Editorial Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 6, 1901

Editorial Notes.

By Editor

If you will keep the faith, the faith will keep you.

SUPERSTITION points us to the past and to the dead; faith points us to the future and to the living.

You cannot win people from the world to Christ by lowering the standard of Christian living. The standard must be exalted; the Saviour must be “lifted up.”

LOOKING toward the Christian’s country, the view is the same in all countries. Hence the Christian can feel as much at home in one part of the earth as in another.

THE proof that you are a free man does not consist in the fact that you reside in a “free country.” It is not geographical boundaries, but the truth, that makes men free.

Do not try to “beat down” the price of admission into the New Jerusalem. Heaven will be infinitely cheap at the highest price you can pay, and you will only deceive yourself if you think to make any compromise with God.

It is surprising how small an amount of Scripture will suffice to convince a person of something he wants to believe, and what a large amount is required to convince him of a plain truth which he does not relish.

FROM God’s standpoint, there are but two great classes of people in the world, which are, not the rich and the poor, nor the respectable and the non-respectable, nor any others recognized in worldly society; but the righteous, or those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and the wicked, or those who believe not on Him.

An old monk is credited with the pertinent observation touching the Bible, that “whoso seeketh an interpretation from this book shall get an answer from God; whoso bringeth an interpretation to it shall get an answer from the devil.”

“THE noblest weapon is the sword, and the noblest uniform is the uniform of the Prussian soldier,” Emperor William is quoted as saying on the occasion of his second son’s entrance upon military duties at Potsdam. “The finest thing I can imagine,” he continued, “is the earnest soldier, inflexible as iron in everything which constitutes the chivalry of an officer; hard toward himself, upholding with rigid self-discipline the traditions of his house and regiment; indifferent to the opinion of others, and with one goal before his eyes—responsible only to his God and his father.”

While men talk about a coming millennium of peace, it is a fact that war is glorified much more than peace by earthly rulers.

For a long time lovers of peace and prosperity have been hoping that the time would come when workingmen and employers, realizing the folly of conflicts that have so repeatedly brought distress and the paralysis of industry upon large sections of the country, would find some way to obviate strikes, boycotts, and lockouts, and establish peaceful relations between themselves. But how long will that time be in coming, when workingmen will strike for such frivolous reasons as that they cannot have lemonade served to them by their employers, instead of cold water? Here is the instance:—

“PITTSBURG, PA., July 23 [Special]: Because the George A. Fuller Company would not permit them to drink lemonade, instead of common ice water, fifty carpenters and others employed on the new two-million-dollar twenty-two story H. C. Frick office building struck work to-day. The company furnished filtered water, in which oatmeal was placed. The meal prevents cramps in the stomach. The men wanted lemonade, and formed a pool to get it. Each was to ‘chip in’ ten cents a week. Yesterday was the first day lemonade was served. The men all wanted to get their money’s worth, and drank so much that Superintendent Clark thought they would make themselves ill. He shut off their drinks, and a strike resulted. Work was stopped to-day; and as this is a ‘rush’ contract, the odd strike is costing the company considerable money.”

The following comment, made by Superintendent Clark, is to the point:—

“This strike is about the limit. Lemonade is injurious, and will knock a man out quicker than anything else. About an hour and a half after they quit, some of them came to me and said that they would go to work if I paid them for the hour and a half they loafed. What do you think of that?

“If I had given in, I might as well have a caterer at the building, and have ice cream, ices, and lady fingers served at regular intervals.”

THE Catholic Mirror informs us that the “relic of St. Anne” (consisting of a piece of bone claimed to have come from one of the arms of the mother of the Virgin Mary) is to be placed in “a four-thousand-dollar crypt, which will be the only one of its kind in America.” This “relic” has for a long time been kept in a church in New York City, to which, whenever the relic was exposed to public view, thousands of Catholics resorted in order to be healed of various bodily afflictions. As a source of revenue for the Church the relic has been a decided success.

“Over the relic altar,” says the Mirror, “will be a statue of St. Anne. A large collection of crutches, spectacles, bandages, splints, and other articles discarded by the afflicted who have been healed will be placed in the new sanctuary.”

These discarded implements, testifying to the great cures wrought by the relic, prove (?) that saint worship is a part of the Christian religion, just as the like tokens in Dowie’s Chicago tabernacle prove that Dowie, who denounces saint worship and the Catholic Church in general, is a disciple of Christ.

The Christian religion does not feed people on relics, but on the fresh bread of life, which is the Word of God. True faith does not point people to the dead, but to the living, even to Him who now “liveth to make intercession for us.” Time does not affect the realities of Christianity; they never cease to be. By faith the divine Healer is discerned as a living, present Saviour, touching and healing the sick just as in the days of old. Faith has nothing to do with looking backward; it points us in another direction. It points us to the “author and finisher of faith,” to whom we are ever to look as we run the race that is set before us. No one will succeed who tries to run that race with his face turned back to the past.