It is useless to deny that the government received a severe check at the by-election in Mid-Devon last Friday, when a constituency which has been consistently Liberal from time out of mind, returned the Conservative candidate by a majority of 559. The chief issue was a tariff reform, the opposition making use of the present high prices on coal and breadstuffs to strengthen their case with the electors, altho as a matter of fact Liberalism is in no way responsible for the condition of the markets. But tariff reformers are persistent and have an abundant supply of energy and enthusiasm. The Liberals, on the other hand, have been too much inclined to settle back at their ease. This striking defeat will awaken them to a sense of their danger.
English Politics.
The last two months have been rather a tame period in English politics; in fact, the year 1907 has not been an exciting one. The Colonial Conference amounted to very little. It was disappointing to both parties. The Hague Peace Conference, whose proceedings were at the outset followed with the deepest interest, turned out to be something of a fiasco. It said little and did less in the direction of securing peace among the nations. Some few conclusions were arrived at in reference to the rules of civilized warfare, the value of which time will have to determine. Europe will continue to be an armed camp, and if the military budgets increase during the next few years at the rate which has obtained since the first Peace Conference, it will be hard for even the most sanguine advocates of internationalism to maintain a belief in the efficacy of such conferences as agencies of reform.
Military Matters.
On the whole the military spirit is easily holding its own in England. The Liberal Party, by passing an Army Reform Bill, has distinctly improved the status of the war department, and while it has succeeded in saving a few millions, there has not been the slightest loss in efficiency. Under a Liberal regime there is no immediate danger of an act calling for conscription or for compulsory military training passing the House of Commons, but the present government will not always be in power and agencies are at work already under private auspices which are doing much spade work in the direction of fostering the military spirit among the young men, and it would not be at all surprising if an incoming Conservative government should pass a measure calling for universal military training as a necessary safeguard against possible invasion.
The Religious Atmosphere.
The religious situation is an interesting one. We are evidently still in a time of transition. Cautious men among the Non-conformists, men who are three-fourths politician and one-fourth preacher, are waiting developments before taking a definite stand. Mr. R. J. Campbell continues his New Theology campaign and has a reasonable number of supporters, both among the clergy and the laity. His strong advocacy of Socialism is making him friends among the Labor Party. No doubt his influence among evangelical Christians is not what it was before he entered upon his new evangel. He will never regain what he has lost, but with the rapidly growing multitude which is committed to social revolution, he bids fair to become something of a popular idol.
Theologically considered, Mr. Campbell's position is becoming fairly clear. He is simply taking into the pulpit the opinions which the higher critics have been advocating in the scholarly world for the past fifteen or twenty years. Hitherto such teaching has been chiefly confined to universities and a very few theological seminaries, as well as to books and periodicals of a more or less technical character. Some of the comparatively unknown preachers have endeavored to expound it from the pulpit; but R. J. Campbell is the first clergyman of influence and prestige to launch out boldly on a course of action which commits him apparently irrevocably to the higher critic's platform. In doing this he naturally voices the real feelings, not only of a large class which has grown increasingly indifferent to the claims of evangelical Christianity, but also of many of his colleagues in the ministry who have not the courage to take their stand by his side.
In time some of these will doubtless do this. The leaven is at work. Every day makes it increasingly manifest that popular Christianity has traveled far from the teaching and spirit of the New Testament. Mr. Campbell hardly exaggerated the facts when he said in a recent sermon on the resurrection:
"Our whole outlook has changed, and we may as well recognize it at once. We do not take the view that those New Testament Christians did about death. Seeing that it is impossible for us to think the same thing nowadays, where is the good of taking a text from these words and asking our hearers to put the same meaning on it that Paul did? If we can not believe in resurrection as Paul did, where is the good of trying to treat his words as infallible?"
As a matter of fact, the so-called change in views really involves outright apostasy. There were plenty of men in Paul's day who could not believe in resurrection, but they did not call themselves Christians, let alone ministers of the Gospel. A prominent exponent of agnosticism in this country has only one fault to find with the New Theology, and that lies in its name. He practically accuses the City Temple preacher of stealing his thunder, and professes wonder that Christians should uphold in Campbell what they condemn in him.
The Churches and Socialism.
Mr. Campbell and his sympathizers are as a matter of course sailing under false colors. They could not do this if the present were not a time of general apostasy. It is only too true that the verities of the Gospel are to-day openly flouted by many professed Christians besides the incumbent of the City Temple, so that his position is really not singular, only so far as he has expressed his views with a warmth bordering on recklessness and from his influential position has attracted widespread attention.
