Earlier text: FROM NAZARETH TO BETHLEHEM.THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
By Frances E. Bolton
It seems to be the natural tendency of the human heart to seek justification through meritorious acts. When we have sinned, we are filled with a sense of our unworthiness and shame, but, instead of immediately seeking the Fountain that has been opened for all uncleanliness, we try to better ourselves by doing some good thing, that will give us favor with God. We seem to think that we must merit something before we dare approach into the presence of God. This principle in the natural heart, of seeking merit in self, has shown its development in all pagan religions, and has made its manifestation a marked characteristic of the Papal Church. Men have thrown themselves as bleeding sacrifices to Juggernaut; women have cast their babes into the Ganges; pilgrimages have been made; fastings, scourgings, and torturous penances have been self-imposed, to merit the favor of Heaven. It was while Luther was laboriously toiling up Pilate's stairs on his knees, to gain merit, that the glorious truth from heaven shone into and illuminated his soul,—"The just shall live by faith." We have heard of the monks, who wore their coarse hair garments for years, without change, and who would not allow water to touch them, lest their spiritual whiteness might suffer loss, through a loss of physical impurity. The "odor of sanctity" that wafted from these saints could not have been grateful to earth or Heaven. But, however apparent the worthlessness of the "meritorious acts" of the cases cited, there is a kind of self-justification that takes a more subtle shade, and its odor, tho less obtrusive and disgusting to earth, is most obnoxious to Heaven. Self-justification, self-righteousness, is a garment of "filthy rags;" mark the term, filthy rags. No monk, however long he wore his robe of odorous sanctity, could be clothed in more obnoxious filth than is described in this term of the Bible. Says the prophet, "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." This shows why the Pharisee's prayer was so abominable to Heaven; he was presenting to God, not the precious fragrance of the incense of Christ's merit, but the unsavory odor of his own. But why is it that our righteousness is so unacceptable to Heaven?—In the first place, we have sinned; we have transgressed the law, done violence to our natures. We have unfitted ourselves for fulfilling the high and holy requirements of God. We can not be the thing that is pleasing in His sight. We have become altogether unprofitable. The feet that should have hastened at His behest, are crippled; the voice that should have offered up sweet praise, is cracked and discordant; the heart that should have delighted in His will, is full of rebellion and enmity. What can we offer to God, whose nature and name are Love, since, through sin, the nature of enmity to Him is implanted within us? He seeks those to worship Him who worship in spirit and in truth. In the second place, for our inability, His love has provided an Infinite Sacrifice. On the cross of Calvary the great meritorious act was done. The spotless Lamb of God, who became sin for us, who bore the curse of the law, who endured the wrath of love against rebellion, has suffered the utmost pang, and tasted the dregs of the wo of a lost world. For ruined man He gave His divine life, and poured out, in a rich, infinite tide, the rivers of redeeming love. That man, lost and leprous, for whom so great a salvation has been purchased, at such infinite cost, should offer to God his own merit, is to count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing; to make it of less worth than man's own unrighteous deeds. It is more than this, it is to say to the Creator that the wisdom of God is less than His creatures; that the plan of the Infinite is beneath that of the finite. It is to despise the divine love that led the Father and the Son to suffer. It is to do despite to the Spirit of grace. What motive lies at the foundation of self-justification? Is it not selfishness? It honors God when we confess our sins, because it owns that He is just in condemning sin. It exalts His law as holy and good. It acknowledges before the universe the conviction that God's government is right, and Satan's is wrong. It is a vindication of honor. Faith in Christ honors God. It says: Your love can save, redeem, restore the sinner, and the heart that believes in the merit of Christ sings:—
"Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling." But self-justification honors, not God, but self. It says: I am able to save myself. It puts itself in the place of God, and is anti-Christ. It says, I can atone for my own transgression, and this dishonors the law, and brings its precepts down to the level of the fallen creature's ability. It is the constant tendency of the heart, nevertheless, to seek justification by some merit of its own. How often, when we have failed, we wait and seek opportunity to win our Father's favor ere we approach His throne! I remember a child who had disobeyed her mother, and was to receive punishment, but before the time arrived for the punishment, she sought in every way possible to merit her mother's favor, and escape the rod. One word of genuine sorrow, one acknowledgment of her wrong, would have been more than all her meritorious acts. The mother's heart would have given expression to her love, not in punishment but in favor, and her erring child would have been restored to her confidence. It is so with our Father. When we err, if we repent, if we come with broken and contrite hearts (and all this is the gift of His love), if we present Christ's merit, He expresses His love to us in blessing and the manifestation of favor. He comes to meet us while we are a great way off, and puts the best robe upon us,—even His own spotless righteousness.
"Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe." When the redeemed come into the city of God, it will be to ascribe their salvation to God and to the Lamb. "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast." We are saved through faith in Christ, but says James, "Faith without works is dead." It is an evidence of faith, genuine faith, an evidence that Christ is in you the hope of glory, when works appear in your life. From Christ is all good fruit produced; for these works are only the outflow of that vitality that Christ imparts. The sun in heaven shines, and his light fills our atmosphere. The light is in him, and it is an evidence that he has light, that he illuminates the world. The stars shine, and those that reflect the sun give evidence that they live in his light. The branch bears fruit, and gives evidence that it abides in the vine. But works, these works of faith, are not our life, but Christ's life in us. Says Paul: "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." There is no room anywhere in the Christian life for boasting, for presenting our own righteousness. I have heard of one brother who said: "It is not my sins that trouble me now, but it is what men call my virtues. It is my prayers, my sermons, my acts of charity, and my professed service to God. There is enough in them to sink me to perdition, and I should despair were it not for the merit of Christ." Is it not so with all of us? Do we not all feel to plead for every act of our life, "O Christ, cover that with Thy merit; let me hide myself in Thee"? O, the relief and the joy that come with the thought that "the Lord is our righteousness"! O, the gladness of the statement that was made to the Angel of the Lord concerning the man who was clothed with filthy garments: "Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him He said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment;" and they "clothed him with garments." We have been called unto the wedding supper of the Lamb, and the robes have been provided. Will any one appear there, as did the ungrateful guest, in his own garments, in his filthy rags? The prodigal who returned to the Father, received the best robe. Yes, the best that heaven can give is for the repentant one. No king of any world can furnish such a robe as heaven can,—rich in glory, "white, whiter than any fuller on earth can white it,"—the robe that will fit fallen man to appear at heaven's court without shame, even the robe of Christ's righteousness.
FRANCES E. BOLTON. PROGRESS,
By Frederick W. Robertson
AFTER long years' work, is visible. In agriculture you can not see the growth. Pass that country two months after, and there is a difference. We acquire firmness and experience incessantly. Every action, every word, every meal, is a part of our trial and our discipline. We are assuredly ripening or else blighting. We are not conscious of those changes which go on quietly and gradually in the soul. We only count the shocks in our journey. Ambitions die, but grace grows as life goes on.—Frederick W. Robertson. DON'T PUT IT OFF.
By James Martineau
THE want which we vainly purposed to relieve, soon looks up at us with reproachful face from the still graves. The tears we failed to wipe away, dry upon the cheek and leave us in the presence of the averted features of distrust, instead of the eye of sweet reliance. The just expectation which we have disappointed can not be recovered; there must be a long undoing before you can weave again, in even lines and pattern fair, the tangled web of life.—James Martineau. Christianity’s Hope for Indian Women
Of women in India it is said they are "unwelcomed at their birth, untaught in childhood, enslaved when married, accursed as widows, unlamented when they die." Christianity comes to them with the Gospel of hope, and will yet put the song of deliverance in their hearts. THE CHANGE OF THE SABBATH.
By G. E. Fifield
Prophecy—History—The Admissions of the Roman Church.
