p. 158 | BREVITIES by J. CLARKE

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 2, 1860

BREVITIES.

By J. CLARKE

A FRIEND, whose friendship only extends to this world's affairs, thus reasons: I shall have no more argument with A., for he has the Bible at his tongue's end, (but mind you, if he can get a chance at B. he belabors him most stoutly).

Teachableness is a Christian grace, and a Christian should be willing to learn, even of a child, but he need not tell the child of it.

Keep your children busy; idle habits will encourage vice, while industrious habits strengthen and foster virtue.

I do not know of any long, tedious, prosy dissertations, or dry sermons, in Scripture.

I would not make up my mind upon any subject upon which I was not posted, and this is a good preventive of slander, small talk, mistakes in dispute, and it keeps a path open for truth to travel in, while it keeps error in quarantine, until it is weighed.

Fits and starts in religion are only outward symptoms of a guilty conscience, occasionally asserting the supremacy of truth, while the will is working in a contrary direction. And thus the will ordinarily takes the lead. Conscience being weakened, and poorly educated, she succumbs to the will, which is influenced by the passions, and the popular customs and opinions

of the day: the will when once renovated, works easily, and thoroughly.

Some think it quite innocent to get discouraged; what do you think Gen. Scott would do with a healthy soldier, who on some important expedition should fall back from the main body, and say, I am discouraged? Would such a soldier be trusted, when storming the enemy's fort? No; what would he be good for? In truth I cannot tell. You would not want him on your farm; such chicken-hearted soldiers can enjoy a seat at the warm fireside, but they had not better venture out much, where there is danger and self-denial.

God's truth, when sanctified to the heart, warms, strengthens, illuminates, animates, and communicates something of an angelic nature to the mind, which is perceptibly felt; certainly we need not doubt the power of God to change the earthly body to a heavenly one, when the leaven is already at work. This may seem a sanguine view of the subject, but it is the view of all those who have felt this influence in the heart. If the germ is thus visible, and tangible, what shall be the full development? But if any one doubts, let him account for the undeviating constancy, and unshaken fortitude of all the Christian martyrs, account if you can, on any other theory, for their joyful songs as the flames scorched their bodies at the stake?

Our trials as yet only make us cheerful; when real persecution comes we expect to be joyful.

SETTING STAKES.—The work of redemption is not where and at no time stationary, but progressive; and here is the popular but fatal error: the conclusion that at a certain time the work was completed. Thus the Jews set their stake at Moses, and could not tolerate the idea that any new station should be made; and now popular Christianity halts at the cross, and considers these profane who progress to the close of the 2300 days; but it will go forward until death is vanquished, Satan and his host annihilated, and the holy city located; then the arch of prophecy will be spanned, then will the song of triumph arise of complete and final victory. Christ did not say, The work of redemption is finished; but, It is finished; that is, his mortal life, and pains, and sufferings, were then ended.

BE QUICK !—If your haystack was on fire, you would not wait until it was wrapped in a flame, but you would run, you would leap, yea, fly if possible, and extinguish the flame while it was yet so slightly kindled that a slight effort would put out the fire. Why not use the same good sense in regard to all the grosser passions, extinguish the first little spark of malice, envy, jealousy, covetousness, pride, ambition, vain-glory, and base lust. There is a trite but good old proverb which says, Cover up the well before the child falls into it.

JEZEBEL OF REV. II, 20, is no doubt Papal Rome, which seduced the servants of God, by teaching the Papal doctrine among them, thus corrupting the church; during the Thyatira period (from 538 to 1798, Catholic supremacy of 1260 years), in which the power of the true church was scattered, and wasted, by the sword, the flame, the rack, the dungeon, and all possible persecutions, that she was indeed as the prophet says (see Dan. vii, 25,) worn out, her champions exterminated, and their writings burned, the Bible locked within the cloister, and ignorance chartered by common law. This was a fine time for Jezebel. Then she rioted in wanton pleasure. But the time of reckoning came, when Luther and cotemporary reformers summoned her to the bar of public opinion, and loudly called for a reform in the Roman Catholic church. Then she had for years a space to repent. The reformers did not at first draw off; but (for many years) called for a reform, and condemned abuses and crimes, which the Papal party stoutly resisted, and thus brought down upon the Roman church the wrath of the whole enlightened world; and now Jezebel was in pangs, when one after another of her civil dominions declared for the doctrines of Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Wickliffe, Huss, and Knox, and a host of them. These civil powers had united (prior to this), with the Catholic church; and this the Scriptures call spiritual fornication, when the church unites its interests with the secular arm, that is, legalizes its doctrines, and enforces its decrees, and carries out its ecclesiastical views by the power of the civil arm; and the fruit of this connection now was, the troubles of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which popes and princes contended in council and on the battle-field, for the supremacy.

But the princes prevailed, and a host of sects and churches were voluntarily cut off from the Roman church, most of them with creeds so resembling the Roman doctrines (although in many respects reformed), that they might well be called daughters of Jezebel, and these reformed priests made these youthful daughters appear fair, as though innocence were their portion for the future; but they halted, and settled down into false security, supposing that these creeds contained the whole that was necessary to reform, and although the people of God were in these churches, and were innocent, because they did not know the depth of Satan [see verse 24], yet as a whole these children (sects) would eventually [see Rev. xvi], be killed with death [chap. ii, 23], not because they had reformed, but because they ceased reforming. They set their stakes at certain points: Calvinists at Calvin, Lutherans at Luther, Wesleyans at Wesley, &c. Thus these daughters, which in youth gave such fair promise of excellence, do now in age develop the characteristics of their backsliding mother, Jezebel, and with her await the execution of the judgment.

But the rest (remnant) in Thyatira [see verse 24] are exhorted to hold fast till I (Jesus) come, and this rest (remnant) will now in the Laodicean age hear the message which calls for holiness of heart; calls out from Babylon the remnant, which have not known the depths of Satan, and hastens the remnant from this Babylonish family of Jezebel the harlot, these daughters whose language is confused like the builders' of the tower, who could not understand each other, who had each a gibberish, a shibboleth of their own.

And a cheering promise is given [see chap. ii, 26–28] to him that overcomes, of power over the nations; and the morning star, the bright and morning star [Rev. xxii, 16] to such as survive to this time, and hear this blessed news of Christ's last work, in preparing a people to meet him, and his speedy return. To such as overcome, this is indeed a cheering promise; and as a furious Jehu overthrew the house of Ahab and Jezebel, so will the wrath of God with fury burst upon the antitypical Jezebel, and she with her daughters will die. Flee then, O ye righteous, from the city of destruction.

J. CLARKE.