p. 15 | The Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 38 (9/30/1913)

Earlier text: Good, if It Is the Real Kind

Peter, the Karen

By Robert Bruce Thurber

By Prof. Robert Bruce Thurber

YOU have heard of the Karens, that remarkable people who live chiefly in the hill tracts of Lower Burma; who so bravely fought to help the British restore order during the terrorism of the robber bands after the occupation; who believe that God gave them His word centuries ago, and when they neglected it, took it from them, saying He would send it again in the hands of white men from the West; who are anxiously waiting for this visitation, and give, as a reason for idol-worship, that they must appease the devil till God comes to save them; who, tho fewer in number, and having much less labor bestowed upon them, have accepted Christianity in ten times the number of Burmese accepting it. For seven years urgent calls were sent to America for a man to carry to them the third angel's message. At last he has come, and a work is begun. But it really began long before he arrived, as God's messages so many times precede the human representative.

Thousands of these attractive people have become Christians with the idea that Sunday is the seventh day of the week. The missionaries have so taught them, they say. For some years, they have been traveling and sending long distances to inquire about this matter. No other call for help could be stronger than their need and desire. Three Karens have been baptized into this truth, but I can tell you about only one of them.

Since we started the school at Meiktila, it has been our aim to make it cosmopolitan, especially to get as students a few representatives at least of each nationality in Burma, in order to sow seeds of truth in their hearts, that they might carry it back home. With this in mind, while we were away up among the Karen hills getting a change from the heat of the lowlands, we encouraged several boys to leave their homes and come to the school, two hundred miles away. We had to offer strong inducements, for the hill-born love their hills. The three who finally decided to come are nominal Christians—at least they have Christian names and sing Christian songs, and that means more of Christianity to them than it would be to us.

John, Tom, and Peter, strong, hardy fellows in their teens, walked to the railway,—which wonder they had never seen before,—and arrived the following day at the school. Friends in America to whom we wrote, promised to help them through school. They were good workers, all three, John starting to learn shoemaking, Tom cane-work, and Peter carpentry. A Karen boy has work “in his bones.” He couldn't coax a crop out of the thin soil of his narrow valleys if he hadn't. But besides being industrious and steady, they were fast becoming skilful.

However, those same home hills are in sight from the school. Their blue retreats looked cool on the hot days. O, the lure of them! It is so hard for even the plain-dweller to resist.

Peter was the only one who didn't peter. He went home with the others for a short vacation, and returned alone. Altogether misnamed, he is a plodder, and says little. Something stronger than the beauty of his childhood haunts drew him to us. I can't explain it. If I could, it wouldn't seem so strong.

Up there they asked him if he worked on Sunday. “Yes,” he answered. “Why shouldn't I?” “We don't know why you shouldn't,” came the reply. “It is surely the first working-day according to the words of the Great Book.”

Peter was one of the elect. He was baptized, for there was no other or better way, now that he knew. Again he went home for a few weeks, and returned, bringing three other Karen boys, one of them a quite well-educated boy, older than Peter, and with some skill in carpentry and turning.

This is the first chapter in a bit of current missionary history, and the completed record promises most triumphant and interesting developments. At present we can but say, “Thus far—”

The Vision in the Cabin

TOLSTOY tells of a poor peasant who was a devout Christian. He was a man of kind heart and gentle disposition, a hard worker, and one who had suffered many buffetings from misfortune, but who still, even with his scant means, found opportunities to do good. The peasant had a vision. It seemed to him that the figure of the Saviour came to him while he slept, and told him that He would come to his poor cabin the next day. When the peasant awoke, he vividly remembered the dream. His heart burned within him, for he felt certain that it would come to pass, and that he would see the Master. How often he had prayed that He might come! And now He was coming! He would honor with His divine presence and beneficent smile the dingy little room, and bless it forever after. So the peasant set about to prepare for this event. The day was stormy and bitter cold, and a biting sleet was falling. He dusted and swept the little chamber, replenished the logs in the rude fireplace, and put on the customary pot of cabbage soup. He had part of a loaf of bread; and this, with the soup, constituted his larder. But poverty was nothing; he was rich in the promise of the Master's coming.

