p. 6 | The Only Remedy for Human Ills

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 31, 1906

The Only Remedy for Human Ills

Confronted by the alarming conditions which prevail in the world to-day, men are impelled to propose remedies of various kinds with the hope of bettering the situation. All such reform movements are efforts to alleviate results rather than to remove the causes of the trouble. There is only one Physician for human ills. There is only one remedy for the mortal disease which has fastened itself upon the human family. This is well stated by the late Dr. James Stewart, who devoted his life to the education of the natives of Africa. We quote his words:—

The hope of a better and happier day does not lie in the socialistic panaceas, or in dreams about equality in a world where no two men are or remain equal for a single day, or in the wholesale distribution of the hard-won fruits of honest industry among the lazy and dishonest. These are the remedies of a well-intentioned but badly instructed and sometimes slightly crazy benevolence. These ill-regulated remedies only make matters worse. They are the falsehood of extremes, and the exaggerations of human thinking applied to those everlasting truths which fell from the lips of the greatest human Teacher. The little grain of truth they contain has been stolen from Christianity itself. A saner spirit and a more robust common sense and a sounder interpretation of what Christ has taught, and, above all, the practise and the spirit of those teachings, must come first.

Although there are more Bibles and more churches and more nominal ministers than ever before in the history

of the world, yet the present generation is perishing for the lack of the real gospel of Christ. Human philosophy can not take the place of a divine revelation.