Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 29, 1906
The Meeting Place
By Bonar.
“The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads,” Isa. 35:10.
Where the faded flower shall freshen—
Freshen never more to fade;
Where the shaded sky shall brighten—
Brighten never more to shade;
Where the sun-blaze never scorches,
Where the star-beams cease to chill;
Where no tempest stirs the echoes
Of the wood, or wave, or hill;
Where the morn shall wake in gladness,
And the noon of joy prolong;
Where the daylight dies in fragrance,
’Midst the burst of holy song—
Brother, we shall meet and rest
’Mid the holy and the blest.
Where no shadow shall bewilder;
Where life’s vain parade is o’er;
Where the sleep of sin is broken,
And the dreamer dreams no more;
Where no bond is ever severed,
Partings, claspings, sob, and moan,
Midnight waking, twilight weeping,
Heavy noontide—all are done;
Where the child has found its mother,
Where the mother finds the child;
Where dear families are gathered
That were scattered on the wild—
Brother, we shall meet and rest
’Mid the holy and the blest.
Where a blasted world shall brighten
Underneath a bluer sphere,
And a softer, gentler sunshine
Shed its healing splendor here;
Where earth’s barren vales shall blossom,
Putting on their robe of green,
And a purer, fairer Eden
Be where only wastes have been;
Where a King, in kingly glory
Such as earth has never known,
Shall assume the righteous scepter,
Claim and wear the holy crown—
Brother, we shall meet and rest
’Mid the holy and the blest.
—Bonar.
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Multiplied Scandals
By Editor
Editorial
Multiplied Scandals
The prophecy forewarns us that Satan will work with great power just before the coming of the Lord. Indeed, if it were possible, the very elect would be deceived. The evidences of this condition of things are now to be seen on every side. Even those observers of current history who do not admit that the end of all things is at hand do yet recognize that this is a time of outbreaking evil. Thus the first paragraph in the March number of The World's Work, a magazine of great influence, runs as follows: “Scandals on every side of us—great insurance scandals, great corporation scandals, political trickery and corruption, and nauseating social scandals—fill the press, supply an incessant topic for conversation, take the place of emphasis in the popular magazines, and become the theme of preacher and novelist. The lapses of American social, financial, and political life are the subject of inquiry and of comment alike at home and abroad; and the ugly facts that provoke such inquiry and comment are indisputable.” After making this frank confession of the true state of affairs in this country, the writer extracts comfort from a recent article in an English magazine which begins thus: “The mass of the American people are certainly as honest as those of any other country.” There is very little real satisfaction in measuring ourselves by ourselves and comparing ourselves with ourselves when we have all fallen into the same ditch together. The plain indications of a moral collapse are wide-spread, and there is no power in human nature of itself to resist the tide of evil. The world as a whole has taken a plunge downward from which there will be no recovery, but individuals who will give heed to the message for this generation may be rescued. The multiplied scandals of this time only emphasize the call for the third angel's message which lifts up the standard of the commandments of God and reveals the power for obedience.
Religious Liberty As a Club
By Editor
The Right to Inquire
On the evening of February 4 an address was delivered in the chapel of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the greater part of which has since been published for general circulation. In an editorial introduction it is stated that “these are the principles that we entertain, and that we hope shall ever prevail, in the sanitarium and all its work and workers.” In view of this statement and of the general character of the address, it seems proper to give the principles presented some consideration in the REVIEW.
The title of the published address is “Medical Missionary Religious Liberty,” and at least one aim of it appears to be to make a protest against an alleged “perverse use of the Testimonies,” but the opening part of this very address itself furnishes an example of such a perverse use of the Testimonies that we must enter our protest against it. The speaker first quoted the following statements from a recent Testimony:—
I wish to say to every soul, “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” In magnifying the Lord, be sure that you do not condemn and make charges against others. While we are to call error, error, and withstand delusive sentiments that will continue to come into our ranks to palsy the faith and assurance of the people of God, we are to make no tirade against men and women.
The conclusion drawn from this excellent counsel is put in these words:—
Those who have done these unrighteous things have claimed that they were doing them out of loyalty to the Testimonies. Thus the situation illustrates this truth: nobody can be loyal to the Testimonies and go contrary to the Bible. Nobody can disobey the Scriptures and be loyal to the Testimonies in doing it. No man can be loyal to the Testimonies, and put himself on the ground of the Testimonies, and stand for the Testimonies, and in the doing of it violate the plain, every-day words and principles of the Bible. But that is what has been done in this situation, else this Testimony never would have needed to be given.
