Earlier text: OUR ELDER BROTHER'DARWINISM AT ITS LAST GASP.'
By George E. Price
SUCH are the remarkable words I find quoted in my last number of 'Nature' (Nov. 28, 1901, pp. 76, 77) from a recent German scientific work. Dr. Stölzle, professor of philosophy at the University of Würzburg, has written a book on von Kölliker, the noted anatomist, and this book is reviewed in a learned article in 'Nature' under the title, 'Truth and Error in von Kölliker,' and is pronounced to be 'careful and scholarly.' The reviewer, however, is in rather a jocular mood, and sarcastically thanks the author for leaving as much 'truth' as he has in the writings of von Kölliker, whom he (the reviewer) evidently greatly admires. But there is a brighter side to the picture; there is truth as well as error in the writings of Albrecht von Kölliker. Of permanent truth . . . is his critique of Darwinism [written in 1864]; it has stood the test of time, and is now admitted as justified; 'and Darwinism, for scientific circles at least, is at its last gasp. Weismann, the toughest champion of Darwinism, can now write over all his works devoted to the rescue of the selection principle: In vanum laborarimus.' 'These are brave words,' adds the reviewer, 'but the game is 'bluff.'' But my readers must not make the mistake of thinking that any of these learned gentlemen are opposed to evolution. Not at all. This is only a peep behind the scenes, a little family quarrel as to just how the settled fact (?) of organic evolution has really come about. As many of my readers are doubtless aware, this division in the camp came about some fourteen years ago, when Prof. Weismann's writings began to make it evident that changes in the individual induced by environment, or by use and disuse of organs, are positively not transmitted to offspring. Very many of the leading biologists of Europe, such as Alfred Russell Wallace, E. Ray Lankester, and others, quickly said that Weismann was right; while some of the Americans, as Cope, Hyatt, and Ryder, with others abroad, mostly geologists, stoutly maintained that natural selection alone was very inefficient, and they must be allowed to retain Lamarck's less extreme ideas about the effects of environment, and of use and disuse being reproduced in offspring. The abrupt way in which new forms of life, in great variety, constantly appear among the fossils, even when heard in single file, according to their choice, instead of in concert, as the Bible would have them, could not have been produced by natural selection alone. About 1887 there began what we may call the modern scientific civil war; and while victory is certainly inclining more and more to the 'Neo-Darwinians,' as the followers of Weismann and Wallace are nicknamed by the others, there are many still holding out, and assured peace is not yet in sight. It is very interesting to listen to the mutually destructive arguments of the two parties. The Neo-Darwinians appeal to facts of ordinary observation and experiment, and affirm that no actual example proving the undoubted transmission of acquired characters, has ever yet been produced, while in the striking examples of working bees, and other neuter insects, the most complicated structures and social instincts have been brought about— without the aid of use-inheritance—nay, in spite of its utmost opposition. Working bees, being infertile 'neuters,' can not, as a rule, transmit their own modifications and habits. They are descended from countless generations of queen bees and drones, whose habits have been widely different from those of the workers, and whose structures are dissimilar in various respects. In many species of ants there are two, and in the leaf-cutting ants of Brazil there are three kinds of neuters, which differ from each other and from their male and female ancestors to an almost incredible degree. The soldier caste is distinguished from the workers by enormously large heads, very powerful mandibles, and 'extraordinarily different' instincts. In the driver ant of West Africa, one kind of neuter is three times the size of the other, and has jaws nearly five times as long. In another case 'the workers of one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads.' One of the three neuter classes in the leaf-cutting ants has a single eye in the midst of its forehead. In certain Mexican and Australian ants some of the neuters have huge spherical abdomens, which serve as living reservoirs of honey for the use of the community. In the equally wonderful case of the termites, or so-called 'white ants' (which belong, however, to an5entirely different order of insect from the ants and bees), the neuters are blind and wingless, and are divided into soldiers and workers, each class possessing the requisite instincts and structures, adapting it for its tasks.