Earlier text: The Industrial Conflict in the Light of RevelationWe understand from Rev. 16:12 that Turkey will come to his end under the sixth plague. Dan. 11:45 and 12:1 teach us that after Turkey comes to his end Christ leaves the sanctuary in heaven, and “stands up” to reign. How is it, then, that, since the plagues are not to be poured out until after Turkey comes to his end, we are taught that he will come to his end under the sixth plague? Please harmonize the teaching or set me straight. D. L. P. Our querist confuses the processes with events. The drying up of the River Euphrates of Rev. 16:12 doubtless refers to the final destruction of the Turkish power. It is the last of a process which has been of long continuance, and opens the way for the battle of Armageddon. If Dan. 11:45 refers to the same event, the coming to the end of the king of the north must be under the sixth plague, but the beginning, the planting of the palace of his tabernacle, may have been some time prior, before the plague began. “At that time” of Dan. 12:1 may have reference to the first event of verse 45. But are you sure the king of the north refers to Turkey? May it not refer to Rome, the power which established the vision, and which wrought so proudly? Dan. 11:36-39, compare with 2 Thess. 2:3, 4. Will you please explain through your “Question Corner” Rom. 14:5, 6. There are those who argue that this text permits a person to observe any day in the week he chooses for the Sabbath, or that he is at liberty to observe no day as the Sabbath; or, just as he happens to believe. P. C. Rom. 14:5, 6 in the American Revised Version reads as follows: “One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, for he giveth thanks; and he that eateth not, unto the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.” The negative regarding the day, omitted from the Revised Version, does not belong to the text. 1. Let him who is troubled over Rom. 14:5, 6, study and appropriate all of the wonderful epistle till he gets to the fourteenth chapter, and that chapter will not trouble him. He will find himself eating and drinking to God’s glory, and gladly observing God’s law. 2. The fourteenth chapter enforces this great truth: “Let us not therefore judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother’s way, or an occasion of falling.” Verse 13. 3. The chapter is a lesson to Christians in the same church regarding Christians. There is no question at stake concerning doing the righteous will of God; for there can be no kingdom of God without “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Verse 17. But doing acceptable righteousness is the putting away of all sin, and by the Spirit fulfilling the righteousness of the law. Rom. 6:12-16; 8:4. Therefore all God’s children would keep His Sabbath without question. 4. But there were other feast days and fast days which some had known in the past not so easy to cast off, and they might still wish to keep them; judge them not. There may be those who think it no harm to eat flesh; judge them not. “Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? to his own lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall [despite your judgment] be made to stand; for the Lord hath power to make him stand.” See Rom. 14:3, 4. 5. Be assured in your own mind regarding duty between yourself and God; for before His judgment seat you must stand. That is true of every duty. It is no profit if you do it because man commanded. 6. Do not make others stumble. If some are stumbling over your flesh-eating, for Christ’s sake and the sake of the weak one’s soul, heed verses 19-21. And do it all in faith, the faith which is founded in the Word of God. Please explain John 5:22, where it says that “the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” If Christ is our judge, who is our mediator? G. S. S. There are different phases to a judgment work. There is the examination of cases, the pronouncing of the sentence, the execution of the sentence. In the closing of Christ’s work as priest the Father is judge. Dan. 7:9, 10. But, in the execution of the judgment, the work is committed to Christ. John 5:22. In the adjudication of the cases of the wicked Christ associates His people with Himself, 1 Cor. 6:2, 3. Please tell us what constitutes the Laodicean Church? L. D. W. The part of God’s church which accepts the great threefold message of Rev. 14:6-12 since 1844, especially that church in its lukewarm and backslidden condition. When it comes out of that condition it will come into the condition of brotherly love, or Philadelphia. See the pamphlet, “The Seven Churches and the Seven Seals,” published at this office. Price ten cents. 1526.—Sunday-Keeping and the Mark of the Beast. Is Sunday-keeping the “mark of the beast” in Rev. 14:9, 11? and can a person have the Spirit of God (Eph. 4:30) without keeping the Sabbath? W. A. No; mere Sunday-keeping is not the mark of the beast. Thousands of good people have kept and are keeping Sunday supposing that they are obeying God and keeping His Sabbath. Having hearts submitted to God’s will, they have His Spirit. When the light of His law and the true object of Christ’s sacrifice is seen, they joyfully embrace the Sabbath of the Lord, and enjoy more of His Spirit. Sunday-keeping becomes the mark of the beast only when in direct opposition to God’s Word men embrace it, knowing it to be an institution of the beast power. The seal of God’s law is the Sabbath. The sealer, the moulder, fixer, stamper, of character, is the Spirit of God; and the last generation will witness a people upon whose character the Spirit of God has impressed every precept of His law, including the long down-trodden Sabbath. G. M. A.