The Golden Rule | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 10, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 28.

The Golden Rule.

KNOWN in the negative in ancient world religions, but in the active, positive, in the religion of the Bible is that wonderful summary of conduct toward our fellows, thus enunciated by Christ:

“All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them; for this is the law and the prophets.” Matt. 7:12.

This Golden Rule is a conclusion from what our Lord has said of God’s willingness to give and our entreaty of Him for blessing, which He is more willing to give than are earthly parents to give unto their children. But asking good things of God and expecting them, demands on our part a kindred disposition toward others. God sends many of His blessings thru others. He moves upon other hearts to bless. But if we would receive, we must be ready to give. “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.”

“Whatsoever ye would that men”—it matters not the kind of “men”—the rule is for us toward them, not for them toward us. They may be German or French or Irish or English or Chinese or Hottentot. They are men. How would you like to have these men treat you?—Do ye even so to them. It matters not what the religion of these men may be, whether pagan or infidel, Roman Catholic or Protestant, Mohammedan or Jew. You may be a Christian. How would you like to have them regard you? Do you think it would be right for them to persecute you? that you should be compelled to do as they did, or to outwardly conform to their worship? Would you believe it right for them to compel you, or seek to compel you, to uncover before their idol shrine, or bow the head as the idol was borne in solemn procession along the street?

All these questions you will answer with an emphatic negative. It is not right to persecute a Christian, to compel him to worship false gods, or take part in ceremonies contrary to his conscience. You believe that and hold it as a decided, self-evident conviction.

But if that be true,—and none ought to deny it,—the Christian ought not to seek by force of any kind save love to compel those who oppose him. He has no right to compel the Chinese to cease his worship of Joss, or to prohibit the Mohammedan from praying toward Mecca, or the Hindu from worshiping the Ganges.

You may be a Hebrew and a keeper of the seventh day. You have no right to seek to compel your neighbors to observe that day, whether he observe another day or not. And if he be a first day observer he has no right, according to the Golden Rule, to interfere with your observance of days.

The Golden Rule puts us in the other man's place and demands that we should treat him as tho he were really and truly ourselves. If this rule had been followed by Christians, we should never have had a Dark Ages, never would have heard of the work of "Bloody Mary" or the horrible times of "Good Queen Bess;" never would there have been recorded the terrors of the inquisition, nor the burning of Servetus, nor the banishment of Roger Williams, nor the hanging of "witches." No Christian, in the light of the Golden Rule, could or would seek to fetter or restrict the religious rights of infidel, Catholic, Jew, or Protestant. All have equal rights before God. All should be respected in their rights. Live the Golden Rule.