Observance of a Perversion
By Editor
There are principles and principles. In which are you trusting? Are they justice, temperance, mercy, truth, love? Or is it the opposite of these? We record another fearful railway accident, this time of the Sunset Express of the Southern Pacific, near Colton, Cal. A train running forty miles an hour ran into an open switch. Ten of the fourteen coaches were derailed; twenty-two persons are known to have been killed; and about one hundred injured, several of whom will die. The greater sufferers were in the lighter cars, day coaches, and tourist sleepers. Of eighty Pullman passengers only two were seriously injured. Observance of a Perversion.
March 28, Emperor Francis Joseph washed the feet of twelve old men in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, before a gathering of archdukes, diplomats, and State officials. Previous to this, assisted by others, he served them with food. Afterward he bestowed upon them silk purses, each containing thirty pieces of silver, which he hung around the neck of each,—a sort of price for the perversion of truth. Still the old emperor did better than most Christians. They do not even attempt it. While peace congresses are multiplying, war talk is multiplying as well, or rather the peace guarded by the bayonet. A very effective cartoon was given to the public two or three years ago of Peace sitting upon a throne, the center of a halo, but the corona of this halo formed by bayonets, every one of which was pointed toward the heart of Peace. That is the kind of peace that is now advocated by our statesmen. For instance, at a recent meeting of the Naval League of the United States, the one thing exalted above everything else was the navy. General Porter declared, “The navy is to the country what the lightning-rod is to the house.” Rear Admiral Barker defined war as a punishment of the sins of nations, and referred to lack of preparation as one of these sins. Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court, spoke for peace, but not apologetic peace. That would be the kind of peace that a big burly policeman would enforce among boys who in his presence would quiet down, but in his absence would fight. Justice Harlan said, “Some of the speakers have spoken of ship for ship and man for man. I believe in two ships for every other navy’s one, and two men for every one.” Representative Sulzer, of New York, favored a small army but a big navy, advocating bigger ships and greater speed and twenty-five per cent. increase in the salary of all naval and army men. Read, in connection with this, God’s prophecy in Joel, the third chapter: “Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up,” “beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong.” And the prophet declares that all this is when the great day of God is impending. In connection with this read also 1 Thess. 5:2-4: “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall in nowise escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” Reasoning from analogy, it seems evident that there are other planets, and that they are inhabited. We can not conceive that this earth is the only inhabited sphere among the countless spheres of the universe—visible and invisible. The sons of God of Job 1 evidently represented other worlds, while Satan the usurper represented this earth. But while there are doubtless many other inhabited worlds, Heb. 1:3, nor 11:3 does not prove it. The word there translated “worlds” is the Greek word aion, meaning “age” or “duration.” The original Garden of Eden has been located in the mountains of southwestern Asia, at the North Pole, and elsewhere. The last location is said by Prof. Clinton McMickle, a Kansas scientist, to be in Yazoo County, Miss., on the farm of Mr. W. H. Henry, where is now the ruins of what was a once splendid city. Why not believe as the Bible seems clearly to teach, that after sin entered this world, the Garden of Eden was transplanted in the New Jerusalem on high; and that when this earth is to be restored from the curse, it will come down from heaven upon the earth. More than this, the arrangement of the world before the Deluge was not the same as now. Holy Writ expressly declares that “the world [the kosmos, arrangement] that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” 2 Peter 3:6. STUDIES IN THE CHRIST LIFE.