—What Jesus teaches by the use of the proverb is an impossibility. It is as impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle as for a man loving, and laden with, riches to enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, whether that refers to a literal sewing needle, or to a small gate in a city wall, as we have been informed by credible travelers, who have seen such—the lesson is the same. The only way the loaded camel could get through “the needle’s eye,” or small gate, was to be relieved of his burden and shuffle through on his knees. SUNDAY LAWS BRIEFLY ANALYZED.
By John Vuilleumier
The Sunday crusade has two modes of operation: First, it invites the churches to the better observance of the rest-day, and urges pastors to preach on the subject one or more times each year. Secondly, it seeks to obtain from the state, laws enforcing Sunday. The first method of work agrees perfectly with the spirit of the Gospel; the reading and explanation of God's commandments from the pulpit, and earnest pleas based on the Holy Scriptures and experience, are certainly Christian ways of bringing about a reformation on the matter of the day of rest among Christians. This done, it will be natural and easy enough to seek the conversion of unbelievers. Each true moral reform must have its starting-point in the Christian Church. Indeed, Christ compares the church with salt, whose aseptic qualities preserve food with which it is mixed. Christ adds: “But if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned?” If the church itself is unfaithful, how can she work for the salvation of the world? If Christians have not the strength to keep the Sabbath, how can they impart it to unbelievers? This brings us to consider the second mode of operation, viz., Sunday laws. This method is open to some very serious objections which we will briefly state. In the first place, religious institutions can not be enforced violently. Force is contrary to the very essence of faith. Indeed faith ends where force begins. And the whole Gospel of Christ is based on faith, and knows no other power than the Holy Spirit. If God could be satisfied with external, mechanical works, enforced by human law, then St. Augustine's theory, adopted by the Inquisition, would be correct. This theory was that it is better to save a soul through bodily torment and against its own will, than to allow it to lose heaven. But this theory is as false as it is repulsive. The apostle Paul tells us that man is “justified by faith without the deeds of the law,” that we are “justified freely by His [God's] grace;” but this full salvation is not contrary to good works; for he adds that faith, true faith, “worketh by love,” and that this “love is the fulfilling of the law.” Rom. 3: 20-31; 13: 10; Gal. 5: 6. Faith then brings good works; she alone can do it; while works without faith are “dead works,” veritable sins before God. Heb. 9: 14. All the persecutions of the past are nothing but the fruits of the Catholic theory of religion enforced through civil law. It has for centuries soaked the earth in blood and is now justly abhorred by mankind; for it treads liberty of conscience underfoot, and makes the church a battle-ground for the most unholy ambitions. M. Ernest Naville, professor in the University of Geneva, Switzerland, member of the Institute of France, made the following declaration a few years ago in a published lecture: “There can be no question, in the present state of the society, of the state law enforcing Sunday observance in the name of religion and in the sense of a religious obligation.” This distinguished professor might safely have gone a step farther and said that never at any time should there have been any question of any state laws enforcing Sunday, or any other religious institution. But why is this entirely out of the question at the present time?—Because the false theocratic theory (men ruling the conscience instead of God) is so unmasked before the world that it has now little chance of succeeding as such. But this same writer, and with him all the Sunday-law advocates, thinks that these same Sunday laws become perfectly legitimate if they are presented from a new standpoint: “from a social standpoint,”—some say “from a hygienic standpoint.” This garb, if we may so call it, does not change the matter at all. The sphere of the day of rest can no more be changed than a piano can be applied in farming, or the brain used instead of the stomach. To thus secularize the rest-day is to pervert it, to destroy it. The promoters of the Sunday law have confessed a hundred times that the Sabbath without God is no Sabbath at all, and yet they do not seem to see that they are contradicting themselves when they wish to enforce it by the power of men, or when they call it a civil, a social, or a hygienic measure. That this hygienic argument is groundless, has been demonstrated in recent Sunday congresses, in which the standpoint of hygiene was one of the