Earlier text: THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL FLOURISH LIKE THE PALM TREE“IS GOD THE CREATOR OF THE JEW ONLY?”
By Charles T. Everson
THE advocates of Sunday sacredness have used various arguments in their endeavors to substantiate their claims. But as the fallacy of one position has become evident they have retreated to another, until at last the majority of them have endeavored to entrench themselves behind the theory of antinomianism. They claim that the Ten Commandments, together with the ceremonial law, were done away in Christ. They endeavor to prove that they were all one law, and that there is no such distinction as the moral and the ceremonial law. But it is not difficult to see that there is not only a wide distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law, but also between the moral law and every other part of God's Word. For as one writer says:— Other precepts come to us indirectly, by the Gospels, by the epistles, by the prophets, by the apostles. These [the Ten Commandments] come directly. Out of heaven they were spoken, and by the finger of God they were written. All the rest of the Bible was inspired. These were not inspired; they were God's own utterances—His audible voice. They are everlasting—eternal. God's law is the same to-day as it was when first thundered from Sinai. When Christ came, as a matter of necessity the ceremonial law passed away. As long as the sacrifices that were offered under it continued, they indicated that the Messiah had not come; for they pointed forward to Christ. But if after the death of Christ a person should offer a sacrifice, he would by this very act declare that he did not believe that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah. Therefore the ceremonial law ceased as a matter of necessity when Christ, the object of the law, had come. But the moral law did not prefigure Christ in any of its precepts. All its commandments are of such a nature that they are obligatory upon every people for all time. When we ask the advocates of the antinomian theory if the Ten Commandments exclusive of the fourth are also a thing of the past, they say that Christ reinstated them. But if Christ could reinstate the nine commandments after they had been destroyed by fulfilling them, as they claim, why could He not have reinstated the other one also? And what could be His object in leaving it out? We are told that the fourth is “Jewish.” Here naturally the query arises, Is God the Creator of the Jew only? Or did He also create the Gentile? When God had created the earth in six days, it is said that He rested upon the seventh day and that He blessed and hallowed it. And Christ says that the Sabbath was made for man. According to the theory held, we are compelled to ask this question, After God had made the Sabbath for man, did He complacently wait over two thousand years till a Jew was born before He ever told any one about the Sabbath that He had made in the beginning? Was the Jew the first man born into the world that God desired to have remember Him as the Creator of all things? Did not the Lord desire every individual that He had made to remember that fact? And did not God make every one else as well as the Jew? And did He want the Jew to remember Him as the Creator only for a limited time? Why should the Jew be the only one that God desired to have remember Him as the Maker of all things? And why did He desire even the Jew to cease remembering this when Christ came? These questions indicate how absurd it is to hold the position maintained by those who oppose themselves to the Lord's Sabbath. The Sabbath has as the reason for its observance a world-wide principle. It is unreasonable to suppose that an institution based upon the fact of creation in which every individual is involved should be limited to any people or time. And it is absurd to maintain that the Jews for the time of their existence before Christ were the only ones in the world whom God desired to have remember Him as Creator by keeping His Sabbath.5 Dr. P. S. Henson, the eminent Baptist divine of Chicago, in a sermon delivered in the spring of 1898, said:— The central thing in the earth was the camp of Israel; the central part of the camp was the tabernacle; the central part of the tabernacle was the most holy place; the central thing in the most holy place was the ark; and the central thing of the ark was the law. The angels looking down into the ark fitly represent the aspect of heaven and earth toward the commandments. This law was to be the foundation of everything worth having. Sinai is the tallest pulpit that the world ever saw, and from it God spake these words. God spake these words, not Moses. They are not an outgrowth of the ethereal teachings of the Jewish nation. They are not for the Jew only, but also for the Gentile. Not in Palestine, but in the wilderness, they were given; thus confining them to no particular country. They are not merely for the old dispensation, but also for the new. Many think that the law was abolished when Christ came. But this is a mistake; for the law is as unshaken as the pillars of the throne of God. The giving of the law on Sinai was not the beginning of the law. They make a great mistake