Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 15, 1904
BUSINESS
By W. N. Glenn
THE boast of the present generation is of its business—its business acumen, business enterprises, and imaginary business prosperity. Laxity in religious scruples, laxity in commonly-recognized morals, even a disregard of common honesty, finds palliation in the plea of business necessity. Business is the most prominent idol in the world to-day. Oppression of all kinds—of the poor, of employees, of business rivals as occasion offers, and of weaker nations—is found in the trail of business aggrandizement, on the pretext of the necessity of business expansion.
View of the City of Darjeeling, India, and the Himalaya Mountains. (See Page 12.)
This condition was foretold by Christ as pertaining to the last days; it would obtain by the time of His coming again. The condition at that time will be “as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.” Business, so far as the great city of Sodom and the cities of the surrounding plain were concerned, was the leading spirit of the time. The consequence was the complete overthrow and destruction of those cities. The general corruption became so great that God could no longer endure it.
THAT business spirit corrupted the mind of even “righteous” Lot, the nephew and willing companion of Abraham. Lot was naturally covetous, and when it became impatient for the two men to remain together on account of their increasing herds, Lot chose the plain of Jordan in which to reside, because of the abundance of pasture and water. He apparently had also an eye to a good market for stock, for he “pitched his tent toward Sodom”—evidently on that side of his cattle range. But business interests and other attractions, perhaps of a social nature, allured Lot and his family into the city itself; and this was their undoing spiritually. Herein is a solemn admonition to the children of God. No such disasters ever befell Abraham as those which came upon Lot after he made secular business the prime factor in his choice of a home.
BUSINESS, however, is not a thing to be ignored. It is legitimately a life occupation. It is the perversion of business, through the influence of the adversary, that has brought so much want and oppression upon the people of the world. As in everything else, we find the true idea illustrated in the life of Christ, and in the principles inculcated in His Word. Very early in life He understood what was the most important business in the world, and set about doing it with His might. When twelve years of age He accompanied His parents to Jerusalem to attend the feast of the Passover. When the days of the feast were fulfilled, His parents started home with their company, and, supposing Jesus to be with some companions, did not miss Him until they stopped for the night. When they found Him not among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, they returned to the city to seek Him. After three days of anxious search, the parents found the Boy in the temple .
There He was in the midst of the “doctors,” who took such occasions to instruct the people. He was apparently very much interested, for He not only listened to them, but asked them questions. And all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding.
“AND His mother said unto Him, Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought Me? wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business? And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them.” They did not understand because they entertained only the common perverted idea of business. It did not occur to them that God has a business in the earth which pertains not only to the every-day needs of men, but to their eternal welfare. The Scriptures, however, and the example of Jesus during His earthly life, teach us that, if the Father's business were diligently attended to by all His subjects, there would be no occasion for business worry or business rivalry among men.
JESUS lived over twenty-one years after demonstrating that He knew the character of His heavenly Father's business, and His own relation to it. And, after declaring that He must be about that business, He went with His earthly parents to Nazareth, and “was subject to them.” Then in obeying His earthly parents He was attending to His heavenly Father's business; for that was in harmony with the commandment of His heavenly Father, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” The impression is far too prevalent that the Lord's business consists in strictly religious work, and that it does not take cognizance of what is called2secular business. But our great Exemplar, in going about His heavenly Father's business, spent eighteen of His twenty-one and a half years in the ordinary walks of life. During this time He attended school, labored with His father, and assisted in the support of the family.
THAT Jesus was a dutiful Son, an honest workman, an upright citizen, and faithful in all religious obligations, is shown by the testimony of the Spirit that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” He had wisdom to make money if He had so desired, and that He did not do so is evidence of His benevolence. His favor with man would get Him plenty of business, and He was not given to wastefulness, as was shown by a familiar lesson during His ministry. John 6:12.
IN contemplating the character of Jesus in order to follow in His footsteps, we must not overlook His career as a man engaged in the common business affairs of life. This was by far the greater part of His life. The record attests that He “was in all points tempted like as we are;” therefore He had the peculiar temptations that come to men in business deals. But He passed through them all “without sin;” there was not a flaw in any business transaction as far as His part in it was concerned. So all of His business life, every job of work that He did, may fairly be reckoned as part of His heavenly Father's business, a part of His earthly mission. He was the Creator of all things; “the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;” yet He faithfully earned the necessities of life for Himself, as well as providing for the needs of others. This example emphasizes the counsel of the apostle that “if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Such an one is not deemed worthy of anything.
THE earthly career of Jesus demonstrates that the cause of God on earth is a business cause; that the service of God here includes what we call “temporal” affairs as well as spiritual interests; that we need the guidance of the Spirit and personal consecration in our business pursuits just as much as in the preaching of the Gospel, and that business dishonesty is just as displeasing to God as dereliction in religious matters. God has promised to those who consecrate their lives to Him that He will never leave nor forsake them. He knows their every need, and says they shall not lack any good thing. He will provide for them, but He does it through their own labor. Therefore to provide for one's own, to “provide things honest,” and to “owe no man anything, but to love one another,” is doing the Lord's business. And no man can do secular business properly, any more than he can minister in spiritual things properly, without the aid of the Spirit. So we are enjoined to “be diligent in business” because we are engaged in our heavenly Father's business.
EVEN the hired or bondservant is to recognize this principle. To them the Spirit says: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good-will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.” The servant's work for his master is that servant's business, just as the contractor's work is the contractor's business, and the merchant's occupation is the merchant's business; and every man's business should be regarded as the Lord's business. No business that can not be so regarded has any legitimate place in the world. Then every service, every job of work, and every business transaction, should be performed with a view to its passing the judgment and meeting the approval of God. The man who desires to please God will ignore any service, any enterprise or business transaction, that can not be performed or conducted on the principle of the Golden Rule, to the glory of God. W. N. GLENN.
THE PATH OF SELF-DENIAL.
By Ellen G. White
BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
CHRIST gave Himself for the saving of a lost world. His life on this earth, from its beginning to its close, was one of self-denial. To those who desire to follow Him He says, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” He will not accept half-hearted service. He withheld no part of the price, but gave Himself as a complete offering, a sacrifice fragrant with the incense of His righteousness.
Professing Christians are too often unwilling to practise the self-denial that the Saviour calls for, unwilling to restrict their wishes and desires in order that they may have more to give to the Lord. To all comes the temptation to gratify selfish, extravagant inclinations. But let us remember that the Lord of life and glory came to this world to teach humanity the lesson of self-denial. He died for us, that we might live forever in the kingdom of God.
Just before His ascension Christ gave His disciples the work to which they were to make all else subordinate. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” He said. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
Think of the greatness of the work before God’s people! The world is to be warned. To all parts of the earth the message of present truth is to be carried. This work calls for means. Those who are inclined to be extravagant are to overcome their desire to indulge self. Only thus can they be true followers of Christ.
No sacrifice is too great to make for the truth, for heaven. Not a farthing of the money that we handle is our own. All is the Lord’s, entrusted to us to test us, to see if we will make a right use of the Lord’s goods. He who in this life does not prove true and faithful will have no second trial. Those who choose the world will perish with the world. A cloud of heavenly witnesses is watching the conflict between good and evil. Those who live for their own pleasure must one day answer to the Judge of all the earth for their misspent privileges and neglected opportunities. They will lose an eternity of bliss and the riches of everlasting life. God forbid that any should delay until it is too late, and should at last have to say, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
Deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow more closely in the Saviour’s footsteps. Before you spend money, ask yourself, “Can I not save this money? I will deny myself for Christ’s sake. He gave His life to purchase eternal life for me. It was by the sacrifice of Himself that He placed at my command the riches of His grace. He was under no compulsion, no obligation, to grant me His favor. Had He withheld all from me, it would have been no more than I deserved. The rich treasures of grace that are the expression of His love for me were purchased by infinite sacrifice and unparalleled humiliation. These treasures are the tangible proofs of a love abundant and unmeasured. How deep is my indebtedness to my Saviour? How shall I express my appreciation of His bounty, my thankfulness for what He has done for me?”
Temptations will come to you to indulge selfish desires. Yield not to them. Restrain your inclination for expensive clothing and rich furniture. It is the express duty of all believers to live with simplicity. Money saved is worth as much as money earned. Money is of value, and to spend it needlessly, to gratify the inclination for expensive clothing or costly furniture, is to set an example that turns the lame, those weak in faith and moral power, out of the way.
Keep in view the nobler world by revealing the self-denial and sacrifice of Him who gave His life that repentant sinners might live forever. O, in a work of self-denial, men and women can stand as if within the open portals of the city of God, surveying the glory within
IN THE SHADOWS.
By Llewellyn A. Morrison
BY LLEWELLYN A. MORRISON.
[All rights reserved.]
“I . . . will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Isa. 41:13.
Dark tho the way be my Father is guiding me
On through the shadows of earth by His eye;
Safe, in the shelter of love, is He hiding me—
So am I covered when dangers are nigh.
Over and over a message He sendeth me:—
“Lift up thy hand in the trial to Me,
I am thy Shepherd, My Presence defendeth thee.
Fear not, beloved, for I am with thee.”
Why should I fear when His love is enfolding me?
If I abide in Him, nothing dismays;
Here, by the moment, His hand is upholding me—
So I go on to the end of the days.
Over and over His grace is compelling me
Just to be sweet where the bitter things be;
Softly, in sorrow and pain, is He telling me:—
“Fear not, beloved, for I am with thee.”
Courage, my heart! Tho the wilderness cover thee,
God is above,—His defenses abound;
Thou art secure with His battlements over thee;
Angelic legions, unnumber’d, surround.
Over and over the Word is revealing it—
They that contend shall be fearful and flee;
Strong as the boom of the sea He is pealing it:—
“Fear not, beloved, for I am with thee.”
Toronto, Can.
CHRIST AND THE POPE.
Christ said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
The pope conquers cities by force.
Christ had a crown of thorns.
The pope wears a triple diadem.
Christ washed the feet of His disciples.
The pope has his kissed by kings.
Christ paid tribute.
The pope takes it.
Christ fed the sheep.
The pope wishes to be master of the world.
Christ carried on His shoulder the cross.
The pope is carried on the shoulders of his servants in liveries of gold.
Christ despised riches.
The pope has a great passion for gold.
Christ drove out the merchants from the temple.
The pope welcomes them.—Selected.
The Industrial Conflict in the Light of Revelation.
By Geo. W. Rine
By Geo. W. Rine.
CENTRALIZED WEALTH.—ITS PERILS.
Has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, that all the really great and vital events of human history were divinely foretold, many of them centuries before they took place? Do you know that the voice of history is the echo of the voice of God? Do you believe that the prophecies of our Christian Bible afford the only absolutely accurate and helpful solution of the perplexing social and economic questions of the day? “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” This being true, is it conceivable that He would not, for the good of His children, shed floods of the white light of truth upon every dark and difficult question of human history?
Here is our Lord’s own assurance given through Peter: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your heart.” The inspired psalmist testifies: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” By applying to every important question that arises the “X-ray of prophecy,” we instantly clarify it with the divine light of reason and meaning.
Meaning of Events Revealed Only through Prophecy.
Nearly all persons who speak or write for the enlightenment of the public have to some extent discussed the great monetary and industrial questions of our day. But the student of sacred prophecy, he who has concern for matters eternal as well as for matters temporal, can not but feel that by far the greater number of these thinkers for the public have missed the really and eternally vital lessons which present economic history so eloquently teaches.
It is a cardinal and fatal mistake to attempt to deal with human problems apart from their relation to divine problems. Numerous books and theses purporting to treat of the philosophy of history have been given to the world. But after all the only absolutely dependable and infallibly accurate philosophy of human history that this world will ever have is the voice of Jehovah, expressed through “holy men of God” who “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
Had the Jews seen Jesus of Nazareth through the medium of their ancient prophecy, they would not have made the irretrievable mistake of rejecting Him as their Messiah, and of unwittingly crucifying the Lord of glory. Had they understood and believed the multiplied Messianic prophecies, they would have been overwhelmed with the proofs of the Messiahship of the Nazarene.