Of course Mr. Campbell is by no means singular in his advocacy of Socialism. That movement is gaining support amongst clergymen of all denominations. In yesterday's papers appears a manifesto signed by over a hundred ministers, some of them men of prominence and influence, stating that the Socialism they believe in (sometimes known as "Christian Socialism"), "involves the public ownership and management of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and is therefore essentially the same Socialism as that which is held by Socialists thruout the world."
In to-day's papers we have Mr. Perks, a prominent Wesleyan preacher, saying in an interview that he is opposed to Socialism and that he believes the Wesleyan church will use its influence against Socialism of to-day even as it fought radicalism at the time of the French Revolution. The time will probably come when all clergymen will take sides on this question. At the present, Socialists are exceedingly active, and their organization has become very full and efficient. They make no odds, for the most part, of rejecting the teaching of Christianity. Their gatherings are marked by numbers and enthusiasm. The churches, on the other hand, are losing both adult members and Sunday-school pupils. Faithful, loyal souls are asking what it means. Wesleyans report a decrease of 12,000 in their Sunday-school membership, and Baptists admit a falling off of 3,000. The working classes which naturally form the bulk of the population, have stood aloof from the church of England for years past, and now the Non-conformist churches are losing the support of this large section. It has been suggested that the Christian churches are losing influence and prestige amongst the lower classes to the extent that Socialism is advancing. If this is true, the reason may be that the churches are also losing much of their original fire and earnestness. Socialism can never take the place of Gospel Christianity, but a pushful, aggressive Socialism may prove more attractive11to the poor and down-trodden masses than a Christianity which is such in name only.
Buddhism in Britain.
The year 1907 has witnessed not only the advent of the New Theology, but also the definite formation of "The Buddhist Society of Great Britain," with headquarters in a fashionable quarter of London. The secretary stated in a recent interview that there are quite a number of Europeans, both in Great Britain and on the continent, who are convinced Buddhists, having become so thru study and travel in Buddhist countries. He added that this was quite explicable, since there was nothing in primitive Buddhism which conflicted with the teachings of modern science. The society aims to carry on an active propaganda and will not unlikely gain followers. The time is favorable for such movements.
In the closing days of 1907 England lost one of her greatest scientists in the death of Lord Kelvin, better known as Sir William Thomson, who filled for fifty-three years the chair of natural philosophy in Glasgow University, and whose discoveries and inventions in the realm of physics are legion. We owe to him the submarine cable, to mention only one thing. Mariners will probably continue to use the Thomson compass, and likewise the sounding machine invented by the same fertile brain, from which have come more than three hundred original papers having to do with every branch of physical science. Lord Kelvin is the last of the giant-brained men who made the Victorian reign illustrious in the annals of science.
Speaking of science, one is reminded that toward the close of 1907 a regular system of wireless telegraphy was opened up between the British and Canadian coasts. For five pence (ten cents) a word for ordinary messages, or half that price for press messages, any one can have his Marconigram flashed across the Atlantic. This is indeed nothing less than marvelous.
King Edward again exhibited his usual tact when he conferred on Florence Nightingale, living in honored retirement and gradually failing in health, the new Order of Merit, which she is the first woman to receive. It is fitting that this much-loved heroine of the Crimean War and pioneer in scientific nursing should be thus recognized.
M. ELLSWORTH OLSEN.
A Catholic View.
THE "noblest man in the world to-day" is what Bishop Muldoon of the Roman Catholic Church called President Roosevelt in a speech on "The President of the United States," delivered at the banquet of the Illinois council of the Knights of Columbus, in Chicago, January 30. So says the Chicago "Tribune." The Bishop continued:
"The United States is the strongest and most perfect of governments. As its head, he becomes the greatest power in the world. He stands for power and for authority, and there is no one who can better appreciate him than the Catholics. . . .
"There is no man who can speak better of the President of the United States than a Catholic layman or a Catholic priest. The fact that he stands for power and for authority makes this possible, for the Catholic is best able to appreciate it. He symbolizes the power of the earth.
"To-day the offering we make to him is the offering of 1,000,000 children, standing around the White House, if you will, hand in hand, ever ready to obey his will, and knowing for what he stands. To act against his will is to act against God's will. And so I encourage the Knights of Columbus to draw their swords, if need be, in defense of him, against anarchy, against dissolution.
