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Review and Herald, Vol. 43, No. 12.

Signs of the near Coming of Christ

Review and Herald

Mar 3, 1874

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 3, 1874

Signs of the near Coming of Christ.

By Dr. G. W. Weldon

DR. G. W. WELDON, Vicar of St. Saviour's, Chelsea, England, says:—
Prophecy fulfilled is the history of the past; unfulfilled, it is the history of the future. Each accomplishment of any one predicted event is not only a guarantee for the accomplishment of future ones, but affords cumulative evidence of the truth of our Christian faith. A candid, humble, prayerful examination of prophecy shows to us one of the most exalted and delightful views of the divine economy in the history of the world. When we think of God looking through the mists of countless ages, beholding generations yet unborn, depicting, as in a photograph, not only their actions, but their very words and thoughts, and making the conflicting plans and jarring passions of perverse human hearts fulfill to the letter the minutest details of his almighty will, we have a wonderful and magnificent illustration that the Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men, and is Governor among the nations.
The most casual observer of events now transpiring in the world must be constrained to admit that we are living in an age of rapid transition. Events develop themselves now in a single year, which, a century ago, would not have appeared in twenty years. Just exactly as a stone rolling down the mountain-side increases in its velocity in proportion as it approaches the termination of its course, so, as each succeeding year glides on toward the consummation of our hopes in the coming of Christ, events develop themselves with increasing interest and progressive speed. And therefore, as we look around us now in the present age, and take up our Bibles, and read of certain signs which are to transpire in the last days; if we can find such signs actually in existence around us, we are warranted in saying that we are in the last days, and are approaching the Advent of our long-expected and absent Lord.
St. Paul says, in his epistle to Timothy, “In the last days perilous times shall come,” and then he gives some of those signs. And Peter says: “In the last days scoffers shall come.” Now our modern skeptics and scoffers are not coarse, but educated mockers—men of science—of whom it may be said, They have everything, except God in spirit and in truth. Many of them apparently possess amiability, kindliness of disposition, and gentleness of heart; and these very qualities in themselves tend to rivet the intellect, and fascinate the hearts of the youthful, and to make them think that this pretended science, so-called, is going to displace the word of God, and to usher in an era of something better and more attractive. St. Peter tells us that such scoffers shall be willingly ignorant of the way in which God made the world. Now one of these modern scoffers, a noted physiologist, speaking of the Bible, and the account it gives of the creation of the world in Genesis, says: “These accounts of the creation of the world are fossil forms of thought, and, after a time, they will take their place as the fossils in the history of our geological strata.” Another noted scientific man in the department of chemistry denies altogether the efficacy of prayer. He says that prayer never painted a flower or photographed a sunbeam; and he calls the Mosaic record of creation “the beautiful myths of the Bible.” Another conspicuous modern writer of this school calls the Bible a fairy tale.
Now, here are three representatives of the world's modern philosophers (although falsely so called) who are “willingly ignorant that God in the beginning made the heavens and the earth, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The dismal infidelity of such so-called learned men of science is one of the signs of the last days, in fulfillment of the scoffers predicted by Peter. Another—the author of a well-known work—in giving an account of the world, how it came into existence, writes as follows: “The air was black, night eternal illumined only by lightning or volcanoes, the earth unconscious of the sun's existence. But the crust thickens, the atmosphere brightens, and the sun's rays penetrated to the earth.” And thus he accounts for the origin of our globe.
And, as regards mankind, he says these strange words, “The ancestors of man were dots of animated jelly.” He stigmatizes prayer as folly, and calls belief in the resurrection a “sweet, fallacious hope of a barbarous and poetic age!—illusions still cherished for mankind while yet in its romantic youth.” But he adds—and these are words that probably find their desponding echo in the heart of every infidel—“How sweet it would be to believe it; the shortness of life would comfort us, and we should welcome death. But we do not believe it, and so we cling to our tortured lives, dreading the dark nothingness, and dreading the dispersal of our elements into ever-unconscious space.” Oh! how different from St. Paul's joyful assurance, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;” and, “If in this life only, we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” The great and good Wilberforce is stigmatized, by the same skeptical writer, as having become the prey of a morbid superstition, when he experienced and openly professed evangelical faith in Christ and conversion of heart.
But these very philosophers of the world, who skeptically reject the history and prophecies of the Bible, foolishly make themselves prophets of things to come, which are nowhere revealed except in their own imaginations. One of them, in his philosophical treatise, speaks thus magniloquently of the future: “We are going to have great inventions in the future—motive force to take the place of steam; aerial locomotion to transport labor at a trifling cost to any part of the world; the manufacture of meat from the elements by a chemical process. Food will then be cheap, and our enlightened posterity will look back upon us just as we look back upon savages. Poetry and fine arts will take the place of religion. Science will transform our bodies into something wonderful. Disease being extirpated, the secret of immortality will be discovered. Man will be perfect, but even then no nearer to the First Cause, the inscrutable mystery, God.” Here we have the dreams of a scientific, or deistical, skeptic, who would shut Christ out of the world which he created, and reach an imaginary state of perfection by human discoveries and inventions. But, in opposition to such dreams, we know that nothing but the personal advent of Christ will bring the earth to the state of millennial perfection and Edenic bliss, to which, as paradise restored, it is destined to attain.
As the end draws nigh, we must expect wickedness to become aggravated. Just as in the disease of consumption, in proportion as the victim approaches the grave, the body becomes more and more the seat of the disease, until, at last, it sinks a prey to the fell destroyer; so we may expect that, as time advances, the various forms of iniquity and developments of evil will appear in an intensified and aggravated degree. The history of the antediluvian world will repeat itself in these last days. “As it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it be in the days of the Son of man.” St. Paul says there will be in the last days some “having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” These are the modern Pharisees and superstitious formalists, who equally with the skeptical Sadducees flourish like a green bay tree in these latter times. They may be seen on Sunday mornings at fashionable churches, acknowledging, in the general confession, that they are miserable sinners, and have gone astray like lost sheep; and in the afternoon promenading at the Zoo, arrayed in purple and fine linen, with every outward adornment of wealth and luxury; and on week days attending performances at the theater or opera, or dancing polkas and waltzes in brilliant ball rooms.
We find Romanism and ritualism putting forth their seductive attractions to deceive, if possible, the very elect; and society for the most part becoming more and more worldly, with superabounding luxury, and extravagance, and lavish display, colossal fortunes, and idolatry of life. These, with other things too numerous to particularize, strangely coincide with St. Paul's prediction: “In the last days perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, incontinent,” etc., “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” 2 Tim. 3:1-5. We are, in fact, treading upon the borders of the final crisis of this dispensation. We have much reason to believe that the six thousand years from the creation of man are very near their termination, and that we are on the eve of the appearance of our Saviour Jesus Christ to establish the glorious fifth monarchy predicted by the prophets. Dan. 7:9-14.

