Editorial by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 29, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 17.

Editorial

By Editor

The Importance of the Now.—Now is the most important moment of our life. We can not recall the past; we can not bring nearer the future. We can not live yesterday over to-day. We may add to its fruitage of evil or good, but its hours are gone forever. Neither can we meet to-morrow's troubles to-day. To live in the past, to long for its pleasures, to despairingly mourn over its failures, or to endeavor to anticipate the troubles of the future, is neither wise nor helpful. God gives us now, this moment, to use as we will

The Decision Ours.—But the responsibility of the decision God has placed with us. He sets before us, as he did Israel of old, "life and death, blessing and cursing;" and tho Infinite Love and Wisdom pleads, "Choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live," Infinite Power will not compel us to choose. We ourselves must make the decision; we can not shift the responsibility if we will. God made the human mind free, bestowed upon it his Spirit, the

Spirit of liberty. 2 Cor. 3:17. He marked out the way by which man could maintain his liberty, by obedience to "the perfect law of liberty." James 1:25; 2:12. But God also gave to man the tremendous and awful responsibility of deciding for himself whether he would walk in liberty, or sell himself into bondage. Man chose the latter, because in himself a helpless, hopeless slave of sin. But God did not leave him here. In man's slavery Infinite Love speaks to every soul. You may be free by the way of Jesus Christ and his cross.

There Is No Neutral Ground.—In great political questions, in the affairs of human strife, in purely speculative, "scientific," and theological theories, we may take neutral ground, and decide neither way. But we can not do this in

the questions between our soul and God. To not decide for the right is to decide against it. To put the question off till a later time is to weave a bad thread in the web of character, and to run the awful risk of never being given the opportunity again. It is to take a step in a false path, which we may not retrace. We can not leave the choice with some one else. God in his Word has told us the way. To acquiesce, to choose, to accept with all the heart, is the only way we can decide aright. But to refuse to decide is to say that we do not believe God. To place the responsibility of decision upon some one else is to decide against God, for we put man in the place of God; he intervenes between ourselves and our Maker.

Washing Our Hands of Evil.—It is by the

right decisions in the now that great characters and great results are wrought out. To parley with the enemy, to question whether Right is just now expedient, means weakness if not death. When the Right and the Wrong come before us, we may not, as did Pilate when the Righteous One stood in his presence, wash our hands before the multitude, and say, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it." The multitude may answer, "His blood be on us, and on our children," but that will not clear our skirts. Pilate failed in that moment when he thought to compromise with the Jews, and said, "I will scourge him, and let him go." He compromised when he set Jesus, the Innocent, and Barabbas, the murderer, before the multitude, and asked, "Whither of the twain will ye

that I release unto you?" He feared the people, feared for his position, his influence, his wealth, his honor, his standing before Caesar, and in the little moments of compromise, policy, and expediency, bartered away the eternal years of principle, character, and life; and, at the same time, lost the very influence he hoped to strengthen over the people he ruled. We may not wash our hands of evil unless we stand positively against it. Others may be more deeply involved than we, as the Jews were than Pilate, but others' greater guilt or prominence will not clear us. We must stand as in the sight of God, without respect to others, and then Christ will wash heart and hand free from all stain of sin.

The Greatness of Now.—Now is only a point in time. It vanishes as we speak the word. It seems so small to many as to be insignificant. But in it are wrapped up eternal possibilities, eternal fruitage, eternal life. If every soul that ever decided wrong could have seen at the time of his decision the results of that decision, it is probably true that none would have so decided; but they decided, and allowed themselves to be deceived into believing, that the ultimate results would be different, looking only to present pleasure and profit. Thus it is with wrong decisions; a selfish motive lies underneath. But they who decide aright, out of whose decisions grow the great things of God and eternity, rarely or never see what may grow out of it, or pause to count the results to themselves. They saw the right, and the duty to right and God and humanity, and they decided there and then. There is no other true way to build character, to truly live for God, except in the living now, the momentary life. All other is false, deceptive, disappointing. This only is true and abiding. "To-day if ye will hear his voice." "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation."