Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 9, 1881
IDOLATRY PUNISHED.
By Ellen G. White
BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
Of the generation that arose after the death of Joshua, the Sacred Record states that “they knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim; and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger.”
Notwithstanding their apostasy and great wickedness, the Lord did not utterly forsake his people. From time to time he raised up faithful and valiant men to deliver them from the oppression of their enemies. But the hearts of the people had become so corrupted by an evil course that it was not an easy task to restore purity of faith or of worship. When the deliverer was dead, and the people were released from his authority, they would return to their idolatry.
“They ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and he said, Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice; I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died.”
The Lord sought to bring his people into a position where he could manifest his power in their behalf; but their hearts were set to depart from God, and they would not submit to his requirements. What blindness! what inexplicable folly! and equally incomprehensible is the course of those whom God has endowed with intellectual gifts and surrounded with temporal blessings, yet who will prefer worldly gain, and even the indulgence of debasing passions, to the favor of God and his infinite love.
Although the Israelites, as a nation, departed from God, yet there was ever a remnant who resolutely withstood the evil influences surrounding them, and maintained their allegiance to Jehovah. These were constantly growing in courage and true godliness. They clung to the Lord more firmly as they saw the apostasy of their brethren. Their faith grew stronger, with every conflict.
It is through the infinite mercy of God that his people at the present day are granted the high honor of being sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. But unless we give ourselves unreservedly to his service, and walk in obedience to his commandments, we can bring no proof that we are members of the royal family. Would that we could ever realize the love which God has manifested toward us fallen sinners, in giving his only Son for our salvation! We should never lose sight of the fact that those whom Christ redeems at such an infinite price are to be purified, that they may be unto him a peculiar people, zealous of good works. We should feel that Christ has placed upon us special honors in thus distinguishing us from the world, when he might have left us to perish in our sins.
God would have his people present a marked contrast, in character and conduct, to the unbelieving world. We are to be “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, to show forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Only by constant watchfulness and earnest prayer, mingled with faith, can we preserve our peculiar, holy character as sons and daughters of God.
It is far more easy to profess and resolve than to perform. Like ancient Israel, many covenant to cleave unto the Lord, and serve him, and then soon forget their vows, and join with the ungodly in the pursuits of worldly gain or pleasure. We should be jealous of ourselves, lest we depart from God. “For if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from Heaven?” The blessings and privileges which we enjoy place us under the most solemn obligation to improve these gifts to the glory of our Creator. They should inspire in our hearts love to God, and an earnest determination to obey his requirements. Let us not become self-confident or presumptuous, but rather fear lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of us should seem to come short of it.
The cause of Israel’s weakness lay in their departure from God by disobedience to his commandments. The reason of the weakness and backsliding of modern Israel is their neglect to obey the divine law. God requires from all mankind obedience to his commandments. [The whole world will be judged by the moral law according to their opportunity of becoming acquainted with it, whether by reason, or tradition, or the written word.]
God’s law is spiritual. It takes cognizance of our most secret thoughts, purposes, and motives. The judgment, the will, and the affections must be controlled by its precepts. Its principles require love to God and to man; without this love, external compliance will not be accepted. This law is the standard of Christian character. Like a faithful mirror, it reveals to the children of men the defects in their moral character. It makes them watchful against temptation. It teaches them to be exact in judgment, and correct in spiritual discernment. The law of God is holy, just, and good. When our lives conform to this standard we are happy.
The Lord was constantly seeking to impress upon ancient Israel their duty to obey his law; and those words of warning and reproof apply with as much greater force to this generation as our light and privileges are greater than were those of Israel. We have seen how the disregard of God’s requirements brought trouble upon his ancient people, and finally resulted in their entire separation from him. Their sad history should be a lesson to us that nothing should be permitted to rival God in our affections. He alone can give rest, and peace, and happiness to the soul. God alone is entitled to our supreme love, to our entire confidence. He should be the object of our gratitude and adoration, our reverence and unquestioning submission. If we fail to love him with all the heart, we rob him of the service which is his due.
Through his pride and ambition, Satan became the enemy of God and man. Though he forfeited his position in Heaven, he has succeeded in his presumptuous efforts to become the god of this world. Satan used the Canaanites as his instruments to allure Israel from God, and lead them to give honor to himself. It was to secure their own safety and happiness that the Lord commanded his people to extirpate those wicked nations.