Established, Strengthened, Settled.

By A. M. Lindsley

It is a good thing, says the apostle Paul, that the heart be established with grace. To this end, Peter prays that the church might be made perfect, established, strengthened, and settled. If ever there was a time when a multitude of doctrines prevail, then now is emphatically the time. The very foundation of our religion and of God’s plan of salvation, provides for a oneness of faith, as there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. But in opposition to this, we have to contend with hydra-headed error. The various gifts were set in the church that unity might prevail in mind and judgment. A church fully united on points of revelation will have the ingredient of love largely developed, and in union of love and faith there will be strength.
The church of Jesus Christ having apostatized from their primitive faith, Satan was well pleased that there should be union if it might only be in error. For this, witness the history of the Roman church. They are united in error, and their union proves to be their strength. Mohammedanism, and other heathen religions also, become strong by a oneness of belief in error. But what will the end be of the union and strength so founded? The answer to us is plain, the very depths of the bottomless pit will be their doom.
Protestantism is to-day strangely divided. Why is this? Why so many different beliefs held among the only true representatives of the religion of the Bible? While passing through the wilderness state, as brought to view by John, in Revelation 12, they imbibed from the papal sink of pollution errors which have clung to them like the leprosy, and like Daniel’s feet of the image, which were part of iron and part of miry clay and would not unite, so has a difference of opinion come in and separated in mind and judgment those whom God would have firmly united on all his blessed truth, that they might indeed be the light of the world. Jesus prayed that his disciples might be one, even as he and the Father were one, that the world might believe he was sent of God.
In order that Protestants should be strong, they must be united on points of Bible truth. In vain will be their Evangelical Alliance, while laying aside those very truths that were given to enlighten, unite, and strengthen. In the 8th chapter of Isaiah, we think there are at least three classes brought to view, living at the time when some are looking for the Lord. One of these is pleading for a “confederacy.” But, says the prophet, “the Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.” But “sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.”
Why would such a union be wrong? Evidently, because it compromises the truth. And we think as the prophet speaks of association that shall be broken in pieces, and the counsel that shall not stand, he looked with prophetic eye down to this very time, when such a union will be attempted from wrong premises, and carried on upon wrong principles, and for this reason it shall come to naught.
The second class mentioned are those among whom the testimony is bound up, and the law sealed. They are given for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts. Contemporary also with these is the work of spiritualism, referred to in the 19th verse, against which the inspired penman again warns us. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
In the time of trouble and pouring out of the plagues, referred to in the 91st Psalm, the truth will be the shield andbuckler of the righteous. In preparation for that time a platform of truth is being brought out upon which God’s people may every one be established, while error will fall back to its place among those who love and make a lie.
Truth is beautiful and harmonious. Let us seek for it, not partially, but wholly, and be established, as Peter says, in the present truth. In every age there is a truth applicable to that time. In his day it was a crucified Saviour—light and immortality brought to light through the gospel; so now, in our time, it is the restoration of the down-trodden law of the Father in connection with the faith of the Son, embracing all ten of the commandments, the seventh day of the fourth commandment in particular, with all the teachings of Christ in this dispensation, and the manifestations of the Spirit given to perfect the church of God and bring them into the unity of the faith.
A. M. Lindsley.
Vermillion, N. Y., Dec. 12, 1874.

WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF THY COMING ?

By Sel.

Why drag thy chariot wheels, O Time ? How slow the moving hours ? When will thy buds, O “blessed hope,” Expand to perfect flowers ? When will the black and weary night, So full of sins and sighs, End, and the dawn of righteousness Upon the world arise ?
The earth rocks with eternal throes, Her crust is red with blood; As from his wine-vats “horrid war” Pours out a crimson flood! Crowns tremble ’neath His “iron rod,” Thrones sway in every blast, Dark shadows of events to come Upon the world are cast!
The fire-fiend, with his torch alight, Steals on the sleeping town, And marble mansion—temple—tower— Before its touch go down. The stately pillars of our pride, On which we placed our trust, Like Jonah’s gourd, in one brief hour Are levelled with the dust.
The cyclone with its stormy wings, Goes forth at God’s decree, And shipwrecks strew the coral coast That guards the Indian Sea. The pestilence with fetid breath Comes up from slum and pen, And stalks through hall and pauper hut To take the lives of men.
No golden sheaves lift up their heads On Persia’s stricken plains; Her fiery sun goes down in wrath, For God withholds the rains. Sin’s siren voice and vampire wings Have lulled the church to sleep,— The faithful few alone are found The Master’s watch to keep.
Are these His signal flags unfurled,— His watch-fires in the night, To tell us of His near approach Who brings the promised light? Then “lift your heads,” ye weeping ones! “Look upward” through your tears! Your “night of sorrow” soon shall end In Heaven’s eternal years. —Sel.

Conscience Above Approval

He who in zeal for his friends permits his love of approbation to overrule his conscience, shows more of the puppet than of the man.

Day of the Lord.

By A. Smith

DEAR READER: I invite your candid attention to the following statements and quotations in elucidation of the queries that may arise in your mind upon the subject under consideration.
1. Is such a day brought to view in the Bible?
With such as disbelieve revelation, I have no controversy, but would simply say, that either there is, or there is not, such a day, and belief or disbelief of the fact will make no difference in the case, except as regards the destiny of the individual concerned. To those who believe the inspired record, the quotations in the replies to the following interrogatives will suffice to establish the affirmative of the question.
2. What is its character?
“A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains.” Joel 2:2.
It is a day not to be desired. Amos 5:18–20.
A burning day. Mal. 4:1; 2 Pet. 3:10.
3. What is to mark its approach?
A great earthquake, followed by signs in the sun, moon, and stars. Luke 21:25; Rev. 6:12, 13; Isa. 13:10; Joel 2:31. (This began to be fulfilled at the great earthquake, Nov. 1, 1755; the day of the Lord beginning between the events recorded in the 13th and 14th verses of Rev. 6.) The sun and moon were darkened in a manner to fulfill the prophecy, on the 19th of May, 1780; and the falling of the stars occurred in like manner, Nov. 13, 1833. The great prophetic chains of Daniel and John terminate very near that time. Its beginning is to be marked by the close of Christ’s ministration in the heavenly sanctuary and the pouring out of the seven last plagues.
Its approach to the world will be as a thief in the night, 1 Thess. 5:2, at a time when peace and safety shall be the cry of corrupt Christianity. Verse 3. Compare Isa. 2:2–5, what the people say, with Joel 3:9–16, what the Lord says at the same time. The apostle adds in 1 Thess. 5:4: “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.” And why? Because they understand the teachings of the Bible on this point. “The entrance of thy words giveth light.” Ps. 119:130. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Verse 105. It shall come as a snare upon all that dwell on the earth. Luke 21:35. But the people of God are not dwellers on the earth, but strangers and pilgrims; therefore the day will not come upon them as a snare. Heb. 11:13–16; 1 Pet. 1:17; 2:11.
4. What is to be its duration?
Over one thousand years. In this period Satan is to be bound. Rev. 20:1–3. The saints who were resurrected and translated at the coming of Christ are to sit in judgment with him upon evil angels and men one thousand years. Rev. 20:4; 1 Cor. 6:2, 3; Jude 6. During this time, the earth will be in a chaotic state, as in the beginning; the cities having been destroyed, the surface of the earth broken up by the mighty earthquakes at the coming of Christ, and man and beasts destroyed. Jer. 4:23–28; Isa. 24:1–6; Zeph. 1. See also Joel 3:16; Rev. 6:14; chap. 16:17–21; Heb. 12:26, 27; Luke 21:26.
5. What events are to mark its close?
The wicked dead are to be raised, Rev. 20:5, and Satan is to be let loose, verses 7–9, and he shall deceive the nations. When the wicked are gathered before the city, they will see the righteous saved in the city of God, and themselves consigned to the burning flames. Ps. 112:9, 10; Luke 13:28.
The new creation will follow the destruction of the old earth. 2 Pet. 3:13; Isa. 65:17–25. A. SMITH.

The Birthday of Faith.

WE have a friend twenty-four years old, who stoutly maintains that he was born on the 21st of October, 1866. On that glorious Sabbath evening he began to live. When the seraphic Summerfield was asked where he was born, he replied, “In Liverpool and Dublin.” May the generation of twice-born men be multiplied.
There are those who can tell the very place, and the very day, hour, and minute of their conversion. There are others who can do no such thing, and such persons are apt to doubt the reality of a Christian experience just because they cannot fix the date of its commencement. You hear others tell “when first they saw the Lord,” when sorrow drove them to the Comforter, when the first prayer trembled on their lips, when they caught the first glimpse of their “Beloved” through the “lattice,” when they first cried, “I yield, by dying love constrained.” The experience was marked, overwhelming—the heart crushed, fears and tears commingling. They remember it well. Then came the rising sun. Pardon slew fear, faith broke the bars of bondage. Forget that supreme hour? Never!
You wish you could speak as confidently; you mourn because you cannot fix the date, and you almost doubt whether you are re-born at all.
Now, it is a good thing for a Christian to know his birthday, and ever after to commemorate it as the anniversary of the soul. But suppose a man should take you into his orchard; the trees are thrifty, and the fruit is plump and ruddy. You ask him, “When was this tree set out?” “Fifteen years ago the first day of May last.” You pronounce the fruit good—fifteen years—now ripe and mellow. Coming to the next tree, you say, “When was this set out?” “I do not know; it was planted before I came on the place.” Would you be so unaccountably foolish as to gravely declare that the fruit on this tree is good for nothing, because no one knows when it was set out? It is not a question of dates, but of products. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” and not by the time when they were planted.
Now and then a person comes forward for church-membership who can tell nothing about the when, or the how, of conversion. Perhaps from forgotten childhood the dear name of Jesus has been spoken with affection, and the heart cannot recall the time when it did not love and trust. It is not half so important to know when you first believed as to know that you now believe. Some pass through tempest to peaceful anchorage; they remember the conflict and victory. Others glide slowly and quietly into new life, and their immortal hope rises as gently as the eastern morning. When and how you came to Christ is one question. Have you come? is another question far more essential. Do not protest that the world was never created because you cannot tell exactly when it was done. If the date of conversion can be fixed, very well. It is vastly more important to be able to say, “My heart, O God, is fixed.” It is not the past experience that makes you a Christian, but the present faith.
And to argue that a man is not a Christian because he cannot tell just the hour when he passed the dividing line and rested in Jesus—why, you might as well say to a man who has forgotten or never knew his birthday, “I do not believe you were ever born at all.” In Heaven they keep the family record, and we shall know all about it by-and-by.—Christian Weekly.

The East India Company and its Empire.

On the first of June next, the once powerful East India Company will pass out of existence, and its name and place will be known only in history. At that date, a balance of $30,000,000 of the capital stock, on which the payment of a dividend of ten per cent was guaranteed by the English Government, will be paid off, either by actual cash payments or by the stock-holder's converting, as it is expected they will, their claims into consols at the market price of the day. The company will then be formally dissolved.
The career of the English East India Company forms one of the most extraordinary and romantic episodes in all history. Formed originally as a mere trading company, without any thought of conquest, its first acquisition of land in the vast country over which it was destined to hold sway was acquired by the purchase of a small trading post at one of the harbors of that country. It increased in wealth and ultimately in power, and gradually became involved in the political quarrels of the petty Indian potentates of the day, until within a period scarcely longer than the ordinary life of man it acquired supreme control of over a hundred million persons, and had in its service an army of scores of thousands of soldiers. A few dozen London merchants, in their capacity as members of the East India Company, held absolute sway over a larger population than was governed by the sovereign of Great Britain. It was an empire within an empire, with powers too vast to be allowed to remain long in possession of a private and partially irresponsible corporation.
How and in what way the political power of the company was gradually transferred to the Government of Great Britain, and a limit placed upon its trading privileges, would exceed the usual limits of a newspaper article to describe. For some years past, this great corporation has been a mere cipher, and, a few months hence, a body which conquered and ruled over a population five times larger than that of the United States will pass away forever.
The area of the British Empire in India has been considerably increased since the abrogation of the political domination of the East India Company. It now consistsof a total of 950,919 square miles. This is only a little more than one-third the area of the United States. But British India is much more densely populated than the United States, and numbers a total of not less than 100,000,000 souls, against our 40,000,000. British India, then, with a territory one-third less than the United States, has five times the population. Probably not less than 40,000,000 persons are indirectly subject to the British rule through tributary native rulers.—N. Y. Bulletin.

The Burial of Moses.