To use the caution given against pursuing a certain course of action as the basis of a charge that that course of action has actually been pursued is, according to the best light we have, a glaringly perverse use of the Testimonies. On this principle of interpretation the counsel recently given to a worthy brother against going to the sanitarium to teach could be used as positive proof that he had already been teaching in the institution. To state the case exactly as it appears to us, we are compelled to say that it seems like an attempt to make the Testimonies responsible for a charge which is based upon assertion rather than upon evidence.
In the early part of this address we find this statement:—
No person in the world can ever rightly and in loyalty to the Testimonies use them as a club upon any soul on earth.
This is not a direct assertion that any one has been using the Testimonies as a club in Battle Creek, but under all the circumstances it may be proper to consider what has been done there. It is, of course, well known that quite a number of very plain Testimonies, dealing both with general principles and with the course of certain individuals, have recently been read in the Tabernacle at Battle Creek. This is no new departure in this denomination. The Testimonies have been read both in the Tabernacle and in the sanitarium for many years. And, further, we distinctly remember that at the General Conference of 1897, held at College View, Neb., nearly half a day was occupied in reading before a very large audience Testimonies which severely reproved the president of the General Conference for the course which he had been pursuing. Now Testimonies have been read which have reproved with the same plainness other men prominent in the denomination, but we heard nothing said then about using the Testimonies as a club, and we do not think they were so used then, or have been so used now. The circumstances have changed, it is true, and it is now the medical work and workers under reproof, but that does not change any principle4concerning the right use of the Testimonies. If there had been any desire on the part of those who have sought to maintain the integrity of this message during the past three years to use the Testimonies as a club, the record of this controversy would have been a very different one.
Further on in the address we find this statement:—
Every man's faith stands between him and God alone; not between him and any other man or set of men. No man is ever answerable to any man or set of men for his belief on any question whatever, Bible or Testimonies.
The position here taken is perfectly sound, and we indorse it heartily. To take any other position on this question would be to indorse the papacy and the Inquisition. When a man teaches doctrines which are contrary to the Scriptures, we of course have a perfect right to point out that fact, and to show wherein he departs from the truth, but he is not answerable to us or any other man for his belief. But while it is always true that “no man is ever answerable to any man or set of men for his belief on any question whatever, Bible or Testimonies,” it is equally true that when a man occupies the position of a teacher or a leader in a denomination, the people have a right to ask and to know whether he believes those doctrines which are held to be fundamental by the body; and if he is sound in the faith, he will not deem it necessary to resent any such desire to know, on the plea that it is an interference with his religious liberty. In the exercise of his religious liberty a man has the privilege of believing or not believing, just as he may choose, but he has no right to use the resources and the agencies of a denomination for promulgating his beliefs when they are destructive of the very life of the denomination, or to complain if the young people of the denomination are not committed to him for their training when he has chosen to believe what the parents do not wish to be taught to their sons and daughters. To insist upon soundness of belief in the teachers and leaders of a denomination is no more a domination of another's faith than the casting of Satan out of heaven for his disloyalty was a domination of his faith. Lucifer justified his rebellion on the ground that his liberty was encroached upon, and other rebellions have since been justified on the same ground. And to raise the issue of religious liberty in order to prevent a denomination from learning concerning the belief of those who wish to instruct in it, is to attempt to use religious liberty as a club. We do not believe in using either the Testimonies or religious liberty as a club.
The issue which it is claimed is now at the front for settlement is stated in this paragraph:—
Now, that is the question in this family. And not only in this family; that is the question all over the United States, and it is fast reaching to the ends of the earth and all over the world. The question is whether man shall dominate man, whether man shall regulate a man's faith, or whether God shall have his place, and man be free, with God in his own place.
We can make a definite application of this principle, and can say that in the recent experience through which we have been passing one prominent issue has been “whether man shall dominate man.” The difficulty began over that very question. The tendency to centralize control reached a point where the integrity of this movement became imperiled, and when the religious liberty of an individual to decide upon his own course for himself was claimed, the imperious spirit of domination which could brook no interference precipitated an open rupture rather than concede such liberty to a collaborer. These are the simple facts of history. And resistance against the denomination to dominate must not be confused with the purpose to dominate. The former sometimes becomes necessary in the interest of truth and righteousness, but the latter is never excusable. We are willing to concede religious liberty to “the other man,” but we are inclined to ask “the other man” to grant us the same privilege. And when the question of domination in this denomination is settled, we think it will be found that the body will claim the right of self-government rather than submit to the domination of anybody. We are sure that the evil principle of domination will not again flourish in this denomination.