—W. P. Ball's 'Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?' pp. 15, 16. They then argue that since natural selection alone has been sufficient to evolve such marvelous structures, habits, and social instincts without any possible help from use-inheritance, what is the good of supposing that the latter has ever played any part in the production of other organisms? On the other hand, the 'Neo-Lamarckians' argue that the influence of environment, and the effects of use and disuse must be true factors (I use the words of the late Professor Le Conte), 'because there was a time when there were no others.' This insuperable difficulty occurs and recurs in the case of every separate organic type. This argument was, I believe, first set forth by no less a person than St. George Mivart, but I quote it as stated by Professor Le Conte:— But not only does not natural selection explain the origin of varieties, but neither can it explain the first steps of advance toward usefulness. An organ must be already useful before natural selection can take hold of it to improve it. It can not make it useful, but only more useful. For example, if fins commenced as buds from the trunk, it is difficult to see how they could be of any use, and therefore how they could be improved by natural selection until they were of considerable size, and especially until muscles were developed to move them. Until that time they would seem to be a hindrance, to be removed by natural selection, instead of a use to be preserved and improved.—Evolution and Religious Thought, pp. 270-1. And thus the battle goes merrily on. The reader will notice how both sides always quietly assume that the higher forms have actually been produced somehow from the lower. The one side argue that since hosts of examples can be shown of complicated types having been evolved where the effects of use and disuse could not possibly avail, therefore Darwin's private patent of natural selection is the one and only factor in the process of organic evolution. The other side as strongly argue that the 'Lamarckian factors' must be very important; for in the case of every organ of every distinct type 'there was a time when there were no others.' But between the two of them, what is there left of evolution, anyway? If an individual positively can not transmit to his posterity what he himself has acquired in his lifetime, how can he transmit what he has not even got himself? Or if natural selection can not start a single organ of a single type, what is the use of talking about its supposed ability to improve them after the machinery is all built? No wonder Sir William Dawson could say in 1891 that 'Darwinism seems to have entered on a process of disintegration' ('Modern Ideas of Evolution,' p. 12), and that now this learned German professor can say that 'Darwinism, for scientific circles at least, is at its last gasp.' And yet the majority of them will, with despairing clutch, still cling to the idea that in some unknown way the higher forms of life have been produced through the lower. But why is this? Why will intelligent, reason-loving men, many of them undoubtedly sincere Christians, thus hold to some recondite, unproved and unprovable theory of the origin of organic forms right in the teeth of the facts? Reader, there is but one answer. They all feel sure that geology has demonstrated that life has been on our globe millions of years, and that there has been at least a succession, if not a gradual development, of life upon the globe; and they think some form of gradual progress more reasonable than successive creations—on the instalment plan, if I may be allowed the expression. Darwin would never have got a respectable hearing if Lyell and the other geologists had not built him a big, tall platform to speak from. But what if this platform should be found to have no objective validity whatever? what if it is only a creature of the scientific imagination? It would take too long to show that geologists do not prove this succession of life, as most people suppose, but that they only assume it as a working hypothesis. And it is unnecessary to show that this succession-of-life idea is only the skeleton of the evolution theory, and that to quote geology in favor of evolution is only reasoning in a circle. The only way I can understand such a unique phenomenon here in the twentieth century is that the circumference of the circle in which they have been traveling for nearly fifty years has such a majestic sweep that most of them can not discern the curve. And all this because they will not believe God's record of a cosmic deluge. As Peter expresses it in his second epistle:— 'For this they willingly are ignorant of [or "wilfully ignore"] that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.' 2 Peter 3:5, 6. It is true that many of the leading geologists have of late years come in with a tardy, and as yet only partial, vindication of Moses' record of a deluge. They are now quite generally agreed that Palæocosmic man disappeared from Europe 'abruptly' at the close of the 'Pleistocene period;' and that along with him there dropped out of sight, on all the continents, those huge mammals that every one has read about,—the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros in Europe, the mammoth and mastodon in North America, the mastodon and great sloths and armadillos in South America, and the huge kangaroos and wombats in Australia. The remains of all these are found in immense quantities on all these continents, buried in strata that were undoubtedly deposited by water, in many cases by water in very violent action. This, they tell us, is the last great event of this kind, tho all through 'geological time' events just like this have been taking place, and hosts of species cut off in some strange way, and their remains buried