"The Catholic Church never has had a fairer field for its work than it has here in the United States. We are not only Catholics; we are American citizens. The better citizens, the better Catholics we are.
"Who is the greatest friend the President has to-day? Is it the wealthiest men or those in power? Or is it the one that teaches that we must obey the laws of God, and the laws of God are the laws of the United States? There is no sectarianism in the laws of the country."
Now no one who knows aught of the Roman Catholic hierarchy will believe for a moment that Bishop Muldoon has abjured Romanism in the slightest degree. He still holds his allegiance to the See of Rome, first, last, and all the time. Holding this, he must be assured that President Roosevelt is working in perfect harmony with the Papacy. They are "ready to obey his will," "knowing for what he stands," and therefore knowing that he stands for the interests of the Papacy.
Bishop Muldoon and his brethren believe that God's will is expressed thru the Roman Catholic Church; that her voice is the voice of God, her law the law of God; they also believe that they KNOW "for what the President stands;" and, furthermore, the bishop declares that "to act against his [the President's] will is to act against God's will;" therefore the President of the United States in his exercise of public functions stands for Roman Catholicism. If this were not so, how could the statement be true, "The better citizens, the better Catholics we are?"
Never before until that papal opinion, voiced by Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court, in the Trinity Church Case, in 1892, and the concurrent events surrounding it, did we hear from Roman Catholic authorities any approval of this government or its federal head. It was not a government blessed of God. But since the declaration that "this is a Christian nation," by the Supreme Court, since the yielding to the clamor for religious legislation on the part of Congress, since the approval of these things by the chief magistrate at various times, and the many other acts favorable to "the church," Roman Catholics have been satisfied that America is fast swinging into line among the Catholic nations of earth.
These are items of more than passing note. Every true Protestant and patriot ought to have an appreciation of the situation, to which, sad to say, the great mass is blind. Rome should be expected to do all in her power to win and control the United States as she once controlled Spain and France and Italy. Logically, she must do this; but wo worth the day to the nation and the world when her efforts are accomplished.
Assassination of Portugal’s King Carlos
Portraits of the late King Carlos of Portugal, his son, the Crown Prince Luiz Philippe, Duke of Braganza, who were assassinated in Lisbon on February 1, and Queen Amelie. The king, queen, and their two sons, Philippe and Manuel, were on their way to the palace in open carriages, going from the railroad station on their return from Villa Vicosa, where they had been sojourning for a time, when they were fired upon by a band of men who were waiting for them on a street corner. The outline of the realm over which the late king ruled is given also in connection with the portraits.
Portugal has been in a condition for some time bordering on revolution. When Carlos ascended the throne in 1889 on the death of his father, the omens were fair for a peaceful and useful reign. He had made a favorable impression on his people during a short regency preceding his father's death, but very soon trouble began among the discontents, and almost every one of the seasons in each year witnessed outbreaks, revolutions, and violence in the kingdom. This led up to the appointment of Franco as prime minister and finally dictator of the realm; the parliament was dissolved, and Franco refused to recall it according to the terms of the constitution. His reply to the demands for the calling of the parliament was, "My dictatorship is administrative, not political. To govern by decree is an affair of transition, a passing thing. Whenever the parties are conscious of their duty and ready to do it, parliament will be open to them. In the meantime, I must do the work of reform. I must do my duty. I shall govern over the parties, and, if necessary, against the parties."
His policy was adhered to so closely that the country was filled with revolutionary and anarchistic ideas, with the result that he and his oldest son were assassinated, as above stated. The second son, Prince Manuel, was immediately proclaimed king, Franco was deposed and fled from the kingdom, and at present it looks as tho the country would again enjoy a term of quiet, especially so since the despotic hand of the dictator was so promptly removed by the newly crowned king.
The British Navy
The British Navy.—English naval experts now state that England possesses not only the biggest, most powerful war-ships afloat, but the biggest and fastest destroyers on the sea, and that her navy is more nearly ready for war than that of any other nation. In a recent review of 182 ships, 116 were able to leave immediately. Her naval expenditure is about $175,000,000 a year. England's ambition is to possess a navy equal to any other two European powers, and it is stated that at the present time the tonnage of the combined navies of Germany, France, Russia, Italy, and Austria is not as great as England's.
Progress in China.
