Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 4, 1900
GREATLY BELOVED.
By Asa Smith
ASA SMITH.
(Battle Creek, Mich.)
CONVINCED of guilt, with contrite heart and meek,
Trembling before His word, I strove to speak,
And tell my sorrow, and confess my sin—
My work was dross, my life was worthless tin.
The enemy, to press me to despair,
Insisted God would never hear my prayer.
My filthy rags, unfit for man or beast,
Would never pass me to the marriage feast.
Accused, condemned, afflicted with my care,
I lifted unto God my weight of prayer,
And stood a suppliant, who made appeal
By what I was, to One whose love can feel—
Aye, e'en to him who on his loving breast
Doth bear the soul by agony oppressed.
Then to the Book I turned, to see what saith
The word of God to aid a sinner's faith,
And opened to the prayer that Daniel made,
Confessing sin like that my heart dismayed.
It seemed the very prayer I strove to speak,
But could not, since my utterance was weak.
And lo! when he had finished, by his side
There stood an angel presence glorified,
And touched him, and in tenderness so moved,
Proclaimed, O Daniel, thou 'rt a man beloved
Of God in heaven. Ah! might that word be given
To me as unto him,—“Beloved of Heaven.”
Then as I bowed,—desiring, but in pain;
Wishing, but deeming all my wishing vain,—
There came a touch of love beyond compare;
And lo! the angel stood beside me there,
And spake as then: “Thy words are heard above,
And thou art cherished in God's heart of love.”
I looked, rejoicing suddenly; for, lo!
My filthy robes were changed to robes of snow.
A diadem upon my head was placed,
A scepter glorious my fingers graced.
A voice said, “Keep my charge. I cause you, I,
To walk with holy angels standing by,
To keep my courts, and to go out no more.
Behold, I set thee here an open door.”
Then wondering at such power and love divine,
I saw a hand reach down to depths like mine,
And gently pluck a worthless thing, low down,
And lift it to the ensign of a crown.
And lo! God's people were, within his hand,
A crown of glory in the heavenly land.
I heard a voice—a tender voice—declare:
“Greatly beloved my suffering people are;
E'en as they weep for sin, so, high above,
They'll shine in glory, ransomed by my love.”
Then, like the prophet's heart of old, mine beat,
And lo! my song was praise, my sleep was sweet.
O you who mourn and suffer when you're proved,
Rejoice! rejoice! you still are God's beloved.
CHRIST MAN'S EXAMPLE
By Ellen G. White
MRS. E. G. WHITE.
There is nothing which will weaken the strength of a church like pride and passion. If one engaged in the work of God does things in contradiction to another engaged in the same work, that is strife and variance. If we do this to be esteemed or to exalt self, it is vain-glory, and death to spirituality and to Christian love and unity of action. Let there be no spirit of opposition among Christians. Christ has given us an example of love and humility, and has enjoined upon his followers to love one another as he has loved us. We must in lowliness of mind esteem others better than ourselves. We must be severe upon our own defects of character, be quick to discern our own errors and mistakes, and make less of the faults of others than of our own. We must feel a special interest in looking upon the things of others,—not to covet them, not to find fault with them, not to remark upon them and present them in a false light, but to do strict justice in all things to our brethren and all with whom we have any dealings. A spirit to work plans for our own selfish interest, so as to grasp a little gain, or to labor to show a superiority or rivalry, is an offense to God. The Spirit of Christ will lead his followers to be concerned, not only for their success and advantage, but to be equally interested for the success and advantage of their brethren. This will be loving our neighbor as ourselves; and an opposite spirit from this creates differences and alienations and want of love and harmony.
Oh, how out of place is all this strife for supremacy! Jesus alone is to be exalted. Whatever may be the ability or the success of any one of us, it is not because we have manufactured these powers ourselves; they are the sacred trust given us of God, to be wisely employed in his service to his glory. All is the Lord's intrusted capital. Why, then, should we be lifted up? Why should we call attention to our own defective selves? What we do possess in talent and wisdom, is received from the Source of wisdom, that we may glorify God.
