh or the Grand Lama of the Roman Church.
But it was for no idle ostentation that the violent faction had enforced the dogma upon their people and upon unwilling Europe, and with the declaration of infallibility the Papal Church found itself in conflict with all civil governments and all modern civilization. The Pope claims an independent control of the spiritual, and finally the temporal affairs of every nation. He is as despotic in America as in England, in Vienna as in New York. From his decision there is no appeal. He holds in his hands the keys of Heaven and Hell. His excommunication is spiritual death; his blessing opens the gates of Paradise. And he has expressly commanded all his adherents to labor and to vote in every country against popular education, against a press that is not controlled by a papal censorship, to overthrow every government that does not admit his supremacy, to re-establish everywhere the Roman Catholic faith, and make it the ruling power in every land.
No Roman Catholic can any longer be a trustworthy citizen of any government that does not obey his master. Excommunication and the most horrible pains of his church await him if he does not accept the doctrine of infallibility in its widest extent, and follow implicitly the political direction of his oracle at Rome. The Pope commands him to believe that the Roman pontiffs have never exceeded the proper limits of their powers (Syllabus iv. 21), that the commonwealth is not the origin and source of all rights (vi. 39), that in the case of a conflict the civil power should not control the spiritual (vi. 42), that schools may not be governed by the civil power (vi. 45, 47), that no Catholic can support secular schools (vi. 48), that the church ought not to be separated from the State (vi. 55), that the Catholic religion should be held by the State to the exclusion of all others (x. 78), that Catholic countries cannot provide by law that persons coming to reside there may enjoy their own religion unmolested (x. 78), and that the Papal Church may punish those who dissent from its rule. Such is only a part of the political faith of every adherent of the papacy. It is difficult to see how any Roman Catholic can avoid holding in future the wildest visions of Mary Alacoque, or escape that fierce fanaticism that once armed the assassin's dagger against French and English kings, or pointed the zeal of Kullmann against Prince Bismarck. Cardinal Antonelli and Dr. Manning have already excommunicated every one who entertaines a doubt of the teachings of the Vatican Council, and who would escape from the tyranny of the Jesuits.
In the meantime, the Vatican Council has produced among the nations of the earth all the discord and despair it was evidently intended to originate. The declaration of infallibility was almost coincident with the declaration of war by France against Germany. The two ominous proclamations resounded over Europe together. German Roman Catholics did not have leisure to hear, or perhaps closed their eyes to, the reasonable promptings of the papacy, and France was beaten almost before Rome could interfere. But it began at once a political intrigue against German, unity and freedom, and the German Empire is already convulsed by the mad, effort of the priesthood to disseminate the disloyal doctrines of the Vatican Council among its people. France is swayed to and fro by the plots of the ultramontanes; the Vatican has bequeathed to the unhappy land a legacy of pauperism, ignorance, and brutal crime. England is alarmed at the secret progress and designs of the successors of Garnet and Parsons. Brazil imprisons its bishops; Switzerland and Italy look with natural suspicion on their papal subjects. New York has once more submitted to the papal rule, after a partial respit of two years; its public officials already countenance murder and riot; the papal priests already prepare for a new reign of robbery and license; and the Democratic party has rushed into an alliance with the papal party, and the election of a throng of free communities from the Atlantic to the Pacific are decided by the voice from Rome. Thus freedom, which had fled from the Old World to escape her ancient foes, has been followed by them to her distant retreat, and is once more struggling in their toils. But we think she will yet strangle the serpent by her cradle.—EUGENE LAWRENCE, in Harper's Weekly, Jan. 2, 1875.
A Sermon on a Card.
By Dudley Marvin Canright
In the good providence of God, wonderful facilities are rapidly being brought into operation whereby his last message of warning can be quickly and cheaply heralded to the world. The steam printing press, the railroad, the steamboat, the wonderfully cheap postal service, all combine to carry forward this work.
