Review and Herald, Vol. 53, No. 4. (1/23/1879)

Review and Herald

Jan 23, 1879

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 23, 1879

EMANATION AND ABSORPTION.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

BY ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.

We have now seen that of the different sects of philosophers, the Aristotelians, the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academics, and the Pyrrhonists denied the immortality of the soul; and that the great mass of the people agreed with them on this subject. This leaves only the Platonics and Pythagoreans, and these sects, it is claimed, did believe the soul immortal. We know that they talked about the immortality of the soul, and argued about it, and professed to believe in it; but the doctrine they discussed was only that of emanation and immanation, or absorption. That is, they thought the soul a part of God, an emanation from him, separated from him for a short time, but destined finally, either at the death of the body or at some future time, to return to him, be re-absorbed into his being, and thus lose all personality and conscious existence. This view, it will be seen, virtually amounts to annihilation of the soul. It is not at all like the present doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

On this point Bishop Warburton remarks:

“But when the ancients are said to hold the pre and post existence of the soul, and therefore to attribute a proper eternity to it, we must not suppose that they understood it to be eternal in its distinct and peculiar existence; but that it was discerped from the substance of God, in time, and would, in time, be rejoined and resolved into it again. This they explained by a closed vessel filled with sea-water, which, swimming awhile upon the ocean, does, on the vessel’s breaking, flow in again, and mingle with the common mass. They only differed about the time of this reunion and resolution: the greater part holding it to be at death; but Pythagoreans, not till after many transmigrations. The Platonists went between these two opinions, and rejoined pure and unpolluted souls immediately to the Universal Spirit; but those which had contracted much defilement were sent into a succession of other bodies, to purge and purify them, before they returned to their parent substance” Then he justly adds: “Thus we see this very opinion of the soul’s eternity, which hath made modern writers conclude that the ancient sages believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, was, in truth, the very reason why they believed it not.”

This was the doctrine of the Platonists and Pythagoreans.

Speaking of this subject, Mr. Watson remarks:—

“Thus philosophy refined upon the doctrine of immortality until it converted it into annihilation itself; for so it is, in the most absolute sense, as to distinct consciousness and personality. The prevalence of this notion under different modifications is indeed very remarkable.”

He thus indorses Warburton’s position:

“Some learned men have denied the consequence which Warburton wished to establish from these premises, and consider the re-absorption of these sages as figurative, and consequently compatible with distinct consciousness and individuality. The researches, however, since that time made into the corresponding philosophy of the Hindoos, bear this acute and learned man out to the full length of his conclusions.”

Of the belief of the philosophers in the immortality of the soul, the Encyclopædia Britannica says:—

“This, however, appears by no means to have been the case with the systems of any, as far as we can learn, of those ancient philosophers who contended the most strenuously for the immortality of the soul. For not only do they seem to have agreed that no suffering could be expected by the wicked in another life, on the grounds that the gods were incapable of anger and therefore could not punish, but the very notion of the soul’s immortality, as taught by them, involved the complete destruction of distinct, personal existence.

“Their notion was, that is when they spoke their real sentiments (for in their exoteric or popular works they often inculcate, for the benefit of the vulgar, the doctrine of the future retribution, which they elsewhere laugh at), that the soul of each man is a portion of that spirit which pervades the universe, to which it is reunited at death, and becomes again an undistinguishable part of the great Whole, just as the body is resolved into the general mass of matter. So that their immortality, or rather eternity, of the soul, was anterior as well as posterior; as it was to have no end, so it had no beginning; and the boasted continuance of existence, which, according to this system, we are to expect after death, consists in returning to the state in which we were before birth; which every one must perceive is the same thing virtually as annihilation. Such, then, were the views which prevailed among the most highly enlightened nations of antiquity on this subject.”

What will our friends say to these facts? Not one of the ancients believed in the eternal, personal existence of the soul. All souls were finally to lose their separate existence, and be re-absorbed into God. Certainly these will not be claimed as orthodox believers in the immortality of the soul! With these views they could not possibly believe in the eternal misery of the wicked.

