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Review and Herald, Vol. 54, No. 7.

THE THEOLOGICAL DRIFT

Review and Herald

Aug 7, 1879

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 7, 1879

THE THEOLOGICAL DRIFT.

By W. H. Littlejohn

BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN.
The phenomenon of tides, though remarkable in its character, is not without its analogies in the religious world. In the one case the tendency up to a certain period of time is all in one direction, and then for a like period in the other; so that the flood is continually bearing upon its surface all sorts of floating material, first heaping them in masses upon the eastern, and then bearing them back to pile them in other masses upon the western shores of the great oceans.
Thus, also, in the history of the church, the trend of ideas is first in one direction, and then in the other. Action and reaction has been the order of the ages, so that one generation is in danger of counteracting the labors of another, and returning back again either to the same opinions which were once held and afterward rejected, or of going to extremes in the advocacy of views which formerly had been condemned as dangerous errors. Like the pendulum of the clock, theorists are continually passing and repassing the central point of truth.
Perhaps we cannot find, just at present, a better illustration of this idea than is presented in the history of thought on the question of man's nature and destiny. The middle ages were occupied in elaborating and enforcing the most extravagant views of hell, its duration, and its terrible infliction of suffering. For ages the terrors of its punishment furnished many with the staple from which was manufactured the argument to induce men to obey God. Later on in history we find that while the extravagance of the medieval views was somewhat abated, the doctrine of an eternal hell was still presented to the sinner as a motive to obedience. Such an idea has figured very largely in all the Calvinistic teachings, even down to the first quarter of our own century. From that time, however, there has been a rapid change in public sentiment. The pulpit has been speaking with less and less certainty of sound each year upon this great question, until within the last decade it has become manifest to all that a change of tactics has been adopted. The instances in which, at present, a resort is made to the old terrors for the purpose of impressing the impenitent, have become extremely rare. This fact had become so manifest that Phinney, who was a radical of the old-school theory upon this subject, was constrained to publish in the papers of the country an article calling attention to the modern departure, and deploring this marked change in the teaching of the pulpit.
This remonstrance, however, fell powerless. The revolution was too nearly complete to be stayed. Nay, more; the allusion to the change seemed to precipitate it by acknowledging the fact of its existence. Steadily and rapidly the old landmarks are being removed, and the new order of things is being entered upon. In the transit, former issues have been lost sight of. It is not now a contest for the old hell with its billows of fire and its myriads of the damned, doomed to be consigned bodily for eternal ages to its fiery flames; but it is simply a struggle for the defense of a modified conception of the idea of punishment. In that idea is found neither a local hell nor everlasting torment, except as it will be realized in remorse of conscience eternal in its duration. But even this extremely diluted form of opinion cannot pass unchallenged. The intellectual pendulum in its reaction is passing on to the other extreme. Radicalism in the one direction is, as ever, the parent of radicalism in the other. The minds of men tortured by, and utterly disgusted with, the unreasonable and terrific teachings of the doctors of divinity on the subject of future punishment, have been unable to eliminate from those teachings that which was erroneous, retaining that which was true. They boldly question now the correctness of these teachers even in the matter of the eternal duration of punishment, as modified to suit the modern theories of greater lenity.
Such men as Henry Ward Beecher and Prof. Swing of this country, and Canon Farrar of England, men who are schooled in the matter of feeling the popular pulse—perceiving that the revolution was fairly inaugurated and could not be stayed—have taken the forefront and become the champions in the great movement of modern reaction, which now has become inevitable. With them are hundreds of others of considerable prominence, who have perceived the certainty of the revolution and have hastened to become leaders in the popular revolt. By a single leap, apparently, they have passed over the old ground of faith in the remediless condition and eternal suffering of the damned, over the intermediate position of unending remorse, to the opinion that probably—if not certainly—eternity will furnish opportunity for the repentance and redemption of those who have rejected salvation here. So strong is the hold which this argument has taken upon the popular sentiment of the country, that already numerous religious bodies have deliberately decided that it is not illegitimate for orthodox Christian ministers to hold privately this modern heterodox view, provided, only, that they shall not proclaim it from the desk. In the interest of such an opinion, and its fearless advocacy, are arrayed several papers of the type of the Independent.
