Your ShelfYour Projects

The Golden Rule

6%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 22, 1915

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 92, No. 20.

Read the full edition

The Golden Rule

By A. E. PLACE

A. E. PLACE
The golden rule, understood and applied in everyday life, would dry up every stream of criticism, or judging, whether large or small, and bring joy and peace to home and heart. But it requires the power of the Holy Spirit to apply it.
The Lord’s Prayer, if understood and applied, would banish the possibility of holding hard feelings, or “hurt” feelings, grudges, or anything of the kind; for that prayer says, Forgive us as we forgive, etc.
Both these rules, covering prayer and action, require the power of the Holy Spirit to understand and to apply. No other rule given to man so completely covers everything in so few words. No other prayer so completely includes everything as does the prayer which the Lord gave his church.
If we on our knees pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,” and get up with criticism in our hearts, or ready to judge one of God’s children; if we on our knees pray, “Forgive us our debts,” and rise with unforgiveness toward brother or neighbor, we cannot understand, neither do we apply, either the rule or the prayer.
The only way for me to settle my sins against God is for him to forgive me, and impute to me the merits of his Son. Peace between brethren must come in the same way. Anything else but widens the breach and increases leanness of soul. No man can get peace by confessing another man’s sins. But when we confess our own sins to God and our brethren, we receive forgiveness, the chasm is filled, and we go on our way rejoicing. Again James says, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” Christ stated this principle plainly in these words: “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Then if a brother criticizes me, I should not condemn him, but I should pray for him. I should forgive him. If he wags his head, or shoots out his lip, I should forgive him, and I should pray, Father, forgive him. So shall we be the children of our Father which is in heaven, who lets his rain fall alike on the just and the unjust.
Some have felt at liberty to judge or condemn in the matter of eating and drinking. Misunderstandings, hard feelings, even bitterness and divisions, have come between brethren, and into the home circle, and between very friends, not by health reform principles, but by their application or misapplication. Members of some families do not see alike on this great question. Careful education, by kind and consistent example, is necessary.
I believe that God gave the health reform principles that they might be a blessing, first of all to this people, and through them to the world. But it cannot be that he ever intended or desired that these, or any other principles from him, should be used by his children in any sense as a club. I cannot believe that God has given to any man or woman the right or privilege to sit in judgment on any other person because of what he eats. “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him.”
It is the privilege and right, if not the duty, of any member of the church to go to any brother or sister whom he believes to be in the wrong on this question as truly as on any other, and talk the matter over kindly and freely. If by so doing an agreement is reached, he has gained a point, and possibly a brother; but until this is done, he can of right do nothing but pray. He has no right to go with the report to any other person, because, first, there may be a misunderstanding about the matter; second, if there is no misunderstanding concerning the act, it is possible that the person questioned has reasons for his act which he considers good and sufficient; third, by carrying such a report one would commit sin which may be regarded by the Lord as great as, if not greater than, that committed by the one thought to be remiss.
But if the one thought to be in the wrong gives no satisfactory explanation of his course, still he should not be judged by his brother, but should be dealt with according to the golden rule.
I believe that the health principles given to this people are of God; that they have accomplished great good in every home where they have been properly applied; but if I make your application of them an open or a shut door between you and me, or between you and the kingdom of God, or set myself up as judge of those principles or their application to you or any one else, I am positively wrong, and by so doing am standing in the way of both the principles and their application. “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
Some of my brethren and sisters may, for reasons unknown to me, which to them may seem good and sufficient, eat or drink something which I do not feel free to eat or drink, and he who sees all things will deal with them as he deals with me.
“Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace.” This does not mean that we are to close our eyes to a brother’s sin. But I believe it does mean that if we follow up a brother’s wrong, we must do it in harmony with divine instructions; for peace can come in no other way.
  • San Jose, Cal.