By A. C. Selmon
To those knowing the difficulty of learning new languages and customs, it could hardly be expected that much headway could be made for the first two or three years in such a field as this, yet we are glad to report that the message is already beginning to make more rapid progress. Up to a recent date the believers in this section of Honan have been few and scattered, little lights in the darkness, so dim and far between that they seemed lost; but from December 8 to 14 a general meeting was held at Shang Tsai, which brought great encouragement to the workers. This was at Brother Westrup's station. There were about fifty native Sabbath-keepers in attendance, and the larger number of these were the result of the work of 1907. Of the foreigners present there were Brother and Sister Westrup, Brother and Sister Allum, and Brother Esta Miller.
During this meeting seven were baptized, of which four were men and three women. These three women have all unbound their feet. With these baptized and those who had received baptism previously, we were enabled to organize a church of eleven members here at Siang Cheng.
Quite recently a good interest has arisen in a large market-place to the north of Shang Tsai station. Several Sabbath-keepers from this place were in attendance, some of them walking the distance of sixty miles to be at the meeting. Something over a year ago a man accepted the truth and began keeping the Sabbath in the village of Shih Chiao, ten miles east of Siang Cheng. The work there has grown to the extent that now there are five families of Christian Sabbath-keepers in that neighborhood. Many of them have had to pass thru months of bitter persecution since they began keeping the Sabbath according to the commandment, but all are of good courage, and their earnestness is winning others.
Sometimes those of other Protestant religions feel constrained to join us. Among these is one with whom we have had occasional studies for the last six months. He has been a colporteur for many years, and his knowledge of the Bible is far beyond that of the average native Christian. Long ago he was convinced of the Sabbath truth, but was told that our ideas concerning the second coming of Christ were fanatical and were leading to discouragement; but he found as he studied with us that we presented no exact time for the Lord to come, and he saw by the fulfilment of the prophecies that Christ's coming is near at hand, and that a message of reform is necessary to prepare the world for that great event.
Our great hope for the growth of the work in China is in the literature. Up to the present, we have had none, or practically none, and our colporteurs have had to go out with nothing more than Gospel portions. What the literature is and has been in other fields, it will be here. The need for the printed messengers in this field is great and urgent, for the reason that the number of workers is so small and the mass of people to be reached is so large. To provide literature for over four hundred millions of people will require large printing facilities. While the native workers will be the means used by the Lord for the spread of the literature, yet we must have a large increase in the number of foreign workers. Considering only China proper, there are eighteen provinces, ranging in population from five to thirty-eight millions. Can we expect progress without at least one good center in each province, manned by two families of foreign workers? As you consider this field, may the Lord of the harvest help you to see your responsibility to help give the last message of mercy in this enemy's stronghold.
A. C. SELMON.
Siang Cheng, Honan.
Our Work and Workers.
The brethren at Dallas, Texas, dedicated a new church building January 25, Brother C. Santee preaching the dedicatory sermon.
Brother Wm. Covert reports a net gain of more than one hundred members in the Northern Illinois Conference during the past year, a good report for a small conference.
The officers of the Indiana Conference, elected at a meeting held January 16-21 at La Fayette, Ind., are as follows: President, W. J. Stone; secretary, W. A. Young; treasurer, T. A. Goodwin.
MISSIONS
Good News from India.
It will be remembered that in one of Professor Shaw's recent letters he told us of endeavoring to obtain connection with the Tamil Sabbath-keepers, those who were Christians and yet who have been keeping the Sabbath for no one knows how long. He writes under January 1 to Elder Spicer at Washington: "We have at last found our way to the Tamil Sabbath-keepers, in company with Brethren Enoch and James. Our reception has been far beyond our expectation. They have welcomed us with outstretched arms, and together we are studying God's word. Their knowledge of the Tamil Bible is surprising, and their true Christian Sabbath-keeping is refreshing. They say that they have five churches with a thousand members, and four church schools with one hundred seventy pupils. With the truth they possess, there is a missionary spirit, and they desire that this truth shall be published. To this end they are beseeching us to place a missionary among them to give them further instruction, and they offer land upon which to build our house. In addition to the keeping of the Sabbath, they are looking for the soon coming of Christ, are believers in Bible baptism, the Lord's Supper, and support their work by tithes and offerings."
Professor Shaw further tells us that he expects soon to write up a fuller account of his visit with them, together with photographs of the people, their homes, and places of worship. Our prayer is that this people may be blessed in learning more of present truth, and that God may specially bless our missionaries in that great and needy field.
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