By Mrs. C. E. Alexander

By Nebo's lonely mountain,     On this side Jordan's wave, In a vale in the land of Moab,     There lies a lonely grave: And no man knows that sepulcher,     And no man saw it e'er, For the angel of God upturned the sod,     And laid the dead man there.
That was the grandest funeral     That ever passed on earth, And no man heard the trampling     Or saw the train go forth. Noiselessly as the daylight     Comes back when the night is done, And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek     Grows into the great sun;
Noiselessly as the spring-time     Her crown of verdure weaves, And all the trees on all the hills     Open their thousand leaves; So, without sound of music,     Or voice of them that wept, Silently down from the mountain's crown     The great procession swept.
Perchance the bald old eagle,     On gray Beth-peor's height, Out of his lonely eyrie,     Looked on the wondrous sight. Perchance the lion, stalking,     Still shuns that hallowed spot, For beast and bird have seen and heard     That which man knoweth not.
But, when the warrior dieth,     His comrades in the war, With arms reversed and muffled drum,     Follow his funeral car; They show the banners taken,     They tell the battles won, And after him lead his masterless steed,     While peals the minute-gun.
Amid the noblest of the land     We lay the sage to rest, And give the bard an honored place,     With costly marble drest, In the great minster-transept,     Where lights like glories fall, And the organ rings and the sweet choir sings,     Along the emblazoned wall.
This was the truest warrior     That ever buckled sword; This the most gifted poet     That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher     Traced with his golden pen On the deathless page truths half so sage     As he wrote down for men.
And had he not high honor?     The hillside for a pall; To lie in state while angels wait,     With stars for tapers tall; And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,     Over his bier to wave; And God's own hand in that lonely land     To lay him in the grave—
In that strange grave without a name,     Whence his unconfined clay Shall break again, oh, wondrous thought!     Before the Judgment-day, And stand with glory wrapt around     On the hills he never trod, And speak of the strife that won our life     With the Incarnate Son of God.
O lonely grave in Moab's land!     O dark Beth-peor's hill! Speak to these curious hearts of ours,     And teach them to be still. God hath his mysteries of grace—     Ways that we cannot tell; He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep     Of him he loved so well.
—Mrs. C. E. Alexander.

The Old Testament.

By S. B. WHITNEY

It seems surprising how far the advocates of error are sometimes carried in their blind zeal to defend their favorite, but erroneous, theories from the force of simple, unadulterated truth. An illustration of this is the notion, becoming so prevalent, that the teachings of the Old Testament are not to be received as Christian doctrine, or even moral instruction; some contending that it is the old covenant, and others asserting that it has no more connection with salvation than an almanac or spelling book.
As one of the “Two Witnesses” is thus slandered and impeached, a word in its defense may not be amiss. And by way of introduction, the following from Mrs. H. B. Stowe is in point: “It is too much the fashion of this day to speak slightingly of the Old Testament. Apart from its grandeur, its purity, its tenderness and majesty, the Old Testament has a peculiar interest to the Christian from the fact that it was the BIBLE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.” This fact alone is forcible, and entitles the book to our respect and confidence, but its force is heightened by a consideration of how our Lord himself regarded it. He says, “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me. . . . For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” John 5:39, 46, 47.
This must, of course, refer to the Old Testament, as does the following: “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” 2 Tim. 3:14–17.
Paul also declares that the gospel was “promised afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,” and “now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” Rom. 1:2; 16:25. Such testimonies as the above show that the Old Testament is very closely related to the subject of salvation, modern sectarian partisans to the contrary, notwithstanding.
The New Testament was not given to take the place of the Old, but to illustrate and enforce its practical instruction, making such additions as the change of dispensation required, and to furnish a record of the fulfillment of many of its wonderful predictions. Indeed, much of the New Testament would be without force and meaningless had we not the Old containing the predictions of which the events recorded in the New are cited as fulfillments. The same may be said of other allusions to the Old Testament. For instance, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” How much of the force of this beautiful figure would be lost had we not the historical account of the event and its attending circumstances. Such instances are numerous; and thus it is shown that the “Two Witnesses” are united and harmonious in their testimony; and happy is the man who gives such heed to them as to be made wise unto salvation, and, by keeping the “commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” escapes the impending judgments threatened by both upon the ungodly of this generation.
S. B. WHITNEY.

The Danger of Hating Enemies

If you begin to hate your enemies you may become so used to hating that you may soon hate your friends, and hate the blessed Saviour himself.
Continue reading: Redemption—No. 2