p. 6 | Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 25, 1907

Note and Comment

The germ idea in the “universal peace” propaganda was brought to view by Mr. W. T. Stead at Carnegie Hall, New York City, on April 14, when he declared that “too many Christians devote their time to saving an individual soul, and not to saving the soul of humanity.” That is practically the position taken by the National Reform Association, which is working to bring about the salvation of nations through civil enactments and the gateway of politics. Jesus Christ came into this world to save individual souls. No single individual soul was regarded by him as of too little consequence for him to spend his time and to shed his blood in its behalf. He would have done it all for one such. But many of his professed ambassadors are turning aside from the salvation of the individual, for whom Christ died, and are turning their attention to the “civic” salvation of the nations, whom Christ has declared he would break in pieces as a potter’s vessel. There has been no provision made for the salvation of nations. God has declared that at the setting up of his everlasting kingdom, he would scatter the nations of this world as the “chaff of the summer thrashing-floor; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them;” but the individual souls that accept Christ “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many [individual souls] to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.” Which work then furnishes the more permanent results, the work for the salvation of nations or that for the salvation of individual souls? With the completion of man’s salvation comes the destruction of earth’s nations.