Primitive Christianity and Its Restoration.
By Editor
GOD permits nothing to come to His children in either seeming blessing or calamity but that it has its lesson. If the lesson be not learned, the blessing will prove a curse. If learned, the seeming calamity will prove a blessing. The work for which the Pacific Press plant stood is, we believe, the work of God. It stood professedly for primitive Christianity, and for the restoration of the ideals of primitive Christianity by the means of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Primitive Christianity stood for separation from the world, from its methods, its selfishness, its scheming competition, its policies, its expedients. By this we do not mean that it stood for exclusive aloofness from the world; not at all. Its business was and is to stand in the world holding in its living principles the savor of eternal preservation of all that is good, and winning every longing-to-be-honest soul to the everlasting truth and righteousness which is in Christ Jesus.9 Primitive Christianity stood for the largest charity toward all men, sinners and saints, irrespective of creed or work; but this is not to be perverted by the mingling of sin and righteousness in the work of God. All charity for the sinner, but no fellowship with the sin. Primitive Christianity stood for unswerving fidelity to the standard of God's Word, for uncompromising righteousness and integrity. As soon as principle yielded to expediency or to policy, as soon as righteousness was compromised, Primitive Christianity failed. Ichabod was written over .... hallowed shrines, and the blackest apostasy the world ever knew was begun. The great Master is endeavoring to teach His blinded and wandering children the road back to truth. He is pointing them to the highway of uncompromising holiness. He holds out before them the plentitude of God's open storehouse in the nail-pierced hands. In all the garnered love of eternity He pleads with them to return. If they will not heed his voice in love He must chasten them. If they have learned some of the lessons, but are slow to learn others, He must correct them, if need be, punish them. If they count the means which He has bestowed, to do work for Him and humanity, as the end, the object, and set their affections upon material things, in His goodness He must remove the means, tho seemingly unseparable, and consume the material things. So He did with Israel of old. They looked upon the beautiful temple, the ornate service, and the richly robed priests, and said, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these," and yet their affections were set on the world, and their conduct and motives were like those of the nations around them. In mercy He tells them: "For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee; tho I make a full end of all the nations whither I have sent them, yet will I not make a full end of them; but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished." Jer. 30:11. And their correction, their punishment, was the destruction by fire of their beautiful temple and city. Blind, indeed, would he be who would claim that we have reached God's ideal; who would not admit that we have been slow to hear His voice, slow to follow His leadings, ready when expediency demanded to shade His principles of eternal righteousness. What is the lesson, then? Turn to God with all the heart, with prayer and fasting. Stand for Him and His work, and His truth, whatever comes. Then will He fulfil to us His own word, to give us "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified." "Then will He give the valley of Achor [trouble] for a door of hope," and all the other promised blessings will follow. Hos. 2:14-23.