Wealth Centralized in the Last Days.
In the previous article, I adduced from the Scriptures indisputable evidence that the enormous evolution of wealth in our day was, thousands of years ago, anticipated by the sure word of prophecy. Not only has the unprecedented increase of wealth “in the last days” been prophetically foretold, but also the marvelous degree to which that wealth is being concentrated in the possession of a few. It is not so much the amount as it is the coalescence and combination of riches that constitutes one of the chief marvels of the closing years of time. It is by no means the magnitude of a nation’s wealth, but its concentration, the inequality of its distribution, that always has been, and still is one of the greatest perils of society. It is the repeated verdict of history that the greatest menace to the stability and perpetuity of any nation is the amassing of its wealth in the hands of a few, while the great mass of its people, the actual wealth producers, become hopelessly impoverished.
In his terrible warning and stinging rebuke to the “rich men” living “in the last days,” the apostle James, in prophetic anticipation, declares to them: “Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.” Chapter 5:3, R. V.
Everybody knows that nothing is regarded with more wonder and even amazement than the stupendous individual and corporate wealth of the present day. This present-day marvel, which everybody is talking or writing about, James foresaw, and foretold, in order that the world might know that “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” The apostle further declares that, as a result of the gold and silver being amassed, it would become “rusted,” and that the very rust would be a “witness” against these rich men in the day of judgment; for the rust is undeniable proof that they were laying up “treasures upon earth, where . . . rust doth corrupt,” and their treasures being on earth, their hearts were there also.
The phenomenal growth of wealth, which marked the closing decades of the nineteenth century, was the subject of our study a week ago. It is a matter of almost universal knowledge that the same years witnessed a progressive concentration of wealth into relatively fewer hands, until now one-half of the people of the world own virtually nothing. The late Henry George once said that he would not have written the widely-famous book, “Progress and Poverty,” if it were not for the lamentable fact that “all the increased wealth that progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and to make sharper the contrast between the house of Have and the house of Want.”
In an article contributed to one of our most conservative journals, about two years ago, a writer of national reputation affirmed that 25,000 persons own more than one-half of our national wealth, or about forty-eight billion dollars. One of the best-known American statisticians recently averred that one family in every one hundred families in the United States could buy out the other ninety-nine, and still have left a very generous margin. Twenty per cent of our total wealth is owned by one-two-hundredth of one per cent of the people. Estimated on the principle of partnership and brotherhood, this minute fraction of our population own more than 4,000 times their rightful share. Putting the same fact in different terms, one-seventh of the population possess more than forty-nine times as much as they would on the basis of equal distribution.
“The Distribution of Prosperity” is the title of an article that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, a month or two ago, in which the writer makes this astonishing statement: “The present concentration of power in few hands makes the socialist’s dream realizable. Uncle Sam might walk into a room where, seated about a table, he might find Messrs. Morgan, Hill, Cassatt, Harriman, Schiff, Vanderbilt, Gould, Rockefeller, Reid, and for good measure, three more. And Uncle Sam could, in five minutes, arrange for the purchase of all the railroads of the country.” Of course the writer means that Uncle Sam could do so if this coterie of railway magnates were willing to sell. About six years ago Senator Depew, of New York, who is himself a multimillionaire, admitted to a reporter for one of the great newspapers of Chicago, substantially the same startling fact. The Senator said: “There are fifty men in the city of New York who can in twenty-four hours stop every wheel on all the railways, close every door of all our manufactories, lock every switch on every telegraph line, and shut down every coal and iron mine in the United States. They can do this because they control the money which this country produces. The control of the money clothes its possessors with absolute power over a nation’s industries.”
Referring to this remarkable admission on the part of Mr. Depew, a writer in the Arena exclaims: “What a travesty on the declaration that this is a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people,’ when fifty men can make beggars of seventy millions of people in twenty-four hours!” In the World’s Work, for October, 1903, a contributor who is an authority on questions of finance, said that there are five millionaires in this country who represent the absolute control of railroad systems having a total issue of $6,750,000,000 of stocks and bonds.