What the outcome of this affair will be, the patient student of the history of religious doctrines is only too well aware. It has been well said that revolutions never go backward. As in the political so in the theological world. The tide having swept everything for ages in the direction of the rugged rocks of interminable agony, is now sweeping back again toward the shores of final restorationism. He alone will be able to stay this terrible drift, who, from His throne in Heaven, can control not only the tides of the natural but also those of the spiritual world. If God shall not come to the rescue, the consequence will be incalculable damage to the cause of truth. No system of religion ever devised can bear, without injury, the strain of such terrible extravagances of teaching on the part of its ministers. The thinking men of the world are certain to come to the conclusion that individuals whose religious sentiments can from time to time experience such radical changes, cannot be safe leaders of the public mind. If they would stop here, their conclusions would not be so erroneous. Unfortunately, however, this would not be characteristic of human nature. The danger is that the contempt that they hold for the individuals whose weakness has been thus clearly manifested, will attach itself to the book of God from which they have claimed to draw their doctrinal opinions. If this should be the case, then we have before us an era of the most terrible infidelity which the world has ever witnessed.
Relief from past mistakes can never be found in the restoration teaching of the present. If that doctrine is true, then the Bible is false. It speaks with no doubtful tone upon that subject. If in the world to come there is to be forgiveness and final redemption, then the book which we call the Bible gives a sound upon doctrinal subjects altogether too uncertain to be of any value to the world as a shaper of opinion respecting the future state. Candid men will readily perceive this fact, and they will inevitably reject either the men who teach it and the Bible along with them, or else they will repudiate the doctrine, and cling to the Bible, finding therein authority for some view which shall avoid on the one hand the unreasonable doctrine of an unending hell, and on the other, the possibility of future restoration on the part of the sinner to the favor of God. This being true, the question now arises, Is there any intermediate position at the present time, which is defensible and sufficiently developed to meet the exigencies of the case? We believe there is.
While the great masses of mankind are rushing past the central point of the true faith to the extreme position of the false one, there are a few who are pausing right where they can plant their feet upon doctrine which is both scriptural and reasonable. While Mr. Beecher and his friends are throwing themselves into the arms of Universalism or restorationism, as an escape from the horrors of eternal conscious misery, there are springing up in all parts of the world devoted Christian souls who believe that they can find in the Bible evidence that man is not naturally immortal, and that immortality is alone the gift of God. In this view they discover both a scriptural and a reasonable solution of this whole question.
To him who is careful in observing the changes of the hour, the rapid development of this class of theorists is a matter of profoundest interest. Among them will be found certain whole denominations of Christians; such, for example, as Seventh-day Adventists, and, generally speaking, first-day Adventists. In the orthodox churches, also, there are thousands of members who are adopting these sentiments, and their numbers are rapidly increasing. So obvious is the fact, that it can hardly have escaped the attention of the casual observer. Scarcely a newspaper reaches us at the present time—which is in the habit of giving the publications of the week—wherein we cannot find a notice of some new work on the subject; or an article either advocating or attacking this conception of the soul.
In England, such men as R. W. Dale, Dobney, and others,—men of both piety and great learning,—are courageously advocating these sentiments. In Europe, too, this opinion is being received with considerable favor. In fine, it presents at present an array of talent and a mass of publications so vast in quantity, and so pointed in argument and forcible in illustration, that it must become an important factor in the solution of the most weighty problem which has been presented to the Christian church for ages. Whether looked upon from the natural or the theological standpoint, the advocates of this theory seem fully to be masters of the situation. When discussing the question of Scripture teaching on this subject, they all insist upon a literal interpretation of its sayings, when such an interpretation is not rendered impossible by the nature of the text or context. Instead of resorting to metaphor and figure as an easy method of removing obstacles in the way of a given opinion, they employ this method of explanation in cases where it is manifestly the only true one. In the study of the Bible they attach to the terms life and death the same signification which belongs to them in common parlance, as well as in the sacred writings generally, instead of following the practice of many modern theologians who are compelled, in order to support their doctrine of the soul's unending life, to employ the former as signifying happiness, and the latter as signifying misery.