by moving water. But surely it would be economy of energy to have all these events occur at one time, and by the same cataclysm; and I would have the reader remember that there is absolutely nothing save this succession-of-life idea, which they themselves have invented, to forbid us believing that all these geological deposits were laid down at approximately one and the same time. For some good standard works which support the idea that primitive man disappeared as above intimated, I recommend 'The Meeting-place of Geology and History,' by Sir William Dawson; 'The Mammoth and the Flood,' and 'The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood,' both by Sir Henry H. Howorth, F.G.S., F.R.S., etc. Howorth's works, the latter one in two large volumes, are rather too elaborate and technical for the ordinary reader; but Dawson's book is eminently readable. Thus with Darwinism "at its last gasp," and with its pedestal of atheistic geology already tottering to its fall, we turn with renewed courage and faith to the dear old Book that has told the one story all these years. Reader, do you wonder that at such a time as this the Lord is sending a special message to the world about his created works? '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.' Rev. 14:7. Do you wonder that the Creator is now giving to the world anew His Sabbath as the souvenir or reminder of a creation brought about, not on the instalment plan, as the geologists tell us, but in six literal days?—a reminder also of His power to re-create or redeem us from sin and its consequences? 'But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.' Matt. 24:27-39. "KEEP THY HEART."
By John Wm. Stein
A MAN may lose his lungs in part,
May lose one half of all his brain,
And live and work; but losing heart,
He never lives to work again.
An auricle, ventricle, gone,
An artery or valve let loose,
And life no longer can be borne,
Its fountain is of no more use.
Then guard it well from every foe—
Disease, the vile assassin's dart;
Expose it not to needless blow.
With all thy keeping, "keep thy heart." The memory may be at fault,
The understanding go astray;
The judgment may be in default,
The will be bankrupt—can not pay;
But if man's courage still is strong,
If all his purposes are true,
He still may live and labor long,
And to the end at last endure.
Then take good courage and be strong;
Determine to do well thy part;
Gladden thy way with cheerful song,
Move on and upward,—"keep thy heart." Keep it from sinister designs;
Keep it from sordid gains and trusts;
Keep it from evil ways and wines;
Keep it from vile, debasing lusts;
Keep it in wisdom's peaceful ways;
Keep it in virtue's faithful charge;
Keep it in truth's bright beams and rays;
Keep it for usefulness at large.
Keep it with all thy diligence;
Keep its life issues. Be thy part
To give right its true prominence,
And in God's keeping, "keep thy heart." Yes, give it into His control,
"Give Me thy heart," the Master said.
He is creation's central Soul,
Without His life thyself art dead.
Lay bare to Him every design,
Commit thy likes, dislikes as well;
Trust thou His grace, free and benign,
And in His all-wise counsels dwell.
Happy the soul with such a Friend,—
Omniscient, omnipresent, part;
Here let thy cares all have an end;
In His safe keeping, "keep thy heart,"
JOHN WM. STEIN. ADOPTION.
By Arthur T. Pierson
I USED to stumble at that word "adoption." People adopt children when they have none of their own by nature; but as the Lord begets children in His own likeness by the natural process of regeneration, He does not need to adopt them. Adoption here does not mean taking into the family a child that is not born into the family, but is somebody else's child. "Adoption" means here attaining "majority." In the Latin language the word "adoption" referred to the declaration of a son's majority. When a young man attained a legal age, his father took him into the forum, and from the bema, or the platform, said to the citizens, "This is my son; he has now come to full age; he inherits my name, my property, my social position." Then he took off the toga praetexta—the boy toga or coat—and put on the toga virilis,—the manly toga, the coat of a man; he invested him in the presence of the citizens, with the sign of full manhood, and said, "This is my son." Paul seems to refer to this: "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. . . . The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, . . . waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." In your minority you are but children; when you come to your majority, you are full-grown sons. There is a day of revelation coming, of manifestation, when God shall take you as His child and set you on the forum of the universe, and He shall, before the universe, say, "Bear witness, this is My son; in Christ he is the joint-heir of My name, of My nature, of My dignity, of My possession, of My throne." And then we shall lay aside the body of our humiliation, the toga that we wore when we were minors, and put on the body of our glory, which is the garment we shall wear when we get to our majority; and this new investment of the redeemed son of God in the presence of the universe is ADOPTION.—A. T. Pierson. Discretion and Forgiveness
THE discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.
