A LONG journey on a level plain is wearisome. It is more restful to climb steep hills occasionally, if for no other purpose than to look back from their elevation over the road already traversed, and to look forward to the things we must meet in our onward journey. Such an outlook is the close of the Old Year and the opening of the New.
THE only proper standard by which to judge of the past, the present, the future, is authentic history and present conditions, illumined by the truth of God's Word, which also sheds certain light on the future. The Author of that Word declares: "I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure." Isa. 46:9, 10. It is well to take God into our reckoning. If we follow our own standards, if we discern by the light of our own faint, flickering tapers, if we measure by the rules of the present age, ever boastful of its attainments in knowledge and righteousness, we shall go fearfully astray.
A Brief Review of the World.
IN the light of His Word and known events let us review the world and its events of the past year.
PHYSICALLY, the year has often recalled the words of Christ, "men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." Luke 21:26. At the very beginning of the year the seismic ague seized the earth in Mexico, extending as far north as Missouri and Kansas. Floods followed, doing serious damage. A little later—still in the first month, northwestern South America was shaken, many villages destroyed by a shock lasting seven minutes, and two thousand were reported killed in Colombia and three hundred in Ecuador. The next great calamity was the months of fearful famine in Japan, and synchronous with this the fearful belching of Vesuvius, burying cities, towns, and villages, causing the loss of hundreds of lives, and millions of property. In that same short month of February the West Indies were twice visited with earthquakes, destructive to life and property, and cyclones and tidal waves swept Society Islands and the coast of Colombia. March witnessed successive earthquakes in Formosa, resulting in the loss of more than six thousand lives. Then followed the California calamity with its millions upon millions of loss from earthquake and fire, and deaths reaching not less than two thousand. North China was the next sufferer with great loss of property and life; famine followed in China, the Philippines, Russia. In August Chile's metropolis was shaken to the ground, and other towns ruined, the loss of life numbering from three thousand to five thousand. We will not pause to note the awful fires, cyclones, floods, shipwrecks, train wrecks, mine explosions, in which the aggregate loss of life numbered thousands, and the loss of property, untold. It has been a fearful year to the palsied earth.
Peace to This House.
POLITICALLY the world has seen little change, but a great deal of unrest. The great Orient is making progress in warlike preparations with leaps and bounds, and is one of the unsolved problems to the Western nations. Russia has been in a state of perpetual unrest, seething with revolution, preying upon the very heart of the autocracy. The people are training rapidly, and it looks as tho the Romanoff dynasty was nearing its end. The Papacy, while strengthening its power in the United States and Germany, has lost influence in France, where she is in a life-and-death struggle with the State over her establishment, with the State, at this writing holding the upper hand. The Old Year closes his record with the national outlook as unsettled as ever, with great problems unsolved, with still greater looming in the offing.
PROGRESSIVE the year has been, measured by worldly standards, in research, education, discovery, invention. Financially, notably in the United States and Germany, there has been prosperity to certain classes and enormous increase of wealth to the nation at large. But prosperity intellectually and financially without corresponding increase of recognized obligation morally is of questionable worth.
MORALLY, the year can not be said to have made great advancement, unless increased revelation of wider spread moral turpitude is evidence of a better condition. So some are inclined to solace themselves. There has been revelation of graft, defalcations, crime,4iniquity, vice, moral obliquity in high life and low till the country is flooded with the turbid, fetid tide, the moral sensitiveness of the people is blunted, and the mass have become indifferent. The condition is a fearful one, and the outlook is appalling. Efforts to punish suppress for a time some particular manifestation of criminal greed, changing the form but not the fact. They do not extirpate the ebullient fountain, the selfish, greedy, carnal heart of man.
RELIGIOUSLY, the year has been one for serious thought. It has been marked by no great revivals. The effort to federate the great Protestant churches has gone on apace. The Roman Catholic Church is making marked progress in federating all Catholic societies, lay and religious. But it is a notable fact that both of these efforts are for more influence upon political and public life, not for more power to reach souls for whom Christ died. It is a Gospel fact that the light of the world and the salt of the earth is the church of Jesus Christ; but her saving power lies not in social forms, political power, or social schemes. Advancement in spiritual life is not shown by increase in numbers, in wealth, in great institutions, in worldly and political influence. All these may be manifest, and are; but they are not evidences that the church knows more of Christ or possesses more of His power. Neither are federation and co-operation such evidence. There is a federation which counts as non-essential the plainest truths of God, and puts expediency of man above the truth of God. The only true union is individual life-union with Jesus Christ by faith through God's word. But true advancement in spiritual life is marked, has always been marked, by greater humility, greater self-denial, greater devotion and consecration; clearer separation from worldly aims, policies, principles, methods; more of the power of godliness in transforming men from the influences of selfishness to the likeness of Christ; and bringing forth in saved men the fruits of the Spirit instead of the works of the flesh.
EVIDENCES of progress in the spiritual life are manifest in greater regard for the word of God, greater reverence for His name, greater boldness in speaking His word, greater devotion to Christ Jesus and all the commandments of God. Less laudation of men and more prayer and praise to God, mark the growing church. But do we witness these evidences to-day! Nay, from the standard of God's word in Christ Jesus we know we do not. The very union the divided church is most earnestly seeking is for the purpose of securing political power to promote or protect institutions for which she has no Scripture warrant, or for which she lacks the Spirit's power to witness. The charity she seeks is that which will cloak the infidelity of higher critics rather than that which "rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth." Thank God, there are many faithful souls in all the churches who are seeking, hungering, thirsting after God, and whom God is helping.
The Future.
WHAT the future has for us God's word has plainly delineated. Sad as it is to pen the sequel to all the present sad conditions, we dare not do otherwise. The inevitable logic of facts, the history of all the past, as well as the "more sure word of prophecy," show what is sure to follow the backsliding of the Church and her union with the world. She will seek more and more political power till the union of Church and State is again effected and all its concomitant persecutions of the Dark Ages are upon us; and the persecuted will be those who do God's will. The unparalleled corruption and extravagance of the nations betoken, as they always have, disintegration and destruction. Joel 2 and 3; Revelation 13, 14, 17, and 18; Matthew 24; Luke 21; 2 Timothy 3 and 4; and many other passages show that we are living in the last days, and that the Master's coming is near, "even at the doors."
The Present Duty.
ARE we discouraged?—Not at all. Are we pessimistic?—Verily not. God lives and reigns. Jesus Christ died for men, died for all, lives for all, pleads for all, opens His great storehouse of grace for all. The great question for each and every soul to ask is, How do I stand with respect to all these things? Am I a child of God? Have I been born again? Do I love Him with all my heart? Am I making progress spiritually, morally, heavenward? Let the light of God into the heart. He invites you to invite Him in. He sends His warning message to you, to all the world. It will do its work. It will gather to Him every willing, longing soul who hates sin and longs to be free; who loves righteousness, and longs for the righteousness of God. Upon them He will pour out His Spirit more abundantly than the church has ever known, not excepting the day of Pentecost. Few tho they be in number, unpopular in the world, the power of God will be with their message, for it is His message. And they will triumph gloriously over the beast and his image, his mark, and the number of his name, triumph gloriously in the Lord Jesus Christ.
READER, in the beginning of this New Year, 1907, open your heart and let the Saviour in, whatever others may do. He will come into your hearts with His message of peace, even as He sent His disciples of old. Let Him speak the message of peace and purity and power. Let His light shine through you to others. So 1907 will be to you, what we most earnestly wish, a HAPPY NEW YEAR.