Mr. Eltweed Pomeroy, as long ago as 1896, in the Arena, gave statistical tables bearing on the distribution of wealth in Great Britain. By these tables it is learned that more than 68 per cent of the English people own less than two-thirds of one per cent of the nation’s property. Eighty per cent of the people own less than three per cent of the property; ninety per cent own less than eight per cent of it, while less than ten per cent of it own more than ninety-two per cent of the nation’s wealth. Again, one-fiftieth of the people own more than two-thirds of all the property of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Some of my readers probably recall the fact that Rome went to pieces when two per cent of her people became the sole masters of all her wealth.
Practically one-half of all Scotland is now owned by seventy persons; 1,700 persons own nine-tenths of the wealth of that historic country. Less than 800 persons own one-half of all the land in Ireland. All the land of that unfortunate island is in the absolute grip of less than 4,000 persons. Discussing the unhappy lot of Ireland, the late James G. Blaine said in part: “Now mark you I am talking of the little island, not so large as Maine, and they pay a rental of $66,000,000 per annum, and they pay an imperial tax of $35,000,000 and a local tax of $15,000,000 more. There are $116,000,000 to be wrought out of the bone and flesh and spirit of the Irish peasant, and no wonder he lies crushed and downtrodden.”
About eight years ago Dr. Josiah Strong wrote: “If 100 workmen could each earn $1,000 a year, they would have to work 1,500 years to earn as much as the annual income of the 100 richest Americans. And if a workman could earn $1,000 a day he would have to work until he was 547 years old, and never take a day off before he could earn as much as some Americans are worth.”4 (372)
The Chicago Record-Herald, describing the business methods of one of the richest men in the United States, has this to say: “The truth is that Rockefeller has become a resistless force in the industrial world, and that he will proceed from one monopoly to another, regardless of all that is said and done to prevent. If he could live to the age of the patriarchs, the United States would come to be merely one of his appurtenances.”
The official income of the German Emperor is $11,000 a day; the income of a half score of the “Captains of Industry” in our own country stretches all the way from $15,000 to $75,000 a day. The Kaiser has the titles and the honors, but our “captains” have the—power.
Six years ago a leading newspaper of New York had a standing rule that the death of a man who left a million dollars behind him was to be chronicled on the first page. To-day nobody having less than $15,000,000 is entitled, in that paper, to that exquisite posthumous distinction. Ordinary one-millionaires, says a contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, are so common that you bump against them in the street. Describing a banquet, at which he was present, in New York, he said it was not possible to throw a toothpick across the table without hitting a millionaire.
A man whom nobody knew, died in a New York hotel a few months ago. When his will was probated it was discovered that he had left a fortune greater than was possessed twenty years ago by any American, excepting Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. Astor. Not long ago a man named Jones died in Florida. He had come from Pittsburg, where he had made iron. He left $60,000,000. Obscure incidents like these show the rapidity with which property is becoming congested in the vaults of a few—how the rich are growing flamboyantly richer. Where the Fisks and the Drews and other Wall Street freebooters of a bygone generation operated in stock involving fifty to seventy-five thousand shares, the money king of to-day deals in whole railway systems, involving fifty to seventy-five millions of dollars, or he consolidates an entire industry into one corporation, having a capitalization greater than the national debt of the United States.
Perils Incident to Centralized Wealth.
The famous Doctor Bushnell, in one of his sermons, said: “The distribution of wealth is a matter of more consequence to a state than its amount. When the Roman state was at the height of its wealth, there were not more than twenty landholders in all Italy; the rest of the people were dependents—an idle, thriftless, profligate race, ripe for every possible mischief and sedition. There could not be a more miserable condition in any state; it permitted no such thing as character, law, security, or domestic comfort.”