—Proverbs. SO OUR covenant-keeping God reveals Himself to His children, Jehovah-Healer; as expressed in our version, "I am the LORD that healeth thee." Ex. 15:26. It was a time of bitterness to weak, doubting Israel when God thus revealed Himself, only three days after the glorious deliverance at the Red Sea. Their supply of water had failed, and they came to a fountain promising refreshment, but when they tasted, lo, the water was bitter. "Therefore the name of it was called Marah [Bitterness]. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet." And the record continues: "There He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them; and He said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His eyes, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee." Ex. 15:22-26. God designed the incident to be an object-lesson, not alone to each one of the Israelites of old, but to each of His people since that time. The bitter water mocking their thirst well represents the best that the world can give to the soul thirsting for salvation. Egypt is a type of the world, with its blackness, its darkness, its doubting, its bondage of sin, its disease and death,—the consequences of the sin. Egypt had made the lives of the Hebrews "bitter with hard bondage." The Hebrews had groaned under the bitterness, and prayed for deliverance, and the covenant-keeping God, Jehovah, had delivered them and overthrown their oppressors. They now needed another lesson. Their faith was imperfect. They sang triumph on the wrong side of the Red Sea; or rather they failed to sing it on the faith side, under the promise. Any one could sing it after the promise was fulfilled. For the second lesson God brought them to a fountain of bitterness, an object-lesson of Egypt, all that could ever be expected from the world without Him. But instead of looking to God for relief, a lesson that the whole deliverance from Egypt taught them to do, they murmured. In His great goodness God gives them another lesson of His power to sweeten all bitterness, to heal all the effects of sin. "The Lord showed him [Moses] a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet." Christ died upon the tree. He there redeemed us from the curse of sin; there He met the climax of the curse; death. "Who His own Self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed." 1 Peter 2:24. It is the cross of Christ that brings healing from all the world's ills. It sweetens every bitter cup. It is death only to sin, and worldliness, and selfishness. It is life to every soul who is crucified upon it by faith in Christ Jesus. It means a whole salvation. Egypt represents sin and darkness. Tho at the head of the nations, she was utterly ignorant of the greatest and most important things, and "alienated from the life of God." Eph. 4:18. This very "civilization" of Egypt, the worship of false ideals and gods of self, the manner of life, food, the numerous transgressions, brought upon her people diseases sore and many. Consumption, and fever, and botches, and boils that can "not be healed," and hemorrhoids, and itch were prevalent and destructive; yet from them all God promised to deliver His people. His power to deliver and redeem included soul, and mind, and body,—the soul from the bondage of sin and sinning; the mind from the thralldom of the philosophy of darkness, and doubt, and subjection to creature rule; the body from the servitude of the habits of lust and appetite and their consequences. O soul, the same God announces Himself to-day as "Jehovah that healeth thee." But He can not do it while you are wedded to wrong habits of eating and drinking; when you are enslaved by alcohol, opium, tobacco, and other hurtful stimulants and narcotics which are eating away and benumbing the finer fibers of the nerve tissues which God wishes to use mightily for Himself; when you are enchained by fashion, and the vital organs are bound, cramped, and distorted, God can not heal you. He can not in His pure nature of truth divide His glory with these. He must have the whole soul, mind, and body. Yield them to Him, and you will find Him "the LORD that healeth thee." What their Repudiation Means.
