p. 468 | BURNING THE BOOKS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 5, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 30.

BURNING THE BOOKS.

LUKE, in giving an account of the success of Paul's missionary labors in Ephesus, where the apostle spent three years, says:—

"And many that believed came, and confessed, and showed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Acts 19:18-20.

This is one illustration of the general truth that when the human mind comes under the enlightening, renovating, and sanctifying power of the gospel, whatever may have been its previous condition, there are a great many old things which have to pass away, in order to find a place for the new things which belong to the gospel, and are secured by it. The old things and the new things do not go on together; but the former disappear and the latter appear. That which is wrong in the past must give place to that which is right in the sight of God. A Christian is a renewed and reformed sinner, as well as a child and subject of grace; and although he will never go to Heaven on the basis of his own merits, he will not equally go there without repenting of his sins and forsaking them. The plan of the gospel is not to save men in their sins, but rather from them, as well as from the curse of the law. Men cannot serve God and the devil at the same time. If they are the servants of sin, they are not the servants of God. Any effort to effect a compromise between the two forms of service and carry both along together, is sure to end in failure. Positive incompatibilities cannot inhere in the same character.

The special truth illustrated by this burning of the books is that when men are pursuing an unjust, a dishonest, and morally unlawful business, as the means of living, they must, if they become Christians, abandon that business and engage in some other business that is consistent with Christianity. If one who is a gambler becomes a Christian, he must at once bid farewell to his gambling. Gambling is a dishonest mode of getting a living, and no one can be a gambler and a child of God and an heir of grace at the same time. So if a man is a rumseller, dealing out death and damnation among the people, as the natural result of his business, he must, if he becomes a Christian, discontinue that business, especially so in this age so full of light on this subject. It will not do for him to get rid of the business by selling out his establishment, liquor and all, to someone else who will continue it. This is no remedy for a penitent and converted rumseller. Let him, if he can, apply the liquor to some lawful and useful purpose; and if he cannot, then he can do what the Ephesian converts did with their books—he can destroy it rather than involve himself in any guilty complicity with the sins of others. Any man had much better lose his property than to violate his conscience or lose his soul. Everyone is as really responsible for the use he makes of his property as he is for the use he makes of his tongue. That use of either which corrupts and demoralizes society is itself immoral, and, hence, contrary to the pure principles of the gospel, and hence again forbidden by the law of God.

The plain truth is that Christianity considered as a practical power, is a reforming power; and no small part of the salvation which it secures, consists in the reform which it achieves, first in the mind and heart, and then, as the natural consequence, in the outward life. It first changes the inner man, in the principles by which he is governed, and thus makes him "a new creature in Christ Jesus;" and then comes the change of the outward man. The two go together, and sustain to each other the relation of cause and effect. Converted sinners if they mean to honor God, and expect to get to Heaven, should not forget to burn the books that belong to the life of depravity. The more thoroughly they do this work the better.—Independent.