principal arguments under discussion. This was the case in the congresses held in Paris, in 1889 and 1892. In the latter congress, the only scientist who spoke at all, a physician, spoke as follows: “From physiology alone it is difficult to establish a uniform rule of rest, which can be applied scientifically to all professions; and it is impossible to demonstrate experimentally that work must be stopped exactly on the seventh day.” And he added, “There can be no general rule formulated, and what would be true in one profession and under certain conditions would not be true in others; indeed this problem is very complex, and admits of no mathematical solution.” The proof that hygiene is advanced only for the sake of expediency, is furnished us by the International Sunday-rest Federation, whose headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland, and which is more or less at the bottom of every Sunday movement in Europe. In the Bulletin of said federation, for February, 1901, we read the following confession: “In 1889, through fear of clerical workings, the French Government would not authorize during the Exposition a Congress of Sunday-rest, and the name of Congress of the Weekly-rest had to be substituted. Notwithstanding, this congress worked exclusively in favor of Sunday rest, and not at all in favor of resting on any day in the week.” This confession means that under the garb of hygiene, this congress dealt with religion purely and simply. Thus it is confessed by the Sunday-law advocates that the hygienic argument is nothing but a sham. The Sunday bills introduced in the legislatures of several Swiss cantons in the year 1901, on the plea of hygiene, contain a great number of exceptions in favor of many lines of industry and business, which are considered necessary on Sunday. One might expect that the legislators, after stating, as they do, that these laws are designed to protect the very existence of the people, would be anxious to give those who are deprived of the benefits of Sunday rest another day in the week on which to rest. But far from it; these bills mention no such thing, yet they call this weekly rest an absolute necessity for the health and life of the people. One may ask whether the weekly rest is hygienic only on the first day of the week, or if tobacco dealers, liquor men, barbers, bakers, confectioners, and photographers (not to speak of railroad men), have not the same right to live as the rest of mankind. Does this not prove again, and beyond dispute, that this hygienic argument is only an excuse for the introduction of a religious measure? Another reason advanced in favor of Sunday laws is that they will stem the tide of dissipation and worldliness. This reason is somewhat more plausible than the preceding one; yet, if we look at it closely, Sunday laws bring precisely the opposite result. Everybody knows that Sunday is the day in which intemperance and immorality make the most victims. What is the cause of this? Evidently the fact that on this day the people have more leisure than on all others. But this very leisure is just what Sunday laws will increase a hundredfold, and with it, in the same ratio, intemperance and immorality. The general meeting of the above-named International Sunday-rest Federation brought out the fact that in 1900 “in all the land a torrent of pleasures and demoralizing amusements threatened the usefulness of Sunday, and that wherever the day is not used as a day of worship, it bids fair to degenerate into a day of dissipation.” Pastor Probst, of Zurich, one of the most active agents of the movement in Europe, declares that upon consulting with physicians, judges, and ministers, he is forced to conclude that “for a great many it would be better to work seven days in the week than six.” Could the stultification be more complete? Thus one of two things will be true: The day of rest will be either a religious institution freely observed, and then it will be a blessing to those who observe it; or else it will be made compulsory by law, and then it will become more than ever a veritable calamity for the masses. Such is ever the result of changing the order of God. Sunday laws are nothing less than an unconscious going back to state religion. It is a sign of our times, and may well be called an act of frantic delusion on the part of Christendom in the presence of the alarming situation of society. Instead of casting themselves, in sackcloth and ashes, at the feet of their legitimate Bridegroom, the churches throw themselves into the arms of an unlawful protector, the civil power, or the world, of which, alas! they have become captive. From a bride faithful and pure, they become that woman described in the Book of Revelation, which for grandeur and pomp sells her charms to the kings of the earth, only to share in their dreadful fate at the coming of the Master. One evil leads to another. Sunday laws, like all religious laws, will be used to persecute those who place the law of God above human decrees, and for whom the rights of conscience are inalienable. For some years, in the United States, the freest country in the world, Sunday laws have been used to prosecute and imprison about two hundred people, whose ostensible crime was that they labored on Sunday, but whose real offense was that they rested on the seventh day of the