The apostle would call our attention from ourselves to the Author of our salvation. He presents before us his two natures, divine and human. Here is the description of the divine: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” He was “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.” Now, of the human: “He was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.” He voluntarily assumed human nature. It was his own act, and by his own consent. He clothed his divinity with humanity. He was all the while as God, but he did not appear as God. He veiled the demonstrations of Deity, which had commanded the homage, and called forth the admiration, of the universe of God. He was God while upon earth, but he divested himself of the form of God, and in its stead took the form and fashion of a man. He walked the earth as a man. For our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich. He laid aside his glory and his majesty. He was God, but the glories of the form of God he for a while relinquished. Though he walked among men in poverty, scattering his blessings wherever he went, at his word legions of angels would surround their Redeemer, and do him homage. But he walked the earth unrecognized, unconfessed, with but few exceptions, by his creatures. The atmosphere was polluted with sin and curses, in place of the anthem of praise. His lot was poverty and humiliation. As he passed to and fro upon his mission of mercy to relieve the sick, to lift up the depressed, scarce a solitary voice called him blessed, and the very greatest of the nation passed him by with disdain.
Contrast this with the riches of glory, the wealth of praise pouring forth from immortal tongues, the millions of rich voices in the universe of God in anthems of adoration. But he humbled himself, and took mortality upon him. As a member of the human family, he was mortal; but as a God, he was the fountain of life to the world. He could, in his divine person, ever have withstood the advances of death, and refused to come under its dominion; but he voluntarily laid down his life, that in so doing he might give life and bring immortality to light. He bore the sins of the world, and endured the penalty, which rolled like a mountain upon his divine soul. He yielded up his life a sacrifice, that man should not eternally die. He died, not through being compelled to die, but by his own free will. This was humility. The whole treasure of heaven was poured out in one gift to save fallen man. He brought into his human nature all the life-giving energies that human beings will need and must receive.
Wondrous combination of man and God! He might have helped his human nature to withstand the inroads of disease by pouring from his divine nature vitality and undecaying vigor to the human. But he humbled himself to man's nature. He did this that the Scripture might be fulfilled; and the plan was entered into by the Son of God, knowing all the steps in his humiliation, that he must descend to make an expiation for the sins of a condemned, groaning world. What humility was this! It amazed angels. The tongue can never describe it; the imagination can not take it in. The eternal Word consented to be made flesh!2God became man! It was a wonderful humility.
But he stepped still lower; the Man must humble himself as a man to bear insult, reproach, shameful accusations, and abuse. There seemed to be no safe place for him in his own territory. He had to flee from place to place for his life. He was betrayed by one of his disciples; he was denied by one of his most zealous followers. He was mocked. He was crowned with a crown of thorns. He was scourged. He was forced to bear the burden of the cross. He was not insensible to this contempt and ignominy. He submitted, but, oh! he felt the bitterness as no other being could feel it. He was pure, holy, and undefiled, yet arraigned as a criminal! The adorable Redeemer stepped down from the highest exaltation. Step by step he humbled himself to die,—but what a death! It was the most shameful, the most cruel,—the death upon the cross as a malefactor. He did not die as a hero in the eyes of the world, loaded with honors, as men in battle. He died as a condemned criminal, suspended between the heavens and the earth,—died a lingering death of shame, exposed to the tauntings and revilings of a debased, crime-loaded, profligate multitude! “All they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.” Ps. 22:7. He was numbered with the transgressors, he expired amid derision, and his kinsmen according to the flesh disowned him. His mother beheld his humiliation, and he was forced to see the sword pierce her heart. He endured the cross, despised the shame. He made it of small account in consideration of the results that he was working out in behalf of, not only the inhabitants of this speck of a world, but the whole universe, every world which God had created.