A new experience has come to the helpers at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. For two or three years they had heard only one side of the story of this controversy. And their faith in the Testimonies had been almost wrecked by a method with which we ourselves are entirely familiar. Recently they have heard the Testimonies for themselves, and a new light has been shed upon the situation. As a result, they could not accept the explanations and interpretations which they had previously assented to, and were unwilling that their views of the present situation should any longer be formulated for them. This exercise of religious liberty led to differences of opinion, and naturally to a different course of action. Then followed charges of insubordination and anarchy. It is, of course, possible that some did not make the wisest use of their liberty, and this may have given occasion for the following rebuke in the course of the address:—
There are people in this family who need to learn it [the lesson concerning Peter's solicitude about John's duty]. They have not been doing it lately; they have been watching other people, questioning others on this, that, and the other. But that is not religious liberty,—it is not following Jesus. It is not Christianity; it is not loyalty to the Bible; it is not loyalty to the Testimonies.
We may be mistaken in our conclusion, but this sounds much like condemning and making charges against others, although it may be intended as a mere statement of facts. Under all the circumstances, however, it is not surprising that there should be some watching and questioning. A situation had been created by the course of the management which inevitably led to it. The remedy will not be found in raising the cry of religious liberty, but in a change of policy.
On the whole, we can not think that the cause of religious liberty has been materially advanced by this address on religious liberty, neither can we think that it will contribute to a settlement, on a right basis, of the difficulties which have arisen among us. It will be necessary to give due consideration to some other instruction in the Testimonies besides the caution not to condemn and make charges against others, before the fundamental causes of the present controversy are removed.
One of the Outposts
By W. A. S.
It is a privilege indeed to look in at the outposts on the line of our missionary advance. The jets of light are being kindled here, there, and all about amid the darkness that covers the earth. One may find but a slender band in these outstations, or it may be but a solitary pioneer, but, depend upon it, there is always courage there, and confidence, and the face is resolutely toward the regions still beyond. In this spirit the missionaries are carrying the banner of truth forward, and in the same spirit the churches must stand by the continual missionary advance.
It was literally but a few minutes that I spent in the Portuguese outpost, as our ship touched at Lisbon. A run of twelve miles by train along the Tagus and we came to Carcavellos, a little village on the seacoast. Here is our headquarters for Portugal, in a small four-room cottage, where Brother and Sister Rentfro, with baby Carlos, are laying the foundations for the coming greater work in this kingdom. These simple quarters make no display, but the workers love the people among whom they have lived for eighteen months, and they love this third angel's message, and that is the combination that makes for progress in this work the world over.5
Thank God for a beginning in priest-ridden Portugal. For many years our laborers going by Europe toward southern or eastern seas have passed Portugal as one of the great unentered Catholic fields. Now this missionary outpost places Portugal on our "entered" list. Doubtless ere this is read, Elder E. Schwantes, from Brazil, will have joined the workers. They have a difficult field. Pray that God may lead the feet of the laborers to homes where honest hearts are waiting.
Along the Lisbon water front one may see where once the waters swept over the lower city in the great Lisbon earthquake. The modern city of nearly half a million now covers the hills along the Tagus River. And we know that as surely as old Lisbon was wrecked by the great earthquake, as the sixth seal was opened, just so surely the new Lisbon, and not only this city, but all the cities of the nations, will fall in a little from now. We can never believe these things and make no effort to warn the world. To believe this message means to give our all of strength and resources in sending it forward. Up and down the earth it must go. And we must go with it, as God may lead, or help to send it, as he may enable.
The statue of Vasco da Gama, looking seaward from one of the Lisbon promenades, reminds us that Portugal was one of the agents of Providence in the discovery and exploration of the world just as the light of the Reformation was breaking over Europe. Now the truth of the last reform message is discovering the way into hearts and homes in old Portugal. W. A. S.
St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands.
A Sunday Closing Bill
By Editor
Among the Sunday bills introduced in the present Congress is one “requiring certain places of business in the District of Columbia to be closed on Sunday.” This bill provides “that it shall be unlawful for any person in the District of Columbia to sell or to offer for sale, or to keep open any place of business for the sale or delivery of, any groceries or meats or vegetables or other provisions on Sunday except that from the first day of June until the first day of October meats sold prior to Sunday may be delivered at any time before ten o’clock of the morning of that day.” A fine is imposed for the first offense, and a fine or imprisonment, or both, for each subsequent offense.
We must believe that those who are urging the enactment of Sunday laws are sincere, but their sincerity does not prevent them from proposing some remarkable legislation.