In other words, when the school of interpreters under consideration find God declaring that “the soul that sinneth it shall die” (Eze. 18:4), they understand him to mean relatively the same as he did when addressing individuals in the use of similar language. Again, when they read that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:23), they are constrained to believe that he who yields himself a servant to sin will be rewarded—not with an interminable existence in misery—but by the cessation of that existence in death; and on the other hand they decide that he who becomes a servant of Christ will receive for his services an extension of his life throughout the eternal ages. Once more, when they ascertain that eternal life is to be given to those who by patient continuance in well doing seek for it (Rom. 2:5–7), they feel that it is safe to conclude that the eternal life promised means a life which shall never end, and that as those only who seek for it are to obtain the same, it is certain that they never possessed it naturally; else there would have been no need of their seeking for it. Furthermore, when they learn that it is declared in so many words that God “only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Tim. 6:15, 16), they feel assured that it cannot be true that immortality is inherent in all men.
In fine, when they discover that in no one of the more than seventeen hundred instances in which the soul is mentioned in the Bible, either in the use of that term or its equivalent terms, God has ever said in so many words that it was immortal or that it could never die, they infer that such a remarkable omission could never have occurred were it true that unending life could be predicated of the soul.
Again, passing from the domain of Scripture to that of reason, they are not only unable to find satisfactory proof that man has a deathless spirit, but they are, on the contrary, able to overwhelm their adversaries with most conclusive arguments from that source in confirmation of the Scripture teachings that unending life, if possessed at all, must come through a beneficent grant of the great Creator. All the analogies of nature, in their hands, conspire in teaching that death without the resurrection would necessarily close forever the existence of mortals. Every proof to the contrary which their adversaries are able to draw from the physical world is demolished by them as readily as is the cob-house of the school-boy by the advancing foot of the one in whose pathway it stands. For thousands of years the arcana of nature has been searched without avail as with a lighted candle in an effort to discover testimony in favor of the article of faith which ispassing in review. The nearest approximation to it is confessedly found in the transmutation of the caterpillar into the butterfly, the periodic return of spring with its annual presentation of revived vegetable life, etc., etc. But instead of substantiating the theory which they are cited to sustain, it is perceived by these men that the very paucity in numbers in these analogies, as well as their extremely inconclusive teachings, furnish presumptive evidence of the falsity of a doctrine which is able to offer so little in its own support by way of rewarding those who have searched so long and so faithfully. Challenging the whole array, they meet it with a logic as irreversible in its effects as was the “tekel” traced by an angelic hand on the walls of the royal palace, upon him who, when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, was found wanting. Why, say they, there is no parallelism whatever in the cases. Man, when he enters the grave, does not present a case of suspended animation; but he is hopelessly dead, as evidenced by decay and decomposition; whereas the caterpillar is simply transformed into the butterfly by a natural process in one of the stages of his development, after which,—in common with all insect life,—he ceases to be altogether.
The following, from the pen of Mr. J. H. Pettengill, throws so much light upon the process by which the butterfly is brought into existence that I have thought best to give it a place here:—
“And as for the larvae that pass through the chrysalis state into a higher life as winged insects, they must preserve the germ of their future life unimpaired while in their first stage, or the butterfly within them is not developed. They die after fulfilling their career as grubs or larvae, and come short forever of that aerial lepidopterous state for which nature has designed them, and into which those of their species that are fit are admitted. Naturalists tell us that every larva of this class, as the caterpillar, for instance, carries within itself while in its grub state, an embryo butterfly or psyche (psuche, as it is called in Greek)—the very word the Scriptures use for the human soul—possessing all the organs of the butterfly in an undeveloped state, in addition to its own proper organism, and that this embryo butterfly or psuche hidden within the grub, is peculiarly liable to the attacks of little winged insects called ichneumon flies, which prey upon its substance and destroy its life, and that, too, without any apparent injury to the grub. It fulfills its larva life and goes into the chrysalis state, and, like all other grubs of its kind, wraps itself in its cocoon or winding-sheet, in the anticipation of a higher life to come. But it rises not with its fellow to another life in the air as a winged butterfly, for the embryo psuche (soul) within was destroyed while a crawling grub. It only goes into corruption and perishes forever. This butterfly life is reserved for those only of its species that were prepared for it, and died in a well-founded hope of the life to come.”