In his famous Pittsburg address, in 1902, President Roosevelt declared: “Especially great and especially difficult are the problems caused by the growth and concentration of great individual, and, above all, of great corporate, fortunes. It is immensely for the interest of the country that there should be such individual and corporate wealth, as long as it is used aright, and when it is not used aright, then it becomes a serious menace and danger.” (Italics mine.)
That exceptionally sober and conservative journal, the Springfield Republican, makes the following significant utterances, apropos of the colossal Carnegie fortune: “But the Carnegie example of excessive wealth accumulation is something not to be considered beneficial or worthy of encouragement. Such a fortune can not have been earned by its possessor. It has been piled in upon him from the earnings of countless numbers of other workers. It rests upon and has been built up through social injustice and the wrongful neglects or favors of the law; and while its disposition in the direction of public benefactions is in the direction of righting a wrong which has been done, and for which society rather than Mr. Carnegie is responsible, the account can not possibly even thus be fully squared; for the distribution can not be made a restoration of what is due, but must take the form of gratuities, and so stirs the spirit of mendicancy.
“Such a fortune as this is demoralizing in its getting, and demoralizing in its best possible distribution.”
What is here said respecting Mr. Carnegie’s mammoth wealth is just as pertinent to the other half dozen equally great American fortunes.
The Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Henry Ward Beecher’s old church in Brooklyn, in a lecture before the Federation of Women’s Clubs, voiced his convictions in reference to monopoly and monopolists in vigorous fashion: “God never meant,” he said, “that one man should control all of the oil and of the steel of this country; that the man of ten talents should crush out the one-talent man. And the ten-talent men are throwing away their chances. God never meant that there should be great monopoly of those things which are necessary to the comfort of the human being. He never intended that one man should control the oil and possess $100,000,000, while others had none.”
Bishop Samuel Fallows, of Chicago, was heard, in 1899, giving utterance in the following trenchant terms, respecting the sinister results of centralized wealth and its incidental power: “Trusts are created aggregating nearly a score of billions of professed capital in less than a single year, some of them of the most reprehensible character, having no other end than to despoil the people. The moral effect of this all-consuming passion to become immediately and inordinately rich is beyond expression. It is eating like a canker into the very vitals of society. Our reformatories and penitentiaries are crowded with inmates in consequence of it.”
“As nations grow rich,” writes Dr. Josiah Strong, “they are prone to become self-indulgent, effeminate, immoral. The physical nature becomes less robust, the intellectual nature less vigorous, the moral less pure. The pampered civilization of old had to be reinvigorated, from time to time, with fresh infusions of barbaric blood—a remedy no longer available. If we can not find in Christianity a remedy or preventive, our Christian (?) civilization and the world itself is a failure; and our rapidly increasing wealth, like the ‘cankered heaps of strange-achieved gold,’ will curse us unto destruction.”
There is nothing more certain in all the universe than that Christianity does afford a “remedy or preventive;” but, except in mere theory, the great mass of humanity refuse to accept the principles of Christianity. And the uniform testimony of the great Source-Book of Christianity is that the unparalleled wealth of these days is one of the agencies which “will curse us [this present evil world] unto destruction.” Not until the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, not until the glory of the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, not until sin and the author of sin shall be no more—not until then will equality, fraternity, liberty, justice, peace, righteousness, and happiness universally and eternally prevail and reign in this world of ours.
The tyranny of concentrated wealth on the one hand, and social, economic, and industrial enslavement on the other, compassed the destruction in turn, of the successive cosmopolitan empires of Egypt, of Babylon, of Persia, of Greece, and of Rome. It was exactly the same status of things in France that bore her resistlessly into the maelstrom of the bloodiest revolution known in the history of man.
Can any one, but the hopelessly prejudiced, deny that identical conditions have long since obtained and still obtain in our own country as well as in all the great nations of Europe? Like causes produce like results. The writer is not a pessimist, but a Christian optimist. We are living in a dark hour. But the darkest hour is ever the harbinger of the dawn. I would by no means say with Louis XV., “After us the deluge,” but, “After the deluge, the endless reign of justice in an endless world.” Then we shall have the sociability of universal love without “socialism.”