who say that from Adam to Moses there was no law. From the dawn of creation God wrote the moral law on the fleshly tables of the heart. But it was largely lost through sin, so that God in His mercy wrote it on tables of stone that might be seen. The ceremonial law passed away at the time of Christ, but not the moral law. God thundered the law to Israel and through Israel to humanity. The Lord addresses every man as “thou.” He singles me out, and deals with me as if I were the only being under the stars. God's law is not an arbitrary restraining limit to my pleasure; but God does not wish me to do any harm. The law is underlaid with love. Man wants to get away from the law. Why, the fool! a man away from the law is in hell. God's law is to promote pleasure. It is not to restrain us, but to keep us on the track. Misery is due to the breaking of God's law. Love underlies Sinai as well as Calvary. Love underlies the law as well as the Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount explains the law of Sinai. Man must keep the whole law. A man can not make up an average. Suppose there are ten gates in an enclosure, and a person is commanded not to go out. If he comes and says that he went out through only one of them, has he not nevertheless disobeyed the law? A man must keep all the law, and at all times. A perfect obedience is required. If a man is to scale heaven with a ladder, it must reach. This kind of law and language is not acceptable to the people of to-day. There never was such a revolt against law. There is a wide-spread contempt for the law and the Law-maker. On account of our contempt for the law, we may be buried under the lava of Sinai. The idea of sin is fading out. Sin is a sort of disease, and hell is getting to be regarded as a hospital. Calvary is meaningless if Sinai is hushed. When we lose sight of the law, there is a shallowness in religion. What the world needs is to know the law, that they may appreciate the Gospel. The law must go before the Gospel, so that a man may be brought to the knowledge of sin that he may be led to salvation. As soon as he sees his real condition, he flees for refuge to Christ; thus Christ becomes “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Then there is planted in me a principle of obedience; and tho I shall never be perfect here, yet when I pass over there I shall keep the law perfectly. We shall sing not only the song of the Lamb, but the song of Moses and the Lamb. The law is everlasting. The Sabbath will be kept in the new earth. Isa. 66:22, 23. And why should not all those who expect to gain an entrance there begin to keep it here? SHOW me the way, O Lord,
And make it plain;
I would obey Thy word;
Speak yet again.
I would not take one step until I know
Which way it is that Thou wouldst have me go. O Lord, I can not see;
Vouchsafe me light;
The mist bewilders me,
Impedes my sight;
Hold Thou my hand, and lead me by Thy side;
I dare not go alone; be Thou my guide. I can not see Thy face,
Tho Thou art near;
When will the morning chase
Away my fear?
When shall I see the place where day and night
Exist not, for Thy glory is its light? I will be patient, Lord,
Trustful and still;
I will not doubt Thy Word;
My hopes fulfil.
How can I perish, clinging to Thy side,
My Comforter, my Father, and my Guide? LIVING FAITH.
By Thos. H. Nelson
[Thos. H. Nelson, in Pentecost Herald.] To-day, as in the days of old, faith heals the withered hands of indolence, opens the "blind eyes" of ignorance, cleanses the "leprosy" of superstition, infuses "new strength" into the impotence of discouragement, "casts out the devils" of dirt and disease, stops the "funeral march" of infidelity, and "touching the bier" of withered hopes, makes the corpse to sing for joy in the very presence of its pall-bearers. Faith reads the combination of the treasure chests of the Almighty, and calls to its assistance the resources of the Infinite mind and muscles. This was the way with the old worthies in the wars of the past for God and right. Descriptions of the heroes of faith form the brightest passages on the pages of inspiration. Faith is the seed of heroism. It inspires resolution, laughs at danger, animates the heart, fires the blood, nerves the arm, and, as God has said, it "endures the cross, despising the shame" till it sits down a conqueror at the right hand of victory. The dark pages of history are made glorious by the accounts of men of faith who, in spite of their ignorance, rise and bless the world by accomplishing what was dubbed impossibility by their learned and wealthy, but unbelieving, contemporaries. It was Daniel's fearless faith that brought the angels to the den to give the lions the lockjaw. It was their intrepid trust in God that enabled Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to face the flames and say, "Be it known unto Thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods;" and the same faith robbed the fire of its power to burn. It was faith that created the glorious galaxy of heroes, that cloud of witnesses, whose photographs appear in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. The Harvest of Obedience and Disobedience
By W. S. Sadler
THE MISSION OF PAIN AND THE LANGUAGE OF DISEASE. NO. 3.