GLORIFY THE LORD IN THE FIRES.

Among the many illustrations of Scripture which Whitefield introduced into his sermons, one is truly worthy of record. Preaching from the words, “Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires,” Isa. 24:15, he said: “When I was some years ago at Shields, I went into a glass-house, and standing very attentively, I saw several masses of burning glass of various forms. The workman took one piece of glass and put it into one furnace, then he put it into a second, and then into a third. I asked him, ‘Why do you put that into so many fires?’ He answered me, ‘O sir, the first is not hot enough, nor the second, and therefore we put it into the third, and that will make it transparent.’ Oh, thought I, does this man put this glass into one furnace after another that it may be rendered perfect? O my God! put me into one furnace after another, that my soul may be transparent, that I may see God as he is.”

DAVID AND HIS SIN.

By W. H. Littlejohn

BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN,

Wherever the Bible is read, the writings and history of King David are destined to occupy a conspicuous place in the thoughts of men.

In what he has written and said in the Psalms and elsewhere, the devout mind finds a spiritual aliment which affords consolation, and instruction adapted to nearly every want and circumstance in life.

In what he has done, the infidel finds a weapon which he employs with more or less effect in his warfare against the inspiration of the Scriptures.

On one occasion the Lord declared that “David was a man after his own heart.” This declaration has furnished the text for many a labored attack upon the character of the God of the Bible. “Why,” says the cavalier, “if David was indeed a man after the heart of the God of Israel, then that God furnishes us with an adulterer and a murderer as a model of the highest type of manhood of which he can conceive. But such a statement we cannot accept as a true representation of the ideal of manhood which the God of the universe does really hold; and we therefore reject the whole statement, and the scriptures which contain it, as a sheer fabrication and a libel upon the character of the great author of all things.”

With this declaration, the issue is squarely made between those who are believers in the inspiration of the Old Testament and those who are deistical in their way of thinking. At first blush it would seem, also, that the rejecter of God's word possesses an advantage in the argument which it would be hard to overcome. No unprejudiced mind can believe for a moment that murder or adultery is right. When, therefore, the objector fastens the one squarely, and the other at least by complicity, upon an individual who was not only a king but also a prophet of the Most High, it is difficult to see how it would be possible to vindicate the God of David if, indeed, it is true, as charged, that David was approved by him as holy while in the continued commission of these wrong acts.

But before we surrender all faith in a book which purports to be a revelation from Heaven to fallen man, and which in its teaching is, as a whole, as outspoken in its condemnation of the sins in question as the infidel possibly can be, let us first inquire whether his premises are well taken and his conclusions correctly drawn therefrom.

We inquire, therefore, Was David guilty of adultery? The answer is necessarily in the affirmative.

We inquire again, Did he connive at the destruction of Uriah the Hittite for the purpose of shielding himself from shame?

The reply is once more in the affirmative. We ask still further, Did the God of Heaven ever approve David for the commission of either of these deeds?

Here the reply is positively in the negative. So far was he from doing so that he sent to the king the prophet Nathan, to declare to him the parable of the little ewe lamb which was the only property of the poor man, and which his rich neighbor took by violence from him and slew, for the express purpose of helping the king to see the enormity of his sin in the case of the wife of Uriah, and of furnishing an opportunity to express the utter abhorrence in which his course in the matter was held by the God of Heaven. (2 Sam., chap. 12.) In order, also, to put the matter beyond the region of debate, it is declared in the eleventh chapter and twenty-seventh verse of second Samuel that “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord;” and in the twelfth chapter of the same book, that God—not satisfied with a simple denunciation in words of the king's course—also declared unto him that as a punishment of his crime the sword should not depart from his house; at the same time smiting with death the illegitimate offspring of the king's lust. How far the threatenings of Jehovah were fulfilled the sad history of murder, rape, and rebellion in the king's own household, and among his own offspring, bears ample testimony.