IT has, we think, already been made clear that Christ and His apostles did not change the Sabbath, and that the Bible gives no hint that any such change ever would be made by divine authority. Christ, the apostles, and the early Christians all observed the creation—the Christian—Sabbath, and showed no honor to the day of the sun. Still, the majority of those who believe in Christ to-day are found disregarding His Sabbath, and observing more or less strictly the Sunday. How and where did this change come about? The paper just published on the “Great Apostasy” shows plainly that this change was the result of that paganization of Christianity which Paul calls the “falling away,” or the working of the “mystery of iniquity.” It is as strange that the church should deny this to-day, and assert instead that the change was made by Christ and the apostles, as it would be for the historical world to deny that Columbus discovered America, and assert instead that the discovery was made by John the Baptist. In both cases the falsification of history would be the same. That the “mystery of iniquity,” the “man of sin,” or the apostate Roman Church, made this change is proven, first, by the prophecy that they would do this; secondly, by the plain history that they have done it; and, thirdly, by the fact that they themselves confess and even boast of their guilt in this matter, and thus glory in their shame. Paul prophetically described this corrupt, the imperial, world-ruling church as the man of sin, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 2 Thess. 2:4. How could this prediction that a man should show himself in the temple (that is, the church) as God, and even exalt himself above God, be fulfilled? There is only one conceivable way. God is the sole, supreme Lord, Commander, and Judge of the conscience of mankind. Each individual is accountable for his religious life to God, and to God alone. God in Christ is thus the head of the church. Now, if a man shall assume this headship which belongs to God alone, and in the temple (the church) exalt himself above all other men, and claim the right and the power to command the consciences and dictate the religious observances of all, in this that man would be making himself equal to God, and showing himself that he is God. If, in addition to this, he should promulgate decrees contrary to God’s laws, and demand obedience to his decrees instead of to the law of God, thus assuming the right to change that law, he would in this be exalting himself above all that is called God. The highest function that even the religious imagination can credit to Deity is to own Him as the Lawgiver of the universe, and of the individual conscience as well. We have seen that the Sabbath is a sign of the soul’s submission to God’s will, or law. Now if any human authority should assume the blasphemous right to legislate in opposition to God, and should establish a false sabbath as a sign of its authority, demanding obedience to it instead of to God, this, and this only, would fulfil this prophecy that a man should not only show himself equal to God, but exalt himself above all that is called God. All this the Roman Church has done, as we shall see. All Protestant commentators agree that the little horn of the seventh chapter of Daniel is a prophecy of the papal or Roman Church. It is said of this little horn, “He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws [“the law,” Revised Version, “of the Most High,” understood].” Dan. 7:25. Here is a plain prophecy that this same blasphemous power that has made of God’s children millions of martyrs, that has changed the laws of men, and kinged and unkinged men at its pleasure, should think to change God’s law, and especially that portion of it relating to time. The Sabbath is the only time mentioned in the divine law, and to this the prophecy must refer. The eleventh chapter of Daniel refers to this same power as doing “wickedly against the covenant.” This could mean nothing else than that that power should seek to change that covenant of the soul’s submission to God alone, after it had been sealed by the blood of Christ. Here, then, are three prophecies that the apostate church should think thus to change God’s law. We have already quoted history plainly stating that “a pagan flood, flowing into the church, carried with it its customs, practises, and idols,” until “almost every ceremony of the church had the aspect of pagan mysteries,” and until the Christians were “celebrating the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, their calends, and their solstices.” To show how this came about, let us use a simple illustration. If you pour a flood of pure water into the center of a muddy pool, there will be a time when that pool is divided thereby into three parts. In the very center, where the stream is falling from above, there will be a circle of pure water. All around this there will be a circle where the pure water and foul water is mixed, the proportions of this mixture being determined by the proximity to or remoteness from this center, where the water is pure. Outside of this circle, on the