[In their prosperity, Israel forgot God, as they had been warned that they would do. But reverses came. The Hebrews were subdued by the king of Mesopotamia, and held in severe bondage for eight years. In their distress, they found that their idolatrous connections could not help them. Then they remembered the wonderful works of God, and began to cry unto him, and the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Othniel, Caleb’s younger brother. The spirit of the Lord rested upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war, and the Lord delivered the king of Mesopotamia254into his hand.]
When Othniel was designated as the man whom God had chosen to lead and deliver Israel, he did not refuse to take the responsibility. In the strength of God he at once commenced to repress idolatry as the Lord had commanded, to administer justice, and to elevate the standard of morality and religion. As Israel repented of their sins, the Lord manifested his great mercy toward them, and wrought for their deliverance.
For forty years Othniel ruled in Israel. During this time the people remained faithful to the divine law, and consequently enjoyed peace and prosperity. But when his judicious and salutary control ceased with his death, the Israelites again relapsed into idolatry. And thus the story of backsliding and chastisement, of confession and deliverance, was repeated again and again.]
Had Israel been true to God, their example of faithfulness would have been followed by their children; but the sins of after generations testified to the indolence, and slothfulness, and neglect of the parents. A solemn responsibility still rests upon parents in the education of their children, to mould their characters after the pattern which God has approved, and not after the pattern of the world. Christian parents should teach their children the solemn and momentous truths of God’s word, especially those truths which particularly relate to the present time. Faithful, earnest, and frequent prayer should be offered that these children may be fitted for any position of trust to which God shall call them, in society or in the church. They should be taught to love righteousness and to hate evil.
One family educated according to the Bible rule may exert an influence directly upon thousands, and through them upon others, until multitudes shall be brought to fear and honor God, and a glorious company of white-robed ones shall stand round about the throne,—a precious harvest from the seed sown by those faithful parents. But Satan is determined that this mighty influence for God and Heaven shall not be exerted in the home circle. He will deceive the parents if possible. He will make them careless, inattentive, indolent, in the service of God. He will make them negligent in training their children according to the Bible standard, negligent in conforming their own lives to the life of Christ; for Satan knows that in most cases he can thus secure the parents and children also, and through them can ruin many souls.
As the Israelites were prone to idolatry, so are the people of the present age. The same adversary that succeeded in leading them astray, is now at work with ten-fold power to entice God’s professed people from their simplicity, their sincerity, their earnestness and piety. His devices are all too successful. Worldly things are allowed to attract the attention and absorb the interest. Professed Christians unite with the ungodly, and Christ ceases to be a welcome guest.
The only safety for God’s people is to put away the impious ambition to make a league with the world, to imitate her customs and practices. They must seek a closer connection with God, and give diligent heed to his word in counsels, reproofs, and promises.
By their family government, parents are laying the very foundation of the child’s character. God has committed to parents a solemn and responsible work. The mother of Moses trained her child for God. So patiently and perseveringly did she plant religious principles in his soul, that although afterward surrounded with great temptations, he was not corrupted. A prospective crown could not entice him from his allegiance to God. What our children may become we cannot tell; the future we cannot read; but God has appointed our work, and bidden us perform it with both worlds in view, that our children may be a blessing to the church and to the world here, and may shine forever in the courts of the Lord hereafter.
Our earthly life, however long, honored, or useful it may be, is but childhood, frail, imperfect, and undeveloped. Manhood, with its full, perfect, glorious development, will come, when, freed from the taint of sin, we stand among the redeemed throng. Then we shall enjoy a life which measures with the life of God, and through everlasting ages we shall go on increasing in wisdom and knowledge.
HE LEADETH ME.
In pastures green? Not always; sometimes he
Who knoweth best, in kindness leadeth me
In weary ways, where heavy shadows be,
Out of the sunshine, warm and soft and bright,
Out of the sunshine into darkest night.
I oft would faint with sorrow and affright,
Only for this—I know he holds my hand.
So whether in green or desert land,
I trust, although I may not understand.
And by still waters? No, not always so;
Ofttimes the heavy tempests round me blow,
And o'er my soul the waves and billows go.
But when the storms beat loudest, and I cry
Aloud for help, the Master standeth by,
And whispers to my soul, "Lo, it is I."
Above the tempest wild I hear him say,
"Beyond this darkness lies the perfect day,
In every path of thine I lead the way."
So, whether on the hill-tops high and fair
I dwell, or in the sunless valleys, where
The shadows lie—what matter? He is there.