“Here is the doctrine of conditional immortality typified in nature as clearly as possible. The parallel is perfect, and if this does not foretoken and teach what we believe the Scriptures declare, concerning the destruction of the psuche, or soul, within man by sin while yet in this world, and his consequent forfeiture of that higher angelic life in the world to come, which is reserved for the righteous alone, then it is impossible for nature to teach us anything by analogy.”
Nature, likewise, simply suspends the operations of growth while the atmospheric conditions are unfavorable to the same. When spring with its warming sunshine and moistening showers invites the dormant though not dead roots into another effort, they readily respond by shooting forth a vigorous growth of vegetable life. If, say they, our friends would show us a solitary instance in which a creature or a plant once dead, absolutely and unqualifiedly, has by any natural process been metamorphosed either into the physical form or spiritual essence of some other living entity, which truly represents the continuation of its own life in another form—whether tangible or intangible—then we would concede that they had made out a probable case; but until then we attach no importance to their inductions except as a proof of the hopeless nature of their cause. To such a conclusion, also, we think candid men are together with them rapidly coming. Many of the greatest scientists of the present hour are, it must be conceded, drifting farther and farther from the conviction that man, either in his own organization or in his surroundings, is able to find any evidence for believing that one, who by looking back for a few decades of years is able to see the limit of his existence in the past, should presume that he—as an exception to all created things—has by virtue of his creation been made equal to God in the sense that he can never die. As this view of the subject shall be more and more generally received, mankind will be better prepared for the glorious announcement in the word of God that Christ has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel; for so long as they are instructed that they have by nature an indefeasible title to unending being, they will never exert themselves to obtain the same, and never more than half believe that the wicked are to spend the eternal ages in irremediable woe.
With the acceptance of this doctrine also, all difficulty in the matter of justifying God in the creation of man, is forever disposed of. No longer will the infidel imputation of cruelty upon a being of infinite capacity for having created a race, nine-tenths of whom are destined during the eternal ages to perpetual anguish in the fiery billows of hell, have power or significance. If man is not immortal per se, then it is easy to conceive how, on the one hand, God can be just and the justifier of him who believeth on Jesus; and, on the other hand, how he could first resurrect, and then with perfect propriety punish, by fire or otherwise, those who have rejected offered light, and then allow them to become as though they had not been. This is so, first, because when God has renewed this earth and filled it with the millions of the redeemed to live therein in perpetual bliss, then he will have proved the wisdom of the creative act which brought it into existence by evident results, whose beneficence eternity alone will be able to reveal; secondly, because He who created has both the right and the power to resurrect; thirdly, because it is manifestly His prerogative by the visitation of reasonable punishment after the resurrection to restrain retroactively the sins of men in this life, provided that punishment is not extreme or unreasonable in its character; fourthly, because God has the undoubted right first to make man subject to death, and subsequently to make it possible for him through obedience to live forever.
But these propositions being true, as suggested above, then the Christian, with the Bible in his hand and the book of nature open before him, without fear of successful refutation, can enter the schools of modern philosophy, and, as Paul did of old, mightily convince men that Jesus is the Christ, and that in him is offered a plan of salvation, which is logically sound and every way equal to the mighty task of saving sinful man.
Once satisfy mankind that Jesus entered the world in order to save its inhabitants from the doom of actual and eternal death, and that he offers to them everlasting life as a free gift in consideration of their acceptance of him through obedience to his will, and you have brought to bear upon them a power which will move them almost irresistibly in the direction of the greatest boon of which the human heart can cherish a hope. All their former repugnance to the reputed methods of the Deity for the redemption of man will be gone; and while they see combined in him both justice and love, they will yearn with an unutterable desire for that unending existence which was of such priceless value in the eyes of the Messiah that he was willing to die on the cross in order that man might not perish, but have everlasting life.