Christ was to die as man's substitute. Man was a criminal under the sentence of death for transgression of the law of God, as a traitor, a rebel; hence a substitute for man must die as a malefactor, because he stood in the place of the traitors, with all their treasured sins upon his divine soul. It was not enough that Jesus should die in order to fully meet the demands of the broken law, but he died a shameful death. The prophet gives to the world his words, “I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”
In consideration of this, can men have one particle of exaltation? As they trace down the life and sufferings and humiliation of Christ, can they lift their proud heads as if they were to bear no trials, no shame, no humiliation? I say to the followers of Christ, Look to Calvary, and blush for shame at your self-important ideas. All this humiliation of the Majesty of heaven was for guilty, condemned man. He went lower and lower in his humiliation, until there were no lower depths that he could reach, in order to lift man up from his moral defilement. All this was for you who are striving for the supremacy—striving for human praise, for human exaltation; you who are afraid you will not receive all that deference, that respect from human minds, that you think is your due. Is this Christlike?
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” He died to make an atonement, and to become a pattern for every one who would be his disciple. Shall selfishness come into your hearts? And will those who set not before them the pattern, Jesus, extol your merits? You have none except as they come through Jesus Christ. Shall pride be harbored after you have seen Deity humbling himself, and then as man debasing himself, till there was no lower point to which he could descend? “Be astonished, O ye heavens,” and be amazed, ye inhabitants of the earth, that such returns should be made to our Lord! What contempt! what wickedness! what formality! what pride! what efforts made to lift up man and glorify self, when the Lord of glory humbled himself, agonized, and died the shameful death upon the cross in our behalf!
Who is learning the meekness and lowliness of the Pattern? Who is striving earnestly to master self? Who is lifting his cross and following Jesus? Who is wrestling against self-conceit? Who is setting himself in good earnest and with all his energies to overcome satanic envyings, jealousies, evil-surmisings, and lasciviousness; cleansing the soul temple from all defilements, and opening the door of the heart for Jesus to come in? Would that these words might have that impression upon minds that all who may read them would cultivate the grace of humility, be self-denying, more disposed to esteem others better than themselves, having the mind and Spirit of Christ to bear one another's burdens! Oh that we might write deeply upon our hearts, as we contemplate, the great condescension and humiliation to which the Son of God descended that we might be partakers of the divine nature, and escape the corruption that is in the world through lust! All haughtiness, all self-exaltation, must be put away from us, and we learn the meekness and lowliness of Christ, or we shall find no place in the kingdom of God. The life must be hid with Christ in God. The anchor of every soul is to be cast into the Rock cleft for us, that Rock which bears up a ruined world. Let us keep these things in our minds.
Pride of talent, pride of intellect, can not exist in hearts that are hid with Christ in God. There would be no strivings to let self stand forth conspicuously unless Deity and humanity combined had stood in the gap to stay the sentence of a broken law. Its penalty would have fallen, without abating a jot of its severity, upon the sinful. It fell on Jesus, the world's Redeemer, to give man another trial. Then let us humble ourselves, and adore Jesus, but never, never, exalt self in the least degree. God forbid that we should foster in ourselves independence. Make haste that none of us may occupy the fearful position of him for whom Christ died in vain.
Will my brethren consider that there is no royal road to heaven? The cross, the cross, lies directly in the path we must travel to reach the crown. Those who will not humble themselves even as a little child, said Jesus Christ, shall have no part in the kingdom of heaven. If the motive of all our life is to serve and honor Christ and bless humanity in the world, then the dreariest path of duty will become a bright way,—a path cast up for the ransomed of the Lord to walk in. If we are children of God, there will be countless opportunities for serving him by active ministry to those for whom he died. Jesus looks upon the wants, the necessities, of every soul, and ministers unto them by standing close beside the one whom he uses to be an instrument to help and bless others. All contentions, all envy, is grievous to Jesus Christ.
Christian Nations and the Perils of Power
Can America and England, Christian though they be in name, be trusted with any further augmentation of power? Will it do to allow them to accumulate force? Will they misdirect that force, or use it for the highest ends? God, of course, can see the end from the beginning, and is in no uncertainty as to how things are to turn out; but looking at the matter under our human limitations, we might almost wonder what God hopes to do with the great centralizations of power, the growing imperialisms, that are rising to conspicuous view in the earth. Certainly, if America and Great Britain do not exercise their vast resources in a Christian manner, if their method proves Babylonian rather than Biblical, those resources will be taken away from them. The talent disused becomes in time the talent lost.—New York Observer.
