1. To what position was Christ raised from the dead?
God “made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places.” Verse 20.
2. How exalted was this position?
“Far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named.” Verse 21. Note 1.
3. Did that include powers and dominions only in this world?
“Not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.” Verse 21. Note 2.
4. What follows, then, concerning all things else?
“And He put all things in subjection under His feet.” Verse 22. Note 3.
5. Of what has He made Him the head?
“And gave Him to be Head over all things to the church.” Verse 22. Note 4.
6. What is the relationship of this church to Him?
“Which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” Verse 23. Note 5.
Notes
1. “Far above all rule.”—Lucifer sought position. He aimed to take the very place of God Himself. “I will be like the Most High,” he said. See Isa. 14:12-14. Not so with our Lord. When He saw man’s dire need, He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” Infinite love moved Him, and therefore that infinite love made Him worthy of the exaltation that was given Him. “Wherefore God also highly exalted Him, and gave Him the name which is above every name.” See Phil. 2:5-9. While in this world He was subject to authority; He was in a physical sense given into the power of Satan, and into the power of the authority and rule of this world. Through the instigation of Satan He was put to death and locked in the rock tomb, sealed with the Roman seal; but eternal right is eternal might: the grave could not hold Him,—God raised Him from the dead, and exalted Him above every name that is named.
2. “Not only in this world.”—Literally, “not only in this age,” not only in this time which we now see. Sometimes Satan would lead us to doubt regarding Christ’s cause, still the Master rules, and by and by He is going to rule even more fully still, when all sin is put away forever in that glorious age to come, the eternal age of the ages, when He shall reign forever and ever.
3. “All things in subjection.”—When Jesus had arisen from the dead, He said to His disciples, “All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.” Matt. 28:18. Not “all power,” in the sense of energy, or might, but all authority. It embraces more than mere energy, or strength. It is authority to use all these. He is worthy of the authority. He who would rule others must learn to rule himself; and our Lord Jesus Christ won the absolute and eternal victory over self, meeting every temptation which the enemy of souls could devise, and coming off more than triumphant in them all.
4. “Head over all things to the church.”—There is no other head than Christ Jesus our Lord. Elsewhere the apostle brings it down to an individual application: “The Head of every man is Christ!” (1 Cor. 11:3), and because the Head of every man is Christ, the Head of every combination of men is Christ. The church of Christ is not a gross material thing; its members are here upon the earth while they live, from age to age, and from generation to generation; but these members, tho dwelling upon the earth, are of heavenly birth; they are born from above, and there their Head, the Lord Jesus, is. To set aside the eternal, all-embracing headship of Christ, and to put in its place an earthly head, is to usurp His authority; for He assures us not only as a church, but also as individuals, “Lo, I am with you alway.” Christ has His representative here, but that representative is not a visible man, nor is it any set of men. That representative is the Holy Spirit. “I will not leave you desolate,” He tells us as He departed from us, “I will come unto you.” John 14:18. And then, that we may understand what He means, He says: “These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.” Verse 26. Again: “He [the Spirit] abideth with you, and shall be in you.” Verse 17. And there are many other scriptures which state the same great truth, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the church, has but one true Representative in this world with full complement of power and authority, and that is the Holy Spirit of truth. He has other representatives, He has here His own children; but He has no vicar of Christ upon earth save the Spirit of God, and that Spirit and the teachings of that Spirit we are to know because the teachings of that Spirit are in harmony with the Word which the Spirit has before inspired, with the law given by the voice of God at Sinai. Therefore God has given us the twofold witness of the Spirit and the Word,—the Spirit in the church and the Spirit in the Word, for the body which He has left. Christ is “Head over all things to the church,” and “the Head of every man is Christ;” therefore every man can come directly to the Head without anything coming between. This does not mean that His own people will work at cross purposes. There can be no stronger bond of union between the hands and their proper cooperation than the bond which guides them both, and so it is with the various members of His body.
