BLINDNESS HAPPENED TO THE GENTILES.
By James White
It is a matter of astonishment to the world that the Jews were so blind to the fulfillment of prophecy as not to know the day of their visitation. It is equally astonishing that the Protestant world at the present day are so blind in regard to the signs of the times. I notice in a late No. of the Northern Independent an article predicting the speedy termination of the system of Romanism, so far as "its powers for evil" are concerned. This judgment is founded on the late and impending revolutions in Europe. To this end it bespeaks the sympathies and prayers of christians in behalf of Garibaldi, the king of Sardinia, &c. Immediately preceding the article above referred to, is the following from the Christian Guardian: "Church of England.—The Pantheistic element appears very strong in the Episcopal Church in England. The Buddhism of the East, moulded into a more modernized type, has gained ground among many of the clergy, one of whom calls that ancient system Pantheism.—'The gospel preached to the farther Asia half a thousand years before the gospel of Jesus was proclaimed in the nearer East.' These false teachers and 'beneficed betrayers' seem to have allied themselves with christianity as opponents in throwing every possible doubt on the resurrection of the Saviour, and the existence of a God who is not diffused throughout and identified with nature, but is its Creator and Ruler. Sad that University essays, and College lectures, and pulpit homilies, should carry with them such pernicious poison as this infidel system distils. Tractarianism also, in other quarters in the Church, is increasingly bold. A list of the names of 151 clergymen has been affixed to a document recognizing transubstantiation and the mass. Alas! for the church, in which these two egregious errors prevail!" If the temporal power of the Pope is curtailed the system of Romanism has no "power for evil" though half the Protestant world is degenerating into Catholicism! Such is the judgment of Protestants even in America. The outward demonstration is the whole basis of judgment. But in this they are consistent, for they judge of the rise or decline of Protestantism in the same manner. If the meeting-house is large and gaudy, and the church roll large, they call the church prosperous, though the spirit of the gospel has died out and the spirit of the world taken its place. And thus they go on, publishing to the world the evidences of their degenerate, fallen state, and blame us for seeing it!
J. H. W.