MAKING SAINTS by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 3, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 44.

MAKING SAINTS.

By W. N. G.

EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH has established the Order of St. Elizabeth in memory of his recently murdered wife. In mentioning this fact a newspaper put in display type the line, “The Empress is St. Elizabeth Now.” The Catholic Mirror speaks of this as an “absurd blunder,” and says that the one who made the head-line “could scarcely have had much reading or he would have known that kings and emperors do not make saints. It is a matter in other hands, and the process is very slow and difficult, and often reaches over centuries. Much more than a simple decree is required.”

Now the Mirror is quite right in saying that “kings and emperors do not make saints;” it is right in saying “it is a matter in other hands;” but it is far out of the way in the expression that “the process is very slow and difficult, and often reaches over centuries.” The Scriptures plainly indicate that the servants of God are all saints, whether they be the angels of heaven or His people on the earth. See Deut. 33:2, 3; Ps. 145:10–12; 149:1–5; Rom. 12:13; Eph. 4:12; Col. 1:2; Jude 14; Rev. 5:8, and other texts.

The matter is not in the hands of kings and emperors, neither is it in the hands of pope and cardinals. It lies between God and whosoever will yield himself to the will of God. As to the time occupied in the process, that depends upon the time the individual takes after hearing the Gospel, to surrender and become reconciled to God. There were three thousand saints made on the day of Pentecost, and where the Spirit of God is allowed free course, unhampered by the traditions of men or the stubborn resistance of the carnal mind, the process is neither “slow” nor “difficult.”

This “slow and difficult” process, of which the Mirror makes mention, probably refers to the Roman efforts to make saints of dead people. We most heartily assert that such a “process” is “slow and difficult,” so much so that it would be better expressed by the term impossible. As no one can be made a saint against his will, it is certain that no one can have this honor bestowed upon him after he has passed the probationary period of this life. For then he can have no will in the matter; the Word of Inspiration assures us that “the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Eccl. 9:5, 6. So that, if they were not saints before death, the making of them saints afterward would be impossible; and if they were saints in this life, the addition of any human effort after death to insure such an honor is not only superfluous but blasphemous, in that it assumes a prerogative of God.

However, the attempt to make men saints without their knowledge after death is paralleled by the attempt at arbitrarily making Christians by means of civil law or court decision. The latter is as unscriptural, and therefore as futile, as the former. Both ideas are streams from the same fountain. W. N. G.