This bill is a fair sample of the inconsistencies in which the promoters of religion by law are involved. If this measure becomes a law, it will at once become a crime, punishable even by imprisonment, to sell “meats or vegetables or other provisions” on Sunday, although the sale of tobacco in all its forms, spirituous liquors, under certain restrictions, newspapers, soda water, etc., is still permitted. Can any good reason be given why it should be made a crime to sell the necessaries of life on Sunday while the things which injure and demoralize may be sold on that day?
Furthermore, in the exception to the law certain work is lawful for a few hours on Sunday, but on the stroke of ten it becomes a crime. Why? Is the work forbidden after ten so that it may be easier to attend church at eleven? Is Congress being asked to assist in securing a good attendance at church? If this step is taken and the attendance is not increased, will a more stringent measure be demanded? And what will the end be?
In the last Congress a bill which was in substance the same as this was passed by the House of Representatives, but was not acted upon by the Senate. We hope that the present House Committee on the District of Columbia may decide that it is not wise to enter upon this path of religious legislation.
The Danger of an Autocracy in the United States
By L. A. S.
The government of the United States is, in theory and outward form at least, a republic, and doubtless few of its citizens are prepared to believe that in reality, as its powers are actually exercised to-day, it comes nearer to being an autocracy than do some European nations represented by crowned heads; yet just this is affirmed by no less an authority on the subject than Senator Bacon, of Georgia, one of the ablest constitutional lawyers in this country. The following quotations are from an article contributed by Senator Bacon to the Independent (New York), in which he sets forth the proof that there has been for years a steady encroachment by the chief executive upon the province of the legislative branch of the federal government, which has reached a point to-day where the functions of the national legislature are very largely usurped by the chief executive, so that in one person there is combined not only all the great powers properly pertaining to the chief executive's office, but also a large proportion of the sovereign powers vested by the Constitution in the national lawmaking body. Thus there is at the head of this nation a single individual who not only executes the laws, but to a large extent controls the making of the laws,—a condition wholly foreign to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, and contrary to every principle of republican government. Senator Bacon says:—
We have passed, by more than two hundred years, the period in the history of our race when one man could assume and exercise the power to determine, independently of the legislative department, what should be, even in part, the laws of the government. The framers of the Constitution stood nearer by a hundred years than we do to the time when a king sought to dictate what laws should be enacted by Parliament. The great and wise men who framed our fundamental law stood in the century next removed from that which had witnessed the culmination of that great struggle from the events of which they gathered the lesson that the power to make laws for the government of a people is safest when not controlled by one man, but when lodged exclusively with their elected representatives.
Yet the nation seems to be forgetting this plain lesson of history, and is moving in a backward, not a forward, course, in this respect. Says Mr. Bacon:—
It is a remarkable fact that in England, a monarchy, not only has the king abandoned all pretense of any control over legislation, but he has practically surrendered the exercise of executive power. The constant progress has there been toward restraint of executive power in the crown, and the enlargement of the power of the legislative branch of the government, until now practically all political power, both legislative and executive, is in the control of the elected representatives of the English people. It is a fact still more remarkable that in the United States, a nation born of a rebellion against a monarchy, and designed distinctively as a representative republic, the president has not only retained all original executive power and greatly enlarged it, but there has been a no less steady progress in the direction of the absorption of legislative power by the executive, and of its practical surrender in large degree by Congress.
Setting forth existing facts which justify this statement, the senator says:—
The time was when one who desired legislation by Congress came to Congress and endeavored to secure its enactment. How is it to-day? Who is it that wants legislation who now comes to the House of Representatives or to the Senate for the purpose of securing it? We see every day in the newspapers accounts of pilgrimages to the White House for the purpose of securing legislation; we see every day in the newspapers forecasts as to whether or not such legislation can be passed, according as it may be announced that it will receive the active support or the active opposition of the executive. Within the recent past . . . statements have repeatedly appeared in the public press telling that members of Congress, senators and representatives, had gone to the White House to solicit the aid of the president to secure the passage of certain desired legislation; and other statements are almost daily appearing in the newspapers that in the varying fortunes of the legislative battle senators and representatives hurry to the White House6to secure the aid of the president to regain a position lost or to advance still farther a line pressing on to victory.
There is still some evidence of a remnant of independence in Congress of the executive will in legislation, but, nevertheless, it is notorious right now that most important subjects of legislation of great public interest are receiving no attention, and the question whether Congress will or will not legislate on them, and what particular enactment will be made when there is legislation, depends solely on whether such subjects will or will not be made “administration measures.” That is openly and undisguisedly now recognized and asserted with almost daily reiteration in the public press, with specifications of the subjects of legislation which will immediately be pressed for action in Congress as soon as they are made “administration measures,” and upon which, with equal definiteness it is also asserted, Congress will not legislate until the executive will is made known in regard thereto.