So he watched from his window, hour by hour. The village street was well-nigh deserted. Presently he saw a pedler, half frozen and numb, struggling under his pack, fighting the stinging blast. Seeing the man about to fall, the peasant flung open the door, and was just in time to catch the tottering figure. He pulled the pedler into the cabin, set him by the fire, warmed him back to life, and fed him the cabbage soup; then when he was fully restored and refreshed, he set him on his way again. Next, a poor woman—a bedraggled creature—awoke his sympathetic heart. Her, too, he took in and warmed and fed, and dried her tattered garments, and, wrapping his coat about her, sent her away stronger and happier.

Day wore on toward late afternoon, and in the growing dusk he perceived a child lying prone on the street, overcome with the storm. The peasant ran out to gather the little one, cold and unconscious, up in his wide blouse, and took him in. It was a long struggle to revive the half-frozen child, but at last he succeeded. With a small pan of warm milk and the remnant of his loaf of bread, he fed this little sufferer until the child fell asleep, smiling in contentment, in the settle before the blazing logs. “Ah,” sighed the peasant, as he looked out of the window to the street, “the Master! The Master said He would come, and it is nearly night.”

He sat down by the fire, and gazed long at the happy face of the sleeping child. In his heart there was at once a great sorrow and a deep sympathy. Presently he fell into a doze. Suddenly the room seemed to lighten about him. A mild radiance illuminated it which did not emanate from the dying embers in the fireplace. Looking up, he saw that he was not alone with the sleeping child. There stood the Master, white-robed, and gazing down upon him with a smile. “Ah, Master!” he said, through half-open lips, “I have waited and watched the long day, blessed Master; but Thou didst not come, and now it is night.”

The Master spoke in soothing tones: “Three times to-day have I visited thy cabin. That poor pedler whom thou didst rescue and feed—that was I; she to whom thou gavest thy coat—that also was I; and this child whom thou hast saved from death—that is I; for inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these, thou hast done it unto Me.” The vision faded. The peasant sat upright. He was alone with the sleeping child, who still smiled in his sleep; but he knew that the Christ had come to his cabin that day.—Anon.

Help Cometh

“Be but faithful, that is all. Go right on, and close behind thee, There shall follow still and find thee, Help, sure help.”

What Real Trust Means

By J. R. Miller

It is often given as a wonderful proof of confidence in a friend, that once when the great Grecian emperor, Alexander, was ill, it was told to him in a letter that his physician intended to give him poison under the form of medicine. The emperor put the note under his pillow. The physician came, poured out the potion, and gave it to him. The emperor looked his friend full in the face, drank the contents of the goblet, then handed him the letter. It was a beautiful trust. Like confidence we are to have in the will of Christ for us. We are never to doubt His love nor His wisdom.—J. R. Miller.

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One of God's Tests

One of God's Tests.—This is the way Jesus expresses it: “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved. But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.” (See John 3:18-21.) New light from God's word always means new test, because it always reveals new duty. The man who loves God will welcome the light, even tho it does involve new duty, and if it condemns the course that he has been following; but it does not condemn the disposition, the spirit which he has manifested. It shows that even tho he did not have all the light, yet his heart was in sympathy with God, and he himself was doing truth in the disposition that he manifested. But in the man who has the form of truth in his life, and yet who despises and rejects the new light which comes to him, it clearly reveals that even tho he has followed “the form of knowledge and of truth,” he has not been doing truth after all. Instead of looking upon the light as a blessed revelation to lead him on, he takes it as a condemner of his course in the past, and rejects it. But the sincere and honest who has had but one ray of light, perhaps, regarding the word of God, but who has followed that one ray with all his heart, welcomes the greater effulgence of increased light, because it reveals more and more of Him who is light.