Having shown now that the skeptic is wrong in asserting that God did really indorse the action of David, we are prepared to consider candidly and carefully the declaration that the latter “was a man after God's own heart.”

Is such language as is claimed by the infidel anywhere employed in the Scriptures?

It is certainly so done. (1 Sam. 13:14.) The next interrogatory to be propounded is, Was it before or after the king's connection with the matter of Uriah and his wife that the language was employed?

An examination of the record shows that, according to the chronology of our Bibles, this language was used fifty-eight years before the crimes had transpired which have been passing in review.

Here, then, two important facts are brought out. The first is that David's great transgression occurred in the latter part of his life, and that God emphatically condemned and punished the same, as positively set forth in the Word.

The second is, that the words of commendation and approval which God spoke of the king were uttered while yet he was innocent of adultery and complicity in the destruction of Uriah.

Putting these things together, we find that the infidel has made out his case by a perversion of the facts which appertain thereto.

He represents God as approving the course of David and cites as evidence the fact that the former spoke commendably of the latter, leaving us to infer that he did so after the latter had committed the sins in question. But as this is not true, he has utterly failed to carry his point, unless he can show that God could not properly approve the course of a man at one period of his life, and disapprove it at another.

But can he do this?

By no means. The slightest reflection will satisfy the candid reader that the life of many a man can be shown to have been exemplary and worthy of commendation up to a given point, whose subsequent course—as the result of strong temptation—has been characterized by deeds of the darkest hue.

Many a criminal has been able to point to the first step which he took in his downward course, and back of that to a life of comparative innocence.

As in their cases so in that of David. His earliest history was his best history. Up to the fatal hour of the king's walk upon the housetop, and his consequent amour with the wife of Uriah, his chastity, according to the standard of these times, was unimpeachable.

How unfair, therefore, the course of the infidel, who, ignoring this fact and the positive reprobation, in so many words, of David's course by the God of Heaven, seeks, by confounding the dates of the commission of the specific sins by David and God's endorsement of him, to deceive the unlearned and unwary into the belief that the God of the Bible had approved in the case of David of great immorality in action. The only justification which can possibly be offered in the behalf of those who persist in thus misrepresenting the real attitude of the author of the Scriptures as related to the sins of one of the greatest

men that ever lived, must be looked for in the ignorance of those who indulge in the same.

If, however, they shall still persist in their misrepresentations when apprised of their mistake, then this plea even cannot be offered in their behalf.

Should it be urged by any that the difficulties of the case are not entirely removed by the explanation given, since God did employ David subsequently to his fall, then we reply that—granting this to be the case—he was wholly justified in so doing; for if David sinned he repented of that sin in bitterness of soul, and turned again to the God of Heaven with his whole heart.

Will any one insist that after he had done so God ought still to cast him off, and to refuse to him a place of honor or usefulness?

Should they do so, we inquire, Who, then, can God employ in manifesting himself to men?

If it be true that he ought only to use those as the mediums of his revelation who have never sinned, and if it be true that thorough repentance for sin when once committed will not render it possible for God to employ the individual thus repenting as an instrument in his service, then he is precluded from revealing himself to us altogether; since “there is none that doeth good and sinneth not.”

To our mind the fact that God received David back to full favor after full contrition, instead of furnishing us an occasion for cavil, should be accepted as one for profound gratitude and thanksgiving; since it affords to all the assurance that their past transgressions do not necessarily exclude them from the favor of Heaven, and that there is hope for sinners of the deepest dye provided they repent and reform.

To our mind, also, the character of David, when taken as a whole, is—after making all due allowance for the times in which he lived—one of the grandest in history.