And more than this; where'er the pathway lead,
He gives to me no helpless, broken reed,
But his own hand, sufficient for my need.
So where he leads me I can safely go;
And in the blest hereafter I shall know
Why, in his wisdom, he hath led me so.
—The Presbyterian.
IS SIN ETERNAL?—NO. 4.
By John Norton Loughborough
BY J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH, OF SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND.
THERE are other instances of the use of the term, "unquenchable fire." In the threatening of God's judgments against Jerusalem, as revealed through the prophet Jeremiah, we read: "But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." Jer. 17:27. No one, surely, will contend that those fires which destroyed the palaces of Jerusalem, are still burning; yet they did burn, and were not quenched until that city was in complete ruins.
The prophet Isaiah speaks also of the unquenched fire, in giving a description of the final melting of the earth. He says, "For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up forever." Isaiah 34:8-10. But in the very next chapter these fires have ceased, and the prophet gives us a beautiful description of the new earth after the vengeance of God (verse 4) shall have come upon the wicked.
The Greek words for unquenchable fire, as in Matt. 3:12, are puri asbesto. It is not exclusively a Scriptural expression. We have a good illustration of its use in Eusebius' History, which was written in Greek. He has been styled by some, "the father of Ecclesiastical History." He became Bishop in A. D. 315. In his history, book vi., chapter 41, he speaks of those who suffered martyrdom at Alexandria. We quote from Cruse's translation of Eusebius: "The first of these was Julian, a man afflicted with the gout, neither able to walk nor stand; who, with two others that carried him, were arraigned. Of these, the one immediately denied, but the other, named Cronion, surnamed Eunus, and the aged Julian himself, having confessed the Lord, were carried on camels throughout the city—a very large one, as you know—and in this elevation were scourged, and finally consumed in an immense fire (Greek, puri asbesto). After these, Epimachus and Alexander, who had continued for a long time in prison, enduring innumerable sufferings from the scourges and scrapers, were also destroyed in an immense fire ( puri asbesto)."
Dr. McCulloch, in his Analytical Investigations concerning the credibility of the Scriptures, vol. 2, p. 487, says: "This phrase, unquenchable fire, was understood only in the sense of an intense fire that totally consumed whatever was subjected to it. Thus Eusebius (Eccl. Hist., lib. 6, chap. 41) in two places, uses the very words of Matt. 3:12—unquenchable fire—which has been translated by Cruse, an immense, or intense fire, in which certain Christians were burnt in Alexandria by their persecutors."
Is the fire and brimstone in which the ungodly are to be punished, represented as of such intense heat as even to burn asbestos, to show the unending nature of the flame or the completeness of its work? What is cast into those flames? Is it some of the precious metals placed there to be heated and moulded into useful articles? We should expect to find it so, if the "eternal hope" theory is true. If we find, on investigation, such substances cast into this intense fire, as in their very nature will long resist the action of the flames, like the fabled "salamander," then we might conclude very differently; but we find the figures used, and the comparisons made require the shortest period for their combustion, as for instance in Psalms 1:4, the ungodly are compared to "chaff"; so in the words of St. John the Baptist (Matt. 3:12), Christ will "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Again, the Psalmist compares the ungodly to "the fat of lambs," and says "into smoke shall they consume away." Ps. 37:20. The prophet Malachi compares them to "stubble," and says, "All the proud and all that do wickedly shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up." Mal. 4:1. In Isaiah we read, "And the people shall be as the burnings of lime; as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire." Isa. 33:12.
Immediately following this, is a question and answer having an important bearing on the subject before us. It represents the sinners and hypocrites as asking, "Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" Verse 14. Does the Lord answer that the ungodly must, and will thus dwell? Nay, verily, while the ungodly are devoured in those flames, as they come around the camp of the saints and the beloved city (Rev. 20), the righteous are protected from the surrounding flames by the great rocks of precious stones constituting the walls of the new Jerusalem city. Let us have the prophet's answer to the question, who can abide when that flame is kindled? "He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks; bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure." Isa. 33:15, 16. So the righteous alone escape the ravages of those flames, like Noah from the ruin of the old world, while the ungodly are "consumed." Isa. 1:28.