RUTH
By F. D. Starr
BY F. D. STARR.
The question is asked whether this series of articles on the books of the Bible is designed to be taken up as a course of Bible study. This was not the thought in writing the articles, as they are too brief to furnish much study; still much benefit would of course be derived from studying the texts and suggestions found in these productions.
The design and desire in writing these brief notes on the several books of the Bible was to encourage study of the Bible itself. It is as if we could take our position with Moses upon Mount Pisgah, and get a transporting view of the promised land. It would be very comprehensive, and only the somewhat dim outline of its beautiful hills, and its lovely lakes, rivers, and plains; its majestic forests, fruitful orchards, and fields could be seen. How intense would be the desire to go over and examine more closely the various objects of interest, and not only to examine, but to live on the delicious productions of the land that flowed with milk and honey, and yielded the mammoth clusters of grapes. We remember how Moses longed to be allowed this privilege. In this respect we see the difference between our opportunity and that of Moses. This man of God was not allowed to go over the narrow stream that separated him from the land that was the glory of all lands, but must be contented to view the land and its contents from afar. On the other hand we are permitted and urged to enter the vast territory opened up to our view, and dwell upon, and live by every word of God; to taste and eat without restriction the wonderful words of life, and know the powers of the world to come. Let us get up into the mountain, and view these things in a general way; and then let us go over and possess for ourselves the treasures that are hidden in this inexhaustible mine of eternal truth.
We will now proceed to examine the book which is the topic of this week’s study. The title itself is a standing evidence of the superiority of the true religion over false religions, in that woman is given her proper place in connection with the work of God in the earth.5This is not the only instance in which a woman has been honored by having her name stand at the head of one of the inspired books. What a contrast to the systems of heathenism, in many of which woman is degraded, and even robbed of her identity and individuality. Let us thank God for this additional evidence that He is no respecter of persons, but that those of both sexes, as well as of all nationalities, may be used as instruments in His hands in accomplishing His purposes.
The interesting story before us is that of a proselyte to the Jewish faith, and her sincere devotion to the people of her choice, the Israel into which she had been adopted. The sentiment of her soul finds utterance in those beautiful words so often quoted or referred to, and which furnish the key-note of the entire book: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
We notice that Ruth was a Moabitess. Let us examine the origin of that people. We read from Genesis 19 that Moab, the father of the Moabites, was born nearly a century before Isaac, the noted progenitor of the Israelitish nation; that this same Moab was the offspring of the incestuous conduct of Lot and one of his daughters. We find the attitude that Israel should take toward that people quite plainly given in Deut. 23:3, 4: “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever; because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt, and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.” We find that in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah this restriction caused a very thorough work of reformation to be started in the congregation of Israel, so much so that those who had married wives of the Moabites put these wives away, “and such as were born of them.” Ezra 10:3. The tenth generation from Ruth would bring us down several generations this side of David. But in this case there must have been a commuting of the sentence against the Moabites. God has ever held the prerogative or right to commute and reverse sentences, as proven by Jer. 18:7–10. The kingdom of heaven sometimes suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. Matt. 11:12. Those who will humble themselves like the Greek woman to accept the position of a dog in the eyes of the people (Mark 7:24–28), and who will persist, like Jacob, to obtain the blessing, are counted with the true Israel, of whatever nationality they may be.
Ruth, the Moabitess, became the ancestor of the illustrious king David, and through him, also the ancestor of our blessed Lord and Saviour.
We find it was the king of Moab who called Balaam to come and curse Israel, and it was the women of Moab who became a stumbling-block to the men of Israel, and drew them into sin and perdition. Numbers 22.
The history of Ruth is a very interesting one. The writer was told recently by a lady who was not a Christian, that there was only one book in the Bible that she cared to read, and that was the book of Ruth. This was no doubt a morbid fancy, but the anointed eyes of the true seeker for spiritual truth may see, in the account of the one who willingly accepted the position of the nearest kinswoman to Ruth to redeem her possession for her, the type of Him who came to be the Redeemer of the lost, as there was no other being to rescue the perishing. Isa. 59:16.