SINCE the inauguration of the present national policy, and because of the unconstitutional positions which have been taken in various national moves, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence have become the subjects of unsparing attacks. The object of these attacks is to prove those national movements right by proving the principles of those historic documents wrong. One of those principles most frequently attacked is that "all men are created equal." That statement has been declared ambiguous, unreasonable, absurd, ridiculous; and yet he who will read and study that document will see that the expression quoted is but a mirror of the spirit of the whole document, that the document itself explains the expression; that there is no ambiguity in it except what is read into it by its enemies; that it is perfectly reasonable and perfectly true. The purpose of those who subscribed to that declaration of principle was to show the world that here was to be a nation in which every man was to be the equal of every other man before the law, as in truth he was the equal in the court of heaven. It was not to teach that all men were born with the same talents, the same powers of intellect, the same amount of inherited means, or the same number of pounds avoirdupois; and yet all these absurd interpretations have been applied to that expression that "all men are created equal." The fact that such guesses could be made by thinking men shows how little the spirit of that honored document is understood to-day. The document itself interprets the meaning of that phrase. Upon the truth of the principle enunciated in that phrase the framers of that document demanded their rights as men before the bar of the world. The law of the land or the court of justice which grants to one man favors or privileges which it withholds from another, out of regard for the positions which the two men occupy, is doing an injustice to one, no matter what the position of the other. The Declaration declares that all men shall be on an equal footing before the law; that as all have equal rights, those rights shall be recognized. The colonists felt that they were being deprived of their rights; that they were regarded as a subject nation, a vassal nation, paying tribute. That was repugnant to their sense of the equal rights of men, and so they founded a nation upon that principle which is also a principle of the Gospel, the equality of men as men. None but they who wish to lord it over their neighbors will be found objecting to the principle involved. Certain men or associations have demanded that this nation be established upon the principles of the Christian religion. They forget that it was established in very truth upon those principles. Those principles were freedom of conscience and the equality of mankind. But they who are working for that end are demanding that the government shall rule in the realm of conscience as well as in the realm of civil affairs, and they declare that the doctrine of the equality of men is a delusion and an absurdity. In yielding to that demand the government must admit the falsity of the principles upon which it was originally founded, and put in their place principles which are false in reality; it must admit and exercise its right to supervise and control the religion of its subjects; it must look upon men not as equal before the law, but as great or humble according to wealth or birth or social position, and then render verdict in accordance with position. But the establishment of this nation was a powerful protest against such a course as that. The protestants refused to submit to a course of procedure which put them and their posterity on a lower level than that of the men who called them subjects, and which denied to them what it freely granted to their neighbors and relatives across the sea. Later they refused to be bound by the principle that the government has a right to control the conscience of the people, to supervise religion. Therefore the Declaration of Independence; and therefore, following that, the Constitution of the nation, founded upon the protest. Here was Protestantism in civil things, as the Reformation was Protestantism in religious things. Now, the protest of the Reformation was made much earlier than the protest of the Revolution; therefore it would be natural, if a retrograde movement should take place along the line of both protests,7that the Protestantism of the Reformation would be the first to suffer. And so has it proved to be. Protestantism does not now stand for what it did in the early days. The gulf of separation is fast narrowing, and professed Protestantism is now more ready to apologize for those acts and principles against which the great protest was made, than it is to condemn them. Just so has it come to be with the protest of the Revolution. Refusing longer to stand by the principles of the Declaration and of the Constitution, and repudiating the protests which those instruments uttered, the nation is fast drifting back to the espousal of the very principles against which its founders protested. The repudiation of those honored principles was the first step, and in the espousal of the opposite principles, the backward movement was complete. That is what has occurred in the nation; but that backward movement was accomplished in individuals before it was possible in the nation. The completion of this movement in the nation, shows the extent to which it has succeeded in the individuals composing the nation. The professed Protestant who repudiates the protest against the principles of the Papacy, has, in his own case, bridged the chasm and gone over. Just so he who repudiates the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution, has accepted and gone over to the principles against which they are a standing protest. The principles of that protest were right principles because they are in harmony with the principles of justice, of humanity—of Christianity. The oft-repeated demand that this government be established upon the principles of the Christian religion, is a misleading one, because, so far as any such thing could be done, this nation was already so established; and one of those principles was the utter separation of Church and State. Further than that, their demand carries with it the intention that the government shall control or supervise the religion of the land; and that is entirely out of harmony with the teachings of the Author of Christianity. The work of the great double protest is being assailed from every side, and the great retrograde movement is now in full swing. It is essential that every soul in the land should understand just what is involved in these backward tendencies of the present time. There is danger in them, danger to the nation and danger to each individual in the nation. The lethargy of death is stealing over the world. The sophistry of the deceiver is a sweet lullaby to many an imperiled soul. Let us hear and heed, and establish ourselves upon the Everlasting Rock, standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, that we be not swept to ruin on the tide that threatens now to overwhelm the world. The retrograde movement on both these lines is a movement away from truth and back to doubt and darkness, error and oppression. It is not of God, and does not minister to salvation. It builds up men at the expense of man; it makes the froward great, and crushes the humble; it puts itself in the place of God, and sits in judgment on the consciences of men; it exalts error, and puts its heel on the neck of truth; it builds up self, and lords it over the heritage of God. All that and more is in the repudiation of the two great protests. S. HOW ARE YOU RELATED TO THE LAW?
