p. 16 | Power to Do the Right

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 37.

Power to Do the Right

One of the many happy renderings of the American Standard Revised Version preferable to the Common Version is that of 2 Tim. 2:3. The Common Version reads, “Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” The American Standard Revision reads, “Suffer hardness with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” The marginal rendering is, “Take thy part in suffering hardship, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Not only endure hardship, but manfully do your part. Be no shirker in life’s conflicts.

It is not the knowledge of right and wrong which the world most needs, but power to do the right. A recent book filled with moral maxims and theories of life from the “Precepts of Ptah-Hotep of Egypt to Thoreau,” closes its introduction with the remark, “I end it with a deepened conviction that the knowledge of Good and Evil has been complete in the world from the beginning of history, and that mankind has had nothing to learn since but the application of it.” Man wants power, but knowledge will not furnish it. And there is but one religion which can furnish it—Christianity, the life and power of God sent down to humanity.