Review and Herald, Vol. 15, No. 20. (4/5/1860)

Review and Herald

Apr 5, 1860

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 5, 1860

AN INTERESTING LETTER.

By Editor

[The following is a letter from a sister of this place to Bro. F. by whom she was baptized.—Ed.]

DEAR BRO. FRISBIE: I take the liberty to address a few lines to you through the church medium—the Review—to inform you and other dear friends west and east of the peculiar watchful care exercised over me by my heavenly Father, who numbereth even the hairs of our head, and does not turn a deaf ear to the feeblest cries of his creatures, not even to the young raven's, how much less to those whom he has redeemed by the precious blood of his dear Son.

My fears were realized with regard to the displeasure my parents would manifest in my being baptized; my father fully believing that I had been dedicated to the Lord by my infantile sprinkling—it is not surprising that he should deeply feel to what depths my “infatuation” had brought me; and viewing the entire matter in the light you are aware he did, he would naturally think it duty to place my departures from his faith in the strongest possible light. I have been until within a few days past with some Methodist friends in the country. They were very kind to me, but labored faithfully to convince me of my errors. I did the best I could to give them the Biblical reasons of my faith, especially on the Sabbath. Those persons not agreeing with us on the importance of the Sabbath question, may think we do not build upon Christ, but on a day; but he declared that he was Lord of the Sabbath, consequently we claim him, and all that he came to establish, as the corner stone of present truth, the keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. How then can people get the idea that we reject a part of the Bible, when it is all summed up in the above words? I find there is a great deal of ignorance extant about our belief among those that seem to be desirous of taking the Bible as the man of their counsel and the guide of their life; but such is my confidence in their religious honesty that if they could once be placed where the full blaze of Bible truth could be brought to a focus on their minds, I believe they would henceforth and forever walk in the light even as He is in the light.

I have just been informed greatly to my astonishment of the assault made upon you by an official member of the Methodist church when you were preaching in Monroe Co. Can it be possible that a professed disciple of Him whose teachings were, “When they smite you on one cheek turn the other also,” could so far forget the Spirit of his Master as to flourish a club in your face! But when we take into consideration that this violent opposer was a disciple of the minister who arose the next evening and in a scoffing manner said he was “a millwright” and wanted to “know what you would take for yourself!” it is not a matter of surprise—“like priest like people.”

The language of our Saviour is, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. In it ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace.” Oh, how true these words are! Let the world and the popular religionists call us fools! fanatics! and speak of us all manner of evil. The true disciple cannot be above his Lord; for if they “call the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more they of his household?” and if he “was wounded in the house of his friends,” how can his followers expect to avoid like treatment? If we suffer we shall also reign. Let us take courage and go on our way rejoicing.

Last Sabbath, after an absence of four weeks, I again enjoyed the privileges of the sanctuary, and truly felt the “Lord was in his holy temple,” but we did not all keep silence before him, but testified freely as the Spirit gave us utterance. O, truly a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness forever. I feel established, strengthened, settled, and trust I shall prove firm unto the end. To this end I beg your prayers, and those of all that love Him who is the “Way, the Truth, and the Life.” And I do most earnestly pray that although I have gone forth weeping, I may come again with rejoicing bringing my sheaves with me. I find faith springing up in my heart like a grain of mustard seed, that my father will yet be as firm and as zealous an advocate of the present truth as he has been, and still is its opposer. If we keep his commandments and ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. Also, Hitherto ye have asked nothing; ask that your joy may be full. And where two or three are agreed as touching any one thing, it shall be granted them.

Yours in the truth. M. Battle Creek, Mich., Apr. 2d, 1860.

THE LAST WITNESS.

By Cummings

A very sure, but to the world unnoticed token of the arrival of the world's Saturday evening is the fulfillment of the prophecy that—

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached to all the world, for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Matt. xxiv, 14.

Translating these words literally from the Greek, they read thus: “And there shall be proclaimed as by a herald's voice or trumpet, this the gospel of the kingdom . . . in all the habitable globe . . . for a witness”—that may be accompanied, as the word indicates with martyrdom—“for a witness to all the nations;” or “unto all the Gentiles,” as distinguished from the Jews, “and then the end shall come.”