The Harvest of Obedience and Disobedience.
"Come and let us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up." Hosea 6:1. HEALTH is the harvest of obedience; disease is the harvest of disobedience. The harvest of health is secured by sowing the seeds of health, and subsequently cultivating the crop. The harvest of disease is secured in the same manner, only that the seed sown is that of disease instead of health. The harvest of disobedience is avoided only by obedience. Health is God at work in man under conditions of obedience, while disease is the same God at work under conditions of disobedience. Whether the individual reaps a harvest of obedience—health, or the consequences of disobedience—disease, God is doing the very best he can for him in view of the seed he has sown. God's own word is pledged that what a man sows, that must he also reap; and, as we have seen, the part that Satan acts in producing disease is tempting man to transgress, and thus sow the thorns and thistles of ill-health. The sunshine and the dew cause the thorns and thistles to grow, just as truly as they cause the roses and lilies to flourish. Either may grow in the same soil; the difference in the harvest consists wholly in the seed that was sown. We are wounded when we go astray; God binds us up when we return. There is sickness and suffering in disobedience, and there is health and happiness in obedience. We must sow if we would reap, and our reaping will always be in accordance with our sowing. It is very true that there are many cases of suffering to be observed in this sinful world, the cause of which the human eye is unable to detect. But as far as we are able to discern the divine plan, we find it is based upon the law of sowing and reaping; and this being true, we have no reason to question but that even those things which we fail to comprehend are likewise regulated by the same just law. It is one of the deceptive delusions of the devil that man may in some way sow the seeds of transgression, and yet avoid reaping the harvest of physical and spiritual disease; or that he may persistently sow for disease, and reap the beneficent harvest of health. The hand of God is at work throughout all nature and in all the realm of human experience, seeking to show man the folly of all teaching which promises a reaping without a sowing, or a harvest in any way different from that for which the individual has sown. And it must have been that God foresaw that the world would be filled with such delusive teachings concerning this law of cause and effect, when He inspired the writing of these emphatic words: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Gal. 6:7. In His infinite mercy God has arranged that the penalty of wrong doing shall have a tendency to correct the wrong-doer and lead him back to the good way from which he strayed. So the Lord, having torn us when we went astray, stands ready to bind us up as soon as we seek to return. In speaking of the perversity of Israel that necessitated their going into bondage for correction, the Lord says, "They have turned their back unto Me, and not their face; but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise and save us." Jer. 2:27. Trouble has many times been the means of leading the spiritual or physical backslider to seek repentance and reinstatement in divine favor. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Rom. 10:13. And if affliction can accomplish the work of leading us to call upon God for help when all things else have failed to produce repentance, it can not be regarded as altogether unfruitful. The harvest of death is sure to follow transgression; but the harvest of life, the gift of God through the seed sowing of faith and obedience, is sufficient to swallow up the harvest of death. Then we can sing, "Death is swallowed up in victory." 1 Cor. 15:54. DOING GOOD.
By Richard Baxter
Do not only take occasions of doing good when they are thrust upon you; but study how to do all the good you can, as those that are "zealous of good works." Zeal of good works will make you plot and contrive for them; consult and ask advice for them; it will make you glad when you meet with a hopeful opportunity; it will make you do it largely, not sparingly, and by the halves; it will make you do it speedily, without unwilling backwardness and delay; it will make you do it constantly to your life's end. It will make you labor in it as your trade, and not only consent that others do good at your charge. It will make you glad, when good is done, and not to grudge at what it cost you. In a word, it will make your neighbors to be as yourselves, and the pleasing of God to be above yourselves, and therefore to be as glad to do good as to receive it.—Richard Baxter. I HAVE a friend so precious,
So very dear to me,
He loves me with such tender love,
He loves so faithfully,
I could not live apart from Him,
I love to feel Him nigh;
And so we dwell together,
My Lord and I. Sometimes I'm faint and weary,
He knows that I am weak,
And as He bids me lean on Him,
His help I gladly seek.
