MEN VERSUS THINGS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 29, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 43.

MEN VERSUS THINGS.

An Important Lesson for Our Time is found in the following incident in the life of Christ: "And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work; in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day." (Luke 13:10-14.) In this is drawn the contrast between Jesus Christ and formal, hypocritical professors of religion; and the difference was manifest by one of the tests of the ages—regard for humanity.

The One Precious Object to the mind and heart of God on this sin-cursed earth is man, including all mankind. God loves him with an everlasting love; loves him even in sin; loved and loves him so much that he gave his only-begotten Son to save him from sin and death. Jesus Christ came to save MEN; let it never be forgotten. For here are his own words: "The Son of man came . . . to give his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28); "the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them" (Luke 9:56); "for the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). In all this "God is no respecter of persons;" for he "hath made of one blood all nations of men." (Acts 17:26.) All are men in his sight, and his love extends to all.

The worth of man is shown in the price which God paid for him—the life, the eternal sacrifice, of the Son of God. For it was not for a period of thirty-three and a half years merely that Jesus took upon him humanity, but for eternity. The giving of self was an eternal sacrifice, that he "might bring many sons unto glory." This is God's estimate of the worth of man, man perfected in Christ, a perfection made possible unto all; and therefore each man, as an individual, was and is of eternal worth in the sight of God. "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation [course of life] received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." (1 Peter 1:18, 19.)

Jesus Christ ever exalted the man above the thing, howsoever holy man regarded the thing. The Jew regarded the gentile nations as accursed; but Jesus ignored the dear tradition, and took a long journey away up to Sidon, that he might heal the child of the poor Syrophenician woman. What were national traditions and prejudices and laws compared with the poor suffering soul? Jewish traditions had so bound about the Sabbath law as to make it a burden instead of a blessing. These traditions were to them dearer than the lives of their fellow creatures. Rubbing out wheat in the hands was to them threshing, and therefore a violation of the Sabbath. Jesus rebuked not his disciples for relieving their hunger in that way. When the sick were healed by our Lord, on the Sabbath day, not once, but often, the rebukes of the self-righteous Pharisees were similar to that found in the scripture at the beginning of these notes.

To them the thing was more than the man, the human being. Their Sabbath law, their property in sheep and oxen, were more to them than the suffering, bowed woman. Tremendous in its sifting justice was Christ's reply: "Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?" (Luke 13:15, 16.) On another similar occasion he asked, before he healed the withered hand: "What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." (Matt. 12:11, 12.) No wonder that Luke tells us (13:17) that "when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him." The man was more than the property, more than the institution; the man was more than the thing.

To-day history repeats itself. The difference is only this: In Christ's time it was the oppression of men by the wrong laws and traditions respecting the right day; but now it is the oppression of men by the wrong traditions and laws respecting the wrong day. But the spirit is the same, that of oppression and persecution; the methods are largely the same; spying, trapping, assumption of divine authority; and the result will be the same, the persecution of those who observe the true Sabbath of the Lord in the Lord's way. We know that it is said that the Sunday, or sabbath, laws are in the interest of this class or that class; but the exaltation of the thing is the abasement of the man. It draws distinction between class and class; sets man to hunting, hounding, and persecuting his brother, and puts in durance vile as criminals Christians who observe the same Sabbath as did Jesus Christ, and who endeavor to observe it in the same way, and counts as "Anarchy," all opposition to the unholy tradition and the unrighteous law.

The religious world is not alone. The spirit of the church is leavening the state, even as of old. When this government sprang into being, Civil and Religious Liberty, Equality of Men, Equal Rights to All, and Special Privileges to None, were principles which were emblazoned upon her banners and engraven in the hearts of her founders. They were written in her Charter of Liberty, and in her Bill of Rights, and they brought happiness and prosperity to all classes where they were allowed free exercise. They reached all classes in a general way when the gyves of bondage were struck from the slave one-third of a century ago. But since that time, in ever-increasing measure, the thing has been exalted and the man abased. It is the "sabbath" that must be protected; it is the flag that must be honored; it is the church that must be revered; it is the wealth, and gold, and bonds, of the country that must be protected; while man in soul and body famishes, suffers, perishes. All that the Sabbath—God's Sabbath—stands for, and all that the flag was designed to mean, all that the church and government were to do, are prostituted in the dust, before the things exalted in their place. It is not the Lord's Sabbath that any human law can "promote," "protect," or "preserve;" it is but the hollow counterfeit, the exaltation of which is designed to exalt the class which make it their shibboleth. It is not the honor of the country which men are so anxious to protect when they ignore the impoverished millions and dying thousands. "The Sabbath was made for man," said Jesus Christ; made to be a blessing. But the exaltation of the thing—as interpreted by the formal professors of his day—resulted in the crucifixion of the Man Jesus Christ as a blasphemer, a traitor, albeit he was the truest and holiest Sabbath-keeper of them all. And so to-day those who keep the same Sabbath that he kept and those who plead for the equal rights of men—all men—are denounced as "Anarchists," and enemies to the government. It is the wine of Babylon which is making drunken alike both church and state, and they do not know it; and the people that look and long and hope that the words of their leaders will be confirmed (Eze. 13:5, 6) have against hope seen their sun sink ever down and down toward the hopeless, coming night when and where the judgments of God will reveal the wretched counterfeits and subterfuges which a world-blinded church and a church-blinded world have substituted for the things, and laws, and methods of righteousness ordained of God. (See Eze. 13:10-16; Isa. 59:2-20.)

