MOZOOMDAR’S FAILURE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 43.

MOZOOMDAR’S FAILURE.

CHRISTIANITY with the Saviour left out is not true Christianity. Men have proved again and again—not to their satisfaction, but to their disappointment—that the theory of Christianity, without Christ in the heart as a living, personal Saviour, does not do for them what they had hoped.

It was not the design of Christianity’s Founder to give to the human race a set of theories and leave them to work out their salvation through those theories, however moral and righteous they might be. The precepts of life which God has given for our guidance are the expression of God’s good pleasure, the expression of His will concerning us. But tho we adopt those precepts as the precepts of our life, we must remember that “It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” We can not “work the works of God” independent of God’s help. Every such attempt is foredoomed to failure. “Without Me ye can do nothing,” is the declaration of Him who is the Author and Finisher of our faith, the One alone who has authority to speak in the matter, the One who is the founder of Christianity. That declaration from the Fountain-head of Christianity goes to the very root of the matter—it is final.

The tree can not grow whose roots are not buried in the earth; the branch which does not draw sap from the living vine can bear no fruit, but withers and dies; the electric motor which does not have the electric current surging through it is dead and can accomplish nothing. And such are all attempts to live Christianity while the door of the heart is close shut against its Founder. “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” As there is no other name which has salvation in it, so there is no system of human devising that has salvation in it. Men can not invent a way of gaining heaven. They tried it at Babel. It ended in confusion and defeat. Every attempt since has ended as that attempt did; but the building of Babels goes on to-day as it did anciently.

Mozoomdar, of India, revolted against the grossness of Hinduism, and recognizing the purity of the precepts which Jesus taught, their exalted character, sought to establish a religion upon them and the best that was in other religions. But he did not accept Christ for what He is, the Saviour of the world. Now he has given up the struggle, and has announced his determination of retiring to the mountain fastnesses of Central Asia where he can be alone. He has recognized with great disappointment the failure of his system, and now he will flee from men as men fled from one another when God showed the first Babel-builders the nothingness of human schemes. We may plan and scheme and devise systems; we may call them Bab-il, “the gate of heaven,” but God calls them Babel, confusion, and blows upon them and they crumble and the builders die. There is no success out of God. If we leave Him out, we and all our plans and systems are failures. If we accept His plan, His way, there is no power on earth that can defeat us, no power in heaven that will. If you want to have success stamped upon you and all you do, believe God, accept His way, the sacrifice He has made, the power He has given. Then success is sure, and the blessings of eternity are guaranteed you.