I have written out and had printed on a postal card the following article. It is printed in nonpareil type solid. It could be in agate, one size finer type, and still be plain. Then a card would contain much more. It costs only one-half cent a piece by the hundred, and much cheaper by the thousand. I also have one on the Sabbath and one on the nature of man. It is so easy to drop one of these to a friend or to an address you may see in a paper. The cost is a mere trifle. I have already received several responses to them. Could not the Tract Society use them well? Here is the sermon:
"Dear Friend:—I send you this, not to solicit trade or money, but to call your attention to important Bible facts. Is not the whole Bible a revelation from God? Are not the prophecies a part of it? Will they ever be fulfilled? Certainly; and they plainly teach the following facts: 1. The very same Jesus who was once upon earth will return again personally, literally. Acts 1:9-11; 1 Thess. 4:16. 2. The Lord will give signs to show when that event is near. Luke 21:25-31. It is our duty to "discern the signs of the times" when fulfilled. Matt. 16:1-3. If it was a sin for the Pharisees to disbelieve them, will not the same course in us now be equally wrong? 3. A warning message will be given to the last generation; the same as in the days of Noah, Lot, Jonah, John, etc. Luke 17:26-30; Rev. 14:6-16. Those who rejected the warning of those men perished. So, when the Lord shall cause this last warning to be given, will it not be equally wrong to disregard it? Yes, verily. 4. While no man will know the day, yet the saints will know when it is near, and will be looking for it. Matt. 24:32, 33. But it will overtake the wicked as a thief. 1 Thess. 5:1-6. 5. Formal professors and the ungodly will put afar off, and mock at the second advent when it is right at hand. 2 Pet. 3:3-5; Matt. 24:48-51.
6. All nations are preparing for a mighty war as foretold. Joel 3:9-16. The world is becoming alarmingly corrupt morally, and violence fills the earth as in the days of Noah. Matt. 24:37. See the terrible record of crime in the papers. The professed church of Christ is fast departing from the simplicity and spirituality of the gospel. Wealth, pride, and formality are taking their place, while the poor are shut out. This is also a sign of the end. 2 Tim. 3:1-5. The gospel was to be preached to all nations. "Then," says Jesus, "shall the end come." Matt. 24:14. Says the Christian Union: "There is not now a corner of the globe where Christianity is unknown." This prophecy is fulfilled. All nations have heard. The end is here. The whole world is troubled and fearful of what is coming. All are anxiously expecting some great revolution. Some think it is one thing, some another; but the Bible shows that it is the coming of the great King. For nearly 40 years a solemn warning of the end at hand has been sounding to this generation. Earnest men have gone to every part of the world proclaiming the second advent, as John did the first. Hundreds of ministers are this day giving the warning everywhere. More than 100,000 souls are looking for that event. More than a score of papers are exclusively devoted to this proclamation, while millions of tracts are being scattered like the leaves of autumn. If Noah, without a tract, a paper, a Bible, or a single man to help him, condemned the world then, what excuse can we have now? You do not believe the warning is of God! Did they believe Noah, or Lot, or John, or Christ? Yet God sent them. Have you examined this work? Are you sure it is not true? We entreat you pass it not by so lightly.
The Seventh-day Adventists have several publishing houses, (the Review and Herald, Battle Creek, Mich., Signs of the Times, Oakland, Cal.), where we publish tons of books and seven periodicals in the English and other languages, devoted to this subject. If you wish to learn more about it, we will send you a free sample of these with our catalogue. Please preserve this card and read the passages cited. Address either as above, or Eld. D. M. Canright, Oakland, Cal.
Sorrow Behind Our Enemies
If we could read the secret histories of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all our hostility.
Think Truly
THINK truly, and thy thought
Shall the world’s famine feed;
Speak truly, and thy word
Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly, and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.
Public Opinion and Christian Character
Public opinion is the world’s law, but the church’s idol. It is that line on the moral thermometer above which the worldling never rises, and to which the Christian should never sink.
The Law and the Gospel.
TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES OF CHRIST CONSIDERED.
IN calling attention to the teachings of the apostles, touching the law and the gospel, we should understand that their epistles and their acts were written after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and the day of Pentecost. These inspired men wrote after all the changes from the first covenant to the second had taken place, and the Christian church had been fully established, and had passed down in her history in the Christian age a number of years. And as no dispensational changes have taken place since that time, it follows as a matter of indisputable fact, that what they wrote in the first century relative to the object and work of the divine law, applies with equal force in the nineteenth century. Having briefly defined the bearing which the writings of the apostles have upon truth and duty in the Christian age to its close, we will now examine some of their most direct statements as to the relation of the law of God, and the gospel of his Son, in the conversion of men from sin to obedience and holiness.