BEFORE us lies a tract, which starts out with Jer. 31:33,—God's promise that He will write His law in the "inward parts" and "hearts" of Israel, His people. The writer truly says that the law was written in the heart of man when God created him, but that man has broken that law; that God wrote it on tables of stone; that He repeated this when the tables were broken; that it is one law, not two. All this is true, and it will ever remain one law, even as God is one. But this writer makes a discovery that there is but one command in the ten that does not contain a principle of eternal righteousness—the fourth. When God was put to the necessity of promulgating a written law, He had a right to place anything in it that suited Him, and it would seem that His purpose was to place the fourth command here.(!) Be it not overlooked that had it not been for the necessity of a written law, the fourth command would have found no place in man's history. And this would be unworthy of notice, did not people believe it. Let the reader note:— 1. The Sabbath came in thousands of years before the giving of the law. God made it and ordained it in Eden before man fell. Gen. 2:2, 3. It was a part of His perfect scheme. It involves the principles of righteousness and right relationship as truly as does any other commandment. 2. "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness." He loved His people. He gave them His law of love. The fourth precept, guarding the Sabbath, is a part of that law. It pleased the righteous God to place it there. Can it please Him to have men attempt to remove it? He showed the unity of that precept with the law by placing it in the law's center, so that the sacrilegious hand of man could not even attempt to remove it, till it had torn away three immutable precepts on the one side or six on the other, before the fourth could be reached. "They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness." "All Thy commandments are righteousness." These are all the words of Inspiration. 3. The law in Jeremiah's day, B.C. 600, was the law written on tables of stone. It is this same law that God promises in the new covenant, in all ages of sin, to write in the heart of the believer. It is not some other law; it is not that law revised, amended, or repealed in part. It is the one entire law of God, the law that was in Christ's heart, the law which He observed in its entirety, that God will write in the heart of the believer. 4. We are told by the tract in question that—Christ, in His millennial work, will prepare the second fleshly tablets of the heart for the law of God to be rewritten upon for the eternal ages. But that is what the Lord is doing now to every soul submitted to Him. The great mass of mankind are still under the old covenant. The greater part of the Jews of old were. But not all. Moses, and Joshua, and Eleazar, and Caleb, and Samuel, and Elijah, and thousands of others, had believed beyond the condemnation of the outward law on the tables of stone to the glory of God's forgiving grace and regenerating power, which wrote the law within their hearts, as a part of their life. It is as true to-day. The man who rejects God's plan, in whole or in part, is endeavoring to save himself by some work or plan or scheme of his own, and is under the old covenant. The man who rejects the human in toto, and yields all to God that God may dwell in Him, is a new-covenant subject, to whom God is writing His holy law. If the law is without, it condemns and will eternally condemn. If it is within the heart, it is loving service to do its every command. What is your relation to the law? "ONCE IN GRACE, ALWAYS IN GRACE."