A PRAYER.

By Eliza H. Morton

Eternal, infinite, all-wise, And ever-present Lord! We bow before thy “great white throne,” And call thee, Father, God! Jehovah, King! we know thy power, We feel thy tender love! We hunger for the manna sweet That cometh from above!
O God, the paths of earth are rough, Our feet are bleeding, sore; We yearn for rest at thy “right hand,” And “joys for evermore”! But, Lord, between us and that home Lie conflicts over sin; Sustained by thine almighty arm, The battle we shall win!
Our hearts are faint and trembling oft; The way seems weary, long; Our strength is weakness, but in thee Is strength eternal, strong. O fill us now with peace divine, And soften and subdue These hearts of stone, until they throb With love and joy anew!
The toil, the pain, the weariness Will soon be ever o’er; In future days unrest will flee, And sorrow come no more. This earth will brighten, ne’er to fade, With one long summer day; O hasten, Sun that never sets, And melt the mists away!
We ask these favors in One Name— A Name that’s “all in all”! Through Christ we bow and plead and pray, O hear us as we call! The “coming and the end” are near; O save us even then! And thine the glory and the power Forever, Lord. Amen.
ELIZA H. MORTON.

THE WEEK.

By J. Clarke

It appears, from the Bible, that for the welfare of the human race God arranged the period of seven days, called one week. He recognized this period in giving the manna in the wilderness, during the forty years' sojourn of his people, by providing a double portion on the sixth day, and withholding the supply on each seventh day. He also recognized this period of seven days in a most decisive manner in giving the Sabbath law. See Ex. 20.
We are informed by Luke that the followers of Christ rested on the Sabbath “according to the commandment.” Chap. 23:56. Now, if this was not the Sabbath that God gave to Adam, how could it be that they rested according to the commandment, which requires that the very day be observed upon which Jehovah himself rested? The fourth commandment was given soon after the commencement of the fall of manna, and it would certainly have been unreasonable for God to allow a change in the day, and yet command that the true day be so strictly observed.
It is almost beneath one's notice to attempt to refute so wicked and reckless a position as that the straightforward account given by Moses is incorrect; and to say that the count of the days of the week as given in the New Testament conflicts with Genesis or Exodus of the Old Testament is childish, if not blasphemous. To adopt the system of Dr. Akers is at once to discard the Bible history of the Sabbath; and the more intelligent and conscientious advocates of the Sunday Sabbath hesitate to use his arguments, while others use them only as a last resort. Verily Sunday must have urgent need of support, if it must resort to such a prop as Dr. Akers offers. If his position were correct, what confidence could one place in Bible history? I have almost imagined that Dr. Akers had a comical turn of mind, and being perhaps somewhat wanting in reverence, had tried to invent as great an absurdity as possible, and written it in ecclesiastical style to experiment on the credulity of the professed Christian public, and to see how great an error they would accept in order to prop up the Sunday institution.
J. CLARKE.

OPENING THE PRISON DOORS.