5. “Which is His body.”—The human body, the members of the human frame, are common figures with the apostle. He uses these in great detail in 1 Corinthians 12, in which he likens the various members in the church and the various gifts in the church, to the various members of the body—Christ the Head, these members composing the body. The life of Christ, the thought of Christ, the teaching of Christ, the obedience of Christ, to be manifest in all the actions of the body. And, too, God has made this church of His, His means of revealing the Lord Jesus to the world. Christ revealed the Father when He was upon the earth. He declares, “As My Father hath sent Me [into the world], even so send I you.” Christians are to reveal Christ. They are to show forth His wisdom, His life, His power.
The Lord in various ways reveals Himself to His children, sometimes by vision, sometimes by angels, always, continually, by His Word. But He does not come directly in that way to those who are outside of the church,—He reveals Himself to the outside through His church. Cornelius could be stirred by an angel to seek after God, but the Lord directs him to send for one Simon, whose surname is Peter, and he will tell him what to do. (Acts 10.) The apostle Paul is stricken down with conviction as to his course, and he inquires what God would have him do, and the Lord sends him to Ananias. (See Acts 9.) And so it ever is: God uses the human agent to speak to those who are without. But He doesn’t make this human agent the lord over those who hear, or listen, or reject. Even Jesus Himself did not condemn those who did not listen, and His followers can do no more than did He. He said, “If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” That is the mission of His followers, to save; and the bond between them is no arbitrary authority of church, or council, or conference, or synod, or presbytery, but the one bond of love and life in the Lord Jesus Christ, bound together for a better carrying forward of His work, and the strengthening of each other in that work. This is the object of His church militant; and in that church He has placed His wonderful graces, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. He who recognizes that will not make of the church a deity, nor will he regard it lightly. He will find there all the imperfections of humanity, but he will also find there all the fulness of the Master working to bring all things “to the praise of the glory of His grace.”
Freedom from Self-Love
IT is not that God needs you, that He has come to you with all the glory of the riches of His grace in Jesus Christ, but because you need Him. He loves you better than you love yourself, howsoever strong the love of yourself may be. He would save you from that lower love. He would save you from the bondage of self-love and self-slavery to the glorious freedom of an endless life of usefulness and joy.
Endeavor and Surrender
“God is more ready to forgive the blotted page of endeavor than the blank page of surrender.”
The Forgiven Son
The quaint saying of Jeremy Taylor, that “God fails not to sow blessings in long furrows,” has an illustration in the following narrative:
In the commencement season of 1857, a student of a classical and military school in New England was to have graduated with honors, but by some deviation from the rules of the school his record was impaired. A rebuke from his father angered the young man, and he vowed he would live at home no longer, and, uttering abusive language, left the house.
But the storm of passion was too violent to last long, and soon spent itself. The better nature came back, and, entering the room he had so rudely left, he threw his arms around his father’s neck, and said: “Father, I’ve done a very wicked thing. I’m very sorry I have abused you so. It was not your loving son that did it. I was angry. Can you forgive me? I shall never again do such a thing.”
The quick embrace and a father’s kiss removed the agony of guilt from that broken heart. Never since that hour—both are living to-day—has an unkind word escaped his lips. He nurses his aged parents as tenderly as they used to him.
For several years this event, so full of interest at the time, had no other meaning than an occasional family reminiscence. But as now seen there was a divine intention in it, reaching into future years. In this school incident there was the illustration, and apparently the only one, that would reach the heart of a dying officer, and rescue both body and soul from the wreck of a great battle. So Christ’s love and foresight “shape our ends” and sow our “blessings in long furrows,” as the following will show.
A few years later found this young man in the West, thoroly trained in business and military tactics. He went to the front at the call of his country, as captain of a company of his choice. He was wounded in that fearful battle of Gettysburg, and on the sixteenth day after, his father found him. Gangrene had followed amputation of the right leg just below the knee, and had nearly reached the fatal death mark. He was given up to die. There was no hope remaining. Life was nearly gone. The embrace he gave his father was feeble. His voice was that of one about to give up life. “Dear father, how glad I am to see you once more; you must do the talking now. I’m almost gone.”