BE TEMPERATE IN ALL THINGS.
By Mrs. H. E. S. Hopkins
MRS. H. E. S. HOPKINS.
(Battle Creek, Mich.)
Our Saviour, in his admonitions to the seventy, who were sent out by twos, said: “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few.” The following words tell us our duty: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.”
Many are the earnest, importunate petitions that have ascended to the Lord of the harvest for help. Jesus says, “Without me ye can do nothing.” Is there not danger of being overanxious, of thinking that there is not another person whom the Lord can trust with this vast amount of work that is to be done in his vineyard? “Be careful for nothing.” “By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,” “that giveth to all men liberally,” “abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Is he not waiting for his people to ask, that he may do great things for them?
Considering these facts, should we for a moment entertain the thought that our divine Lord desires that any of his laborers should work beyond their strength, hoping to accomplish a desired end, but thereby entirely cutting off their own usefulness? “He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”
We read, in Mark 6:31: “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.” The disciples had just returned from their first missionary tour, wearied with labor for their Master. And these are the words of compassion breathed from the lips of the Redeemer, assuring his disciples that it was not necessary to work to the utmost of their strength.
“Let no one labor to the point of exhaustion.” “Do not crowd two days’ work into one. God’s work is world wide. It calls for every jot and tittle of the ability and power that we have, but there is danger that God’s workers will abuse their powers as they see the field is ripe for the harvest. But God does not require this.”
In the ministry; among Bible workers, canvassers, office laborers, students, teachers, physicians; and even among those engaged in household duties, “Sabbath-keepers as a people labor too hard without allowing themselves a change, or periods of rest. Recreation is needful to those engaged in physical labor, and is still more essential for those whose labor is principally mental. It is a religious duty to take care of the health which God has given them. The Lord does not require them just now to become martyrs to his cause. They can serve the cause of present truth far better by their lives than by their death.”
But these admonitions are not intended for the idlers, the do-nothings. “Why stand ye here all the day idle?” Where is the talent I intrusted to you? These are the questions the Master asks you. “I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth.” Why not dig it up, and put it out to the exchangers, as the Lord requires?
“Oh,” says one, “if I had the ability that this one, that one, or the other has, I might do something to extend this message, but I do not see how I can do anything.” Have you truly decided to stand still, fold your hands, and let others take the crown that you might win? Can you afford it, my brother, my sister?
“We should be grateful that God condescends to use any of us as his instruments.” “As stewards of the Lord’s gifts we are to trade upon these talents, however small they may be. Many neglect the work because they563think their talent too small to honor God. But you should not thus estimate the talent God has given you. Because you do not seem to be so highly favored as some others, you should not underrate your intrusted gifts, hiding them in the earth.”
“Laborers are few.” The Lord needs your service. “Will you let him have it?”
“What shall I do anyway? I can’t go to China, India, or any of the dark quarters of the globe.”
Are you sure? Did you ever talk with the Lord about it? It is true that we can not all go to these places. Some of us must stay at home. Some of us have a work to do in our own kitchens. This is one of the best places to learn how to prepare good, healthful food, that we may have clear minds to be fitted for the work in foreign fields.
Then there is the “little flock;” what a work for this is intrusted to some of you! Take the little folks out with you to visit the sick, the poor, the aged, and the lonely, thus letting them see a little of the other side of life, and instilling into their minds a missionary spirit. There are letters to write to isolated members, who are scattered here and there. And there are relatives, whom we must not neglect. Our first effort should be with them. Surely there is plenty of work for all. If you are ready and willing, you will not have any difficulty to find out where your field of labor is. Take courage, go forward in the name and strength of the great I AM, and he will verify his promise: “Unto every one that hath, shall be given.”
SEVENTY DOLLARS A WEEK BY BEGGING.
Christian World.