margin of the lake, the muddy water will still be untouched and unimproved. Christ poured the pure life water from above into this world, which was as a pool every idea and every thought of which was corrupted by selfishness and by sin. For a time His church remained pure; but all around this church was a circle where paganism was being affected by Christian thought. Thus a “new paganism” was created. Outside of this still, the old pagan ideas remained untouched. As long as the church organizations remained pure, excluding all pagan thought, this “new paganism” could not injure Christianity, while, on the other hand, Christian thought did, to some degree, permeate and purify this paganism. But all too soon the church itself was caught by the glamour of the worldly philosophy of this “new paganism.” As shown in the last article, the New Platonic school was founded, and spread over the whole world. Origen, the so-called church father, was one of the leaders of this school. This school brought in this “new paganism,” with its theories and practises, into the church. Thus among some of those who professed to believe in Christ some honor began to be given to the sun festival of the pagans. The historian Milman tells us that “the believer in the ‘new paganism’ of which the solar worship was the characteristic, would acquiesce without scruple in the sanctity of the first day of the week,” and that therefore “it is the oracle of Apollo of Miletus [the sun] which is to decide the fate of Christianity.” “The metamorphic language of Christianity had unconsciously lent strength to this new adversary, and, in adoring the visible orb, some, no doubt, supposed they were not departing far from the worship of the ‘sun of righteousness.’”—History of Christianity, book 3, chapter 1, and book 2, chapter 9. This strange blending of paganism with Christianity, in the church, had so far advanced in the early part of the fourth century as to make it necessary for services to be held in the churches on both Saturday and Sunday. In speaking of the reception of Arius back into the church of Constantinople, Neander says: “It happened to be on a Sabbath (Saturday), on which day, as well as on Sunday, public worship was held at Constantinople.” “The Sabbath was celebrated nearly after the same manner as Sunday. Church assemblies were held, sermons delivered, and the communion celebrated on this day.”—Torrey’s Neander, vol. 2, pages 298, 385. We have now reached the era of Constantine. Constantine was an enthusiastic devotee of this “new pagan” sun-worship. Gibbon says of him:— The devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun, the Apollo of the Greek and Roman mythology. . . . The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine. . . . The sun was universally celebrated as his invincible guide and protector.—Chapter 20, par. 3. For political reasons alone, this sun-worshiper declared himself a convert to Christianity. After his political conversion, as might be supposed, the “Britannica” says of him:— At best he was but half Christian, half pagan, a man who sought to combine the worship of Christ with the worship of Apollo, the sun, having the name of the one and the image of the other engraved on the opposite sides of his coins.—Article Constantine. Of this combination Dean Stanley speaks thus:— The retention of the old pagan name “Sunday” for the weekly Christian[?] festival is in great measure owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiments with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as “the venerable day of the sun.” . . . It was his mode of harmonizing the discordant religion of his empire (pagan and Christian) under one common institution.—History of the Eastern Church, page 291. This union, or harmony, of the two discordant religions was helped along in this way: while Constantine was yet openly a pagan he made this law:— Let all the judges and townspeople and the occupation of all trades rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are situated in the country freely and at full liberty attend to the duties of agriculture; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines. The date of this pagan edict, which is the father of all Christian[?] Sunday laws, is A.D. 321.7At a later period, carried away by the current of opinion (or rather by the current of his own political ambition), he declared himself a convert to the church. Christianity then, or what he was pleased to call by that name, became the law of the land, and the edict of A.D. 321, being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.