The Greek word for “gospel,” literally rendered “good news,” is the same as our English, or rather Saxon word “God-spell;” the word “spell” meaning “news,” and “God's-spell” meaning “God's news;” that is, the information that God has to tell us. Every time, therefore, we hear the gospel, we hear news which God makes known to us. What are these news? If I were to state that there is an El Dorado discovered in Surry, or a California in Kent, millions would rush from London across all its bridges

in order to explore the mine, to collect the gold, and become suddenly rich. I have better news than these; but unhappily, news not always and everywhere popular. The very fact of our hearts not being thrilled by their announcement is evidence of something cold, dead, insensible to what is the greatest glory, the richest happiness. The best and brightest things that ever vibrated on human ear, or thrilled human hearts, are these. Here is an epitome of the news: that there is for us orphans an everlasting home; for us exiles a country whose beauty and blessedness no tongue can tell, and no heart can conceive; for young men and women, weary in the shops, exhausted in the streets, sorrowful, depressed, dejected, a rest perfect, everlasting, and complete—the rest that remaineth for the people of God. To hundreds it comes as an old story. “Oh how often,” will it be said, “have we heard that! It has been told us Sunday after Sunday; we have read it in our Bibles; we have been taught it in our schools, and we have committed it to memory from our catechisms.”

This insensibility amid light is just the dreadful state of man's heart that we have to deal with. Familiarity with the message takes away its edge, and blunts its impressions. If the lost could only hear that there is a home and a heaven and a rest accessible to them; if the poor savages in Africa, and in Labrador, and in Greenland, and in China could but learn or hear for the first time and accept the message while they hear it, that this life's close is the commencement of a more glorious one, what a thrill of ecstasy would rush through every heart! Alas! the very exuberance of our blessings makes us insensible to them. This is one of the strangest phenomena, and yet one of the most common, that the more we are familiarized with mercies the less we appreciate them. Were you a traveller in the distant desert, beneath a burning sky, and on a parched soil, weary, scorched, and parched with consuming thirst, oh, with what thankfulness would you welcome one sweet cold spring! you would value it infinitely more than all the wine that the richest and choicest cellars of the greatest and the noblest can furnish.

But pure spring water is so common that we do not value it. Fresh air—perhaps in London somewhat corrupted—is so universal that we are insensible to its excellence. Our greatest blessings are scattered on the high road, and because they are so we neither appreciate nor are thankful for them. The greatest mercies, the brightest hopes, the noblest truths, the most thrilling prospects, that ever tongue told or ear heard, are those heard every Sunday; but they are so familiar that they pass from the ear into the air again, as the wind passes through a ruined archway, creating a murmur in its transit, and leaving, instead of an impression, the silence of death.

That this world is not the end of us; that this body with its aches and its pains and its fevers, and its sicknesses, and its weaknesses, is not our lasting tabernacle, as it now is; that there remaineth a rest for the people of God, an everlasting home, an inheritance of glory, a crown of joy that fadeth not away—is surely glad tidings. O, blessed revelation! oh bright hope! The ancient heathen hoped that there was an elysium, but he could not prove it. The Mahometan fancies on the authority of his Koran that there is an everlasting harem where his sensual passions will be gratified to the utmost; but as his conscience becomes pure and his mind enlightened, he grows sick of the sensuous prospect.

But we have not to prove the existence of a heaven; it is not a corollary, nor an inference, nor a logical conclusion; it is a revelation from that God who dwells in it, and comes to us in all the certainty of an absolute and indubitable truth.

Has the thought of heaven ever cheered you? Has the prospect of a home ever made your fireside brighter, and your heart bound with joy? Have you sat in the country at eventide, and gazed upon the last rays of the retreating sun, and the emerging stars that begin to sparkle, and the quiet beauty of the moon as she mounts to her midnight throne? Have you ever thought, if not of the words, at least of the sentiments of the poet—

“There is a heaven o'er yonder skies, A heaven where pleasure never dies; A heaven I hope and long to see, Where Christ prepares a place for me.”