Returned from a short walk with the surgeon, the colonel asked his father to sit down by him.
“Have you been talking with the surgeon?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say about me?”
“He says you must die.”
“How long does he think I can live?”
“Not more than four days, and you may go at any moment.”
“Father, you must not let me die now. I am afraid to die. I’m not prepared to die. If I must, do tell me how. I know you can, for I’ve heard you do it for others.”
There was no time or place for tears. There was work to be done, and done at once. There was no hesitation. Instantly the Spirit said to the father, “Tell him of the school incident. That is what he wants; I have held it in reserve for this moment.”
“My son, you feel guilty, do you not?”
“Yes; that makes me afraid to die.”
“You want to be forgiven, don’t you?”
“Yes; can I be?”
“Certainly.”
“Can I know it before I die?”
“Certainly.”
“Do make this so plain that I can get hold of it,” raising his feeble arm and closing the hand as if to grasp it.
“Do you remember the school incident years ago?”
“Yes, very distinctly. I was thinking it all over a few days ago, as I thought of your coming.”
“Do you remember how you came back into the house, and, throwing your arms around your father’s neck, you asked him to forgive you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said, ‘I forgive you with all my heart,’ and kissed me.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Certainly; I never doubted his word.”
“Did that take away your guilt?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Were you happy at home again?”
“Yes; more than ever before.”
“That is just the thing for you to do now. Tell Jesus you are sorry that you have abused Him, and ask Him to forgive you, just as simply and sincerely as you did me. He says He will forgive, and you must take His word for it, just as you did mine.”
“Why, father, is that the way to become a Christian?”
“I don’t know of any other.”
“That is very simple and plain; I can get hold of that.”
Very much exhausted by this effort, the colonel turned his head upon his pillow to rest. The father, having done his work for the dying son, sank into a chair and gave way to a flow of tears, expecting soon to close his son’s eyes in death. That painful suspense was not to last long. It could not. It did not. A change had taken place. A new life had come to that soul. Its first utterance changed the tears to joy.
“Father, you need not cry any more. I don’t want you should. I want you should sing. It’s all right with me now; I’m happy; Jesus has forgiven me. I’ve told Him how sorry I am that I have abused Him so; and He has forgiven me. I know He has, for He says He will, and I have taken His word for it just as I did yours. I’m not afraid to die now; I don’t think I shall. I feel the stirring of a new life within me, and with it comes the feeling of new life in my blood. I want you to sing that good old hymn we used to sing when a boy at family prayers: “When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.”
Immediately the life current, which was rapidly ebbing away, began to flow back, the pulse beating at the death rate began to lessen, the eyes to brighten, the countenance to glow with new blood, the voice to be natural, the sadness of that afternoon to give place to cheerfulness and hope. The surgeon, coming in as was his wont every day to watch the rapid progress of the dreaded gangrene, put his fingers upon the pulse, and said with great surprise: “Colonel, your pulse is wonderfully changed; you look better. What has happened?”
“Well,” replied the colonel, “Father has shown me how to be a Christian, and I have done it. I’m better; I’m going to get well. I’ve asked Jesus to let me live to take care of father, mother, and sister, and to serve my country, for which I have given my leg, and well nigh my life.”
On dressing the wound next morning the whole mass of rotten flesh fell to the floor—the gangrene was arrested—its work ended. The surgeons, throwing up their arms, exclaimed: “Great God! this is a miracle. God only could do this!”
Years have come and gone. This young officer, thus rescued from the wreck of war, still lives. In that school incident in 1857 was foreseen the saving of a valuable life—thanks to sovereign grace. That life has been an important factor in the political, religious, and domestic history of his day. Positions of trust have been freely given and honorably held by him. His official career has been marked by efficiency, integrity, a high sense of honor, a quick apprehension, and a ready decision of official questions, fairness, impartiality, general popularity, and official success. The church knows the influence of his membership and support. In his home, blessed with the wife whom God had prepared for him, a large family has been reared to a Christian life, and all of suitable age are gathered into the church. The morning prayer has held the same place as the morning meal. God grant that such a life may be spared for many years to come.