He leads me in the paths of light
Beneath a sunny sky,
And so we walk together,
My Lord and I. TRANSMITTER and receiver must be in tune with each other if the message shall pass between them. They have come to that point of discovery in wireless telegraphy. Ah! must dull copper and carbon and brass be brought into harmony if we would have it sensitive to electrical impulses, and shall human hearts expect to understand and be moved by the great impulse of the divine Heart above, save as they bring themselves and keep themselves in harmony therewith? The most ancient wireless telegraphy is from heaven to earth, but we cannot expect to be sensitive to it until we who receive are in spiritual harmony with Him who sends. The thrills of spiritual desire, the throbs of spiritual affection, the promptings of divine impulses, may pass by us unnoted and unfruitful if our spirits be not in sensitive harmony with them. There is a heavenly teaching that flashes from God to man, but only those men hear it whose hearts and lives are in accord with the Spirit of the Teacher. Is not that what Jesus meant when he said, "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching"? —Sunday School Times. "All things journey; sun and moon,
Morning, noon, and afternoon,
Night and all her stars." AND man journeys with them, whether he will or not. The day is likened unto a journey, and so is life. To some it means glorious triumph; to many the journey's end is looked forward to with dread and despair. They have no light but the present, and that present is but temporal. The children of hope have an eternal present. God called Israel to a journey. The place of starting was Egypt. The goal of the journey was the land flowing with milk and honey. There were many difficulties and perils in the journey of between 300 and 400 miles which the Lord asked them to take between Egypt and the "Pleasant Land." But He led them the very best way, tho not the shortest way. If they had fully believed Him, the journey would indeed have been brief from Rameses to the River of Egypt on the border of the Land of Promise. But they did not fully trust God, and so He led them a longer way that the people might not be frightened by the sight of warlike enemies. They must learn of God, and see His glory, and know His power. But His Presence went with them every step of the way. Every hour of the day they could see the Pillar of Cloud which enshrouded the divine Presence. Every hour of the night watchers beheld the radiance of the soft light of the Pillar of Fire. By desert paths or mountain passes, by sea shore, or inland arabah, the Pillar of Cloud by day and Pillar of Fire by night led the way. God thus identified Himself publicly with Israel. First of all to Sinai they journeyed, there to meet God, to hear His voice, to learn His character, to partake of His providence, to be blessed by His compassion. There He kept His children for nearly a year, feeding them daily with the corn of heaven, quenching their thirst with water from the riven rock, that they might know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. After the education at Sinai—an education so full and efficient and faithful on God's part; so reluctantly received, so unbelievingly witnessed, so poorly applied, on the part of the people—Israel again took up their journeying to the Promised Land (Numbers 10), only eleven days' distance from Horeb. Very orderly were to be their journeys. There were to be special calls by their special trumpets. There were four standards under which the hosts went forward, three tribes under each standard. Between these divisions marched the priests and Levites with the tabernacle of the Lord. Our God is a God of order. It was to be a missionary journey. All who would in heart unite with them might go with them. From Egypt came some, a "mixed multitude." Moses, the visible leader under God, invites Hobab the Midianite to go with them in these winning words: "We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel." And when Hobab refused, that other winning plea was made, that he might be a help unto them, and would share in the good things of God. So they started, the Ark of God with His glorious Presence going before to seek them out a resting place, and giving rest every moment to every soul who would receive that law in his heart. When the Ark set forth, Moses said, "Rise up, O Jehovah, and let Thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee." And when it rested, he said, "Return, O Jehovah, unto the ten thousands of the thousands of Israel." Num. 10:33-36. Would to God they had joined with Moses in all this glad faithful worship, following where He led, resting where His Presence indicated. But carnal lustings, idolatries, provocations, murmurings (1 Cor. 10:1-11) marked their course. The eleven days' journey to the Land of Milk and Honey became a crooked, weary, wandering, wilderness journey of thirty-eight long years of striving with God, till the unbelieving and rebellious died by the way. We, too, as they, are journeying, if we are not Egypt-dwellers. God has called us from the Egyptian darkness of sin to His eternal inheritance. He calls us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to the mount of God. He wants us to know Him. He would write His law upon our hearts, even as He longed to write it upon the hearts of Israel of old. He would feed us day by day with the Bread of Heaven, fresh from God's storehouse. He would quench the thirst of our souls continually with life-giving draughts from the never-failing Fountain. He would lead us all the way. He would imbue us with the same Spirit, so that we should say to every dweller of earth's drear deserts, "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel." This is the journey, dear soul in the Egypt of sin, God has called you to take. Will you do it? Will you leave Egypt with its flesh pots, its lustings, its abominable idolatries, its science falsely so called, its eternal disappointments, its darkness of despair, for the journey with God through the wilderness to the land of eternal Light and Beauty? Rough tho the way may be, the journey is pleasant with Him, and its end is life and peace. Sabbath Observance Has Been Continuous
By G.