An American writer has made an interesting study of street-begging from the standpoint of a beggar. Assuming the garb of a mendicant, he put his arm in a sling well saturated with carbolic acid, partly for its appeal to sympathy, partly to expell the undesirable tenants of his raiment, and started out in business for a week. In seven days of begging he collected seventy dollars, averaging 5s. 2½d. sterling an hour for the actual time employed.
For the purpose of his investigation he selected all sorts of districts. He estimated that, if he had confined himself to the best-paying fields, he could easily have averaged twenty dollars a day of eight hours. Following the cue given him by a “beggar friend,” he solicited only those men who seemed to be strangers, but accosted women indiscriminately. In the “millionaire districts” he got the least, in the “tenement districts,” the most.
The proportion of givers was, among the poorest, six in twelve; among the middling rich, four in twelve; among the richest, two in twelve. From out-of-town sight-seers he got twice as much as from city women shoppers. He found that begging from house to house pays five times better than begging on a street corner, yet the “stander,” not the traveler, gets rich: the reason being that the stander works without intermission.
He found that as a rule “a stander beggar has at least a comfortable home, that his rent is paid promptly, his meals are good, he has a wife and children, he makes and receives calls, and in many cases has a savings-bank account of generous dimensions; some of them are even owners of realty.” From six to ten thousand persons in New York he estimates as in the business of begging. The magistrates commit many, but when released they go at it again.
The pathetic side of the story is the plundering of the sympathetic, but ignorant, poor. The instructive side of it is the certainty of debauching manhood by “charity” to beggars.
“JESUS IS MY LOVE.”
[The Lollards’ Tower in London, constructed by Chicheley, archbishop of Canterbury, in his palace at Lambeth, at the cost of six hundred pounds, was often filled with persons accused of heresy. The walls of this dungeon still bear witness to the sorrows and hopes of those who suffered in this place. The words “Jesus amor meus” (Jesus is my Love), written by some poor martyr, may still be seen upon the wall in the Lollards’ Tower. The large staples and rings to which the prisoners were fastened are, or were, preserved in a large lumber room at the top of the palace.—From “Papers for the Times,” by the Rev. D. Compton, Hastings.]
In this dreary dungeon I,
Bound in chains a prisoner, lie,
But my Love is ever nigh—
“Jesus is my Love.”
Friends and kindred all have fled,
Some are false, and others dead,
But this one of whom I said,
“Jesus is my Love.”
In my lonely hours he cheers,
Soothes my heart and wipes my tears;
Better he than all my fears—
“Jesus is my Love.”
Better with him in the gloom
Of this dreary dungeon tomb,
Than without in palace room—
“Jesus is my Love.”
Scant my clothing, coarse my food,
Vexed am I with treatment rude,
Yet, though lacking earthly good,
“Jesus is my Love.”
May it not be long before
All these sufferings shall be o’er,
Then shall I for evermore
Dwell with him, my Love.
Better here in bonds to lie,
Better on the block to die,
Than my faith I should deny—
“Jesus is my Love.”
—L. Shorey.
Christianity and Political Expansion
ALL the talk about the extension of Christianity through the expansion of our territory, or through our influence as “a world-power,” rests upon a confusion of ideas. Our government has no right to seek to do any such thing. And it does not do so. The notion that the mere annexation to this country of the Philippines or of a few provinces of China is of itself going to evangelize these regions, rests upon a survival of the old theory of a state church, which the United States has absolutely discarded.
As a matter of fact, there is much to show that when a so-called Christian nation acquires the political sovereignty of a heathen country, while missionary work is made easier for the subjects of the suzerain nation, their efforts are less effective. The great successes of modern missions have been achieved in countries that were not under the rule of foreign states. Pattison and Paton, Williams and Judson, did not know what home protection meant. They did not appear before the natives as representatives of a foreign power, with designs upon their great political independence.
One great advantage that, up to the present time, American missionaries have had in the Asiatic colonies of Great Britain has been that they have escaped the suspicion of being agents of a power that had designs upon the political control of the land.—The Watchman.
Humility in Christian Experience
“Those who have the deepest experience in the things of God, are the farthest removed from pride or self-exaltation.”
DO WE KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS?
By J. G. Wilson
J. G. WILSON.
(Dafter, Mich.)