It may be claimed that there is evidence of eternal misery to the wicked in what is said of the undying worm, "Where their worm dieth not." Mark 9:44, 46, 48. Let it be borne in mind that hell, in which the undying worm is to do his work, is gehenna. In the gehenna—in the vale of Hinnom—both the worm and fire were agencies accomplishing the consumption of the carcasses of animals, dead bodies of mal'efactors, and rubbish from Jerusalem. In that case, the fire might be quenched and the worm die, and thus the work of complete destruction be retarded. Not so in the fires of gehenna, where the wicked shall go. The fire shall go unquenched, and the worm—another element of their destruction, whatever it may be—shall not die.
The words of our Saviour in the above text seem to be a repetition of the language of the prophet Isaiah when speaking of the coming of the "new earth" state. He says, "And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." Isaiah 66:24.255
We are not surely to understand that such an abhorring scene is to exist in the new earth where St. John has told us there shall be no more curse. Neither can we say that the ungodly remain here to be thus tormented when Solomon has said, "The wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it." Prov. 2:22. The Lord has said to his people, "When the wicked are cut off thou shalt see it." Ps. 37:34. They see it as the perdition comes upon the ungodly (2 Peter 3:7) when they surround the beloved city, (Rev. 20:9.) As they behold, it is an abhorrence to them, but with the coming of the new earth this scene ends, and bliss alone remains to the righteous occupants of those elysian fields.
In the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah we have a view of that time when the heavens and the earth having "waxed old" are to pass away, giving place to the new earth. Here the prophet shows us the excellency of those who have feared the Lord and loved his righteousness. God is their strength, and of course those who have made him their trust, will remain throughout all generations; but of the ungodly he says, (verse 8) "the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool." This being the case, we may conclude with Isaiah that "The destruction of the transgressors, and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." "And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it (his work—margin) as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them." Isaiah 1:28, 31. The "strong man" is Satan, (Luke 11:18-22) his work is sin and sinners in the world. Satan, sin, and sinners are thus to be destroyed, and the whole universe of God will be once more pure and spotless, as though sin had never been found in it.
It is claimed that the words of Scripture, used in speaking of the final punishment of the ungodly, convey the idea of eternal suffering. Aside from the texts already noticed, those mainly relied on as teaching this doctrine may be summed up in the four following: (1) Dan. 12:2: "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." (2) Matt. 25:46: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." (3) Rev. 14:11: "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image," etc. (4) Rev. 20:10: "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."
We will notice these texts in the order we have given them. The first, from Daniel, refers to persons raised from the dead. One class shall "awake to everlasting life," which very plainly implies that the other class will not live everlastingly. If we use life here in its most obvious and commonly accepted sense of conscious existence, then one class are to have such an eternal, conscious existence after the resurrection, and the other class will not have such existence, but in lieu thereof will have "shame and everlasting contempt." If they die the second death, and are cut off completely, as shown in former articles, it would be equally true that they awake to shame and everlasting contempt. The prophet Obadiah says of the ungodly: "Shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off forever." Obadiah 10. Christ, in that day, will be ashamed of them before his Father and his holy angels, Mark 8:38, and the shame of their own course of sin will indeed cover them. God will "pour contempt" upon them. Ps. 107:40. He will, as the word contempt signifies, "treat them as unworthy of regard." With the frown of God's wrath upon them they are brought to naught, and to all eternity remain cast aside as unworthy of his regard.
On the second text (Matt. 25:46), Canon Wilberforce, in his second discourse, said: "The word in the Greek, here rendered 'everlasting,' did not and could not by any possibility be made to mean never ending. In no single instance in the New Testament, nor in the Old Testament, where its equivalent in Hebrew is used, does the word express the idea of never-ending duration—it always and invariably means and must mean as belonging to an epoch, or the epoch or age."
Again, relative to the construction he had given the term, he "admitted the danger of this doctrine as apparently endangering that of the perpetual bliss of the redeemed, but said that those who were found faithful will be partakers of the endless life of God, who is everlasting."
Rev. A. Bradley, of All Saints Parish, Southampton, in his three printed sermons in opposition to the Canon, claims the eternal torment of the wicked from the word everlasting in this text. He says: "If the word is not the same as everlasting we will not thank them for the correction, for with it goes, perishes, the 'blessed hope' which is given us in the text, of 'everlasting life,' the Greek being, as I have already told you, precisely the same in both clauses; the everlasting punishment and the life eternal being both of them translations not of two different, but of one and the same Greek word."
