p. 16 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 2. (1/9/1901)

Earlier text: STUDENT POPULATION IN INDIA

THE STRAIGHT PATH.

Hosea 14:9: “The ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them.”

Prov. 2:15: “Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths.”

“The Bible is so strict and old-fashioned!” said a young man to a gray-haired friend who was advising him to study God’s Word if he would learn how to live. “There are plenty of books written nowadays that are moral enough in their teaching, and don’t bind one down as the Bible does.”

The old merchant turned to his desk and took out two rulers, one of which was slightly bent. With each of these he ruled a line, and silently handed the ruled paper to his companion.

“Well,” said the lad, “what do you mean?”

“One line is not straight and true, is it? When you mark out your path in life, don’t use a crooked ruler.”

The Present and the Future

“To-morrow can not make or mar To-day, whate’er the day may be; Nor can the men which now we are Foresee the men we yet may be.”

Wanted

Wanted.—A boy not less than eighteen years old, who is a good, earnest worker and desires to take a medical and nurse’s course. Must have good references. Address Dr. W. H. Maxson, 1051 Market Street, Oakland, Cal.

LESSONS BY MAIL ON MEDICAL ELECTRICITY OR HOW TO USE THE BATTERY

By G. L. Abell

By Prof. G. L. Abell, Member of the Board of Directors of the Electro-Medical Society of San Francisco

Learn how to use the battery and treat yourself. Many diseases are quickly cured by the proper application of electricity. The course embraces the treatment of every organ and part of the body. The lessons are written in plain language and are illustrated. Course, five dollars. Send for circular. Address,

PROF. G. L. ABELL

School of Chemistry and Electro-Therapeutics

22 Geary St., San Francisco, Cal.

THE GREAT DAY OF THE LORD.

By M. C. Wilcox

By M. C. Wilcox. This tract of 40 pages sets forth in brief some of the more important events of the Great Day of God Almighty. It discusses the character of that day, shows when it begins, the coming of the Lord, the events in connection with that coming, the Millennium, the Saints in Judgment, when the Day of the Lord Ends, and the Eternal Home of the Redeemed. Bible Students’ Library No. 65. Price, 5 cents.

Reports from Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes

We have received from Mr. Booker T. Washington the “Nineteenth Annual Report of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama, for the year ending May 31, 1900.” This leading industrial school among the colored race of the South seems to be prospering. The average attendance for last year was 1,083, from 27 States and Territories, from Africa, Porto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and Barbadoes. We understand that the tendency of this school is not to augment race hatred, but so to educate the negro that he will be worthy of trust and confidence. Those interested may address the principal, Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee, Ala. Right in connection with this comes the “Thirty-second Annual Report of the Principal of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute,” Hampton, Va. This is the parent institution, and the greatest school of this kind in the country. One of the great objects of the school is to establish “the work habit— the creation of love for the work of the hand,” and to bring about “kindlier relations between the negroes and the white people of the South.” These are good.

An Ancient Gospel Papyrus

An interesting ancient papyrus is now under examination at the Strasburg Library, a London despatch to the New York Sun tells us. It is thought by some of the Egyptologists to be fragments of a gospel, rejected as uncanonical in the third century but widely accepted in the second. The papyrus dates from the fifth century, “but the character of the Greek words which are textually reproduced proves that the original manuscript belongs to the second century. An interesting feature is the very close connection apparently existing between it and the Logia of Christ, the recovery of which three years ago caused a sensation. It is suggested that both are practically pages of the same manuscript.” But all this is largely in the way of suggestion and opinion. Another fine ancient papyrus, in the British Museum, written between A.D. 70 and 80, has, after five years’ work, just been published. It consists of a collection of folk legends current in Egypt at that date. Among them is one, concerning one Sosiris, which indicates that it was based on the story of the Gospel.

The Awful Dogma and Related Articles

Read the article “The Awful Dogma,” in another column. This will be followed by several others of equal interest.

God’s Judgment of Nations

By Editor

The poem “Litany—the Closing Century,” came too late for even our first issue in the year. It is always well to pray for rulers and nations, and we wish that Mr. Elkins’ prayer might be answered. But God will weigh “unto truth” this nation, and every nation of earth, as truly as He did Babylon of old, and when found wanting, He, who is no respecter of persons, will set them aside. And yet over it all are God’s everlasting goodness, wisdom, and power, directing all, and guiding to the good of those that trust Him, and the everlasting glory of eternal Love.

Church Federation

By Editor

In our Outlook department is a very important article on “Church Federation.” This church federation would be harmless and possibly might do a great deal of good, if it proposed to do its work wholly by persuasion, the only means that is permissible or known to true Christianity. But the danger of the federation lies in the fact that it proposes to work its reforms thru the agency of civil law, and that means oppression and religious persecution. Civil rulers are for the purpose of keeping the peace, but when the churches get the power to control and enforce civil law, it brings persecution every time. It has always done this, and in the very nature of things it always will.

Christendom and the Massacres

Horrible massacres by the Turk in Armenia are reported; but what can Christendom say? That is, what can those say who are upholding the fearful massacres of thousands of Chinese who have been compelled in their minds to stand for their rights and defend their native land? “But they are not Christians,” do you say? But who made man the judge? Christ came not to judge, but to save. He who, professing to be Christian, puts himself on the judgment-seat, is not an ambassador of Christ, but a usurper of the throne of the Infinite.