What will be the outcome of this process of destroying the balance of power established in the three co-ordinate branches of the government? On this point Senator Bacon says:—
The time will come in the not distant future when, if this practise continues and increases, the question of the attitude of senators and representatives with reference to any proposed legislation will not be an important matter, and when it will be well understood that such and such legislation is to be enacted or defeated, as the case may be, according to the will of the president, and regardless of the personal views of senators and representatives. It is a popular practise to criticize speech making in Congress, but it will be a sad spectacle to contemplate when members of each House will cease to discuss measures actively favored or opposed by the president because of the absolute uselessness of such a discussion. Only “administration measures,” or those concerning which the executive is indifferent, will be enacted, and none others will be attempted from very hopelessness.
Senator Bacon concludes his article with the following observation:—
There can be no condition more dangerous to the maintenance of free government than is found in the concentration in the hands of one man at the same time of both the executive power and practically the power to make the laws he is to execute. Whatever may be the form of government, when these two powers are thus concentrated in the hands of one man, the government is an autocracy pure and simple. It makes no difference in practical effect whether that one man himself decrees the laws, or whether they are enacted in obedience to his dictation.
It is not from any failure of the Constitution to clearly separate between the functions of the chief executive's office and those of the national legislature, or expressly to define and limit the powers of each, that this departure from republicanism is taking place in the government. It is being done in open disregard of plain constitutional provisions.
As seen in the vision of the prophet John, this government “had two horns like a lamb,” but “spake as a dragon.” Rev. 13:11. It was not when this power was seen “coming up out of the earth” that it spoke with a dragon voice and persecuted the saints. It did this only after a great change had come over it which perverted its nature and subverted the principles upon which it was established. Such a change we see now in process of accomplishment. L. A. S.
Satan’s Gospel of Preparation
By W. A. S.
A WRITER in the Washington Post some time ago called attention to the great change in religious thought during the last fifty years. As the landmark for fifty years ago he takes the incident of the presentation of a Bible by Queen Victoria, in 1857, to a visiting party of Zulu chiefs, to whom she said that the secret of British progress was that all Christians believed in the authority of that Book.
Then the writer refers to an address recently given by Dr. Eden, an English bishop, to a body of Sunday-school workers, squarely denying the altogether divine authority of the Scriptures. He adds:—
It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the two opinions which reflected fairly the current thought of the two epochs. Queen Victoria just believed what almost every Englishman believed, and Dr. Eden but voiced the sentiments of those he addressed. There can be no two opinions about the matter. To-day only a few men accept the Bible as the Word of God, whereas in 1857 only a few doubted it.
To take the place of the old view of religion, according to the observation of this writer, there has sprung up a new philosophy of God. The literature of the New Thought movement he finds flooding the world. “There is hardly a city of any size that does not possess its sage who issues tracts from a calm retreat where deep thinking goes on uninterruptedly.” Of the general tenor of the new teaching he says:—
They consider creation as a thing constantly going on, and the Creator as an infinite mother. . . . In the little books of the present century there is no question of salvation, but very much of bodily health. The soul is considered to be an emanation of the divine nature, or, in the language of the theosophists, a ray from a radiant center. . . . The determination of man to worship some god in human form is the weakness that carries humanity away from the path of true progress. Therefore, the present view of God as a radiant center must greatly cheer the humanitarian.
And who can not see that these ideas are flooding in from every side? Faith in the authority and inspiration of the Word of God is destroyed by the idea that every man is subject to inspiration, and that he may find a basis of authority in his own nature. Thus the way is opened for the utter perversion of the truth.
Long years we have known that at the very end Satan himself is to come as an angel of light, as the great healer and humanitarian and medical missionary. The false gospel of his coming must precede him to prepare the way, just as certainly as the gospel of Christ’s coming prepares the way for that final event.
On every hand we may hear the cry of that “other gospel,” which Paul says ought not to be believed even though an angel preach it. The world is being sown with literature of the theosophical, spiritualistic, mind-healing, Christian Science order. New philosophies of God and of life are being propagated, and back of it all is one master mind shaping everything for the last crowning deception. He is to deceive all but the very elect. He will try to deceive those. We are face to face with the last bewitching delusions and sophistries of the evil one. The third angel’s message is our protection, and these things now knocking at our own doors are but signs that we have come to the very last of the last days.