The Reverends H. O. Mackey and H. C. Lake, in their sermons, take a similar position. We instance the words of the first discourse of the former. He said, "Much has been made of the fact that the words 'everlasting' and 'forever' might be translated so as to mean something else." He affirmed that "however long the punishment of the lost might be, it was identical with the blessedness of the saved."
While it may be true that the word everlasting, translated from the Greek word aion, can be rendered "age long" and refer directly to the age or time of duration of the object or being spoken of, the length of that age must correspond to the length of the existence of such object or being. It is true of the righteous, as the Canon informed us, "Those found faithful will be partakers of the endless life of God." The everlasting—"aion"—existence in their case must be endless.
The Scriptures make a clear statement relative to both the righteous and the wicked. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." John 3:36. If, then, the wicked are not made partakers of the endless life of God, how are they to live eternally? If we should admit, in this case, that the everlasting punishment is an eternal punishment, would that prove it to be eternal, conscious suffering? May it not rather be, as quoted in our last from the learned Dr Whitby, that the sinner is destroyed, never to be restored, and that such a destruction, from which there is no recovery, is an eternal punishment. In favor of this conclusion permit us to place by the side of this text St. Paul's testimony concerning the punishment of the wicked.
MATT. 25:46.
"These shall go away into everlasting punishment."
2 THESS. 1:8, 9.
"Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power."
The punishment is everlasting. It is final. There is no recovery from it. What does St. Paul say this punishment is? "Destruction." He does not say that the wicked shall be to all eternity being destroyed and yet never destroyed, or as one advocate of the eternal misery doctrine expressed it, "The wicked will be always dying, never dead." Such a statement is not admissible; a being could not be said to be dying unless a time was approaching when it might be said of him, He is dead. So of this everlasting punishment. St. Paul does not say that the wicked will be everlastingly destroying, but that they shall have "everlasting destruction." This punishment, then, is complete and total destruction, a destruction from which they are never again restored. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Prov. 29:1. Such is an everlasting punishment.
A FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT.
THE argument of the vast antiquity of the earth, founded on elevations of coasts at a given rate of upheaval, needs circumscribing, when we reflect that two hundred and fifty years ago Sir Francis Drake's fleet sailed into Albemarle Sound, through Roanoke outlet, which is now a sandbank above the reach of the highest tides, and which only seventy years ago was navigable by vessels drawing twelve feet of water. The coast of South America has in some places been upheaved twenty feet in the last century; in others, depressed to the same extent. So with other arguments. Lyell thinks that the doctrine of the pristine fluidity of the earth, and the gradual solidification of its crust, is one of the scientific theories which has been adhered to, after the props by which it was at first supported has given way, one after the other. Again, geologists vaunt the long periods of time that roll by while the strata are forming, as if they had determined them with mathematical exactness, without reflecting on the fact that vegetables kept for a year and nine months in hot water have been changed into dark lignite; and a cloth, exposed to steam for six years, transformed into black and glittering carbon. Moreover, to show how cautious we must be in arguing from these changes to the great antiquity of the earth, let us remember that in tropical countries plains may in a day be converted into lagoons and marshes. Two thousand four hundred and forty years ago, Nineveh flourished in all its grandeur; now its very site is overwhelmed with sand. Old Tyre—the mistress of the sea, the queen of cities, two thousand four hundred and forty years ago—is now a bare rock in the sea, on which fishermen spread their nets. A thousand years ago, Greenland was a fertile and well peopled land, Iceland was covered with woods of birch and fir, with waving fields of barley and other grain. So strange, so complete and comparatively rapid have the changes wrought on the face of the earth in historical times, that we need no fabulous myriads of years for the formation of geological strata. Wisely on points like these, St. Thomas wrote; "In questions of this kind, keep fast to two things; first, let the truth of Scripture be held firm and unshaken. Again, when Scripture may be interpreted in more than one way, we must not stick so fast to any one interpretation that, if it be proved that what we held to be the sense of Scripture is false, we should still continue to uphold it; since this causes Scripture to be laughed at by unbelievers and keeps them out of the way of believing."—Sel.
FAIRS AND FESTIVALS.
REV. SYLVANUS STALL, in his new book entitled "How to Pay Church Debts, and How to Keep Churches Out of Debt," after discussing the subject of church entertainments, concludes by saying:—
"We know of no arguments in favor of such entertainments, and some of the arguments against them might be briefly stated as follows:—
1. In proportion as they are more frequently used do they despoil the church of its spiritual power.
2. Those who labor faithfully for the success of the enterprise are apt to suffer from unkind speech, or unjust suspicion in the management of the finances.
