Trusting in an Arm of Flesh
How natural it is to look to what our eyes can see, our hands can grasp, what we think we comprehend! How natural it is to trust in an arm of flesh. Just now many persons, white and colored, are looking to Mr. Booker T. Washington as the saviour of his race. They will be disappointed. Man can not save man, it matters not what his piety, talents, ability, fortune, or influence. It is for this reason that the Word declares, Cursed is the man that maketh flesh his arm. It is not an arbitrary, vindictive curse; it merely states the consequences of trusting in that which can not save. Booker T. Washington may be an instrument in God's hands to lead his people to a higher, better plane; nay, more, to start them on the path which leads ever upward; we pray that thus it may be. But if men trust to the man, to mere methods and forms, they will certainly fail. All true reform work must have a moral basis, and the true moral basis must be laid in personal relationship between the individual soul and God. Then men's hopes will be in God; and “blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.”