The lesson of this narrative is that, very generally, the way to become a Christian is indistinct and confused. Ministers should make it so plain that men can get hold of it. It is so simple that “wayfaring men, the fools, shall not err therein.”—New York Observer.
The Reward of Doing Right
By Robertson
Do RIGHT, and God’s recompense to you will be the power of doing more right. Give, and God’s reward to you will be the spirit of giving more. Love, and God will pay you with the capacity of more love, for love is heaven and the Spirit of God within you.—Robertson.
Each Shall Give Account to God
EVERY one of us shall give account of himself to God.— Paul.
Our Work Advancing in Borneo
THE following letter from Brother Chan, of Singapore, which appeared in the Asiatic “News Letter” for January, gives some recent developments in the work in Borneo:
“In answer to several urgent calls, I went to Borneo the first part of October. The first Sabbath after my arrival, quite a number closed their doors and kept the Sabbath of Jehovah. The first man that accepted the truth is one Chen En Fook, who is employed by the Land Office of Jesselton, Borneo; his mother-in-law and her four daughters also believe. They are people who are acquainted with the Bible. Among the four daughters, two are still in one of the schools. When the teachers of the school knew that the family of the two girls had begun to keep the Sabbath, they used every method to keep them from seeing the truth, so these two girls were misled for some time.
“The first two nights after I came to Jesselton I made use of the public reading-room of the town to give lectures to the public. The first night I presented the second chapter of Daniel, showing that Christ will set up His everlasting kingdom in the very near future; and the second night the four beasts of Daniel 7, showing that the little horn and the prophecies concerning it are fulfilled in the Papacy, and calling their attention to the prediction, ‘He shall think to change times and laws,’ also to the fact that the Papacy has sought to change the Sabbath of the commandment. The third night I was going to open meeting at the same place, but the man in charge, influenced by some one who opposed the truth, would not let me do so. He said they had received a cable from Singapore concerning some important matter for which they would have to use the place to meet with their members.
“It happened just at this time that Mr. Chen En Fook’s father-in-law, Mr. Wong, came from another town on his regular visit to his family. When he was told that I was there, he came to me, and earnestly desired to learn the truth; so I sat down with him to study the precious Word. The study continued till daylight. He wrote down everything I spoke. The following night he came again for more instruction. As his business is in the other town, he was obliged to leave the next day. When he went back, he began to preach to his friends. Some accepted the truth. They asked me to go over there, and that I did.
“The same night one of the ministers asked if I would object to being questioned. I said, ‘No harm.’ Then he said, ‘I was told that you people testify that the Papacy changed the Sabbath. I am afraid this is your own explanation. Have you any proof?’ In answer to this I gave him a long study. Still he was not quite satisfied; so on the morrow he went to the Catholic priest, and asked about the change of the Sabbath. Not only did the priest not deny this fact, but he quoted many proofs to show that the Roman Catholic Church is the only church upon the earth that has power to do this. This convinced the minister that the Papacy had done the very thing foretold in Daniel 7. When he came again to Jesselton, Mr. Wong related to his family what this man had heard from the priest, and his two daughters who were wavering decided to keep the commandments. Both the mother and the daughters are bearing testimony for the truth every day. Whenever any one comes to their house to exhort them to keep Sunday, the two daughters give them Bible tracts that the people are not able to explain away, or ask questions that they are unable to answer.
“When I was in Jesselton, the Misses Wong were doing personal work among their relatives. These two young women wish very much to come to Singapore12to be trained as workers in the third angel’s message.
“Some of the men believers have already resigned their good positions in foreign business concerns, and are doing such work as they can earn their living at, that they may be free to observe the Lord’s Sabbath. On Sabbaths they close their shops and post a notice on the door, saying, ‘This is Sabbath day. No business done in this shop.’ This is a new thing in these towns, as the Sunday-keepers never close their shops.