ALTHO this doctrine is not so generally discussed as it was fifty years ago, it is held by many people. The belief is well calculated to encourage the backslider in his way and course; for as long as he indulges the idea that because he was once converted he can not be finally lost, he will be content to take his ease spiritually, and to cater to the lusts that have drawn him away from the Lord. He will do so under the vain impression that in time the Spirit of the Lord will bring him back to the fold even against his inclination. If there be no danger of one's going to perdition after once experiencing a change of heart, what mean the warnings of Scripture against such danger? To those who maintain the doctrine, or rather the delusion, under consideration, the apostle Paul says plainly, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." 1 Cor. 10:12. And this warning was predicated on the "ensample" of those Israelites who came out of Egypt "of faith" (Heb. 11:29) and were baptized "in the cloud and in the sea," and ate "spiritual meat," and drank "spiritual drink," drinking of "that spiritual Rock that followed them," which was Christ; yet they tempted Christ by murmuring, and were "destroyed by the destroyer." They perished in the wilderness, and were not permitted to enter the promised land. See 1 Cor. 10:1-12. A like warning is given in the third chapter of Hebrews: "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end." This warning is also predicated upon the failure of those Israelites who came out of Egypt by faith, but fell in the wilderness, not being able to enter Canaan because of unbelief. Eternal life is gained through faith in Christ, but only those secure it who "by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality." Rom. 2:7. Paul also compares the Christian life to a race, the preparation for which may not be neglected. His exhortation is: "So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." 1 Cor. 9:24, 25. Now no backslider is temperate in all things; and no matter how high may have been his spiritual attainments at one time, as long as he conducts himself in an intemperate manner he is resisting the Spirit of God. Such a course is sheer presumption, and he who deliberately pursues it has no promise of salvation at all. Every possible effort is required to win the race. Paul never was a backslider from the faith of Jesus, yet he found it necessary to maintain a constant "fight" against temptation and the lusts of the flesh. He dared not give way at any time. He says, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Verse 27. Thus it is clear that Paul did not entertain the false theory that because he was once converted he was sure of eternal life in the end, without regard to his course of life. Even at his best, he saw a possibility of being a "castaway." Peter's testimony on this point is equally plain. Speaking of those who are led away by false teachers, he says: "If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them." 2 Peter 2:20, 21. See, also, Luke 11:24-26. In harmony with this is the testimony of the epistle to the Hebrews: "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame." Heb. 6:4, 5. But the Scriptures do not leave us with the doctrine by itself; they give us illustrations of the subject. Balaam was a prophet of the Lord, but he fell away through a natural desire for this world's honor and riches. By his fall he became a common soothsayer, or diviner, after the manner of the heathen, and was eventually slain in battle, having taken his place with the Midianites in their opposition to Israel. See Num. 24:15-25; 31:7, 8; Joshua 13:22, margin; 2 Peter 2:15. A more emphatic illustration is that of King Saul. That is, some may deem it more to the point because it is said that the Lord gave him another heart. Saul was out hunting his father's asses, and stopped at the house of Samuel the prophet. Before parting with him, Samuel anointed him to be king over Israel, and told him what should come to pass as he went on his way. Among other signs was this: "Thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall prophesy; and the Spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man." 1 Sam. 10:5, 6. "And it was so, that when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him another heart; and all those signs came to pass that day." Verse 9. The record goes on to state that when Saul met the company of prophets, "the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them." But after Saul became king, he departed from the Lord, and the Lord rejected him. He was not only rejected, as the head of the royal line in which the Messiah should be a lineal descendant, but the Spirit of the Lord was altogether withdrawn from him. After the death of Samuel, Saul was confronted by a Philistine army and was much afraid. He inquired of the Lord, but "the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets." Then he sought a witch, contrary to the express command of the Lord, and took counsel of her. He had so far departed from God that he could not return; he had sinned away his day of grace; the Lord would have nothing more to do with him. And in the battle that followed, his army was defeated, and to avoid falling into the hands of the Philistines, he committed suicide. The life and experience of King Saul forms a complete refutation of the deceptive dogma of "once in grace, always in grace." No man can safely hold to such a delusion, for it is altogether out of harmony with the plain Word of the Lord. The words of Jesus are, "He that endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved." Matt. 24:13.