The amount of hold that truth has on man's conscience, the joy it creates, the impulse it gives, is the measure of your belief and the reception of it. Thus the very first news, good news, is of a home far beyond—a rest for the weary when time shall be lost in eternity; a city that hath foundations; a better country, whose sun never sets, whose sky is never covered with a cloud, where the flowers are amaranthine, where the trees never lose their foliage, where all is beauty and blessedness, and the heart has its deepest feelings and its highest longings gratified to the utmost. Is not this good news? But some one says, “We know not the way; how do we get to this heaven?” Hear the good news: there is a way to this heaven. When man sinned, his sin, like a disruptive earthquake, rent this place we call the earth from that grand continent which we call home and heaven. In that tremendous chasm which disruptive sin dug between happy heaven and our poor, lost, stray, sinful earth, a broad, deep, moaning sea rises and beats against each strand continually. How can that chasm be crossed? Ask the infidel, and he will tell you you must take a leap in the dark; if you miss the opposite shore you must perish. Ask the Romanist; he will tell you the church is the bridge that will carry you across. Ask the New Testament, ask the Son of God, and in his own majestic and emphatic accents he replies, “I am the way; no man cometh to the Father but by me.” As God he touches the opposite shores of the great continent of heaven; as man, he touches the opposite shore of the disrupted and broken-off Island of time; as God-man, he unites the twain into one; reaching the very heights of God's throne, so that the most depressed, the most forsaken, and the most guilty sinner, has but to enter upon that

better than Jacob's ladder, which will carry him from the lowest depths to which sin has sunk him to the greatest heights to which God's love can possibly raise him. Is not this good news? And this way is not a new one. It is in one sense the old way; it is in another sense always new. By a new and “living way,” says the apostle; that word “new,” is applied to all things that never lose their freshness. For instance, of some piece of music you can say, “It is always new;” and yet it was composed by Mozart or by Handel some forty, fifty, or a hundred years ago. You may say of this way it is a new way, and yet it is an old one. It is old because it was preached in Paradise; it is new because it has all the freshness, from all the deep interest attached to it of a first and early discovery. This way has been trodden by many of your fathers and your children have trod it, and have entered into the everlasting rest. And if you examine it, in one part of the road you will find riches; in another part you will find rank; in another part of it beauty; in another crowns, and coronets, and purple robes and great learning, and vast genius, and lofty attainments; in another part the tear of the weeper not yet dried, the blood of martyrs, as if it only had been shed the other day; all these having cast off the world like a loose garment, and dropped it on the road, that they might tread more unembarrassed the path that leads to God, to glory and to happiness; in other words counting all but loss for the “excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.” You have not a way to strike out; no mountains to cleave, no rocks to blast, no vast hills to tunnel through, no deep valleys to raise to a level, no broad oceans to cross. It joins the Pacific of time with the great Atlantic of eternity, without the difficulties of a Panama 'mid the passage to detain you for a single hour. What a blessed way! What good news! What glad tidings that there is a heaven, a home, an everlasting rest, a joyful retreat. The way to it is so plain that carping scribes may miss it, critical divines may let it go, bitter sectarians may mistake it; but a wayfaring man, that is, an honest man, that wants to find out in the Bible the way to heaven, never can possibly err therein. It is a way too, which has a chart ever directing you, the Spirit of God ever explaining it to you; and so crowded with those that tread it of all classes, ages, complexions, and colors that no man goes alone to heaven. A great multitude out of every nation, kindred, people and tongue, whose backs are on the world, and whose faces are Zionward and to God goes with him.—Cummings, Great Tribulation.

THE TRUTH DOTH NEVER DIE.

Though kingdoms, states, and empires fall, And dynasties decay; Though cities crumble into dust, And nations die away; Though gorgeous towers and palaces In heaps of ruin lie, Which once were proudest, of the proud, The Truth doth never die!

We'll mourn not o'er the silent past,— Its glories are not fled, Although its men of high renown Be numbered with the dead. We'll grieve not o'er what earth hath lost; It cannot claim a sigh, For the wrong alone hath perished— The Truth doth never die!

All of the past is living still— All that is good and true; The rest hath perished; and it did Deserve to perish, too. The world rolls ever round and round, And time rolls ever by; And the wrong is ever rooted up, But the Truth doth never die!

Suffering Before Sinning

Suffering should always be preferred before sinning.

PATIENT IN TRIBULATION.

THE saints of old went through great tribulation; and our Lord has given us to understand that while in the world we shall have the same; yet how few have heartily considered and embraced this position of divine truth, as it relates of necessity to them personally!