week, “according to the commandment.” In England, in Scandinavia, and in Switzerland, within a few years, honest Christian people have also been prosecuted for the same reason. In Basle, Switzerland, the publishing house of the Seventh-day Adventists was obliged to close its doors in order to escape bankruptcy from increasing fines, and its manager, a minister of the Gospel, was imprisoned and banished. And all this in the name of a law which claims to enforce the weekly rest for “reasons of health,” and against people who religiously stop work on the seventh day of the week. We are happy to state, however, that not all Christendom is siding with this backward movement. There is a true rest-day movement, a forward movement, which calls upon the people to return to the true Gospel,—the Gospel of free salvation, through faith, and not by the works of the flesh; the Gospel of the regeneration of the individual through the Holy Spirit, bringing obedience to God's law, including the Fourth Commandment. It is in the name of this Gospel, ignored and rejected by the Sunday movement, that we raise this protest. We do so with love and pity for those who go astray, but also full of confidence in the final triumph of truth, liberty, and righteousness, because God lives, and because His cause is immortal. This Gospel, dear reader, we commend unto you. Will you not accept it, and be saved? —The Literary Digest says: “A law has been ‘published’ in Spain making Sunday a day of rest, and prohibiting manual labor on that day. Consul R. M. Bartleman, of Cadiz, who furnishes this information in the Daily Consular Reports (Washington, April 19), goes on to say: ‘Work on Sunday will be permitted only when absolutely necessary, the hours to conform with the regulations. On no account are women or persons under eighteen years of age to be employed on said day. The law will be put in force within six months.’” Union Label Advertising League
The confederacy idea is still onward, and unions and leagues are being gathered into compound bundles. The New York Journal says that a number of manufacturers of union products have formed the Union Label Advertising League, with William H. Scott, of Sweet, Orr & Co., as president. The league proposes co-operation with retailers and organized wage-earners to promote the sale of union-made goods. The readers of this paper will remember that some time ago an article was published in these columns showing something of the terrible sufferings inflicted on animals by vivisectors. It was shown that many of these experiments were carried on for the simple curiosity of seeing how the animals would behave under the torture that was inflicted upon them; that these brutal exhibitions were attended by persons who could have no other object in view than the gratification of a morbid curiosity, a depraved desire to see the torture, hear the cries of the animals, and see their contortions under the common acts of the pain-producers. That thousands of animals of different species are thus tortured to death under the most excruciating torment is a matter of general knowledge; but it has not been so generally known that human beings have been and are being put through a similar course of cruel and criminal experimentation. True, they are not strapped down and dissected while still living, as the animals are; but they are being inoculated with the most virulent diseases against their will, and generally without their knowledge, and all for no other purpose than to study the effect of the inoculation. So prevalent has this practise become in the Old World, that doctors believing in human vivisection, and practising it, are not allowed on the medical staffs of children's hospitals lest the physicians turn these institutions into laboratories of human vivisection. Children's hospitals become rich pastures for the heartless vivisector when he is permitted to practise there. That this work is not confined to the Old World, is shown by the report of Rev. Herbert Ward, before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, in which he describes experiments on forty pauper children, in the very language of the physician (mis-named) who performed them. This report was given in the effort to have a law passed to prevent the continuance of the practise. One medical man, who is professor of chemistry in the University of Wyoming, states the position of the human vivisectors in the following language:— The Humane Society seems to think that the aim of science is the cure of disease, the saving of human life. Quite the contrary; the aim of science is the advancement of human knowledge at any sacrifice of human life. If cats and guinea pigs can be put to any higher use than to advance science, we do not know what it is. We do not know of any other use to put a man to. The study of science in the hands of such men is a dangerous business. We may be sure that those who consider science of more consequence than human life will not be slow to take human life for the advancement of science; and they will find ways of doing it so that they will not endanger their own lives in the process. The increase of this doctrine in the land may account for the large number of capital operations performed by science-loving surgeons. It is a fact that many diseases which were formerly treated by the simpler