God's Wrath upon His Church.
By Howard Crosby
THE narrative of the call of Samuel is a most important lesson of God's ways with his church. If the church makes a god of its forms, he breaks those forms to pieces. When the brazen serpent became an object of adoration instead of a memorial of God's grace and symbol of his salvation, he caused it to be destroyed. So when priest and people settled down satisfied with the ritual of the tabernacle, and were careless of their conduct, indulging in all sin, he sent the Philistines to plunder the tabernacle by capturing the ark and carrying it into a foreign country. When the ritual priesthood failed in their duty, he punished them, and set up an order of prophets above them to be the interpreters of his will. Samuel is thus a witness to God's demand for a spiritual religion in contrast to mere form. There is no more mistaken notion than that the religion of the Mosaic covenant was a ritualistic religion. It had a ritual, certainly, brimful of Messianic symbol, but its whole core was spiritual. The love of God and one's neighbor was the inward principle which formed its heart. God, as a merciful Saviour providing a substitute to bear the sins of Israel, and calling for their grateful love and service, was constantly exhibited to them in every ceremonial, and the words of exhortation from God to them, in the law, were most touching and tender. To compare such a religion with the mere outward rites of paganism and Romanism is to compare light with darkness. God is a holy God, and he will have his people holy; and if they substitute a ceremonial for holiness, his holy wrath will certainly fall upon them; and in this blow, not only those will fall who, like Eli's sons, commit gross wrongs, but those also who, like Eli, through indulgence or apathy, fail to rebuke and resist the evil. Let us take this lesson to ourselves to-day. The church of God is to-day courting the world. Its members are trying to bring it down to the level of the ungodly. The ball, the theater, nude and lewd art, social luxuries with all their loose moralities, are making inroads into the sacred inclosure of the church, and as a satisfaction for all this worldliness Christians are making a great deal of Lent and Easter and Good Friday and church ornamentation. It is the old trick of Satan. The Jewish Church struck on that rock. The Romish Church was wrecked on the same. And the Protestant Church is fast reaching the same doom. God will not bless a church that drags down his heavenly things into the dust—that gilds vice, calls it Christian, and then indulges in it. But vengeance will come and strip such a church of its pride and make it eat the bread of affliction. It is not only that people who come to the Lord's table go away to gamble and cheat and lead loose lives, but the ministers of Christ, the Elis, whom God has set to be watchmen to warn the people, yield to the tide of worldliness, and, instead of urging the people to a closer walk with God and a holier heart, give pulpit lectures on philosophy or art, or make ad-captandum harangues on the political questions of the day, or show off smart sayings that may raise a laugh, and then servilely seek the patronage of the rich and fashionable, when they ought, even if they have to wear only a rough garment and a leathern girdle like Elijah, to be sounding into the ears of these false Christians the words of the prophet: "A people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that are corrupters; they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward." Ezekiel saw the six men, every one with a slaughter-weapon in his hand, going through the midst of Jerusalem, slaying utterly (at God's command) the old and young, and beginning at the temple; and when the prophet exclaimed, the Lord replied, "Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head." In this vision God showed Ezekiel that he would bring down his fearful and unsparing wrath upon his own church, which had gone away from him and identified itself with the world. The vision is meant equally for us. God never changes. He will treat the Christian Church as he treated the Jewish. His fierce anger will be felt both by ministers and people who turn his truth into a lie, and use the Christian name as a cover for lust and greed. I do not speak extravagantly; I have not set up a man of straw to contend against. While it is perfectly true that there are those who fear the Lord and speak often to one another as they think on his name, it is also true that the great bulk of the Protestant Church is identified with the world. It has a name to live while it is dead. It has turned its doctrine into naturalism or rationalism, and its life into selfishness. The old landmarks are gone. Family prayer is given up, prayer-meetings are ignored, worldly partnerships are formed, social sins are connived at, and even excused, the pulpit is made a stage on which to strut and pose before a gaping world, and religion is made one of the instruments of fashion. We may not cure this dreadful evil, but we may ourselves avoid it and its doom. We may look to ourselves and to our own families, that we go not with the multitude of Christians to do evil and to perish in the hour when Christ shall come as a thief to their dismay. We may be among the few in Sardis who have not defiled their garments, walking in white with our Lord. But we cannot hold this exceptional position without an effort. The fast-rushing tide is all to the world. Anxiety to make money, to be fashionable, to obtain sensual indulgence, amid the thousand avenues of luxury now opened by Satan, is ready to carry away our young people, to their spiritual and eternal ruin. Unless parents by example, precept, and rebuke interfere to check their children, they will only prepare them for destruction. It is in the family that the religious life is nursed. It is by the family God would build up his true and spiritual church. If religion is neglected by the guardians of the family, the stream of posterity is poisoned at the source. Let us take the warning given us in God's word from Israel's fall and ruin; let us keep ourselves unspotted from the world; and let it never be said of us, as it was of Eli to his condemnation, "His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not."—Howard Crosby.