Adventist Response to Claims About Resurrection Day

The statement made by a little Eastern magazine, that “Seventh-day Adventists — possibly because of what has been said concerning the apparent hatred of our Lord’s resurrection day, which seems to lie behind their persistent efforts, in open alliance with Jews and infidels, to destroy Christendom’s rest day — have sought diligently to prove that Jesus was raised on Saturday, and not on the first day of the week,” is false, both in the direct sentence and in the parenthesis. Seventh-day Adventists have never sought diligently to do any such thing, but rather the contrary. They do teach the Bible Sabbath, and protest against any civil-legal sabbath whatsoever.

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Contained in This Issue

Question Corner ................. Page 2

4187 — The Importance of the Sabbath; 4188 — Cleansing the Temple—Differences; 4189 — Satan and His Fall; 4190 — Death of Judas; 4191 — To the Spirits in Prison; 4192 — Scripture Irony, 2 Chron. 18:12; 4193 — The Bands of Syria; 4194 — The Two Seas

Our Bible Band .................. Page 3

General ............................ Pages 3-5, 8, 9, 12

“Pray Without Ceasing” — Mrs. E. G. White

The “I Come” Which Shall Be — L. F. Starr

Are Angels in the World To-Day?

The Message for This Day

Bible Studies of Vital Import .......... Pages 6, 7

God’s Message for To-Day

What Will You Do with the Bible?—The Day Dawn

Poetry ........................................ Page 5

The Life-Giving Fountain — Paulina Alway Anderson

The Outlook ........................ Pages 10-12

The Great Red Plague

In the Balkans

Notes

The Home ............................ Page 14

Peter, the Karen — Prof. Robert Bruce Thurber

The Vision in the Cabin—What Real Trust Means

The second article on Immortality, by Alexander Ritchie, is crowded out of this issue. It will doubtless appear next week.

Editor's Farewell to the Signs of the Times Readers

By Editor

Personal.—The writer closes with this issue his editorial relationship with the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, for a few months at least. Not knowing what the future may disclose, he wishes to take this opportunity for a word with the SIGNS family, and our readers in general. We thank them for their uniform courtesy and kindness, and for the many good words of encouragement, helpfulness, and approval which have been sent to us through the years. He feels that these are not deserved, and wishes to again credit the good things to the Master, and to bear the many blunders himself. He can only say that he has faithfully tried so to set forth the blessed truth that he should have the Master's approval. And yet in a period of twenty-five years, it would be strange indeed if there were not many blunders made. And these he regrets,—what he has seen, and what he may have not seen, but which others have felt. He has been glad to see the working of God in the winning of souls. To Him be the praise.

The writer still remains on the Board of Directors which publishes the paper. He asks for the coming editor, who has been on the editorial staff for so long, the same hearty support which he has received. He will doubtless give you a stronger paper than ever, worthy of your interest and your efforts in extending its circulation. It will preach the same great message, the same everlasting gospel.

To our readers: Study the sacred truth. Yield to its gracious power. All that the world can give will not close to us the portals of the grave, nor redeem us from death; but the gracious truth of God has the promise of the life which now is, and that which is to come. Let its gracious power come into your lives, and make you living witnesses for the blessed Christ.

Born from Above.