remedies, are now given over to the lancet and the scalpel; that surgeons, especially young surgeons, eager to make a record for themselves, find cases for operation which formerly were never touched by the knife. And this is but vivisection under another name, only in this case the patient pays dearly for the operation, and very likely continues to pay for it through all his life. The heartlessness of those who admit the practise of human vivisection is well shown in the reports of some of these cruel experimenters, two of which we give, tho we have many others on file. Dr. Jansen, of the Charity Hospital in Stockholm, in a lecture before the Medical Society of that city, reported as follows:— “When I began my experiments with black small-pox, I should, perhaps, have chosen animals for the purpose; but the most fit subjects, calves, were obtainable only at considerable cost. There was, besides, the cost of their keep; so I concluded to make my experiments upon the children of the Foundlings’ Home, and obtained kind permission to do so from the head physician, Professor Medin. “I selected fourteen children, who were inoculated day after day. Afterward I discontinued them and used calves. I did not continue my experiments on calves long; once because I despaired of gaining my ends within a limited period, and again because the calves were so expensive. I intend, however, to go back to my experiments in the Foundling Asylum at some future time.” A physician now resident in San Francisco, Cal., writing to the New York Medical Journal, reports as follows concerning work carried on by him in Honolulu:— I inoculated with the virus of syphilis the arms of six leper girls under twelve years of age. December 14, I repeated the experiment. This last time I inoculated fourteen lepers. . . . Since coming to San Francisco, I have tried on several occasions to get the opportunity (to inoculate a leper with syphilitic virus), but so far without success. While the twenty cases in which I inoculated syphilis on lepers are not absolutely conclusive, still it is a point worth consideration. It is to be hoped that this experiment should be tried by competent observers under more favorable circumstances. Surely the miseries of the leper are sufficiently terrible without being compelled to carry the virus of that disease in his system. In another case the experimenter tells plainly of his success in securing a healthy boy whom he inoculated with germ consumption. The patient, he said, was very susceptible to the poison, was seized with the most intense fever which lasted for four days, and certain glands of his body swelled up to many times their natural size. The vivisector says: “I can not yet say whether the boy will be consumptive in consequence of my treatment.” The treatment was given to see whether the boy would take consumption by inoculation. It was of no concern to the vivisector whether the boy died of that terrible disease or not, whether he made of himself a murderer or not, just so that he found an answer to his heartless inquisitiveness. Another report tells of the torturing of insane patients in a public insane asylum in Voralberg, Austria. These patients were inoculated with various poisons simply to see what effect the inoculation would have. The irresponsible patients did not object materially to any of this work, except the inoculation with hyoscamine sulphate. The result of the inoculation with this poison was so terrible, the report states, that when the physicians attempted to repeat the experiment, the insane victims fought like wild men. Many also asked the doctors on their knees, to let them die rather than inoculate them with this terrible medicine. These pitiable subjects endured the results of the injection for weeks, breathing with great difficulty, barely able to swallow; mouth and throat so dry as to be a veritable torture, thirst unquenchable, sleep reduced to one or one and a half hours per day, loss of appetite, loss of flesh, and terrible pains during the night. Such torture seems more the work of demons than of men, especially when practised upon such victims as these. Dr. K. Menge, of the University Hospital for Women, in Leipzig, Germany, tells in the German Medical Weekly of experiments performed upon thirty-five pauper women. These poor women were inoculated with germs from the most repulsive matter imaginable. The vivisector says, “All the bacteria planted were capable of taking root and flourishing.” Of course they were. That is the business of disease, to propagate itself. But it is the business of physicians to prevent it. Another physician tells of his experiments in inoculating three new-born babes with “very considerable quantities of staphylococci.” Another tells of inoculating with purulent bacteria eighty-two pauper women who were awaiting confinement at a university clinic. Eighty cases are cited where children between the ages of eight and fifteen were inoculated with various contagious diseases for experimental purposes. A similar outrage was performed on a large number of women about to become mothers, whereby their innocent offspring were cursed with a terrible disease from the moment of their birth. Another physician took bacilli from the decomposing corpse of a patient who died from an infectious disease, and injected them into thirty-five women