The Fearful Curse.

The story can never be told, that of the curse of intemperance, till God’s books shall open; but, O, what volumes open before us here! Think of this: Lady Henry Somerset says in the Sunday School Times: “One saloon [only one] in London which, with a neighboring branch belonging to the same firm, was sold some little time ago for £101,200, was watched during one Sunday [only one day in the week], with the result that 377 women with babies in their arms were seen to enter its doors, and the total number of children visiting the saloon on that one Sunday was 2,712.” What does all this promise?

Man Is Not His Own Saviour

It is a sad, hopeless wail, the following from an infidel paper:—

“There is no God, or none who heeds the placing Of sorrow, joy, and love in mortals’ lives; Of no avail ourselves in dust abasing— The battle is to him who nobly strives. Man is man’s saviour! All the god-host banish! Let but the hand of one true friend be near To grip in hours of darkness, troubles vanish: A brother’s all we need when life is dear, For he doth hear!”

And man as man’s saviour has brought man to the lowest condition of heathenism as the angels have beheld it for the centuries. There is a Friend always at hand who “sticketh closer than a brother.” “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” And the ages demonstrate his unwisdom. God is, and He is “a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”

Unbelief in Creed

Unbelief in Creed.—Speaking of the revision of the Presbyterian confession of faith, the Springfield Republican says: “The fact is that the churches and denominations do not believe in their dogmas. It is one of the puzzles of life to view the clinging to forms of expression from which the life has departed, in relation to the government of this universe; the calmness with which men sustain creeds which ‘deal damnation round the land,’ while they themselves do not believe a word of them. For here is a great body rent in difference over the question of revoking or doing away with a conventional system made centuries ago, when the race was yet in the blindness of Roman domination, which has for its central core the tremendous assumption that (in the words of an excellent definitive dictionary) maintains that ‘God, antecedent to the fall of man or any knowledge of it, decreed the apostasy and all its consequences, determining to save some and condemn others, and that in all He does He considers His own glory only.’ That is the very essence of the Presbyterian confession of faith, with all its five points of particular election, particular redemption, moral inability in a fallen state, irresistible grace, and final perseverance. It is nothing less than a hideous scheme of despair. . . . And it is incredible that any man of common reasoning power should hold it as faith. It is not so held to-day. But the pride of the church, and the fear of a break to skepticism, frighten the good folk, who feel that others who are not so good may somehow get the better of them, and all Christianity go down, if their creed be abandoned as untrue.”

The Passion Play and the Gospel

William Elliott Griffis, D.D., tells us in the S. S. Times that “it is a matter of commonplace knowledge that the modern theater grew out of the medieval church;” and he further says, what every true observing Christian knows, that, “say what we will about the playhouse, who can deny that its tendency is invariably downward?” And the Passion Play is only one of the steps on the way. And in closing his article on the Passion Play, he truly remarks: “Where in Holy Scripture (Revised Version) are angels, God’s ministers that excel in strength, set forth either with plumes or wings? Where are gentle women? Where is the record of any drops or gouts of blood following the crown of thorns? Better a thousand-fold the Gospel’s simplicity than the meretriciousness of drama or legends. Better the few precious words of witnesses than acres of canvas and color, of forests of wood carving, than a million collections of ecclesiastical furniture that distort or exaggerate the facts of the Gospel Record.”

It Is Not Hopeful.

We do not need to go to great men to learn the present moral condition of things; for God’s Word has foretold the increasing wickedness and spiritual declension of these last days. And in God’s providence, and by His permission, the very things foretold are being written in the everyday events of present life. But we are nevertheless glad that there are prominent men who see and voice these things. Their very uncertainty will cause people to think. There are those who are prophesying peace and prosperity for the opening century; but Cardinal Vaughan, the leading Roman Catholic prelate of England, in the words of a newspaper, “declares that the whole world is sick, and that he sees no hope for humanity in the dawn of the new century. The spirit of greed, he says, has mastered Christendom, and the prospect for humanity is almost as bad as it can be.”

False Religions and the Power of Evil

A religion or ism that is intrinsically false will have the supernatural power of evil to support it, and to assist its missionaries to enthral its victims. It is only a phase of hypnotism. There is no question but that a supernatural power accompanied the rise and spread of Mohammedanism. It was, and is, a religion intrinsically false. The same we believe is true of Spiritism and Mormonism. But these should be distinguished from religions which are corruptions of the true. In the latter we find those who are the children of truth despite the perverting error, and the error is deplored by them; but in the former the very error is the supreme thing which possesses the soul of the devotee. Yet even these are not to be silenced by force, but to be met by the Word of God, by calm, Christian reason, and by holy trust in the power of Him who is mighty to save.

A False Gospel of Self-Salvation

A correspondent sends us a paper called “Christian,” and asks our opinion of it. Opinion, merely, is of little worth. It is strange that any one should be deceived by a paper which makes such claims; but such is and always has been the case. But we started to say that no paper which teaches self-salvation is “Christian.” It is Christianity that self must die, and that Christ must be received by faith.

A paper that teaches— “Follow your own Spirit! This is the bugle-call I am sounding for all the world. The only God that you should worship is the I AM within yourself.” “An individualist is one who asks the god within themselves. There is no other guide for you that is true and certain”— is not of Christ but is of the flesh.

Lepers in the Philippines

There are estimated to be 30,000 lepers in the Philippines, mostly in the Visayas group.