1. The address of Paul to the elders of the church at Ephesus, whom he called to Miletus. The apostle appealed to them in the most touching manner as follows: "Ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews; and, how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." Acts 20:18-21.
The great apostle, on the important occasion of addressing the leaders and representatives of the Christian church at Ephesus, makes no point more prominent than that in true conversion the sinner has to do with both the Father and the Son. The gospel which Paul preached calls sinners first to the Father to exercise repentance toward him, as the author of the divine law which they have transgressed, and then to Christ to exercise faith toward him in order to obtain pardon. The gospel, as taught by the great apostle, first shows the sinner the nature and extent of his sins by the moral code, and then invites him to come to Jesus as the only means of pardon.
The most eminent gospel ministers the world has ever known have spoken very plainly of the object and work of the divine law. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law."—John. "Where no law is, there is no transgression." "I had not known sin, but by the law."—Paul. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."—James. And what makes these declarations standard, before which false opinions fall in the minds of Bible readers, is the fact that they were written by inspiration of God.
The eminent Paul would show the nature and extent of the malady of sin, by the law, before presenting the remedy in Jesus Christ. His manner of teaching is a plain rebuke of the surface work carried on in the popular revivals of our day, where sinners are invited to come to Jesus Christ before they are instructed as to the nature and extent of their sins. Genuine conversion cannot result from such teachings. When the excitement produced by the sensational revivalist has passed off, the victims of this surface work fall back into a far more hopeless condition. These ministers who with a velvety tread have walked all around the ten commandments, and have avoided to touch the sins of the people, and have not taught repentance toward God, as necessary to true conviction of sin before coming to Christ for pardon, have, in the words of Pollok,
"With quackish ointment healed the wounds
And bruises of the soul, outside, but left
Within the pestilent matter unobserved,
To sap the moral constitution quite,
And soon to burst again incurable."
2. Paul's statements in his epistle to the church at Rome concerning the work of the law and its relation to the gospel in the conversion of sinners. Whether the reader shall consider that the apostle is describing his own personal experience, or that he is delineating the true process of genuine conversion to Christ, his good words have equal force. He says, "I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." Chap. 7:7. He here quotes from the tenth commandment to show that by the word law he means the ten precepts of the moral code.
The law of God is the appointed means to discover sin. "I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came sin revived and I died." Verse 9. The law is the means of producing conviction upon the mind of the sinner before he can come to Jesus Christ understandingly, and in a manner to secure true conversion.
In view of the great work of the law in the conversion of sinners, the apostle states his opinion of its holy character for the benefit of the Christian ministry and the church. "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." Verse 12. "For we know that the law is spiritual." Verse 14. "I delight in the law of God after the inward man." Verse 22. And let it be borne in mind that the epistle to the Romans was written A. D. 60, more than twenty-five years later than the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and the day of Pentecost. Whatever, therefore, was the character and work of the ten precepts of the moral code when this epistle was written, is their character, and their work in the conviction of the sinner at the present time.
In another chapter Paul declares that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Rom. 4:23. And in the verses that follow the apostle speaks of the only remedy through Jesus Christ. "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." Verses 24, 25. The divine law must stand as firm as the throne of Heaven, while a system of pardon and justification is introduced through Christ by which God "might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Verse 26. We may now feel the force of the apostle's concluding declaration in the last verse of this chapter: "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; Yea, we establish the law."
The justice of the Eternal Throne must be maintained. And such was the changeless nature of the divine law, that God could be just in pardoning the unworthy transgressor of his holy law only through the worthy name of his Son. If that law could have been changed, Christ need not have died. But because the law of God must stand as firm as the changeless throne of Heaven, Christ died for sinners. Here then is the burden of the gospel of the Son of God as taught by Paul. It is not that Christ died to change or abolish the divine law, but that he died for our sins. With great power the apostle appeals to the church at Corinth, that he had made this fundamental principle first, and most prominent in the gospel of Christ which he had preached to them. "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." 1 Cor. 15:1-3.