3. In most cases they are employed by Christians who withhold from God that which he requires at their hands, while they seek to carry forward the work of the church by drawing the needed funds from 'outsiders.' They covet the wealth of the wicked, and seek opportunity to gain their influence and money. 'Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.'
4. If not universally, yet quite generally they alienate from the church some of its most useful members.
5. Whatever other effect these entertainments may have upon those who are not church members, they surely will not lead poor sinners to the cross of Christ.
6. Those most worldly minded in the congregation are sure to desire and apt to succeed in being at the head of these entertainments, and, guard them as best we may, they are almost sure to introduce into them such features as are ruinous to the best interests of the church; a disgusting song spoils the concert, a double-entendre the exhibition, cordials, cider and cigars the picnic, a heterodox statement of irreligious sentiment the lecture—on and on, through the whole list, the devil is determined to be in somewhere, or his personal friends will denounce the pastor as an 'old fogy,' get enraged because they cannot have their own way, dismember the congregation, and then leave in disgust.
7. Last, but by no means the least of all the evils, is the undeniable fact that church fairs, oyster suppers and the whole round of church entertainments are fatal to every impulse and principle of Christian benevolence."
GAVAZZI ON ROMANISM.
By Wm. Penniman
BY WM. PENNIMAN.
IN Gavazzi's concluding lecture on Romanism in his condemnation of the worship of relics, we find the following:—
“But if the worship of relics is so stupid and revolting, what will you say about the worship of images? The papists say, in the face of the second commandment, that it is right to worship images; and it is also true that in order to worship images they must entirely violate the second commandment of the decalogue, and you cannot find in all their edition of the Bible the second commandment at all. Still they pretend to have the ten commandments the same as the Protestants. Yes, ten commandments! But though the Bible system is a connected system, the priests of Rome took the last commandment of the decalogue, and, like good upholsterers, cut in pieces the last commandment in order to eke out the ten commandments. The second commandment, which forbids the worship of images, is cut off entirely, and the last commandment is divided, so that the ninth commandment says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife;’ and the tenth, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ox, nor his ass,’” etc.
As Gavazzi has described so truly and forcibly what the papists have done to the second and last commandment, it is to be regretted that he did not see what they have done to the fourth. They not only “say in the face of the second commandment that it is right to worship images;” but they also say in the face of the fourth that the church has power to change the law of God; thus setting up a counterfeit Sabbath in place of the Sabbath of the Lord, in fulfillment of Dan. 7 : 25, which says this power should think to change times and laws. Truly the “Bible system is a connected one,” and the papists have attempted to sever the very connecting link in the center of the moral law, which links the system together.
The Peking Gazette
A HONG KONG journal furnishes some particulars concerning the Peking Gazette, the oldest periodical in the world. Its circulation is estimated at 100,000. There are ten publishers in Canton, each of whom employs about ten distributors, so that there are one hundred distributors in the city and suburbs alone. The Gazette is printed from movable types, and each publisher takes a certain number of copies. It is delivered every two days to subscribers, who are of two classes. The first retain the pamphlet and pay about twenty cents a month; the second pay about one half the sum and return the Gazette to the distributor the next time he comes around. Together with it is delivered the local “official sheet,” which is collected from the yamens daily. This is printed from wax blocks, which are then remelted and available for another day’s issue.
—Sel.
The Use of Time
By Congregationalist
"What use are you making of it?" We asked this of a young man who has been reading for years, apparently for his own amusement. Does he tell somebody of the things he has read? Does he give others a thirst for knowledge? And so of leisure. If you are blest with time at your command what use are you making of it? It is as valuable to the world as your money, and even more so. Many, possibly most, play at life. For some it seems a comedy, for others a tragedy, but for few intense earnestness with a use for everything. Too many people seem to be like the children who build snow men only for the pleasure of knocking them down. "We play cards every evening," said a young lady to us recently. And we judged so from the very little knowledge she seemed to have gained in life.—Congregationalist.
Lessons on Life and Comfort
LIBERALITY should have banks as well as streams, say some. True; but even the banks should be green and velvet. When we cannot relieve another's want, we can at least refuse with kind and courteous words.
THE chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex one, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones are let on long leases.
LIFE is divided into three terms: that which was, which is, which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better for the future.