God's Healing Message---the Gospel
By Prof. J. A. L. Derby
THAT there is in the world to-day more liberty, more enlightenment, more material wealth, than ever before, no philosopher, reformer, or prophet will deny. Geologists tell us of the glacial age, when, they say, slow-creeping continents of ice slipped down from the north over our globe and changed the face of the earth. But mightier by far has been the change wrought by the printing-press. And not as then to chill and gore and abrade; but to enrich and broaden individual life by placing within the power of conquest of each a new world—the empire of mind, the realm of thought—a refuge from physical drudgery and carking care. In the most literal sense of Daniel's prophecy, knowledge has been increased. The life that knows only the body and its physical needs, that labors only to supply its appetite, is brutish, animal. To enter the life of the mind, to live in the sphere of ideas, we must ascend. And this is indeed worthier of us as beings endowed with reason. Printing, public libraries, free education, and the general diffusion of the best that has been thought and said, has placed the intellectual life within a hand's grasp of almost any one. Nobility Is Not Conferable.
That by all this our manners are more refined, we shall not doubt. But are we the more ennobled? Alas, nobility is not conferred by kings, nor is it the offspring of books or schools. The gliding of an adder or the soaring of a vulture is more graceful than the jerking, jolting method by which even the most benevolent philanthropist must move about. We need but recall that the ages of most ostentatious polish—as in Greece, Rome, France—have marked the periods of deepest corruption, to disabuse our minds of the delusion that a society enlightened and refined is necessarily the nobler. Education does not inevitably make for character. Freedom Alone Can Not Save.
And what has freedom done for the world? Take, for example, the land of amplest liberty—America. Nothing but the profoundest ignorance attempts to deny that our public life is the basest and most corrupt in the world. Our municipal government is the despair of civilization, as it is also its shame. Look at any great city in this land, from New York with its graft ring and Tammany Hall, to San Francisco with its official thieves and plunderers, and what do we find?—Graft and boodle, and these, not as incident or accident, but as the undeviating, shameless intent. If this condition were found only in municipal circles, we should have enough to alarm us. But the Pennsylvania capitol frauds are the less numerous simply because occasions are less. Has liberty of competition satisfied greed?—No, it must monopolize the earth. We talk of the evolution of industry. What we mean is the broadened opportunity for greed to display its nature. What has liberty done for labor?—Given it a chance to plot murder in its secret circles; to organize incendiarism, as in almost every strike; to commission sluggers, as wherever a man tries to work independently of a union. And these not because it is labor, but because it is human nature. It is folly to contend that either the rich or the poor, either capital or labor, are the happier for liberty. But what of wealth? Has not the astonishing, unprecedented production of supplies for our material needs, modifying the pressure of hunger and want, given our moral nature a chance to expand? A chance, doubtless. A million dollars of surplus in my bank account would doubtless give me a chance to do much philanthropic work for my fellow beings. But it would give me also a chance the easier to oppress others, to make a vulgar display, to compete with others in ostentation, to gratify my desire to have others look up to me as their superior, to feed my appetite and my vanity. Whether plenty is a blessing or a curse depends on heart condition, on what principles and motives control one. Only the mainspring of conduct can determine for us the value of liberty. If all men would rule themselves there would be no need of civil law. Is civilization then to be regretted? Must we go back to tyranny, ignorance, and want? Liberty should certainly be deplored, if it necessarily resulted in license and anarchy. Education should be shunned, if it inevitably resulted in sharpening men's faculties the better to contrive evil. Wealth should indeed be lamented, if individual and social decay and corruption were its only possible effects. Liberty Not the Cause; Only the Opportunity.
But the fact is, none of these undesirable consequences are chargeable to the antecedents mentioned. A mad dog does not bite because he is at liberty, but because he is mad. If he were a normal creature, he might, by his liberty, be of the greatest service to his master. Liberty does not beget license; but man perverts liberty. Skill as an engraver does not make a man a counterfeiter; a dishonest heart misuses that skill. Education does not make for pedantry, atheism, and rascality, but men will carry out their inclinations with the best means at their disposal. Money may buy bread and the enrichment of my own life and the life of others; or it may purchase poisons for perverted and uncontrolled appetites, degradation and ruin for myself and others. So we stand face to face with the problem: An age with the largest opportunities for the realization of the truest, richest, completest living, yet steadily passing into degeneracy of morals, anarchy of government, the unrestricted sway of the worst passions. Society is diseased. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From crown to sole there is no soundness in it, but only wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. Its education is materialistic and atheistic; its morality is a shallow ethical culture; its refinement a sterile and rampant code of forms. Are we better? Are we happier? Is there less of malice, envy, hate, unkindness, ingratitude, selfishness, grudging, ill-will, spite, bitterness, wrath, passion, suspicion, backbiting, insinuation, ruthless ambition, murder, drunkenness? Only a false and purblind optimism would pretend to answer, "Yes." Well might we tremble and despair if left to human wisdom to devise the remedy or to forecast the end. But a Higher than man has spoken. He that knoweth the end from the beginning hath declared them both. In the volume of the Book it is written. God, who determines the limits of the nations that they may seek after Him (Acts 17:26, 27), who marks whether they fulfil this purpose or not, has foretold this age, has illustrated His method of dealing with it, and has revealed the only remedy. When Babylon of the ancient day had filled the cup of its iniquity, a divine message of impending judgment, of gracious warning, and of proffered mercy was sent thru the prophet Jeremiah. The record is found in the 50th and 51st chapters of his book. But the message was slighted. Why should the walls of Babylon tremble at the voice of the mournful Jeremiah brooding over the fate of his conquered country? So the warning went unheeded. But the record remains: "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed." There is but one specific for the moral diseases of the individual, of society, and of the race. "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings." Jer. 3:22. When the call to a nation falls upon listless ears, then but one thing remains—to lead out the few individuals that will listen. "Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul; be not cut off in her iniquity." When the world lends but a deaf ear, we may know that the same time has arrived—its destruction is near. "For this is the time of the Lord's vengeance: He will render unto her a recompense." Jer. 51:6. That time in the earth's history has fully come. Society as a whole is beyond healing. There is no political panacea to meet the need. Philosophy is a burnt-out torch. Schemes of moral rejuvenation have been abandoned by the world itself. "Babylon is fallen" (Jer. 51:8), was the message to a doomed nation.5"Babylon is fallen" (Rev. 14:8), is the message to a doomed world. Destruction followed then; destruction will soon follow now. Individuals could be saved from the general destruction then; individuals can be saved now. God was the Refuge then; God is the Refuge now. The "everlasting Gospel" of divine forgiveness and love was the healing balm then; the everlasting Gospel will save yet a very little while; soon the offer of mercy will be heard no more forever.