By Editor

Few spectacles are sadder or furnish occasion for greater discouragement than the prostitution of fine abilities to serve an ignoble purpose; and we meet with such at every turn. Presidents and governors, judges and legislators, clergy and laity—men of high position and holding places of trust—are constantly proving unfaithful to those trusts; and when these men hold public positions the offense is all the greater, and the wound the deeper. The last one to put himself on record as an offender against the moral sentiment of the community is the present governor of New York—the Hon. Lucius Robinson; nor is it his first offense, but one of a series of which good men of both parties have grown so weary. And these are the facts:—
A year ago the governor shocked the community by granting a pardon to John Cosgrove, Richard Eustace, and Thomas P. Doyle, after their conviction for repeated violations of the excise law. Their conviction cost months of work on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, aided by an overworked district-attorney. But no: these men must be set free, and our readers will recall the indignant protest that went up from the public press, and they will recall the defense that the governor felt obliged to put forth over the signature of his son, and they will not have forgotten how specious and puerile that defense was; nor will they soon forget it.
A few months since, one Jacob Berry was convicted of keeping a disorderly and indecent place of amusement. What the indecencies were, our modest types would refuse to tell. But we may say that orgies were nightly held in his “house”; that the worst form of vice known was perpetrated in this public place; that young men—and not from the lowest walks in life—were here trained in this school of debauchery, and that precisely the phases of lechery which Nero and his courtesans delighted in were flashed forth from the garish glare of gas-lights, not even being covered with the veil of obscurity. After—as Dr. Howard Crosby tells us—fifteen months of unceasing effort on the part of District-Attorney Bell, who conducted the prosecution with public spirit and professional skill, this wretch Berry was convicted in the Court of Sessions by a jury and sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and to pay a fine of $150—the only fault being that the sentence was absurdly light in proportion to the real offense. Berry appealed his case to the Supreme Court. After careful consideration, the Court affirmed the proceedings of the Sessions. Berry’s counsel then carried his case to the Court of Appeals, which unanimously confirmed the verdict and ordered the sentence to be carried out.
And now the governor acts his part: he puts away what the Court of Sessions did, and what the Supreme Court and our highest Appellate Court affirmed, and opening the prison doors, sets Berry free, remitting even the paltry fine of $150, which Berry is abundantly able to pay!
But the governor, as if anticipating the indignation of the people, comes before them—in that familiar attitude in which he should be photographed—with a bundle of apologies under his arm, which are none the less his that they are put forth anonymously. And such apologies! Let us enumerate them:— [1] “It was a first offense.” So is that of Chastine Cox and many other murderers; and which, morally speaking, is the worse—the killing of a body or the wholesale destruction of souls? [2] “The papers and petitions in behalf of Berry were numerous and strong.” The signatures numbered, we learn, 150. Why didn’t they number thousands?—for the brothels and hells of this city would have promptly supplied them. And note a touching thing! [3] the owner of the “opera-house” [2], to whom Berry paid his rent, joins in the request for his release, and certifies that after he was arrested Berry stopped his orgies. How kind in Berry to have stopped under the circumstances! [4] “The jury recommended Berry to mercy, and expected mercy would have been shown.” Indeed! The law provides for a year’s imprisonment and a fine of $250. The Court awards neither the one nor the other, but the jury thought mercy would be shown! Why didn’t they supply the mercy themselves, and acquit the poor fellow on the spot? [5] Berry “is an orderly and well-behaved man of excellent character.” A keeper of a bawdy house—of an infamous house of unspeakable indecencies—such an one an “excellent character”! Certificates of good character seem to be so abundant that after this no one ought to be without one. They are indispensable in every family! But [6] “Berry lost $10,000”;—poor Berry! He lost part of the gains from his infamies in the costs incurred in his unsuccessful appeals to the Courts. Why shouldn’t he be released, and why shouldn’t the legislature repay him this amount? [7] “Berry’s mother is prostrated, and will die of a broken heart if not released.” Governor Robinson, how many mothers’ hearts have been broken by the conduct of erring sons! Nay, how many mothers’ hearts have been broken by the ruin of their sons’ souls at such places as Berry’s “Opera House”? Governor Robinson, other mothers besides Berry’s mother are dying of broken hearts, as countless thousands have died before them—hearts broken by the loss of their sons’ souls in just such dens of infamy as Berry’s! Finally the governor quotes a non-committal letter from District-Attorney Phelps, who, however, neither raises objection nor asks for Berry’s release. But the worst thing in the governor’s apology is the long extract, quoted in justification of his course, from the letter of one who, although nominally a judge, has not sat on the bench for five months, who is utterly incapacitated for the discharge of any judicial duties, as the governor assuredly knows;—and he must know more concerning which a decent kindliness compels silence. Why was that name allowed to be printed to a justification of the governor’s action? Why did not the governor procure some certificates from Bloomingdale?
Here we rest. The task has not been a pleasant one;—we had rather say a good word for the governor any day than utter a reproachful syllable;—but if we have shown our readers how utterly unjustifiable the governor’s course is, how he has wronged the moral sense of the community, how he has prostituted justice, the work will not be without a measure of compensation. Few men have finer abilities than Governor Robinson; none have entered the gubernatorial office with better reputation; and shall we not say that, with all the good service which he has rendered, and which we gladly recognize, few have ever left the office, as Governor Robinson will leave it, accompanied by a greater measure of reproach!
It is not Berry’s case only, nor Cosgrove’s, nor Eustace’s, nor Doyle’s, nor the giving away the people’s money to Roman Catholic sectarian institutions, nor vetoing the Tramp Act;—it is the constant and repeated pandering to the worst elements in his party by one who can have no personal sympathy with them, by one who knew better and who could have done better, but did not,—it is this which has forfeited Governor Robinson the regard of good men, irrespective of party; it is this which would make his elevation to the gubernatorial office a second time—which, however, we do not anticipate—nothing less than a calamity.—Christian at Work.