Our twenty-six symposium numbers beginning May 1 will be enriched by a series of most interesting studies in our Home Department on the life of Christ as conducted in a Christian home. The whole family will enjoy it. The first issue of the twenty-six specials is on the Bible, with a fine new cover design. According to the Washington Times, for the four years ending in 1904, the rate of deaths per 100,000 in American cities of more than 50,000 population ran as high as 410. That was Denver. In New Orleans, 326; San Francisco, 285; Washington, 276. This does not mean that Denver and San Francisco are the most unhealthy places to live, but people flocked to these cities who were consumptive, and the deaths were largely from hopeless cases. The District of Columbia health officer believes that greater benefit would accrue from the testing of milk and the killing of infected animals than anything else. The United States Department of Agriculture, in the booklet which it issued in the last of December, 1906, declares, “There is no means to-day by which persons are brought into closer contact with tuberculous matter than among the dairy products obtained from, or in the environments of, tuberculous cows. The wide use of milk, . . . the ease with which it may be contaminated, . . . all lead to one conclusion; namely, that we have no more active agent than tuberculous cows for the increase of tuberculosis among animals and its persistence among men.” These things ought to lead to great care in all local communities, and especially among users of milk. There has been handed us a paper containing an article entitled, “Is the First Day of the Week Ever Called Sabbath in the New Testament?” The writer goes on to say that two ministers whom he met offered, he believes, about fifteen hundred dollars to any person who would show in the Bible where the first day of the week is called Sabbath. He declares that he showed this, but the fifteen hundred dollars was refused. His proof was that Sabbaton where it occurs in Matt. 28:1, and parallel passages, ought to be translated Sabbath, “now after Sabbath to the dawning into the first Sabbath.” 1 Cor. 16:2, “Every first Sabbath.” And then he refers to one German translation that so translates it. As we have before pointed out many times, all the scholarship of the world is against it. No one who has a scholarship the reputation of which is worth maintaining would for one moment render the Greek of Matt. 28:1, “After Sabbath to the dawning into the first Sabbath.” This writer declares Sabbaton is universally translated Sabbath where it refers to the seventh day of the week. That is true. It refers to the seventh day of the week, and after the seventh day of the week was the whole week named. The very original of the term week, held by the Semitic nations thru whom the Sabbath truth came to us, comes from Sabbath. They have no names for the days, as Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It is first day into the Sabbath, second day into the Sabbath, third day into the Sabbath, and so on all thru the whole week; Friday is called Sabbath eve, and the seventh day the Sabbath. Consequently the term came to mean the whole week. Take for instance Luke 18:12, where the Pharisee says, “I fast twice in the week;” it would be nonsense to say, “I fast twice in the Sabbath.” The expression means week, and the scholars who translated the King James Version, and the Revised Version, and every other version, so far as we know, except the one German version and one other English translation, invariably so render. The grammar of the Greek forbids rendering it in any other way. A recent issue of an eastern paper represented the President of the United States in pugilistic trim, hammering away at a bag entitled “State Rights.” One of the tendencies of the time is to centralize government. Men in power seem to think that it is necessary. It may be. It is a sad commentary on the times, if it is. Any people ought to be such that the least government possible is the best government, but as facilities for transportation increase, as confederation is rapidly taking place among the various classes of criminals, as well as other strata of the social world, men are feeling that the criminal law and the repressing hand ought to govern the whole territory. Another thing which increases the seeming necessity of this is that municipal courts and State courts are much more likely to be purchasable than are Federal courts. There is no question but what in some instances of this kind the use of the now famous “Big Stick” has been an excellent thing, but strengthen this centralized power a little more, and place on the throne of power one less regardful of the rights of others, and we would have the centralized power used for the exercise of tyranny. That will be more manifest in religious form when Revelation 13 is fulfilled, and the Church-and-State demagogues and political schemers accomplish their demands for a recognition of a union of Church and State. They do not call it by this name, but by whatever name it is called, it is as truly so as ever existed in the Dark Ages. Just now people regard these things very lightly; there will come a time when they will see that they are among the very beginnings of the ruin of the government. One deceived soul writes us that she hears spirits singing that “Christ the Lord has come; let all the nations know, and the earth receive her King,” and more besides. She writes us that we should print this or offend God. But God does not contradict Himself. When Christ the Lord comes the second time, all the world shall know, “Behold, He cometh in clouds, and every eye shall see Him.” This “secret” or “spiritual” coming of Christ is one of the deceptions of the enemy. A study of the plan of salvation in the light of the sanctuary will correctly adjust and harmonize all seemingly discordant texts. A San Francisco paper reports that in a recent sermon in that city, the Rev. E. H. Hadlock, of the First English Lutheran Church, declared: “Christ called the Sabbath the first day of the week instead of the seventh.” Where? There are many who would like to know. It was in 1865 that the motto “In God we trust” was first placed on our national coins, but it does not seem to have helped the general faith or morals of the people.