THE PRINCIPLES OF GOD'S GOVERNMENT UNCHANGEABLE.
By D. Burdick
God has not committed the principles of his government to man to be decided by the majority of the people. His laws did not originate with fallible man. The prevailing doctrines of the multitude have ever been in conflict with the pure principles of the divine law. Even in these latter days of improved facilities for obtaining knowledge, a veneration for the opinions of the multitude stands directly in the way of a candid investigation of important truths by many who otherwise evince a good degree of logical acumen. Instead of being reliable teachers of divinity, they are mere theorists. They take for granted a theory of long standing, which has nothing in the divine record to sustain it; hence, to make the idea plausible, they must make a parade of Bible quotations which have no direct relation to the petted theory. They must invent new definitions to terms which are common as household words. For instance, death, which everybody knows is the extinction of life, is called a separation from God. The death that was threatened Adam, it is said, was executed the very day he transgressed, not upon his physical system, but upon his spirit or soul. To save the incongruity of the idea that his body lived nearly a thousand years without a soul, or that he and his wife committed suicide by hiding among the trees of the garden, it is called a spiritual or moral death. Perhaps on no other subject has the mind been so completely captivated as on that of the Sabbath and the nature and destiny of man. On no other does there appear such manifest incongruity between the teachings of man and the principles of God's word. Although the advocates of the Sunday Sabbath, and the inherent immortality of man, may, like the persecutors of the saints, verily think they are doing God service, nevertheless that belief will not prevent the legitimate fruit of an evil tree. One declaration of divine inspiration is worth more to the candid searcher after truth than the opinions of scores of uninspired men, however high they may rank in literary attainments. Life and death as applied to the corporeal body with which, in all ages, man has been familiar, is the primary idea, to which primitive fact, in a figurative expression, spiritual life or death has an allusion, and without which these illustrations would be wholly unintelligible. Regeneration, and being born of the Spirit, are figures to show the necessity of a change of heart if we would secure eternal life through Christ, and have a part in the first resurrection, to escape the second death. They were not given for the exercise of the finesse of Rev. D. D.'s to prove that Adam was in full possession of animal life before the breath of life breathed into his nostrils a living soul. The lengthy articles now being published to maintain this petted theory are elicited by the candid investigation of the nature and destiny of man by those who are not75trammeled by sectarian bias or a veneration for men of pompous titles. But, however carefully these investigations are kept from the view of the orthodox eye, truth will ultimately prevail. D. BURDICK. Milton Junction, Wisconsin.