“I very earnestly pray that the Lord will bless the seed sown there, and ere long much fruit will be borne to the glory of His name.”
Progress in Missions
FIRST of all, we thank the Missionary Review of the World for its splendid chart of statistics for 1912, collected and tabulated by the Rev. Louis Meyer, D.D. This chart gives the statistics of church missionary societies in Canada, the United States, West Indies, Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, the continents of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, and a summary of Christendom. As far as it is able to gather, it gives the date of the organization, the total home income in dollars, the total income from the field in dollars, the foreign missionaries, ordained ministers, physicians—male and female—laymen, wives of missionaries, and unmarried women engaged in the foreign mission work. It gives of native workers the ordained, and other helpers; and the total for the whole field. The report gives the number of stations, of out-stations, of organized churches, of communicants, and the total number of other baptized Christians and other adherents. It gives the number of heathen baptized during the last year, both of adults and children; the catechumens at the close of the year, that is, those taking instruction preparatory to full church-membership; the number of Sunday-schools, pupils in the same; colleges, theological seminaries, training schools, students in the same; other schools, pupils in the same; hospitals, free dispensary and treatment rooms; with the foreign countries in which missions are sustained, and the number of missions. The report must have cost an immense amount of labor.
Missions Supported by Americans
The total home income of the American societies amounts to ...$14,942,523.00
The total income from the mission fields to ...$3,641,585.00
The ordained ministers ...2,330
Male physicians ...258
Female physicians ...115
Laymen who are working in foreign missions ...751
Wives of missionaries ...2,475
Unmarried women ...2,108
The total number of foreign missionaries from America amounts to ...8,037
Among the native workers there are, ordained 2,497
Other native helpers ...35,354
Making the total number of native workers laboring under these various missionary organizations ...37,951
The grand total of native and foreign missionaries ...45,988
These are laboring in 2,024 stations, 11,420 out-stations. There are organized churches to the number of 5,514, and the communicants number 199,116. There were baptized last year 46,583 heathen converts (adults), and 27,985 children. Many of these we suppose were simply sprinkled.
Sunday-school children are reported to the number of 892,500.
The Seventh-day Adventists' total home income is reported at $357,588, and from the field $135,235; 106 ordained ministers; 17 male physicians, and 7 female.
In all Christendom, including Canada, United States, South America, West Indies, Great Britain, continents of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, the grand total of home income is given as $30,404,401; reported from the field, $7,902,256. Engaged in the foreign mission field: 5,769 ministers, 563 male physicians, and 23 female physicians. These figures would seem to indicate that there is a very large field, indeed, for self-supporting medical missionaries. The total number of all kinds of workers in the foreign mission field, including native, as given in this report, are 111,862. Total number of organized churches in mission fields is given as 15,396, with communicants to the number of 2,644,170.
It would have been interesting if there could have been given in this report the amount per capita paid by the different organizations, churches, societies, etc. We believe that it would have formed a text which could have been used with good effect in stirring up missionary zeal on the part of many Protestant churches. There is a decided increase, especially in the amount of means given for missionary work.
We do not know how detailed were the reports which Dr. Meyer received for Seventh-day Adventists. He has noted the work only in heathen and Catholic fields. He has given them only in a very general way,—Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, South America,—while other missionary societies have been listed in various countries in the continents wherever they had missions. For instance, in Asia Seventh-day Adventists have missions in Korea, Japan, more than half of the provinces of China, Siam, Burma, India, Persia, Syria, Caucasus, Siberia, etc., and in every country of South America, and the Catholic countries of Europe.
