p. 8 | No Substitute for the Gospel by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 9, 1913

No Substitute for the Gospel

By C. M. S.

THE evil conditions that exist in this world are the fruit of sin. So long as that evil tree exists in the world, it will bear its fruit. Those conditions can not be eradicated by law. Their eradication depends upon the eradication of sin from human hearts. We do not put an end to the production of fruit by plucking it off the branches of the tree that bears it. The tree will keep on bearing until it is uprooted.

Now the socialist and the National Reformer propose to drive out sin and bring in the kingdom of righteousness in this world by enacting laws to change conditions. It can not be done. The conditions are results of sin. Men do not eradicate malaria from a community by giving quinin to persons suffering from that disease. They eradicate the mosquitoes, and the malaria, which is the fruit of the mosquitoes' activity, vanishes with surprising suddenness. When the cause is removed, the result goes with it.

Characters are not formed, souls are not born into the kingdom of righteousness, by any process of legislation whatever. He whose Christianity depends upon a favorable environment, will awake one day to the fearful reality that his Christianity was a sham, a counterfeit; that he had no Christianity, and that the foundation of his hope and trust was built on quicksand.

Daniel, whose faith and trust and loyalty and fortitude the world will never cease to admire, was a true child of God in spite of the most adverse environment. There is nothing to admire in the man who is good because he has no opportunity to be bad; who acts like a Christian because every occasion for acting otherwise has been removed. Others would never be moved to sing his praise for doing as he did, when they know that he would have done very differently if he could. We admire a Joseph, true to his God under temptation and false accusation; we admire the three Hebrews who were willing to go to their death in the sevenfold-heated furnace if that must be, but unwilling to yield principle as the price of life; and how we admire and how we love Him who, though tempted in all points like as we are, yet rose above that most unpromising and unfavorable environment, and "did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth."

Such characters are the precious stones of the palace of the King, the jewels of divine grace, the pearls that shine with brighter luster because of the friction of their hard and rough environments.

The National Reformer, the church federationist, and the socialist propose to create more promising environments for the people of this world so that better Christians may be produced, forgetful of the fact that spiritual strength as well as physical strength comes only as a result of vigorous contest against the power or force that opposes. We have no brilliant record of Christian character save where we see it contending against the adversary in some unpromising environment. The cases mentioned are examples in this particular.

The Saviour's warning and admonition to his followers indicate beyond question that he did not expect his followers to be in any sense or to any degree the creatures of environment. He said: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." And the apostle declares that Christ left us an example that we should walk "even as he walked." We are to expect tribulation if we are children of God; and tribulation enters very materially into our environment. But "be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." That means that the Christian must rise above "the world," above environment; that he must not yield to it; that if he finally goes down in defeat, the excuse of environment will not avail him. In conquering environment for himself, our Lord conquered it for every soul that will trust in his keeping power.

If it be true that environment is responsible for sin, then Satan goes free as sin's originator, and the blame rests upon heaven itself; for was not Satan in heaven, surrounded by the environment of heaven, when he conceived the ugly monster of wickedness that disrupted heaven and filled the world with graves? If sin was conceived in heaven, with such an environment as that which there existed, what reason have we to suppose that by altering men's environment

in this world, we shall put an end to sin?

The germ of sin infests the human heart, and nothing but true heart conversion, no power but the power of God in the life, can overcome that disease and set men free from the power of sin. That is the purpose of the gospel in the world, and there never can be a substitute for it. Human laws to change men's environment will never accomplish the work. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation."

Sin will be in the world, and the struggle of the faithful children of God against it will be going on, until the day when the Son of man shall come to reward his saints and put an end to sin and sinners. There is only one escape from the power of that thralldom, and that is through complete surrender of the heart to God. Then comes true that wonderful paradox that by surrendering we become conquerors,—"conquerors through him that loved us," over all that had conspired for our ruin.

And that work is an individual work. No man can do it for another. The mass can not do it for the individual, nor the individual for the mass. Every heart is a citadel; and God will not force its walls. He enters and conquers by love alone. We may know, therefore, that any system built up on the idea of saving society independent of the individual, is a system not born of heaven, and not commissioned of heaven to do its work. The hope of the race does not rest in changing the environment of the people so that it will be easy to do good and hard to do evil. It does not rest in human legislation to compel conformity to the customs, practises, and rituals of the church, but in individual submission to a personal Saviour. There is no substitute for the gospel.