—Sunday and the Mosaic Sabbath, page 4. Could history possibly more plainly state the origin of Sunday in the church? A pagan prince makes a decree regulating the observance of the sun festival. Afterward, for political reasons, he professes Christianity, and then enforces this same decree as a Christian ordinance—not that this changed the Sabbath. Not so easily nor so quickly could the change be brought about. We have seen that the change began before the time of Constantine, by the “new paganism” coming into the church. It was not completed for many centuries after Constantine. But by the influence and legislation of Constantine the “new paganism,” now in the church, and constituting a large majority of its members, entrenched itself behind the civil law, and gained the power to persecute the true Christians. And yet in the fastnesses of the Piedmontese Alps, along with the simple Gospel of the Saviour, the true Christians persisted yet a thousand years in keeping the Sabbath and in disregarding the Sunday. Not until, by the crusades of the Papacy against them, they were driven from their homes and scattered as strangers in all the papal lands, did they lose the Sabbath of the Lord. As might be expected, after the time of Constantine, we find this imperial, paganized church anathematizing Sabbath-keeping, and stigmatizing it as Jewish. The Council of Laodicea, A.D. 364, said:— Because Christians ought not to Judaize, and to rest on the Sabbath, but to work on that day, wherefore if they shall be found to Judaize, let them be accursed from Christ. This same council by its twenty-ninth canon, recommended “that Christians should abstain from all worldly business on Sunday if they were able.” It will be remembered that the law of Constantine only referred to the people residing in the towns. “But it was not until the year 536 A.D. that abstinence from agricultural labor on Sunday was recommended rather than enjoined, by an ecclesiastical authority (the third Council of Orleans), and this expressly that the people might have more leisure to go to church and say their prayers.”—Chambers’ Encyclopedia, article Sabbath. Up to this time, even when the people in the country did attend church on Sunday, it was the common practise of the pastor, after they had listened to his sermon, to dismiss them to “their respective occupations.” Even now, in the middle of the sixth century, they are only recommended to cease Sunday work, and that not because of any claim of divine authority for the observance of the day. “Nor was it until about the end of the ninth century that the emperor Leo, the philosopher, repealed the exemption of the edict of Constantine.”—Chambers, article Sabbath. The exemption was that country people might work. So it was not until nearly the close of the ninth century that the apostate church required Christians in the country to abstain from Sunday work. Even then they had no idea that it was wrong to play on Sunday. The Puritans of England, in the seventeenth century, were the first to give the day a strictly Sabbatical character, by forbidding all amusements on Sunday. This they did in direct opposition to the teachings of the English Church. To thwart this purpose of the Puritans, James I. enacted his law of “field sports on Sunday,” enjoining that after attending the church on Sunday forenoon, the people in the afternoon should be free to enjoy such sports as dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May games, morris-dances, etc. This law was re-enacted by Charles I., and a copy of the law was ordered to be read in all the churches. The historian Hume says that this was one of the reasons why the Puritans under Cromwell uprose and beheaded the king. Thus this Sunday sabbath came from paganism, through the Papacy, and the institution was so vigorously opposed by the true Christian spirit, and came in so gradually, that it took seventeen hundred years of the Christian era to obtain its present form. Thirdly, the Admissions of the Roman Church.
Q.—How prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days? A.—By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church. A.—Because, by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the church’s power to ordain feasts and command them under sin.—Abridgment of Christian Doctrine (Roman Catholic). Q.—Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept? A.—Had she not such power she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her, she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority.—Doctrinal Catechism (Roman Catholic). These admissions may be multiplied indefinitely. Before me lies a tract of thirty-two pages, published by the Catholic Mirror, under the eye of Cardinal Gibbons. The title of the tract is “The Christian Sabbath.” The tract shows just what we have shown in these papers, that the seventh day of the week is the only Bible Sabbath, and that Sunday is the offspring of the Roman Catholic Church. Then it concludes with a most energetic challenge to the Protestant ministers the world over to prove to the contrary. Not one of them has ever accepted this challenge. Commenting on the tract the Mirror shows that Protestants have accepted Sunday from the Catholic Church alone, and if they still cling to Sunday after this fact is made plain to them, they can not justly claim to be Protestants, but ought to accept the other teachings of the church as well. The paper concludes thus: “Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping of Sunday. Compromise is impossible.” THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED.
By William Penniman
"Too Great Tendency to Extreme Literalism."