It may be well to make comparison of all missionary organizations between 1911 and 1912:
The home income of foreign missionary societies in 1911 (we give round numbers) was ...$25,297,000
Home income of foreign missionary societies in 1912 ...$30,404,000
Income from the fields, 1911 ...$5,519,000
Income from the fields, 1912 ...$7,902,000
Total number of Protestant missionaries in the field, 1911 ...22,000
Total number of Protestant missionaries in the field, 1912 ...24,000
Total number of native workers, 1911 ...98,000
Total number of native workers, 1912 ...111,000
Number of communicants, 1911 ...2,304,000
Number of communicants, 1912 ...2,644,000
Total adherents, including communicants, 1911 ...4,876,000
Total adherents, including communicants, 1912 ...6,055,000
Added, adults and children, 1911 (incomplete) ...152,000
Added, adults and children, 1912 ...212,000
Donations to Missions
By Editor
Our Chinese Training School, a most worthy object, is appealing to some hearts. What was told in this department last week shows China’s pitiful need of laborers. The training school which the Signs family hope to furnish will help greatly in meeting this need. We can assure our readers one and all that the object is worthy. If it were not we would not invest in it. We present in this issue all that has thus far been given to this enterprise, beginning in December, 1912.
Chinese Training School
Previously Reported — $435.00
F. A. Allen — 6.00
Mrs. Ed. Presteen — 1.00
Alexis Hinckley — 5.00
S. S. — 100.00
J. B. Donald — 5.00
“W” — 5.00
Total — $557.00
India
Leah Graham — $2.00
Mrs. Charlotte Gerlach — 1.65
S. S. — 50.00
Total — $53.65
All donations to India hereafter received will be turned to the Woman’s Hospital and Dispensary, unless the donor prefers some other object.
Burma
Reported individually through “Our Little Friend” — $2.65
Japan
S. S. — $25.00
Korea
S. S. — $25.00
Africa
Eva and Dille Cady — $4.00
A. Karlson — 2.50
Total — $6.50
“The Frankensteins of Civilization”
“Oil-driven, single-funneled, and protected against air-bombs — H. M. S. ‘Queen Elizabeth’ as she will be when completed.”
A STORY which had quite a large circulation, some years ago, told of a German scientist, named Frankenstein, who concluded that he could take the elements of which man is composed, and make man. After years, he succeeded in making a large man physically, but a horrible monster mentally. This monster that he had formed longed for a mate, and searched the world that he might find it. Frankenstein himself revolted from the awful responsibility of killing this human monstrosity which he had created, or of bringing another monster into the world that might fit the one already formed, and might not. He died at last from the violence of his own creation. In other words, he undertook to make man, and made a demon, superior so far as physical strength is concerned, but devilish in mental and moral make-up.
This is in a way a striking illustration of what the civilization of the present time is doing without Christ. Not long ago the New York “Independent” suggested some of these things that might destroy the civilization that had created them. For instance, splendor and luxury are among them,—“baleful products of civilization which enervate energy, and slay the mother which bore them.” Invention and science are other products of this wonderful civilization. Science, the “Independent” calls “the glory of civilization,” but civilization which makes science its glory may be expected to be destroyed by its glory.
Science has blessed, but it may work to destroy as well as to bless. This is demonstrated in the fact that the strongest, ablest service of science is given to war. Even now, in a comparative time of peace, the war burden is crushing this old world, and it goes on increasing from year to year, creating bigger guns and mightier Dreadnoughts. The “Independent” well asks: “What will be the result when war comes, when those who even now can scarcely feed their babes find no work to keep body and soul together? What when the fleets of war prevent the fleets of commerce from feeding the millions that crowd the cities? What when the cities themselves are bombarded, not only from the ground but from the sky?”
Surely science, as applied to war, is a Frankenstein monster indeed. The awful creation will devastate, burn up, and destroy in a day what it has taken civilization ages to create.
Take, for instance, another product of civilization, the saloon evil, and the low resorts, gambling-hells, houses of ill fame, that grow out of it, vice licensed and commercialized.