Sabbath Observance Has Been Continuous.
ALTHOUGH the observance of the Sabbath of the Lord began to wane after the time of the apostles, there were always those who adhered to the Word of the Lord, that "one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Nor did they deem the law ended because Christ Himself fulfilled it in His life. He did not fulfil it for the purpose of putting an end to it, but to "magnify" it and "make it honorable." In this was manifested His righteousness. Isa. 42:21. True disciples of that time understood that God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, to condemn sin in the flesh, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:3,4. Authors of note, who themselves held to the observance of the first day, leave records in evidence that the Sabbath—which the Lord blessed and sanctified in the beginning, and of which He declared Himself to be the Lord when on earth—has not been left without witness in the church of Christ. Morer, one of the authors referred to, says: "The primitive Christians had a great veneration for the Sabbath, and spent the day in devotion and sermons. And it is not to be doubted that they derived their practise from the apostles themselves, as appears by several scriptures to that purpose." Also Lyman Coleman testifies that during the early ages of the church the first day of the week was not entitled Sabbath, "this word being confined to the seventh day of the week, which continued to be observed for several centuries by the converts to Christianity." Also Cox's work, "Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties," tells of the "ancient Sabbatarians, a body it is well known of very considerable importance in respect both to numbers and influence, during the greater part of the third and the early part of the next century." Another evidence that the true Sabbath had its adherents during the early centuries is found in the opposition they met by those who upheld the observance of the first-day holiday. For instance Justin Martyr, who was opposed to any set Sabbatical institution, charged the Sabbath-keeping Christians with "weak-mindedness," and he, as all their opponents, charged them with adhering to the institutions of Moses. That Sabbath-keepers must have been a considerable force in the church in the fourth century, is shown by the desperate efforts of the Catholic power to put them down. The Sunday law of Constantine in 321 gave a marked impetus to the growing popularity of that "venerable day of the sun" in the church, but the Council of Laodicea, in 364, found it necessary to go much farther than the emperor's decree in order to firmly establish the solar holiday in the church. So it was decreed that members of the church should not rest from work on the Sabbath like the Jews, but should labor on that day. And to this was added the penalty of anathema, or excommunication. Nor was this all. It was further declared by Eusebius that "all things whatsoever that it was the duty to do on the Sabbath, these we [Eusebius, Constantine, et al.] have transferred to the Lord's day [Sunday], as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has a precedence and it is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath." But as proof that even this did not put down Sabbath-keeping, we find the Emperor Leo, more than a hundred years later, making more stringent Sunday laws, including the country people (who had been exempted by Constantine), and adding severer penalties. This was in the latter half of the fifth century, when both the historians, Socrates and Sozomen, mention the extensive observance of the Sabbath by Christians, especially in Constantinople and in the Egyptian cities. There is good evidence that the chain never has been broken in Abyssinia. By the close of the fifth century, however, Sabbath observance had been pretty well stamped out of what was known as the Catholic Church, whose greatest strength was in the West. But the Lord can preserve His Word and his institutions, as also a people, when human judgment would deem all destroyed. This was demonstrated in Elijah's day. 1 Kings 19:13-18. So a