DO YOU BELIEVE IN RELIGIOUS LIBERTY?
AMERICANS boast of liberty, religious and civil. Without question, ninety-nine out of every one hundred people one would ask, "Do you believe in religious liberty?" would reply, "Of course, I do; what do you take me for?" But do they? The Puritans believed in religious liberty for—the Puritans. The Roman Catholics during all the Dark Ages believed in religious liberty for—the Roman Catholics. John Calvin believed in religious liberty for—John Calvin. The Puritans did not believe in religious liberty for Roger Williams. The Roman Catholics did not believe in religious liberty for John Huss, Jerome of Prague, John Wickliffe, Martin Luther, and many others. John Calvin did not believe in religious liberty for Michael Servetus. Do you believe in religious liberty for the man who is opposed, bitterly opposed, to your creed? This is the true test of religious liberty, to hold and contend for religious liberty for the other man. That is true religious liberty. It is held by those who have faith enough in an Overruling Power to believe that He can manage the matters which lie between men and God. Jesus Christ held to that. Listen: "If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." John 12:47, 48. Are you not willing to stand with Jesus Christ on all the questions of religion, and leave the adjustment of the matter to the individual soul and God, and to the final judgment? Do you truly believe in religious liberty? Do you believe in it for the other man? The Garden of Eden.—A daily paper, Sunday edition, gives us a picture from a photograph of the Garden of Eden as it is to-day. The scene is one in Western Asia, but there is absolutely nothing, unless it be certain names of rivers, to connect any spot on this earth at present with the garden which God made and planted, as recorded in Genesis 2. There is one river mentioned there, which parts into four heads. The name of one of these rivers is Euphrates. But all these names have meanings which are descriptive of the stream, and would be as descriptive of any similar stream in later ages. For instance, "Euphrates" means "to break forth," "rushing;" "Gihon" means "to gush forth," "to issue," "a stream," etc. The name of a river, before the Deluge, descriptive of the stream, would no more identify it with a stream of the same name this side of the Deluge, than the name Adah in Genesis 4:19 and 36:2 would indicate that the two persons were identical. The simple fact is that at the time of the Deluge the earth underwent a great cataclysmal change. Before the Deluge there were no divided seas and continents. The land was together. The sea was one. Gen. 1:9, 10. At the time of the Deluge Peter declares emphatically that "the world [the cosmos, the arrangement] that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." 2 Peter 3:6. "The mountains rose, the valleys sank down," the American Standard Revised Version expresses it in Ps. 104:8. Hence we find fossil remains of sea shell-fish in the rocks on high elevations. Various and many evidences clearly show that the present land was at one time submerged. The place of the original Garden of Eden was obliterated, and all the rivers of the present world drain the land of its richness and empty it in the great salt sea, whereas before the Deluge they were life-giving streams, springing from a great central fountain and beautifully and perfectly irrigating the earth. A great thanksgiving day at Jerusalem is described in Nehemiah 12. The occasion was the dedication of the walls of Jerusalem that had been restored under the direction of Nehemiah after the return from the Babylonian captivity. In view of our national Thanksgiving, it would be well to note that they kept the dedication "with gladness, both with thanksgiving, and with singing, with cymbals, psalteries, and with harps." Also that "the priests and the Levites purified themselves and purified the people." Furthermore, "they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced; for God had made them rejoice with joy; the wives also and the children rejoiced; so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off." In the Scriptures, sacrifices and offerings are almost inseparably connected with thanksgiving. Material giving is the really practical feature of Thanksgiving. "O that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare His works with rejoicing." The example of the people at Jerusalem would make an excellent basis for a Thanksgiving program. The death penalty in France will shortly be done away. The office of public executioner has been abolished, and at the coming session of Parliament the final act is to be passed. The sentiment against capital punishment is so strong that only a small per cent. of murderers are executed, and it is made more difficult to convict such criminals at all because of the death penalty. A railroad head-on collision occurred at Woodville, Ind., on the 12th inst., in which forty-seven persons were killed or burned to death in the fire which broke out in the wreckage. Thirty-eight others were injured, some fatally. In the crash six passenger coaches and several freight cars were demolished. Cause, somebody failed to do his duty. Mount McKinley, in Alaska, was recently ascended by a party of explorers headed by Dr. Frederick A. Cook, of Brooklyn, N. Y., who reached the summit September 16. They confirm the altitude given by government surveyors, 20,300 feet, which establishes the fact that it is the highest mountain in North America. The new railroad across the isthmus of Tehuantepec, connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean, was opened for traffic on the 1st inst. The road is 170 miles long, and effects a saving of 1,429 miles between New York and San Francisco, as compared with the Panama route. All but one of the building contractors of Mobile, Ala., put their establishments on the open-shop basis on the 12th inst., according to a previous agreement. As a result, about fifteen hundred men in the building trades failed to appear for work. At national headquarters of the Prohibition Party the statement is made that in the past two years the party has gained 68,000 votes in the country at large.