If he had his faults, he was also possessed of shining virtues. From the humblest walks in life—from following his father's sheep in the wilderness—he rose steadily to the highest honor which his generation could confer. As a warrior, his prowess was unequaled, and his genius was without a parallel in his age. As a king, he was wise and beneficent. As a prophet, his hand swept the cords of human sympathy, and struck the key of human experience, as no other had done before or has done since. As a father, his tenderness of heart and forgiving spirit, as he agonizes and pours forth a flood of tears at the undeserved death of a rebellious and unworthy child, are most forcibly brought out in his “would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33). As a fugitive from the unreasoning and unreasonable Saul, his forbearance is most impressively illustrated by his refusal to take vengeance on his adversary when occasion had been offered him again and again. As a repentant sinner, the heartiness and thoroughness of his contrition afford manifest evidence that, although possessed of the weaknesses of human nature, there was in him after all a strength of principle which gave him the victory in the last resort. Sad it is indeed that through one fatal mistake his career has been measurably clouded.

But even in that mistake we see a disposition to counteract the terrible effects which would naturally follow. This he could not do altogether. The prophet declared that in his fall the wicked should take occasion to blaspheme God. (2 Sam. 12:14.) How fully this prediction has been realized the necessity for this article proves. While, therefore, we regret the action, and the occasion which it has afforded to the enemies of God for traducing his word, our faith in that word should be strengthened when we see how literally this prophecy concerning the course which the enemies of God would pursue in reference to David's sin has been fulfilled in ages in the past, and how literally it is accomplished even before our own eyes.—Allegan County Democrat.

LIGHT

By Eliza H. Morton

Long years ago, a tiny star Arose, and shed its beams afar; It gleamed and shone and cast its light Down through earth’s vistas dark as night.

The human race, all vile and weak, That Day-star now can love and seek; And in the light walk evermore, For death and sin will soon be o’er.

Like drops of dew, like grains of sand, The light is sown o’er all the land; All nations hear the warning cry, The burden this: “The end is nigh,”

O mortal man! O can it be, That light is being sown for thee; And that thine eyes are turned away, And darkness takes the place of day?

An awful look of black despair The face of sinners soon will wear, When glory lightens up the sky, And Jesus leaves his home on high;

And with a flood of living light Appears with throngs of angels bright, To give his people crowns of gold, And peace, and joy, and wealth untold.

The darkness then will darker grow And end in everlasting woe; The light will shine and shine for aye, For then will dawn eternal day.

ELIZA H. MORTON, Allen’s Corner, Me.

LENGTH OF DAYS.

By Eliza H. Morton

In this degenerate age few attain to the appointed years of man. The man in the prime of life, the youth in the vigor of his strength, and the infant of tender years, alike lie down in the silent grave. Men skilled in the arts and sciences have vainly sought for the “elixir of life,” but human power is all unavailing in its attempts to lengthen out the brittle thread of human existence. Spurious remedies for every known disease exist, but no mortal physician has dared to attempt or pretend to recall the breath of life after it has left the body.

A good old age may be attained by regarding the laws of health, and it is the duty of all to so care for the body that life will not prove a burden. Happy are those who “sink into the grave like a shock of corn fully ripe.”

This life, at best, is short and fleeting; but soon the Lifegiver will open the graveyards of earth and satisfy the righteous with length of days forever and ever.”

ELIZA H. MORTON.

IMPORTANT MATTERS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

FRIDAY EVENING FOR SABBATH-SCHOOL LESSONS.

We rejoice at the general movement now being put forth among our people in the Sabbath-school work. These efforts have been made none too soon. We have many things to learn in this work. Indeed, we have paid so little attention to it that we have nearly everything to learn. Observation has led me to believe that Friday evening should be devoted to studying Sabbath-school lessons, by the officers in the school, the teachers, and the scholars.

In many cases heretofore, our brethren have had prayer-meetings on Friday evening; but this seems objectionable for several reasons. 1. It throws all our meetings together on one day,—prayer-meeting on Friday evening, Sabbath-school Sabbath morning, and prayer and social meeting Sabbath afternoon. We think it would be better to have our prayer-meeting in the middle of the week, say Tuesday evening. 2. The Friday evening prayer-meeting is objectionable because it takes the very time that should be devoted to a preparation for the Sabbath-school.