distinguished English clergyman named Buchanan gives us another connecting link with the fifth century. Having spent some time in the British Empire of India, he is a competent witness, and testifies in part as follows:— The Bible was translated into the Armenian language in the fifth century, under very auspicious circumstances, the history of which has come down to us. It has been allowed by competent judges of the language to be a most faithful translation. La Cruze calls it the "queen of versions." This Bible has ever remained in the possession of the Armenian people. . . . The Armenians in Hinduism are our own subjects. They acknowledge our government in India, as they do that of Sophi in Persia; and they are entitled to our regard. . . . They maintain the solemn observance of Christian worship throughout our empire on the seventh day. In the latter part of the eleventh century Pope Gregory VII felt constrained to issue an edict of anathema against those who kept the Sabbath. So prominent was this question at that time, that Gregory's legates who were sent to Constantinople to endeavor to re-unite the Greek and Latin Churches, found it necessary to discuss, among other points, the Sabbath question. A traveling writer named Purchas, of the seventeenth century, also mentions several sects among Eastern Christians as "continuing from ancient times," and states that "they keep Saturday holy." He also says that they did not esteem it lawful to fast on Saturday, as had been commanded by the papacy, in order to make the day as noxious as possible as compared with the Sunday holiday. Thus the records show a continuous line of Sabbath-keeping Christians, even through the most perilous ages; and this, too, in face of the fact that the papacy, the dominant power for thirteen centuries, made continual effort to squelch Sabbath-keeping and to erase the record of it, as far as possible. Persistent effort was made to destroy even the Word of God, in order that the people would be kept in ignorance of everything that did not have the sanction of the Roman Church. Dissenters from papal dogma were not allowed to publish anything, and of course accounts of them were, in the main, distorted; yet when they are accused of maintaining only the Scriptures as a ground of faith, and of rejecting the papal traditions, we can safely believe the charges, for that was the ground of the long persecution. So there are various allusions to sects of the Waldenses as being observers of the seventh-day Sabbath. Such mention is made by Mosheim, D'Aubigne, Benedict, Dr. Allix, a Catholic, Dr. Francis White, of the Church of England, and others of note. The lifting of the cloud of oppression by the influence of the Reformation brought to light a large number of Christians of various names who were keeping the Sabbath of the Lord. And, continuing the practise already shown to have been in vogue in Asia, Africa, and Europe, we have the more modern sect known as the Seventh-day Baptists, whose history is not less than two hundred and fifty years old. They sent a missionary (Stephen Mumford) to7America in 1664; and Elder William Gibson came over from England in 1675. For the past fifty years the Seventh-day Adventists have given a new impetus to the Sabbath reform of the last days, a work designed to "prepare the way of the Lord, and make His paths straight." The judgment message is going forth to the world, and those to whom it has been especially entrusted, because they have heeded the call, have encircled the world with their missionary stations. They proclaim the duty of loyalty to the commandments of God in connection with the good news of the near coming of the Lord. The Scriptures emphatically couple the law of God and the final judgment of the world. "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Eccl. 12:13,14. This shows conclusively that every work, with every secret thing, is being compared in the court of heaven by the standard of the commandments of God—the same commandments that our Saviour made the rule of His life during His sojourn on earth as our infallible example. G. A PITIFUL PLEA FROM A STRICKEN LAND.
By S.