“SUNDAY-BREAKERS;” WHO ARE THEY?

By G. B. S.

“Where there is no law, there is no transgression;” so to apply the name Sunday-breaker to those who do not keep that day as a Sabbath, is altogether out of place. Yet the term is a very common one, one that we have been familiar with since our earliest recollections, and we do not like to give it up; and while the name will not apply to those who do not keep it as a rest day, we think there is a people who are truly Sunday-breakers, and that is direct transgression of a known commandment.
Some may be surprised that we apply this name to those who are the observers of the seventh day of the week; but we read, “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” Here is a duty enjoined upon every one, not to keep a Sabbath, but to lay by in store as God hath prospered him. The commandment is plain. How many of us are there who are careful, week by week, to obey its teaching? and how can we help classing those who do not among the “Sunday-breakers.” G. B. S.

COURAGE AND TRUST.

[THE following fable, with its interpretation, is commended to the attention of those who seem to think that no one can do any good, outside of their opinions or creed, and who would prevent the honest-hearted from drawing consolation and truth from the pure stream,—the Bible,—as if no others had any right to that universal fountain of the water of life. M. E. CORNELL.]
THE LAMB, THE WOLF, AND THE DOG—A FABLE.—A little lamb once left its mother, and went down the mountain to drink at a stream which ran below. At the same moment a wolf came out of the neighboring wood, and faced the lamb on the opposite bank.
“What right have you to drink here?” quoth the wolf; “Don’t you know this stream belongs to me?” “Am I doing wrong?” asked the innocent lamb. “I thought the stream was free to all.”
“Don’t stand there lying,” said the wolf, pretending to be very angry.
“I do not tell a lie,” answered the little lamb: “I was very thirsty when I came down the mountain, and I am sorry to have offended you by drinking of the stream.”
“Your sorrow won’t prevent me from killing you,” replied the wolf; “so prepare yourself to die!”
“I have no preparation to make,” said the lamb. “All my life has been as innocent as the flowers in the meadows.”
“So, then,” said the wolf, “you will make a dainty meal for me,” and he jumped over the stream, whilst the lamb lifted up its eyes to heaven, and stood ready to be sacrificed.
At this instant, the faithful sheep dog came bounding down the mountain and confronted the wolf.
“How now, old rascal?” quoth he. “Do you seek to kill one of my master’s stray lambs, by pretending to own the stream wherein he has slaked his thirst? This is one of your old tricks, which you must now answer for without loss of time.”
“Pardon me,” quoth the wolf, crouching with a vulpine smile. “I meant the little lamb no harm; I merely wanted to try his courage.”
“Try thine own courage against mine, then,” answered the brave dog; and with that he fell upon the cowardly wolf and tore him to pieces.
The little lamb uttered sorrowful cries, like the wailing of an orphan in some alien world, and then with the dog walked up the mountain to the fold.

INTERPRETATION.

“Dear to Heaven is innocence; Ever ready its defense. There are angels evermore, At the threshold of God’s door; Swift to fly, and strong to do Justice, all the wide world through. Thou art safe in self-possession. Innocence needs no confession. Guilt lies only in transgression. Fear not, therefore, though there be No sign of ready help for thee; But in thy peril and distress, Trust the Master, questionless.”
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