Take some of the mighty explosives over which science has rejoiced, like nitroglycerin, and dynamite, and cordite, and other powerful agents,—splendid, in a way, when they tunnel the mountains and break mighty canals through the rocks. But when they are used, as very clear evidence in the Indianapolis dynamite trial brought out, to wreck and destroy the buildings that are of real use in civilization, the creation has become a monster, and especially when these mighty explosives are used by such a class of people as the I. W. W.’s and Syndicalists of the world, who are not only educating the people to their own views of matters, but who are declaring that the minority must act, devastate, kill, destroy, against the will of the people as a whole, until they can seize all the products of civilization. Their best weapons are these mighty, easily compounded explosives. The “Independent” well says that “the danger is serious, and the people should be warned, and should act. It is something to make stricter laws as to the use and storage of dynamite, which it is now easy enough to get; but if the present social war grows, it WILL AWAKEN THOSE WHO SLEEP. We make no crusade against Socialism, we are willing it should make its argument and win if it can, but we do object to a minority of men fighting the majority meanwhile with dynamite and sabotage.”
And these are the products of civilization with Christ left out. All civilizations without God have become monsters, and have wrecked the very lands which created them, and this very condition of things which we see at the present time is striking fulfilment of the prophecies of God’s Word repeated over and over, that man left to himself, apart from God, will develop just such conditions of things as we now see, and which are holding the nations in the very grip of paralysis and fear. Take the whole 59th chapter of Isaiah, and it reveals to us just such times as these in which we live, monsters developing in the midst of a people professedly religious.
In the third chapter of 2 Timothy, verses 1 to 5, are mentioned eighteen different sins out of which grow these monsters of civilization. These sins are held by a class who have the form of godliness but deny its power. The hope of the world is not in the form of godliness; it is not in a profession of religion; it is in the power of godliness to restrain all the unholy passions of the human heart. No wonder that the apostle declares, in this passage to which we have last referred, that the times are perilous.
And these very conditions have been brought about by another monster of civilization, the product of that school of criticism which has exalted above the Word of God the theories of men. This exaltation of evolution is one of the planks in the platform of those who are destroying society at the present time. If there was ever a time when a message was demanded, it is the message which God has given for these days: “Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” It is creative power that is needed in these days—creative power applied to character—and a science that is subject to moral law of the Creator.
The Humbug of Celebrated Baths
Doctor Woods Hutchinson is telling the world that the celebrated baths that are advertised so much, and in so many places, are no better than baths that can be had almost anywhere. “The baths,” says the doctor, “are just as big a humbug13as the waters are when drunk. Lake water in a tub, a handful of salt, a pinch of plaster off the wall, and a basket of garden loam, will make as good a ‘rheumatiz’ cure as the best bath for which a grasping hotel manager ever charged five dollars. And the loam and the plaster do no good at that.” Our doctors are doing a splendid work for humanity, when they glaringly expose the humbuggery of the widely advertised “cures” that are such cunning yet bold frauds.
Not a Reformer, but a Regenerator
In an address at the recent council of the “Federation of the Churches of Christ in America,” at Chicago, Vice-president-elect Gov. Thomas R. Marshall, of Indiana, delivered an address on “Young People’s Organizations and Christian Unity.” He gave utterance to some mighty, vitally important truths which run directly counter to one of the purposes of the federation,—reform through politics. Here is one of the good things:
“There is, I sometimes think, a weakening to a greater or less degree in the spiritual power of the church, together with a lessening of the faith and hopes of men. I think I know what has produced it. From my view-point, Jesus Christ was not a reformer in the usual and ordinary acceptation of that term. He lived when the greatest despotism that the world has ever known ruled the habitable globe. Yet, the only recorded statement of anything He said with reference to the Roman Empire was, ‘Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’ Slavery had reached the very depths of degradation, and yet His apostle advised a runaway slave to return to his master. The Christ was not engaged in repealing bad laws, nor in providing criminal punishments for the violators of good ones.
“Jesus Christ was more than a reformer. He was a regenerator. The church is to stand as the representative of the kingdom of God on earth, and ‘except ye be born again, ye can not enter into the kingdom.’ He brooded over Jerusalem as a hen broods over her chickens, and yet, He never strove to make bad Jerusalem appear to be good Jerusalem.”
We shall print more from this excellent and timely address later.