Sometimes the margin of our Bibles gives us better understanding than does the text,—not that it need be contrary to the text, but it gives us the more literal, stronger meaning. Take, for instance, John 3:3, the words of Jesus to the moralist Nicodemus. It rang with a strange power into the heart of the Jewish Pharisee. “Except a man be born again,” reads the text; but the margin reads, “Except a man be born from above.” It would be possible to understand “born again” to have reference to our own natural, mortal life, like the Eastern religions which tell us of the various incarnations through which we must pass, every one of them on the low, creature plain. Nicodemus had been born in the world as every other human had. He must, to have place in God’s kingdom, have a source of life and kinship that was above the earthly—he must be “born from above,” and so must every one, or he can not see the kingdom of God. The only life which the mortal man has in this world is the soul-life. He lost the spirit-life when he sinned against God in the beginning, and died spiritually. To be restored to the kingdom of God, or the heavenly family, he must have that life restored, the spirit-life, the eternal life in Jesus Christ, the power of Divinity which is able to change the heart, and make the spirit dominant over the flesh with all its tendencies. Let the soul who accepts of Jesus Christ feel that he is not born into an earthly family, but into a heavenly.

How Does It Come to You?

—Read it in John 1:17: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The text does not teach of two different things, but of the same; for the law given through Moses is declared to be God’s truth. “Thy law is the truth.” Ps. 119:142, 152. But received from the human source, it is simply law; and law only condemns. Received through Jesus Christ, it is grace and truth. The Jews thought to make themselves wholly righteous by living the law as they received it by Moses, and failed to reach the righteousness of God. But the child of faith who looks beyond the sin to Jesus Christ, the sinner’s Saviour, finds no condemnation in Christ Jesus, for the law in him is the law of life, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made us free from the law of sin and death. Rom. 8:1, 2. So it is all-important as to our attitude toward the law. Does it come to us in its mere outward form, or do we receive it through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ? In the one case, it may develop an outward rigid attempt at obedience, as it did in the Jews who sought righteousness under the old covenant. Moses did not so receive it. He looked beyond the glory of the condemnation to the glory of righteousness through the mercy of God, and received it. The same faith will bring the same righteousness and the same joy, received now, and it will lead the receiver to say, “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day.”

Truth Cannot Be Burned, Beheaded, or Crucified

The truth can not be burned, beheaded, or crucified. A lie on the throne is a lie still; and truth in a dungeon is truth still; and a lie on the throne is on the way to defeat, and truth in the dungeon is on the way to victory.

Priest's Crime Blamed on Lust, Not Religion

The Roman Catholic priest who betrayed an innocent girl, making her believe she was legally married, and then a few weeks ago murdered her, cut her body up, and threw it into the Hudson River in instalments, like other ministerial criminals of the same brand did not do it because of his religion, but because of his uncontrollable lust and unconquerable badness.

The Ceremonial Law and the Moral Law

The “ceremonial law,” so called, of the Levitical dispensation, was nothing more than directions as to the way offerings should be made, what these offerings should consist of, when and what feasts should be held, etc. These sacrifices and feasts pointed forward to the work of Christ, our great High Priest. The priests were typical of Him. All those ceremonies existed to manifest faith in a Redeemer to come. They were the gospel ordinances of that dispensation, just the same as the ordinance of humility, the Lord’s Supper, and baptism are gospel ordinances of this dispensation. The moral law is independent of all, in both dispensations. When the Levitical dispensation ceased, those ordinances, through which faith in the Son of God was manifested, pointing forward to a Saviour to come, ceased also. When the priestly work of Christ closes, the gospel ordinances of this dispensation will cease. But the precepts of the moral law “stand fast forever and ever.”

A Helpful Marginal Suggestion.—John 3:8

in our Common Version reads, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Similarly reads the American Revised Version, but the margin reads, “The Spirit breatheth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” The original word pneuma is rendered everywhere in the New Testament by the term “spirit,” with this one exception. It is rendered “wind” nowhere else. Why should the exception be made here? What Jesus was trying to teach Nicodemus was spiritual things. The illustration of the wind may be a true one, but it is a weak one as compared with the strength of the original text. Nicodemus wanted to know, how could these things be? Jesus said, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born from above.” The power of God through His Spirit was able. “The Spirit breatheth where it will.” It is not compelled to act according to human reason; it acts above it. It does not obey natural laws; it obeys heavenly laws. And so of every one that is born of the Spirit.