Our love to God must be supreme. Heart, soul, strength, mind,—all to the utmost must be in this love; and “if any man love God, the same is known of him.” We may say much about our love to God, but he knows the heart. We must recognize the fact that love to God carries with it love for whatever God loves, and therefore it follows that love to man is necessary to meet the requirements of the law.
Love to God and man is only one love, and is not divisible. But our love to God is measured by our love to our fellow men. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” 1 John 4 : 20. This does not stop with our natural brother, nor with our brother in the church. But even if it did, how many are wanting! The love of God extends to every soul. Oh, for such a love to be seen among the professed people of God—a love that embraces the whole human family!
We may think that, had we been on earth when Jesus Christ walked among men, we should have ministered to his needs, sympathized with him in sorrow, and followed him even to prison and to death; and we should have said, with Peter and the others, “Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.” Matt. 26 : 33. Let us not deceive ourselves with beautiful thoughts of what we “would have done” for Christ, when all around us are souls for whom he died,—souls who need just such care and sympathy as we think we should show to Christ,—and yet we are indifferent to their needs. O Christian, would you bankrupt yourself to minister to Christ if he were on earth now? Would you share your abundance or your little with Jesus? “O yes,” you say, “nothing would be too good for him.” You need not look far for an opportunity; for he says, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matt. 25 : 40.
Look at the human side of Jesus, in humanity all around you; and remember that when you feed the hungry, when you minister to the needy or the afflicted, it is the same as if you did it to Christ. When you lodge that poor tramp, let not your eyes fail to look beyond a wretched man to the One who died for him. Christ is identified with every soul; and if we would minister to him, we must recognize his human side—man.
Then there are those who are slighted, neglected, and turned away. The Lord, whom we profess to love, says to us: “I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.” When, Lord?—When you thus neglected humanity; for “inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” Matt. 25 : 45. O Christ, how often thou art neglected to-day, even by professed friends!
Christ taught the young ruler, in Luke 18 : 20–22, that he had failed to keep the commandments when he used his property for himself, and neglected the poor and needy. He says the same to all who do the same thing in our day. Shall we hear his words with sorrow because we love our possessions more than we love our Lord? Shall we turn from following him now, in this eleventh hour, to the things of this world? Love to God and to man—this alone fulfills the law.
SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH
By David Paulson; W. S. Sadler
David Paulson W. S. Sadler
THE MINERAL ELEMENTS IN FOOD.
The mineral elements comprise but an insignificant percentage, by weight, of the food consumed, yet their extreme importance can best be understood when we learn the fact that man will die more quickly in attempting to live upon food from which organic salts (mineral elements) have been removed, than he would if he was entirely deprived of food. See Bunge’s Physiological Chemistry, page 115.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIVE MINERALS AND DEAD MINERALS.
The various mineral salts that are needed in the human system are found in abundant quantities in the soil. This has led many to believe that the body can make use of these salts without their being transformed into living salts, which is accomplished by their becoming a part of a living plant, by being grown into a plant. Careful experiments, however, have demonstrated that the human system has absolutely no power to recognize or appropriate these inorganic salts (that is, in the condition found in the earth). It is impossible for the system to in any way utilize them as food.
Chemists have attempted to feed animals upon a fluid that was prepared by mixing together the various chemical elements contained in milk in exactly the same proportions in which they are naturally found in milk. Yet these animals speedily died, thus demonstrating that the druggist or the chemist can not, by an artificial process, accomplish that which the Lord has arranged through nature to do. If a tomato be burned, and a careful analysis be made of its ashes, iron will be one of the minerals found. But this dead iron can not be used in the human system to supply the blood with the iron that it needs. In the process of burning, the living salts of the tomato were reduced again to the form in which they were originally found in the earth by the roots of the tomato plant. The organic salts have again become inorganic.
DEAD SALTS UTILIZED ONLY BY THE VEGETABLE WORLD.