If we look at it at all, we seem to do so under the impression that we are to be exempted from this part of God's will concerning his people.

But let us consider. How can we follow him who was made perfect through suffering, if we do not suffer with him? How can we be made alive to God without becoming dead to the world? And how can we become dead to the world unless we are crucified to it? And how can one be crucified without suffering from the cross, and tribulations by which it is to be accomplished? Nay:—

“Through tribulations deep, The way to glory is.”

not only of the glory that is beyond this sphere, but that inner glory of the new man formed within, who is in the likeness and image of God. Before this can be done our old man must be crucified, with his affections and lusts! And this crucifixion through successive tribulations, will result in the complete death of the carnal mind if we do but endure the fiery ordeal through which our great Refiner may require us to pass.

Endure! But alas how many fall here! It would seem as though we were willing enough to go with Christ to the temple, to astonish and confound, by our skill and wisdom, the great and the wise; or to the place where the leaves and the fishes are multiplied; or to Jerusalem to receive the honors and praises of the inconsiderate throng; or to the mount of transfiguration, where, filled with ecstasy, we shall be constrained to exclaim, “It is good to be here!” And all these may have their time and place in God's order; yet there is but little, or naught in any of them that is either crossing or trying.

And surely this is not following Christ fully. It is only stepping occasionally into his path whenever and wherever it may suit the tastes and preferences of a refined self-will; in effect it is not following him at all. To follow him is to “go through evil as well as good report.” At one time to confound the wise in their wisdom, and at another time to answer not a word though one who may have our life in his hand demands it; at one time to abound in plenty, and at another time to be an hungered, and to suffer need; at one time to have the praises of the multitude, and at another to hear it cry as loudly, “Away with such a fellow from the face of the earth, it is not fit that he should live;” at one time to be on the mount amid its raptures, with the spirits of the just, into whose company we have come; and at another to be alone, enveloped in darkness, in sorrow, and in great heaviness of spirit, where none may participate or sympathize with us.

Ah, yes! To know Christ in the “fellowship of his sufferings,” is as necessary, in order to “be perfected in him,” as to know him in his triumphs. “For unto you it is given not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.” And “we are joint heirs with Christ if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.” “Forasmuch then, as Christ hath suffered for us in his flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.”

But how few understand this! How long before many can be brought to see its divine origin and necessity! Hence, but few can be found who have not some complaints and discontent, which they often express concerning the things which are a source of trial and suffering to them, as though the way was hard, and many things they find in it ought not to be so.

O how many stumble and become offended here in the path of Christ! Instead of embracing the crosses and tribulations, both inward and outward which come upon them in the providence of God, as the appointed and necessary means of their crucifixion and death to the world, they shrink “as though some strange thing had happened unto them;” and take it as an evidence that God is displeased and angry with them. Hence, they have no heart to endure. They do not see its necessity—nor do they believe that God has any wise and kind design in it. This is why they fail to grow in grace and in spirituality.

To have the necessary strength and willingness to endure, we need faith; faith in God as the Lord of all,—feeding the young ravens when they cry; permitting not the young lions to suffer hunger; clothing the grass, adorning the lilies, numbering the hairs of our head, and so particular in all his providence that not a sparrow falls without him. Yes, faith in him, as one who sitteth like a refiner and purifier of silver, watching the progress of the work, and keeping us in his crucible only till the refining process is completed; or as the wise husbandman of the vineyard, whose eye is constantly upon each branch, perceiving every dry twig, oozing excrescence, or worm-secreting knurl that is to be found upon it; and with his sharp pruning knife, yet merciful and skilful hand, “purging it that it may bring forth more fruit.” Yes, a full and hearty confidence in him as the Lord from whose hand we receive good, and,—what may seem to the unwise or unbelieving,—evil; who so completely controls our afflictions, that they really work for us a

far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. All things are ours; whether it be Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, things present, or things to come, all are ours.

Need we say more? Is it not clear that in order to follow Christ, self must be refused in all its will and wisdom, and the cross accepted with all its pains of crucifixion and death?—that if we are ever purged from our dross, we must pass through the fire?—if ever counted happy we must endure? In a word, if our garments are ever found without spot, they must be cleansed by him whose “coming is like the refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap,” penetrating every thread and fibre of the thoughts, desires, and intents of the heart; melting and subduing its unpliableness, and cleansing from all its stains and pollution?

