WHICH WAS MORE OUT OF PLACE?
It is a quite common incivility to laugh at the mistakes of others. It is especially common to note and to publish the errors of people who are trying to learn a language different from their native tongue. But here is a “joke” that illustrates a great deal more than was intended:— A church service was being held in a Filipino town in honor of some American soldiers. The interior of the church had been bedecked by the natives in red, white, and blue, the masterpiece of decoration being a painted eagle on a shield hung above the image of one of the saints. On the banner which streamed from the eagle’s bill was this legend: “The Old Reliable Condensed Milk.” It seems that the artist who painted the eagle had copied it, inscription and all, from the label on an old milk can, believing that the banner bore the American motto. There is a serious feature in this incident, which is destined to be felt when the amusing side has been forgotten. And that is the spectacle of a “church ‘service’” in honor of men whose profession is to kill and destroy. A church service that is in honor of any other man than the Lord Jesus Christ is a travesty on Christianity and Christian worship. The sad part, and the ominous part, of such practise is that it is becoming so prevalent in the so-called “Christian lands,” by those who boast a “Christian civilization.” Hero-worship is heathen in its origin, and is heathen in principle wherever practised. When encouraged by professed Christians, it is a sure sign of gross apostasy. Church service in honor of the soldiers of any human government is a species of spiritual retrogression, a mimicry of medieval custom, a glorification of mortal man instead of the Lord God of heaven, that is ominous in the extreme. It is that fornication of the Church with the State to which Babylon and her daughters are so fast returning in these perilous times. But the pace is set, the momentum is on, the course is down grade, and only an individual here and there will be able to turn aside and extricate himself from the deluded throng. “Thus saith the Lord: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” Jer. 17: 5-7.