Life of William Miller.
THE following is from the Introduction to the new work entitled, Sketches of the Christian Life and Public Labors of William Miller, Gathered from his Memoir by the late Sylvester Bliss, and from Other Sources, by Elder James White. The compiler says:—
Before us is a plain volume, the title page of which reads, “Memoir of William Miller generally known as a Lecturer on the Prophecies and the Second Coming of Christ, by Sylvester Bliss, author of Analysis of Sacred Chronology, A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse,” etc.
Mr. Bliss was for more than twenty years the local and able conductor of the Advent Herald, which sustained the leading doctrines promulgated by Mr. Miller, published at Boston, Mass. The publisher of this volume, Mr Miller's intimate fellow-laborer and friend, in his preface says:—
“The name of William Miller, of Low Hampton, N. Y., is too well known to require an extended introduction; but while well known, few men have been more diversely regarded than he. Those who have only heard his name associated with all that is hateful in fanaticism, have necessarily formed opinions respecting him anything but complimentary to his intelligence and sanity; but those who knew him better esteemed him as a man of more than ordinary mental power, a cool, sagacious, and honest reasoner, a humble and devout Christian, a kind and affectionate friend, a man of great moral and social worth.”
“However his public labors may be regarded by a majority of the community, it will be seen, by a perusal of his life, that these were by no means unproductive of great good. The revivals of religion which attended his labors are testified to by those who participated in them; and hundreds of souls will ever refer to him as a means, under God, of their awakening and conversion.”
“As the public learn to discriminate between the actual position of Mr. Miller and that which prejudice has conceived that he occupied, his conservativeness and his disapprobation of every fanatical practice will be admitted, and a much more just estimate will be had of him.”
Mission to Prussia.
By John Nevins Andrews
LAST week we gave, as copied from the Advent Review, No. 10, a most cheering account of Elder Andrew's visit to the Sabbath-keepers in Prussia. No. 11, of that paper brings further statements from Bro Andrews of his labors in Prussia. We copy as follows that part of the report which relates chiefly to the doctrine of election, and reserve a portion of the lengthy report which pertains to a private discussion of the Sabbath question with two pastors of the established church for next week. Bro. Andrews says :—
We have now been in the vicinity of Elberfeld about twelve days. We have had meetings nearly every day since our arrival, and some of the time have had two meetings a day. These have all been lengthy meetings, owing to the fact that two languages had to be used, the English and the German, for each sentence that was spoken. But every meeting has been solemn and interesting, and it has been evident that the Spirit of God has been specially present to make the hearts of the people tender, and to set home the truth with power upon each heart. I have made each discourse partly doctrinal and partly practical. The practical part I have made as close and as searching as by the help of the Spirit of God it was possible for me to make it. I desired to see how such preaching would be relished. But, instead of causing offense, this has given us the hearts and the confidence of this people to the fullest extent.
On sixth-day last we went to Gladbach, near the frontier of Holland, where quite a number of these Sabbath-keepers reside. As we returned on first-day at noon to fill an advertised appointment in a public hall, we could only have four meetings in G., but these were very interesting though very lengthy. In my first two discourses, I spoke so earnestly upon the necessity of faithful obedience to all that God has commanded, and of the danger of apostasy from God, and of final ruin as the result, that some first-day Baptist friends who were present, and who were strong Calvinists, came to me before the third discourse and said that they were believers in the doctrine that God elected his people before the foundation of the world, and that the elect would never fall away; and that my doctrine concerning the necessity of strict obedience to God could not be true. They wished to know what I had to say on the subject. It was time for meeting to commence again, and so I told them that I would speak on the subject. God gave me great freedom in speaking. I took as my text the passage on which they placed the greatest reliance, viz., Eph. 1:4-6. I stated that the Bible does certainly speak of election before the foundation of the world, and that I was disposed to admit every principle of truth involved in this subject, and disposed to deny only the erroneous inferences drawn from these principles.
I stated that without doubt God foresaw the fall of Adam when he purposed to create him, and that he formed a purpose as to what he would do in that event, so that the fall of Adam did not take him by surprise, or find him unprepared for the event; that he would gladly have made the first Adam and his family the everlasting possessors of the earth had they remained in innocence; but, that foreseeing the fall of Adam, he formed the following fixed purpose :—
1. That there should be a second Adam to take the place of the first, and that to this second Adam and his family he would give the earth.