Thy way is then plain. It is simply to embrace all the trials and crosses that come upon you, whether inward or outward, as from the hand of your heavenly Father. Be like Job, who, when stripped of children, possessions, health, reputation and all else save his life, looked beyond the satanic instrumentality through which it was all accomplished, and seeing him, the Invisible, who had permitted and guarded it all, he endured, and blessed the Lord who had both given and taken away. Let your attention never be taken up with the agency through which your trials come. If you do all will seem perplexing and wrong. But as Mr. Wesley says, “See God in all things and be resigned, that you may be conformed to the whole will of God, who wills and does all (sin excepted), which comes to pass in the world. In order to this, we have only to embrace all events, good and bad, as his will;” not regarding the instrument, but him who governs all. As the poet has it:—

“The man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heavens espy.”

Happy is he who has learned this judicious lesson! His eye is single; not double or manifold which brings “care of many things,”—his whole body is “full of light;” affording peace and “contentment with such things as he has,” and he knows, as Mr. Wesley further says, “that the best helps to a growth in grace are the ill usage, the affronts, and the losses which befall us.” We should receive them with thankfulness, as preferable to all others, were it only on this account,—that our will has no part in them. The readiest way which God takes to draw a man to himself, is to afflict him in that he loves most, and to cause this affliction to arise from some good action, done with a single eye because nothing can more clearly disclose to him the emptiness of what is most lovely and desirable in the world.

Yet, under all this there may be a peace and quiet of soul like the stillness that prevails far beneath the turbulent waters of the ocean. Yea, a rejoicing in these tribulations from the assurance that this is the way of salvation, the way through the crucifixion and death of Christ, to the resurrection in his likeness, which is life triumphant and immortal. The way from the earthly to the heavenly, from the flesh to the spirit, and from self to God. Paul had to learn this and so must we. To him was given a messenger from Satan to buffet him; a thorn in the flesh to pierce his pride lest he should be exalted above measure with the revelations of God. He did not at first see its necessity, and besought the Lord, even thrice for its removal. But God answered not by removing the trial, but by promising him grace sufficient to sustain him in it. Hence, after this he could say, “I now rejoice in my sufferings.” And “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and not only so, but glory in tribulations also;” knowing what they accomplish under God. So fully did he see that “all things work together for good,” that we find him “glorying in his very infirmities.”

The inquiry may arise,—When do these sufferings cease, as to their painfulness? In the language of Mr. Wesley, we reply, “When we become willing they should endure as long as God pleases.” That is, when what is now our cross, that which now thwarts our wills becomes a pleasure. When we “rejoice evermore and in every thing give thanks.”

If we do but endure the cross of Christ, the time will soon come when we shall be crucified unto the world, and the world unto us; when we shall become “dead and live not” in our old selfhood, but Christ live in us, and the life that we shall then live will be by the “faith of the Son of God.” Then all things become alike good; all things alike welcome to the spirit of resignation and thankfulness. The mountains are made low, and the valleys are raised up till all becomes one shining highway, where no evil heart, temper or passion is found; and the Lord our God “is all in all.”

We may further remark, that these tribulations, or in other words, the cross of Christ is wisely presented to all. But oh, how few understand or accept it! The open sinner fights against us as his bitterest enemy, and of consequence, realizes a life of inward and outward violence and unrest. He will not “take up the cross,” and is impatient to find it in his way.

Even the young convert in the midst of the joys of the justified state, imagines that he shall be forever free from suffering—and when it comes “if need be, he is in heaviness through manifold temptations” or trials; instead of “counting it all joy” as something which is to give “faith its perfect work,” in order that he may be “perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” he sadly concludes that he has deceived himself, or that he has got out of the way and is under his Father's displeasure. Hundreds stumble and halt under this error for years. They have no strength or heart to endure tribulations, especially those that are inward, because they have no faith that God is in, or has any control over them. The Lord cannot therefore, advance them because they will not abide the fire through which he designs to bring them forth as gold—without dross. You will always find such ready “to leap over a wall, and run through a troop,” while in the joyous, luminous, and ecstatic of the emotional; but when they are called to “endure hardness as good soldiers,” the very means through which the Lord may advance them, they are sad, faithless, and discouraged.