The process of decay in either animals or plants changes their substances back into the elements from which nature originally constructed them. The plant has power to take these dead salts and organize them into its own structure. In this form, when we eat the plant, we are able to utilize these salts in our bodies. In this process inorganic salts become translated from the mineral kingdom into the vegetable kingdom; and when man eats the products of the plant world, they in turn are translated into, and become a part of, the animal kingdom.
SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM THE TRANSFORMATION OF SALTS.
The plant is able to take the dead mineral salts found in the soil and organize them into living salts, as it were, perfectly adapted and suited to the use and nourishment of man. This is a most beautiful illustration of that spiritual transformation by which the soul, dead in trespasses and sins, is so transformed by the grace and power of God that it has life—everlasting life. This scientific truth that dead salts are by the vegetable kingdom organized and made ready for use by the animal kingdom, is but an illustration of how we may, by faith, reckon ourselves to be dead unto sin, and alive unto God; for the plan of salvation is a process whereby the things that are earthly may not only be transformed, but eventually translated into the heavenly.
Again: just as man is utterly unable to digest or assimilate the inorganic salts before they have been organized into plant life, so God will be unable to use us as stones in the eternal building unless we have been born again, made alive, as it were, from the dead. From the salts and ashes resulting from the death of self, God is able to raise up a new being, impart to it new life, and enable it to do a new work. These beautiful truths of the new birth and new life and the new work of the Christian are all plainly and beautifully illustrated in the natural world, in the transforming of dead mineral matter into the living, acting tissues of man himself.
AN OBJECT LESSON OF TRANSLATION.
It is an interesting fact that chemical tests are unable to detect any essential difference between what we have termed the dead salts and the living salts, or between those of the mineral and vegetable kingdoms; and yet there must necessarily be a vital difference, owing to the fact that the “dead salts” are of no food value whatever, while the living salts are a necessary part of man’s daily food. What great spiritual lesson may we learn from this? It is this: viewed from a human standpoint, the earnest, struggling Christian seems to occupy a position almost identical, as far as human besetments and shortcomings are concerned, with that occupied by the careless and indifferent sinner; for, in the words of Inspiration, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.”
The work of preparation for the kingdom of heaven is one of faith; the daily progress can not always be discerned by sight. By faith we are to reckon ourselves dead unto sin, and alive unto God. By faith we should reckon that in Christ the victory is ours. It may be that the real change can not be discerned by human sight any more than can the difference between the mineral and vegetable salts, and yet, when used by man, there is shown to be a vital difference between the two. The humble, struggling Christian may, in the eyes of man, seem to possess few virtues or excellent qualifications as compared with the moral non-professor; and yet, when it comes to the question of the use God is able to make of these two men in his eternal plan, it will be seen that the man who, by faith, has reckoned himself dead unto sin and alive unto God, will be chosen as a being to be eternally glorified; while the other will be passed by with the terrible words, “I never knew you: depart from me.”
The Christian will have to reckon a difference between himself and his neighbors, by faith, and not by sight. By sight, there may be no striking difference. By faith, the difference may be almost infinite, even as in the case of the dead and the living salts.
In Col. 3:5 we are told to mortify our members. We have also learned that one way in which salts are produced is by the decay of animal and vegetable matter, and so it is with the spiritual mortification. As the vegetable plant can take the inorganic salts resulting from decomposition, and organize them into living salts, which the human system can appropriate; just so the plant of divine grace, growing, as it were, upon the very grave of the decomposing old man of self and sin, can organize these things, which we have reckoned to be dead indeed, into a new and living form. This transformation is in itself a promise of the ultimate translation that shall bring us into association with the heavenly beings.
Said Christ: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.” The lily is but an example of how the plant can take the lifeless mineral matter and organize it into a thing of beauty. See how the lily can grow and present its flowers of spotless purity, organized from the slime and filth of the water in which it grows. This reminds us of another Scripture statement, “He shall grow as the lily.” Hosea 14:5.
Thus it is that true science sheds light upon things spiritual; while spiritual truth should be a chart and compass to guide the scientific mind in its investigations of physical truths. Without science in our religion, we become superstitious; without religion in our science, we are doomed to skepticism.
Copyrighted, 1900, by David Paulson and W. S. Sadler.