Generally, brethren and sisters are tired Friday evening, after making preparation for the Sabbath. The REVIEW comes Thursday or Friday too. If they could spend Friday evening at home reading the REVIEW, getting their lessons, instructing the children, and resting, they would be all prepared for the Sabbath-school next day. Quite generally this practice is now coming to be adopted. We recommend every church in Ohio to adopt this custom. Have your prayer-meetings Tuesday evenings, and devote Friday evening to the Sabbath-school work.

“GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS.”

There are two texts in the Bible which we ministers in Ohio need to lay to heart and put into practice immediately. The first one is the admonition of our Saviour, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” John 6:12. And the second is, “Strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die.” Rev. 3:2.

We do not claim that the first text exactly applies to the subject in hand, but it is good advice and somewhat applicable after all. But the second is directly to the point. All over Ohio there are scattered, lone Sabbath-keepers, one here, two or three there, six or eight in another place, and in several places even as many as a dozen or twenty in the same neighborhood. Some of these have embraced the truth by reading; but in many cases a course of lectures or even a tent-meeting has been held in these places. In some instances a good little company of from twenty to forty has thus been brought out; but they have been left altogether, without any further instruction. Perhaps a minister has visited them and spent one Sabbath with them once or twice during a year, and that is all.

They know comparatively little about the workings of the message. Few of them take the REVIEW, and less of them Good Health and the Instructor. Most of them are doing nothing to support the cause in any of its branches. A great many of them use tobacco, tea, and coffee, and know nothing of the health reform, nothing of the testimonies, and they are as weak as water. Now these Sabbath-keepers, with proper instruction, would be as strong in the faith and as zealous as the best of us, but they have had no fair chance.

There are a great many Sabbath-keepers in Ohio who are not near enough to a church to attend regular meetings. No one visits them; no meetings are held with them. Perhaps they are opposed in their own families, and meet with no sympathy from anybody. They get discouraged. In some cases they are poor, and not able to have our papers and books as they would like to do. And these dear souls come to feel that nobody cares for them. Keeping the Sabbath has separated them from their friends and from other churches around them, brethren do not look after them, and hence they are in a very sad condition. Many of them will be lost unless they are helped. In the places where these persons live there is the very best chance in the world to hold meetings, and this would encourage these souls, bring out other Sabbath-keeping families, and thus build up a little church. I have no burden at present to enter entirely new fields to raise up more churches in Ohio.

Dear brethren, the Lord will hold us accountable for these souls. They need our watchcare. We must look after them. I believe it should be the work of every minister and director in Ohio, for the next six months at least, to hunt up these expiring brands, gather up these fragments, and strengthen the things that remain. More strength can be added to the cause in this way than in any other, even if we do not get half as many new converts to the faith. But no doubt if we go into these neighborhoods and work with these brethren, we shall not only save a vast amount of expense, but we shall get more into the truth than we would by entering entirely new fields.

We appeal to the directors, librarians, and tract workers in Ohio this winter to do a large share of their missionary work among our own people. Go and visit these lonely ones. Take a load or two of brethren, hold an evening meeting, and invite in the neighbors. You need not preach a sermon. Have a prayer and social meeting. Advertise our papers and books, and urge these Sabbath-keepers to take them. And if you find the neighbors interested, appoint another meeting. I have seen this course taken where good results have followed. If I have any wisdom for the work in Ohio, this is our business at present. D. M. CANRIGHT.

WHAT WAS SHOWN BY THE BAPTISM OF JOHN?