"TOO great a tendency to extreme literalism" is what the endless-misery advocate pronounces the destruction-of-the-wicked doctrine to be. With more than tenfold propriety can we claim that those who say this cling to an extreme figuratism when they claim that 122 texts are all figurative, and that the 9 which they urge against the destruction of the wicked are all literal. There are in reality only 5. [When properly understood, there are none.—ED. S. OF T.] How shall we take the Scriptures? Luther says in regard to the interpretation of the Scriptures: "That which I have so often insisted on elsewhere, I here once more repeat, viz., that the Christian should direct his first efforts toward understanding the literal sense (as it is so called) of Scripture, which alone is the substance of faith and of Christian theology." R. Hooker says ("Eccl. Polity"): "I hold it for a most infallible rule in expositions of Sacred Scripture that when a literal construction will stand, the fartherest from the letter is commonly the worst. There is nothing more dangerous and delusive than that act which changes the meaning of words as alchemy doth or would the substance of metals, make of anything what it listeth, and bringing in the end all truth to nothing." Jeremy Taylor says: "In all the interpretations of Scripture the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen unless there be evidence to the contrary. The reasons are plain because the literal sense is natural, and it is just, and it is most agreeable to laws, to the predication of commands, to the revelation of the divine will, to the concerns of the vulgar, in which the idiot is as much concerned as the greatest clerks." Alford says (Comment on Acts 10:42): "A common interpretation which should be constantly borne in mind is that a figurative sense of words is never admissible except required by the context." Of course the objection, "too much literalism," is urged against the doctrine that the Bible teaches literal hell fire. Is it not true, and can it not be established here by Bible and profane history, and also by geology or geological formations, that this world was once destroyed with water? According to the Word of God (2 Peter 3:10), this earth will be melted with fire, and the works therein burned up. Then when we read (Mal. 4:1; Rev. 20:15) that the wicked shall be burned with fire, let us take it as it reads. There is no doubt but that the suffering by the remorse of conscience will be greater than that by fire, but the sinner will suffer both. We say, therefore, to the sinner, in the language of Scripture (Isa. 55:7): "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." “He is happy who has conquered laziness once and forever.” The Gospel Among Headhunters
Inasmuch as the everlasting Gospel must go to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” some one will have to take it to those “man-eaters.” It is a pertinent question. Who will be a soul-hunter among the head-hunters? WORK TO GOD’S PURPOSE.
By Horace Bushnell
God has a definite life plan for every human person, girding him, visibly or invisibly, for some exact thing, which it will be the true significance and glory of his life to have accomplished. . . . Away then, O man, with thy feeble complaints and feverish despondencies! If God is really preparing us all to become that which is the very highest and best thing possible, there ought never to be a discouraged or uncheerful being in the world.—Horace Bushnell. Commerce and Missions in China
IN 1842, an exchange tells us, the English nation employed more than 15,000 persons to secure for itself commercial advantages in China; the same year all the churches in Christendom had only 16 missionaries in the empire. Now there are nearly 2,500 and 5,000 Chinese workers. A GERMAN army officer estimates that in the century just closing no less than 30,000,000 men have been killed in war in civilized countries. This is a vast number of persons to have been killed in the century that is lauded more than all others for its enlightenments and humanitarian sympathies. Thirty million able-bodied men such as go to war would make a strong and, withal, a large nation. THE Union Signal of October 5, in referring to the fact that fifty thousand Londoners had howled down a peace meeting in Trafalgar Square, says: "Ferment and unrest are everywhere, but we hold on with mighty faith, not only to the hope, but to the belief, that peace shall yet float her white banner over the whole world. But before that can be, a stupendous work must be done, needing the help of every man and woman of God." But why cling so tenaciously to a "belief" when the testimony of the Spirit is so explicitly to the contrary? A universal peace is a pleasing theme, and many would have us believe that we are even now in the glittering suburbs of that dream city. The cry of peace—universal peace—and of safety is echoing through this wilderness of sin already. But, "when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them; . . . and they shall not escape." 1 Thess. 5:3. "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come." 2 Tim. 3:1. This present time is the most perilous time the world has ever known. We are in the "perilous times"—the quotation from the Union Signal admits it. We are, then, in "the last days"—the perilousness of the times proves it. If we say peace and safety in these times, we shall be among those upon whom "sudden destruction" shall come, and who "shall not escape." In that time of peril "our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him." Ps. 50:3. That will be a time of judgment: "He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may9judge His people." Verse 4. It will be a time of the harvesting of souls: "Gather My saints together unto Me; those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare His righteousness; for God is judge Himself." Verses 5 and 6. The times are perilous—all admit it; and the perilous times were to be an omen of the last days, an earnest of the second, personal appearing of the Lord Himself in the clouds of heaven. Then why pin our faith to the realization of a dream, when the dream not only is in contradiction of God’s Word, but is referred to in that Word as a sign of the end? The perilous times are here; the cry of "peace and safety" is here; and the grand consummation of earth’s history, which they portend, is about to burst upon us.