But God has foretold it all—all the past and coming religious persecution which results by exalting things above men. Read it in the seventh chapter of Daniel, in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the Revelation, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and in other scriptures. Read that it all will be fulfilled, because those who do it know neither the Father nor the Son; and yet they believe through it all, even as men perish before them, that they are doing "God-service." (See John 16:1-3.) Read its partial fulfilment in the persecution of Christ and his apostles and his disciples all through the Dark Ages. Its final fulfilment is beginning in the Sunday laws and growing intolerance and persecutions of these present days.

God has foretold the oppression of the poor, even in our days, which comes by exalting the thing above the man. Said the apostle and prophet James: "Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out; and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous One; he doth not resist you." (James 5:1-6, R. V.) This is not a prophecy against farmers; it embraces all who meet its terms. The persons who have always been among the greatest sufferers are the agriculturalists, the farming community, the products of whose labors sustain the world. Truly they have suffered hard times in the Old World, and are suffering in this. The hoarding of riches, the unequal laws, the "making the ephah [the measure] small and the shekel [the dollar] great" (see Amos 8:4, 5), resulting in depriving the farmer, the laborer, of his hire—all are remembered of God. Thus again the Spirit of God, in sympathy with men, voices their cry through the prophet: "O mighty God, . . . thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity; wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? and makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag; therefore they rejoice and are glad." (Hab. 1:12-15.) How graphically is portrayed in the above the work of the overreacher, the covetous, the oppressor! He devours men, he makes them as the fishes of the sea, or the creeping things, for whom none will care. The loss of a thousand dollars is more than men; the money must be saved, the men, compelled to depend upon their employer, may go and starve. If the millions are not increasing fast enough, the wages must come down. What matters it? they are only men; and what are men compared with protected, fostered institutions? If the income is not piling up, increase the price of coal or oil or ice. The discharge of men, or the cut in wages, or the advance prices in the necessities of life, or the unequal law, the "unrighteous decrees" "to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor" (Isa. 10:1, 2),—all these are "legal," and expedient, and good business policy. And so it goes, till by such laws and policy the "proud man," drunken with the wine of Babylon, "neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and can not be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people." . . . He "increaseth that which is not his," and "ladeth himself with pledges;" that "getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil" (Hab. 2:7, 9, R. V.); "that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone [as rulers] in the midst of the earth" (Isa. 5:8).

Our lesson, O Christian brethren and sisters, wherever you are, by whatever name you may be called, is to regard men as God regards them, more precious than all things else in the earth. Tell the people that God loves them. Let the poor, the oppressed, the needy, the destitute, the sin-bound, see God's love in you, in word, in act, and in deed. Let the great sympathy of Christ flow through your life to the longing yet despairing souls of earth. Men are more than things. Lowell sings truly:— "Tho we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed. Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God! We owe our allegiance to the state; but deeper, truer, more To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core:— Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then, Before Man made us citizens, Great Nature made us men." The message—God's message—to you, O struggling one, is to come to him. You may not believe it; but taste and see that God is good. Men may have led you to hope in this world; but you have found its fruit Dead Sea apples, ashes and bitterness. You have trusted man, and have found disappointment, trial, oppression, and loss. O come to Christ. He will not disappoint. He does not promise you here the wealth and honor and fame of this world; but he will give you his peace, his rest, his presence. He will not force you; love does not use coercion. He asks you to come. But he does not ask you to take one step that he has not taken before you. He does not ask you to tread one path but what has been marked by his blood-stained footprints. Nay, he will do more. He has not only gone all the way before, but he lived all his life in Jesus of Nazareth, that he might live it all in you once more. The little while here will he abide with you by his Spirit, his power, and then in all the eternity of bliss that knows no sorrow or pain or toil or oppression, you will dwell with him. Never mind what others do; in Christ "be thou the true man thou dost seek." O come, come to him; we know he is true; we invite you again, come to Christ, the Fountain of Life, the Living Water, the Bread of Life, the embodiment of all the exceeding riches of God's grace for you. He says: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."