By O. Davis

The angel said to Joseph, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus [Saviour]; for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matt. 1: 21. If he was to save his people from their sins, the previous sanctuary service had not done this work, but had only remitted the sins under or through the figure of the death which Jesus was to die, when as the “Lamb of God” he became the atoning sacrifice. Let us watch the unfolding of the plan in which Jesus becomes the Saviour of his people as it is connected with the mission of John the Baptist. Luke 3: 4: John the Baptist was “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Luke 1: 76, 77: “For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins.” He was to give the knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins in preparing the way for the great sacrificial act of Jesus the “Lamb of God,” who was to give his life for the sins of the world. How did he do this work? He preached (Luke 3: 3) “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.”

Let us look carefully at this work which was to prepare the way for Christ,—to give the knowledge of salvation to his people. In Mark 1: 5 we are told that the people were “all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.” The first act in this work was the repenting and confessing of sins. In this part of the work there was no making known any particular plan or work of remission; but John was to give the knowledge of salvation by Jesus and to make his paths straight. This knowledge, then, must be found in the ordinance of baptism, as the sins were remitted through this ordinance and the knowledge of salvation was to be given through the remission of sins. This salvation, then, must be prefigured by this ordinance, the ordinance which the Lord had sent him to prepare his way with. (John 1: 33: “But he that sent me to baptize with water,” etc.) As the sins were remitted by this baptism, as the wages of sin is death, and as without the sacrifice of life there is no remission, it could only be done through this ordinance as a figure of the death of the Lamb of God, who was to take away the sin, in fact. Baptism, then, must have been an acknowledgment of the penalty of sin, and if it was to prepare the way for Christ, it could only, and must, prefigure that great sacrificial act.

And further, John was to make his paths straight. The great act of Christ in becoming the saviour of his people must be shown entire. The former sacrifices, which had prefigured the death of Christ, and through which sins had been remitted, had shown only his death; they did not show his resurrection from the dead. But John was to make his paths straight; and as his resurrection from death was a part of the act by which he becomes the saviour of his people, this figure which John was sent with must show that also.

Does baptism, then, contain these essential figures? First, as to its being a figure of death. Is it not a positive necessity that it should be such a figure, as sins were remitted through it? As it was given by Heaven, by one who saw the end from the beginning and knew the fitness of things, by one who had for four thousand years taught the remission of sins through the figure of death, and as it was now to specially prepare the way for the work of Jesus, would it not be strange if this crowning work in the preparation for Christ should not contain this previously essential figure! And was not Cain’s offering rejected because there was no figure of death in it, and it did not therefore recognize the necessary work of an atoning Saviour?

We will try this figure by which the way of salvation was made known by John. We take the candidate for baptism out into the water, we baptize or immerse him beneath its surface, we hold him there a short time and he will die. There is nothing but death there. (Ah, how true that the wages of sin is death!) Here, then, we truly find the figure of death, and by accepting of the death of Christ through this figure, our sins can be remitted. (Paul says, in Rom. 6: 5, “Planted together in the likeness of his death.”) And we can be raised out of this state of death, thus showing the resurrection from the dead also. Here we accept in figure that which Christ accomplishes in fact; and thus John’s baptism showed the way of salvation, and made Christ’s paths straight.

As the time draws near for this atoning sacrifice of Christ, how much more significant the figure! The sinner himself must now pass under a state of death; he must show more directly than by the death of an animal that condemnation rests upon him; and thus the penalty is brought nearer home, and he is better prepared to accept his Saviour’s death. Significant, truly, and given at the right time, was this institution of God. How well adapted, not only to recognize death as the wages of sin, but the resurrection from the dead also.

Is it not consistent to suppose that John understood the meaning of this institution, to some extent at least, if not fully? He says, John 3: 36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” And although he preached remission of sins by his baptism, he could point to Jesus as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. What a spirit of inquiry must have been awakened in the minds of those who had had their sins remitted only through the blood of an animal, as John constantly affirmed that this work was but to prepare the way for Christ! Must they not have understood it as a figure of Christ’s work? And when he actually died on the cross and was raised from the dead, and when Peter and the rest of the apostles preached repentance and remission of sins in the name of a crucified and risen Christ, memorializing as a fact that that had been prefigured, is it a wonder that the people were brought under conviction at the wonderful work of God, accompanied as it was by the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and that three thousand souls were converted? Can we not profitably pause here and contemplate this wonderful unfolding to man of God’s great act of love in his plan for man’s redemption? And can we not unite with the angels in the anthem, “Glory to God in the highest”? O. DAVIS.