Through all this they fail to become established. Sometimes they are in a state of justification—of pardon and joyous consciousness of acceptance with God—but at others they are full of unbelief and anxiety if not painful remorse. Their faith depends mostly upon their feelings and emotions, and not as it should, on the unchangeable promise of the Lord. They lack the faith that would keep them immovable.

A few of these unsettled and anxious ones at length find the way of peace and become established therein. This they find by simply reconstituting themselves and their all to God; and relying on the plain promise, that they are in consequence “accepted of him.” They now cease to look at the state of their emotions, for evidence of acceptance. They find that it is all in the will. When this is in harmony with God's, he accepts and approves. When it is in opposition to his, even in the smallest matter, he is displeased. Resting upon this plain and scriptural test, they find great peace, and are enabled to abide in the fellowship of the Spirit from moment to moment as they never did before. And though tribulations come upon them, and their feelings and emotions vary as did those of their masters, yet they cling to the precious comforting truth, that “where there is a willing mind it is accepted.”

With this faith and knowledge of the way, they can now endure hardness and suffering. They now consent that God shall “do unto them as seemeth unto him good.” To put them into the crucible and into the furnace; on mount Tabor, or on the cross; amid the plenty of leaves and fishes, or in the wilderness to suffer with hunger and temptation; for they have been assured that all work together for good, while it is in their heart to say, “thy will be done.” Their language now is “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him,” being confident that their Father owns them even “in the furnace of affliction.”

God now advances them. They are put into the first fires which cause the grosser dross to arise and pass off, until as they see no more coming to light, they conclude that all is pure within.

They are then subjected to new tests—put into fires hotter than the first, when, to their astonishment perhaps, more of the selfish nature is brought to view. This passes also. They are not becoming worse as it may seem to them, but purer and purer. Only let them abide, and as they are passed from vessel to vessel, and from fire to fire “dying daily” they shall be brought forth “as gold seven times tried in the fire.” Yea after they have suffered awhile, they shall become “strong established and perfect.” Thus saith the Lord.—Sel.

"The Tobacco Question."

SEVERAL of the Annual Conferences have introduced a "new condition of membership," viz., abstinence from the use of tobacco. The Maine Conference at its late session adopted the following by a rising vote.

Resolved, That no person shall hereafter be admitted into this Conference who uses tobacco.

Speaking of the Wisconsin Conference, a writer in the N. W. C. Advocate says:—

"The Conference holds fast to its position on the tobacco question, and receives none into full connection, or for ordination, who are in the habitual use of tobacco, until the Conference is satisfied they, by the grace of God, will abstain from its use. Therefore no tobacco monger need look this way for a field of labor in which to preach a gospel of purity, until he reforms from his evil ways."

Neither the British Wesleyan nor the Canada Conference admit any young men among them who use tobacco. If this course be correct, then the example of older members of Conferences who use tobacco, and especially Chairmen of Districts, and of Presiding Elders, must be more or less pernicious. We have men in B. R. Conference who will speak and vote against the use of tobacco, (just as they do against slavery) but who are nevertheless fairly pickled with it, as they are also with pro-slaveryism. And yet these men are fain to be the leaders (since to resist is vain) of the reform movements in the Church!

Christianity

By Paley

CHRISTIANITY.—I desire that in judging of Christianity, it may be remembered that the question lies between this religion and none; for if the Christian religion be not credible, no one, with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other.

Corrupt Communication.

'But let your communication be, Yea, Yea; Nay, Nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' Mat. 5, 37.

Can it be possible that these gracious words are in the memory of persons, when making use of expressions like the following :

'I'll bet;' 'I'll bet a dollar;' 'I'll bet you what you dare;' 'By George;' 'By jingo;' 'I swan;' 'I swanny;' 'Gracious;' 'My soul;' 'By jolly;' 'Gosh;' and others in common use.

Some, no doubt, think expressions similar to the above add force or grace to the language. Others use by-words because it is a common custom, without thinking what they are doing; or that there is any harm in their use. Even some Christians have become addicted to this habit. I am sorry, for such expressions coming from the lips of a professor appear to me like a pious way of swearing, or proposing to gamble. My brother or sister, if you are one of this number, I invite you to be so no longer, but throw your influence against the unhallowed practice.—Sel.

Continue reading: SADDUCEEISM