AGAINST THEMSELVES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 25, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 43.

"AGAINST THEMSELVES."

PRINCIPLES are greater than men; for they make men what they are. A good character is but the development of good principles; an evil character, of evil principles. A good man is a good principle incarnate. An evil man is an evil principle incarnate. Each is the impersonation of the principle which actuates him.

THOUGHTFUL men and Christians will look beyond the man to the principle. If the man's character be evil, they will shun the evil principle which made the man what he is, even tho they endeavor to save the man. While they hate the principle of evil, they love the man because of the possibility of an eternal character of good within him if right principles may only be given the opportunity to rule his heart and life.

THE most precious thing in all the universe is character. The names written to all eternity in "the Lamb's book of life," are names of eternal characters of good. It is to those names and those characters that God calls every morally responsible soul. It is to save men to these characters, having essentially within themselves immortality, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died. But these characters are made up of living principles of righteousness.

IT, therefore, inevitably follows that he who receives the principle without reserve, in that principle receives the character. While it is true that character is a matter of development, covering a period of time and involving choice and test, it is nevertheless all involved in the principle whole-heartedly received and everlastingly held.

HE, therefore, who truly accepts Jesus Christ receives the eternal principles of unselfishness, righteousness, truth, and love, which made the character of Christ what it was,—the character of God incarnate. The acceptance of Christ Jesus can not be merely nominal. The mere name is nothing. A man may be called Christian, or any other name; but that does not make the man. The character—the embodiment of eternal, essential principle—is all-important. And the principles of Christ received will make the character of Christ.

THE reverse of this must also be true. The rejection of Christ is not in mere formal resolution. It may be put in words long after; but it takes place when the human soul meets the principles of right face to face and rejects them. He may be a church-member; he may even be a teacher, a preacher; he may write after his name D.D., or S.T.D., but if he has rejected the principles which made Christ's character, he has rejected Christ. Does he reject righteousness, humility, faith, purity, liberty of conscience?—In these very things he rejects Christ. And this has been as true in men's actions toward Christ's followers. It is an eternal truth.

Photo by the editor, March 2, 1904. House Originally Built by Roger Williams in 1634. Used in the Trials of "Witches," 1692; now a Drug Store.

ANOTHER vitally important consideration is that the rejection of any principle of right is always against the rejecter. He is in the long run the worst sufferer. He may reject that principle in a man. He may persecute, banish, imprison, and even put to death with torture the man in whom the principles are incarnate, yet he is doing it all against himself; and in the ultimate he is the greater loser. For in rejecting eternal principle, he has rejected eternal life; while his victim, who laid down his life for Christ's sake, has in Christ preserved it to all eternity; and Christ "will raise him up at the last day."

THEREFORE when men rejected the preaching of John the Baptist, they "rejected the counsel of God against themselves." Luke 7:30. When the Jews rejected Jesus Christ, of whom John was the forerunner, they hid from their own eyes the things of righteousness which belonged to their peace. Luke 19:41-44. When the Jews a little later at Antioch set themselves against Paul and Barnabas, they also set themselves against the Gospel of salvation, which the apostles preached, and judged themselves "unworthy of everlasting life." Acts 13:46. And so it has been in every age. Pagan Rome and Papal Rome were not merely against so many mere men and women of an obscure sect—heretics; they rejected in their treatment of those men and women the eternal principles of expansive truth and righteousness for which the martyrs stood. It was not Martin Luther which the Papacy rejected, but justification by faith in Christ for which Luther, notwithstanding his faults, stood.

WHEN the Puritans of Massachusetts drove from them Roger Williams, they drove out religious liberty, of which Williams was but the incarnation. But when Salem received him, they did it evidently because of the man; for two years after he had settled in Salem he was driven thence by a superstitious, tradition-loving people.

THESE reflections crowd upon us as we contemplate the history associated with the modest building in our illustration. It was built by Roger Williams when he was invited to Salem in 1634. He was driven from Salem because of his principles of liberty, through the influence of Massachusetts, in 1636. In banishing Williams the people of Salem banished justice and liberty, and belied the name of their town. It was no longer Salem—peace—but superstition, turmoil, strife; and fifty years later their seedsowing

resulted in the baleful harvest of the Salem witchcraft delusion, in which one hundred and fifty persons, including children of five years of age, were tried, and nineteen were hung on Gallows' Hill, and one was pressed to death. And the very house built and inhabited by Roger Williams, whence he was driven in 1636, became the home of Jonathan Curwen, Esq., one of the judges of the witchcraft trials, and the place where some of those trials were held. Principles of righteousness and liberty went with Williams; superstition, and vivid, suspicious imagination were seated upon the throne. No one was safe. A mere suspicion, and the innocent man or woman was incarcerated as a witch, charged with having dealings with the "black man," of holding hellish fasts and feasts, of eating red bread and drinking blood, of changing themselves or their victims into various forms, of making bargains with Satan, of pinching, pricking, or striking others when miles distant, etc. One test was by water, in which the accused was cast. If he swam ashore, he was guilty and was hung. If innocent, he drowned. Either way it was death.

"But those days are past," it is said. That is true; but human nature and essential principles are the same. Rejecting religious liberty incarnate in man now, tho its exponent be less than the least, men reject Jesus Christ, its Author, and the principles which make men like Him. Rejecting Him, man is left to the greatest delusions and self-deceptions. What are you, reader, doing now? What is America doing now? What is the world doing now? Are we—make it personal—am I rejecting the counsel of God against myself?