THE DAY OF PREPARATION.
By H. E. Fairchild
CHATHAM is a naval arsenal town in the county of Kent, England, about thirty miles east and southeast of London. From eight to ten thousand men are constantly employed building war ships. Some of the largest war ships afloat are built in the dockyards here, and the men, as a rule, who build the ships, are more or less filled with the same fighting spirit as those who compose the crews. The fact is no longer kept from all the people who care to know, that the world is not getting ready for the “good time coming,” but is with feverish haste getting ready only for war. The editor of the London Daily Mail says: “If we [England] are to face the growing danger of European complications, we must be prepared. And being prepared means, first and foremost, that our navy must be ready for action. The naval reserve should be called out, and twenty thousand volunteers for the fleet demanded. Our reserve fleet should without the slightest delay be put into commission, a large force of cruisers mobilized, and all the destroyers fitted for sea.” After saying that all shipbuilding “in England for foreign powers” should be pre-empted,” he says, “push forward night and day the battle ships and cruisers completing in our yards for the navy.” Notwithstanding that England is “mistress of the seas,” she knows the emergency is great, and “looks to the war office and the admiralty to rise to it.” The fighting element of Europe is not dreaming of “peace on earth,” but the people of God have it, and are telling those who have it not how to get it. Over sixteen thousand copies of Present Truth circulated weekly in England, from door to door, by consecrated men and women, is a mighty army, but how different from the army of fighting men! “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” The preaching of the cross makes foolish the wisdom of this world. The world by wisdom knows nothing of God. Without a knowledge of God in Christ no man can be saved, so that the message of the third angel is to make known the true God as revealed in Christ, and will make ready a glorious church to meet our God, who will save us. The people are fast losing sight of God in Christ. “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Christ in us, the hope of glory, will reveal him who is, and we are not. Surely the “controversy between Christ and Satan” is, Who is to be seen, Christ or Satan, in man. “No power but of God!” “Christ the power of God” “in us,”—and yet the victory not ours?—Why, of course the victory is ours, “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” Great is the darkness, but greater the light that is risen upon us. Praise God!