LABOR ONLY IN LOVE.

By J. S. M.

A PORTION of Mr. Moody's experience has been going the rounds of the papers, in which he relates how he heard another preacher take the position that God loves sinners, and since that time his preaching has been from the same standpoint. Whatever Mr. Moody's preaching may be in other respects, in this thing he is certainly correct. While it is true that God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil,” it is equally true that he “so

loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

In performing missionary labor, love for the erring one should be the motive power, and our only object should be to see him ultimately saved in the everlasting kingdom. With such a power to prompt us and such an object in view, we shall sooner or later have success. We shall find but very few hearts so hard as to refuse to listen when they are once convinced that we are actually striving to secure their happiness. While it may sometimes be necessary to use great plainness of speech with regard to sinful practices, it should always be accompanied with the spirit of love for the sinner. J. S. M.

LUX IN TENEBRIS.

By Susan Coolidge

Dark falls the night, withheld the day, Weary we fare perplexed and chill, Led by one little guiding ray Shining from centuries far away— Good-will and peace; peace and good-will.

The torch of glory pales and wanes, The lamp of love must know decrease, But still o'er far Judean plains The quenchless star-beam lives and reigns— Peace and good-will; good-will and peace.

And clear to-day as long ago The angel-chorus echoes still, Above the clamor and the throe— Of human passion, human woe— Good-will and peace; peace and good-will.

Through eighteen hundred stormy years The dear notes ring, and will not cease; And past all mists of mortal tears The guiding star rebukes our fears— Peace and good-will; good-will and peace.

Shine, blessed star, the night is black, Shine, and the heavens with radiance fill, While on thy slender, guiding track The angel voices echo back— Good-will and peace; peace and good-will.

—Susan Coolidge, in Independent.

WHY CAN'T YOU TRUST CHRIST?

In a recent sermon, Mr. Spurgeon related the following incident:— “A young woman came to me last night in deep distress, and I set before her the way of salvation, and said, ‘Trust in the salvation of Jesus Christ.’ ‘Oh! I feel—’ she said. ‘I don’t care,’ I replied, ‘what you feel. Will you tell me any reason why you should not trust the Lord Jesus Christ?’—‘I don’t know any reason; but—’ ‘Can you trust me?’—‘Oh, yes sir, I can trust you with anything.’ ‘Then you must not talk in that way, and say you can trust me, a sinful man, and not trust the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s ridiculous. Trust a man, and not trust the Son of God! Can you tell me any reason why you can’t trust him? Will you show me anything he ever did, why you should not trust him? Will you explain to me on what grounds you dare to say you cannot trust him?’ ‘But, sir, I feel—’ ‘I don’t want to know anything about your feelings, I want to know why you can’t trust him. He says he is able and willing to save you; can you trust him?’—‘But yet you know—’ she said. ‘But I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I want to know why you can’t trust him. Did he not stand in the room and place of every soul that trusts him? Do you think he is unworthy of your confidence?’ She looked at me at last, and said, ‘You won’t let me do anything else but think about Christ.’ ‘No; why should I? I want to drive you to him. Tell me why you should not trust him?’ She stood up, and said, ‘I cannot imagine any reason why I could not trust him.’ ‘And why don’t you?’—‘Yes, I do; and am I really saved?’ ‘If you really trust him.’ ‘Of course I am saved,’ she said, gladly. ‘I see it now. How was it I did not see it before?’ He says ‘I am saved, for are not these his own words, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life”?’ I am so glad you would not let me talk about my feelings, and kept me to that point; for now I see it all.’”—Selected.

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