A BUDDHIST priest, Dr. H. Dharmapala, is now on the Pacific Coast lecturing in behalf of the people of India. He is looking for missionaries, but not missionaries of the cross, to go to India and work for the uplifting of his people. He says that his country is suffering from an overabundance of gods, a plethora of gods, he calls it, about 333,000,000 in all. That would be about one god for each inhabitant of the country. He tells us that scarcely anything is being done to improve the condition of the millions who were once a great people, but who have now fallen into a most pathetic condition. What he asks is the personal services of those who are willing to work along “ethical, philanthropic, educational, and scientific lines for the most helpless, illiterate, degraded, and superstitious people on earth.” These are the words of Dharmapala himself, high priest of that religion which has helped to make these conditions possible. It is a pitiful plea, this appeal of a Buddhist priest, pitiful because of the terrible conditions which lie back of it, and pitiful also because of the acknowledged impotence of that system of worship to do anything for the uplift of that idol-stricken people. But Dharmapala hopes to reap the results of the uplifting and civilizing influence of Christianity with the Christianity left out, and through agents which are antagonistic to Christianity. It can never be. The world owes its spiritual and mental and true physical uplift to the influence which Christianity has exerted on the world—not through instrumentalities antagonistic to it, but by virtue of the power that lay in it, the power of Him who lived it and was its Author. This is not saying that heathen countries have not benefited by the Gospel and do not benefit by it. They have, and they do, and they will continue to benefit thereby, even when the majority of the people are not in harmony with Christianity. And further than that, those not in harmony will benefit by it. But the benefit comes through the influence and teachings and ministrations of those who are Christians. Its opposers can not plant its seed nor give to others its benefits. They may carry about the empty vessels from which the bread of life has been freely distributed to others; but they can not feed the multitude. They may put nets in the hands of their fellows; but they can not tell on which side of the ship to cast the net, nor furnish the fish to fill it. From the day when Abram was called out of Ur, the people of the nations have been deriving benefits from the spread and prevalence of Christianity; but God has never put the instruments of His kingdom, the vessels of His temple, in the hands of those who knew Him not. The benefits of Christianity must come through its Author and those who are His. India needs help, and Dharmapala, the priest of Buddha, knows it; but he is looking to man and not to God for that help. His mission is bound to fail. He recognizes the failure of India’s 333,000,000 idols. There is no help in them; neither in the source to which he looks for help, the Theosophical societies of the world. Upon the only possible source of help he has turned his back; to the only light which can lighten his people he has closed his eyes. He sees nothing but his great need, and reaches out in his darkness for help to those who have been blessed with the blessings that Christianity has bestowed upon the world, but who have failed to recognize either the Giver or the meaning of the gift. What, then, must the Christian do? He must give to Dharmapala’s people the only remedy there is, even tho Dharmapala and his people do not recognize it as a remedy at all; and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In that is the very uplifting power which that people need, whether they know it now or not. To those who receive it the civilizing and uplifting and saving power will come. They will be blessed by it, and will in turn be a blessing to others, even to those who never learn the mystery of its power. Christianity is the salt of the earth. Wherever Christians are scattered that salt is doing its work; and there is no country in the world to-day in greater need of it. There are those in India who have been able to recognize “when good cometh,” and they are rejoicing to-day in the blessings that have come to them through the acceptance of God’s remedy for sin and all the results of sin. India’s pitiable condition is a result of the workings of sin, the transgression of God’s law. In that transgression self has been exalted in the worship of the gods to which the people have bowed down. They have frightfully abused their bodies to win the approbation of their gods and their fellow-men. The whole caste institution is designed to exalt some men above their fellows, and keep others down. The teachings of that religion have led men to think themselves a part of the Deity and capable of being absorbed into the person of the Deity. The whole tendency of this teaching, while exalting self, has debased and degraded a mighty people, until one of their own priests can speak of them as “the most helpless, illiterate, degraded, and superstitious people on earth.” India needs the Gospel. She knows she is needy; but does not know what will supply her need. She does not know the Gospel, but she needs it, and she needs it now. We have the Gospel; can we withhold it from her and still have it? She needs the light; we have the light, the very light of life. Can we keep it to ourselves and still have it? The duty of the Christian toward earth’s idol-stricken people is made plain in the Gospel itself. That Gospel is a pure, living, flowing stream. Stagnant water is never pure. If we accept the Gospel and then seek to hold it to ourselves, it is no longer the water of life, and we who so hold it make of ourselves stagnant pools instead of living springs. India is appealing for help. The Christian must answer her appeal, even tho he may know that she does not recognize his Saviour as her helper, or him as the instrumentality through which that help will come. S.