and three new-born babes, who were taken into the experimenting chamber almost immediately after birth. We have no desire to go further in relating the practise of this terrible business. We have no disposition to pander to morbid curiosity, nor to condemn physicians who are physicians indeed. We know there are such. But the statement of these terrible crimes against humanity, this terrible recklessness with human life, must certainly cause the thoughtful to stop and consider what kind of progress we have made in civilization; what kind of golden age this is upon which we are said to have entered; what the condition of the minds of such men must be; and what society has to expect from the increase of this insidious and frightful business. Does it tell us of the approach of the millennium? Or does it declare to us, in unmistakable language, what the Word of God is also telling us, that this age and this world are drawing near to the end of their history? The race is deteriorating in morals, in physique, in religion, in true culture of soul, in Christian life; and the facts above stated are but a small portion of the evidence that this is so. The militia are again in charge of affairs in Teller County, Colorado, where dangerous conditions now exist. The first act of anarchy was the destruction of the lives of thirteen non-union miners at Independence, on June 6. The non-union miners were at the station ready to take the train when a large quantity of dynamite under the station platform was set off by some concealed assassin. A wire was found leading from the scene of the explosion to a chair a considerable distance away. By pulling this wire the assassin exploded the deadly charge. In addition to the thirteen men killed, seven were seriously injured. The person or persons who perpetrated this crime are believed to be the ones who recently exploded a charge of dynamite at the foot of a shaft, killing a number of non-union miners. As yet there is no trace of the guilty parties. The discussion of the outrage in the streets of Cripple Creek brought on a riot, in which many shots were fired. One man was killed here and several wounded. At Victor, while a mass meeting was being held to discuss the murder of non-union miners, a riot was started, culminating in the death of two men and the injury of six. Large bodies of armed men then paraded the streets of these towns, and conflicts were frequent. Martial law was proclaimed on June 8, and a large number of union miners have been arrested by the troops and deputies and incarcerated in the military prison. Previous to this some of the union stores were wrecked, and their contents piled in the streets by an anti-union mob. The Citizens’ Alliance and the Mine Owners Association have forced the resignation of the coroner, chief of police, and city marshal, because of their sympathies with the union element, and others were put in their places. A strong effort will be put forth to rid these districts of the union element and union influences. The union members who are not in prison are armed and threaten trouble. All this is but an indication of the conflict that is preparing between the classes. We shall see more and more of it until the end. No serious engagement has occurred during the week between the opposing forces in Manchuria. The Japanese are energetically preparing for the reduction of the fortifications of Port Arthur, and there are rumors of a serious attempt on the part of the Russian commander to bring a force to the relief of the Port Arthur garrison, which would attack the Japanese forces in the rear. It is reported that two Japanese battalions have been completely wiped out by the Russians near Feng Huan Cheng. The Japanese were ambushed and annihilated before re-enforcements reached the scene. When the latter arrived, the Russians were driven from their position. It is reported that a naval engagement has occurred off Port Arthur, in which several ships were lost; but the report has not been confirmed. The British' post in Tibet was attacked on June 8 by the natives, who lost 116 of their number killed. The British casualties numbered six. The expedition is still safe. It is reported that the Russian Government has intimated to England that the British expedition must not continue if Great Britain desired to maintain friendly relations with Russia. It is also reported that Russia is calling out Russian troops in the vicinity of the Tibetan border in readiness to help the Tibetans against the British, if the latter continue to push on toward Lhasa. Terrible conditions are reported to exist in the Russian camps at Liao Yang and other places. The facilities of the railroad are not sufficient to bring overland all the needed supplies, and, as a result, the soldiers are suffering from lack of food. The troops are poorly housed, and a revolt is said to be rife. There is much sickness in the camps of both armies. Spain is sending war-vessels to Morocco, that government having heard a report that the purpose of the United States in sending war-ships to Tangier is to obtain a port on the west coast of Morocco. Spain would protest against such an act. The liberty bell is to be one of the attractions of the St. Louis Exposition. The bell arrived at the exposition grounds on June 8, and was formally installed in the Pennsylvania building.