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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 1, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 40.

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Editorial Notes.

By L. A. S.

A LITTLE treasure laid up for eternity is far better than a fortune for a few years of time.
ANY person will gain heaven who will seek to be saved as earnestly as the godless individual seeks to be lost.
TEMPTATIONS and trials, when put to the right use, are stepping-stones to a realm where they are never known.
ONE thing that is responsible for anarchy may be discovered in the fact that there is never an avowed anarchist who believes in God.
THE best remedy for the sorrows of this world is to become a partaker of the “joy of the Lord,” by getting actively to work for the salvation of souls.
THERE is no use in sighing for an external paradise until you have let God create a paradise within you. God made Adam a perfect being before He put him in the garden of Eden.
WHEN the longing of His people to behold Him is as great as it should be, the Lord will no longer remain in heaven, but will be drawn down to the earth. How great is that longing in your heart?
THE Lord is no respecter of persons, and shows no partiality in His dealings with individuals; but it is not true that He has no favorites, for to all of us He has freely extended grace, which means “unmerited favor.” We are all of us His favorites.
THE reason so many people who pray for God’s blessing do not get it, is that they are, perhaps thoughtlessly, asking the Lord to bless some sin.
MOST people have all the money and power in this world with which the Lord can safely trust them.
It is no time now to take a nap in the service of God. Those who do this may sleep on through the hour which will close up the work and fix their own eternal destiny. The devil will not arouse the sleeper, and it is presumption to ask such a favor from the Lord.
THE Christian religion was not made for good people, but for bad people, which was the only kind of people there were on the earth after Adam’s fall. Every descendant of Adam has possessed by inheritance a heart “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”
THE evangelist who is truly “instructed into the kingdom of heaven” will bring forth from the treasury of divine truth “things new and old,”—not things new, nor things old, exclusively, but both things new and old, the new things relating to the old, and shedding increased light upon them. The new truth will not be independent of the old truth; it will not discredit that which is old, but will further confirm it. The new light will reveal new things, but will show them to be in the same pathway that has been followed from the first. The old truth should discredit any new doctrine which discredits it.
ELIAS was a man subject to like passions as we are,” declares the epistle of James. Naturally he did not differ from other men; but he was a man of faith; and his faith was indicated in his first recorded words spoken to king Ahab: “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” He who has faith realizes that he stands before God; that he is in the presence of Him whose eyes run to and fro throughout the earth, and who also, as Paul declared, is “not far from every one of us.” This is the truth, but without faith we do not grasp it. Faith makes real to us the presence of the Almighty.
THE leading negro educator, Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee, Ala., Industrial Institute for negroes, has taken occasion to speak concerning the danger from anarchy in the United States, and he puts a pointed and serious question to the people of this nation. He says:—
“In all sincerity, I want to ask, Is Czolgosz alone guilty? Has not the entire nation had a part in this greatest crime of the century? What is anarchy but a defiance of law, and has not the nation reaped what it has been sowing? According to records 2,516 persons have been lynched in the United States during the last sixteen years. There are or have been engaged in this anarchy of lynching nearly 125,800 persons.”
Thus it is a fact that many of the very ones who held up their hands highest in horror at the anarchy of Czolgosz, were anarchists themselves of a no less real, and certainly no less dangerous, type, since they were participants in the law- and government-defying lynchings to which Mr. Washington refers. Their anarchy was more respectable; that is all. And for this very reason, because it was sanctioned by large numbers of respectable people—because it was approved by so many of the “best citizens,” it is far more dangerous than the type of anarchy shown by the weak-brained Czolgosz, which never has had or will have any following in this country worth mentioning, nor any influence whatever in shaping the institutions of its government.
The most dangerous form of anarchy is the most respectable form, because that form can command the largest following; and the most respectable form of anarchy is accorded a good deal of deference throughout the world. If the causes were searched out, we should find that anarchy has its beginning in a lack of reverence for the law of the Almighty.
It appears probable that King Edward VII is suffering with cancer of the throat, despite statements that have been issued to the contrary. A late dispatch from London states that the king’s throat is causing him increased anxiety and inconvenience. “Although his physicians,” says the dispatch, “affirm that the growth in the throat is not malignant, it obstinately resists all attempts at cure, and grows steadily worse.” The king’s voice is now so seriously affected that he is obliged to avoid all public speaking. Something with reference to the cause of the malady may be inferred from the statement which is made that the king’s consumption of tobacco is now limited, much against his will, to three cigars a day.
The dispatch adds that “some time ago the king thought of trying Christian Science treatment, but after speaking with some of the aristocratic devotees of the sect here and investigating the claims of some of the alleged cures, he concluded the evidence was not sufficiently strong of the efficacy of Christian Science to induce him to run the risk of popular ridicule and possible hostility by experimenting with it.”
LAST week in these columns we made reference to the noteworthy action of the Virginia constitutional convention touching the old-time American privilege of freedom of speech. Here are the facts of the matter as set forth in a press dispatch to the Daily Moon, of this city:—
“RICHMOND, VA., September 18.—Virginia, so conspicuous in the days of the revolution in helping to secure freedom and justice for the colonists who suffered from the tyranny of England, is the first among the sisterhood of States to take formal steps for the suppression of free speech.
“The constitutional convention yesterday decided to eliminate from the bill of rights of the State the words ‘freedom of speech.’ This action was taken after a scene that was dramatic. In the present bill of rights occur the words, ‘Guarantee the liberty of the press and freedom of speech.’
“The committee to which the instrument was referred for revision recommended that the words ‘freedom of speech’ be eliminated. When the report came up for discussion, A. C. Braxton, a leading republican member, moved that the words be retained. The motion drew forth earnest opposition, led by Judge Berryman Green.
“‘Ever since the days of King Alfred,’ he exclaimed, ‘freedom of speech has been the prerogative of the English-speaking races, but one of the strongest evidences of its abuse is the noble victim now lying dead in the nation’s Capitol, surrounded by weeping thousands.
“‘Do not grant full freedom of speech lest it be abused and made synonymous with license. No other bill of rights embodies such words, and in view of recent events it behooves us to be careful what we do.’”
“When he concluded, a vote was taken on the motion to retain the words in the bill of rights, and it was rejected by an overwhelming majority.
“Over the building the stars and stripes and the flag of Virginia floated at half-mast in mourning for the dead chieftain, while drapery of somber hue shaded the entrance. As he spoke, Judge Green pointed to these evidences of woe.
“His words were greeted by the loudest applause from almost every member of the convention; and when the vote was taken viva voce, if there was a man present who desired the bill to declare for freedom of speech, he dared not raise his voice to let it be known.” (Italics ours.)
LIBERTY is not, in its proper sense, a synonym of license. Many people seem to think that license is simply too much liberty, and that it is dangerous to allow people full liberty lest it should lead to license, riot, and anarchy. This is a mistaken idea. License is always against liberty and contrary to it, since it always interferes with liberty. Liberty means liberty for all; license means that some one’s liberty and rights are to be invaded. Liberty for all means respect on the part of each for the rights of all. License means a contempt on the part of some for the right of others. Liberty is from above; license is from beneath. We can never have too much of true liberty.
L. A. S.