2. That this second Adam should be God's own Son, clothed with humanity.
3. That he should die to redeem sinful man.
4. And that those who were finally possessors of the inheritance through the second Adam "should be holy and without blame before him in love." Thus much God fixed without condition and without uncertainty. He appointed157the way of salvation through the second Adam, and chose him and his family in place of Adam the first and his natural descendants.
5. Another thing which he fixed in his purpose was that the offer of adoption into the family of the second Adam should be made to all mankind.
6. But now comes the point which God did not fix. He did not decree that a part should receive this salvation, and shut out the remainder from the possibility of sharing it. He offered it to every man, and extends to each grace to accept, but he compels none. And this offer he holds open from age to age till the number necessary to his purpose have accepted. God has provided the way of salvation without man's asking it, and of his own sovereign will has determined what character the saved shall bear, but he has left each man to choose whether he will have a part in this great salvation.
I also quoted some of the words of warning found in the Bible with regard to the apostasy of the righteous. Finally, I showed that the day of Judgment is to decide the case of all men according to their works—a plain proof that not God's decree, but their own conduct, determines the fate of men; and that a day of Judgment is absolutely inconsistent with the idea that God selected or rejected each individual before the foundation of the world. The meeting closed with a very solemn impression upon all present.
During the night, my mind was much exercised on the subject of election, and I determined that if those Calvinist friends came again I would speak further on the subject from Rom. 9:15, 16. I was not disappointed; for they came, and certain others with them, so that we had quite a number of persons present who were not Sabbath-keepers. I gave first a general view of the doctrine of election in the chapter, showing that it relates here not to the salvation nor to the damnation of men, but to God's choice among men of those who shall fill certain important places in his work, and that this choice, while placing a heavy responsibility upon the man chosen, does not make it certain that he will be saved; while the men not chosen and not thus highly honored have nevertheless the full privilege of receiving salvation through Christ if they will. I illustrated this by God's choice of Abraham, which seems to be the starting point of Paul's statement concerning election in this chapter. Thus, at the very time when God chose Abraham as the father of the family of the faithful there lived a greater than Abraham, Melchesidec, whom he saw fit to pass by or reprobate. I showed secondly that it is God's just prerogative to fix the terms on which he will pardon sinful man, and that man cannot complain that God has never consulted him on the point or asked his opinion of the justice of the conditions. God's sovereignty is here seen, and must be here acknowledged. Thirdly, I showed what conditions God has fixed. "I have mercy on whom I have mercy." Now upon whom will the great King have mercy? He answers it himself: "Let the wicked man forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isa. 55:7. I also showed, out of Hebrews 3:12, 13, how men harden their hearts by sin, and that God hardens men's hearts only by withdrawing his tender Spirit when they persist in grieving it. Such a man as this was Pharaoh, and because Egypt was very wicked, and Pharaoh fixed in sinfulness, God opened the way for this extremely wicked man to take the throne, and to contend with the Almighty.
When the meeting closed, the chief speaker among these Calvinists came forward, and expressed his thanks for what had been said, and stated that he believed I had spoken the truth. My first discourse here in Prussia was addressed to the brethren from 2 Pet. 3. It was a very solemn season, and the word made so much impression upon them that they asked me if I would repeat it to the public in case they would hire a hall for first-day last, and would advertise the meeting and the subject. I said, Certainly I will, so they advertised that I would speak in English, and that Bro. Ertzenberger would interpret in German. Doubtless the novelty of the announcement helped to call out the people. We returned from Gladbach direct to this meeting, and on entering the hall found it filled with an intelligent-looking, well-dressed audience. As the hall was insufficiently seated, more than half of those present had to stand up. It was not without some misgivings that we entered upon this service, but God helped us both. We began at once, and the Spirit of God soon raised us above the embarrassment of the situation. God gave a good degree of liberty in speaking, and I think the subject must have been of interest to the people. Though the discourse was of necessity quite lengthy, and though the position of many was not one of rest, every person present paid strict attention from beginning to end.