“As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Luke 6:31.
O, sad to the young, the old,
Oft erring in doubt and fear,
To be shunned, left alone in the cold,
Alone in the darkness drear.
Know ye not that the ache of the heart
Oft prompteth the bitter speech,
From your circle left apart,
Longing your hands to reach?
Dear ones, since life's so brief,
So fleeting its little day;
So soon do we fade as the leaf,
Let us love while we may.
To the erring tho great the blame,
Tho sore the life-work failed,
For the sake of His dear name
By love be it vailed.
Soon to meet at the throne above,
To stand at the bar of heaven,
To-day let us forgive,
As we hope to be forgiven.
N. S.
PAYING THE PENALTY.
A GLASS of beer can't hurt anybody! Why, I know a person—yonder he is now—a specimen of manly beauty, a portly six-footer; he has the bearing of a prince. He is one of our merchant princes. His face wears the hue of youth; and now, at the age of fifty odd, he has the quick elastic step of our young men of twenty-five, and none more full of wit and mirth than he; and I know he never dines without a brandy and water, and never goes to bed without a terrapin or oyster supper, with plenty of champagne; and more than that, he was never known to be drunk. So here is a living exemplar and disproof of the temperance twaddle about the dangerous nature of an occasional glass and the destructive effects of a temperate use of good liquors.
Now it so happened that this specimen of safe brandy-drinking was a relation of ours. He died a year or two after that with chronic diarrhea, a common end of those who are never drunk, but never out of liquor. He left his widow a splendid mansion uptown and a clear five thousand a year, besides a large fortune to each of his children; for he had ships on every counter, but which he never had occasion to use. For months before he died—he was a year dying—he could eat nothing without distress; in the midst of his millions he died of inanition.
That is not the half, reader. He had been a steady drinker, a daily drinker, for twenty-eight years. He left a legacy to his children which he did not mention. Scrofula has been eating up one daughter for fifteen years; another is in the mad-house; the third and fourth were of unearthly beauty—there was a kind of grandeur in that beauty—but they were blighted, and they paled and faded in their sweetest teens; another is tottering on the verge of the grave, and only to one of them is left all the senses.—Hall's Journal of Health.
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I CAN’T STAY IF YOU SWEAR.
A BOY who attends a Sunday-school in town went into the country last summer to spend his holidays at a farm-house—a visit he had long looked forward to with great pleasure. He went out to help the men to gather in the harvest. One of the men was an inveterate swearer.
The boy, having stood it as long as he could, said to the man, “Well, I have made up my mind to go home to-morrow.”
The swearer, who had taken a great liking to him, said, “I thought you were going to stay all the rest of the summer.”
“I was,” said the boy, “but I can’t stay where anybody swears so; one of us must go, so I will leave.”
The man felt rebuked, and said, “If you will stay, I won’t swear;” and he kept his word.
Boys, take a bold stand for the right; throw your influence on the side of Christ, and you will sow seed the harvest of which you will reap both in this world and the next.—Endeavor Banner.
HOMES AND ORPHAN ASYLUMS.
By A. S. Hobart
There is a great contrast between the children of a home and those of an asylum. Both have food, and clothing, and discipline, and school instruction. In these matters probably few homes are better than, and the majority of homes are inferior to, the asylum. The general health and personal appearance of the inmates of these public charities needs no defense when compared with those of the children of homes. But for little children learning to think and talk and observe, how far the asylum comes from reaching the advantages of the home! In the latter, father and mother spend hours, daily, in talking to the child. They call attention to every part of the house, and to all the furniture, and teach him the names, and drill him in the pronunciation of them. They seek to encourage the child in expressing his thoughts accurately. By many loving ways they lead out his plastic and elastic mind into maturity. Moral truths are inculcated long before the child knows what is being done.
Where there are other and older children, they come in for personal care, consideration for the rights of others, respect for age, and experience a share in the work. There is not a phase of life, and scarcely a great idea of religion, but is taught in the home, in some way, before the child is fifteen.—A. S. Hobart, D. D.
TOBACCO WAS HIS RUIN.
He was a young man, only a little past thirty, and yet by his face one would almost think he was sixty; wrinkles, scars, prematurely gray hair—all of them thru debauchery. He was waiting to be taken to the penitentiary, where he had been sentenced for a crime committed when he was under the influence of drink.
When asked how he came to be in such a state, he said, with a look of despair, “Tobacco has been my ruin. I kept pure company and was a clean young man until I formed the tobacco habit. I trace my downfall from the very hour I began to use tobacco. I soon became accustomed to company I would not formerly have thought of associating with. Then came the wine-cup. The thirst for it was created by the use of tobacco, I verily believe. Then the company of dissolute women.” He was the very picture of despair. His whole life destroyed and blotted out by the devil’s hand, the devil’s instruments being used to do it.
There are so many who look lightly upon the using of tobacco—even do not reprove the young men when they begin to use it, call people cranks who do not believe in the use of tobacco, and criticize and even persecute those who are warring against this evil.
Selfishness, unquestionably, is at the bottom of a large part of this; for when one has formed the habit, it is very difficult to give it up, and the temptation is to brace one’s self against all arguments in favor of its being abolished.
It would be well if all such people could take a look at the wrecks caused by the use of tobacco.—Anon.
WHAT TO TEACH BOYS.
A PHILOSOPHER has said that true education to boys is to “teach them what they ought to know when they become men.”
1. To be true and to be genuine. No education is worth anything that does not include this. A man had better not know how to read—he had better never learn a letter in the alphabet, and be true, genuine in intention and in action—rather than be learned in all sciences and in all languages, to be at the same time false in heart and counterfeit in life. Above all things, teach boys that truth is more than riches, more than earthly power or possessions.
2. To be pure in thought, language, and life—pure in mind and in body.
3. To be unselfish. To care for the feelings and comfort of others. To be generous, noble, and manly. This will include a genuine reverence for the aged and for things sacred.
4. To be self-reliant and self-helpful even from childhood. To be industrious always, and self-supporting at the earliest proper age. Teach them that all honest work is honorable; that an idle life of dependence on others is disgraceful.
When a boy has learned these four things, when he has made these ideas a part of his being—however poor or however rich—he has learned some of the most important things he ought to know when he becomes a man.—Parish Visitor.
Speak of the Love of God
“DEAR reader, examine yourself. Where do you stand? Do you engage in gossip with your neighbors? Have you done so to-day? Turn to the Lord, and ask Him to give you something better to talk about. Stop thinking and speaking of the faults of others, and think and speak of the love of God. You will find the change a profitable one. It will do you good, and He will help you to do others good—instead of harm.”
VIRGINIA HOMES.
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MISSION FIELDS AT OUR DOORS.
By E. J. B.
The Philippines.
LEAVING Honolulu for the Philippines, we may pass the group of small but fertile islands that make up the Ladrones. The stars and stripes float over Guam, the most southerly of the group. There are twenty of these islands, and their area is estimated at 416 square miles. The islands produce sugar, rice, and indigo, and the breadfruit, banana, and coconut grow there in their perfection. A mission has just been opened in Guam by a party of American missionaries.
The Philippine Group is variously stated to contain from 1,400 to 2,000 islands. The largest of these, Luzon, is about the size of Ohio, containing 44,400 square miles. The area of the whole group is placed at 143,000 square miles; but the islands have not been fully explored and surveyed, and so definite figures are impossible.
The Philippines are wholly within the tropics; but the climate is said to be unusually good for tropical regions. The annual mean temperature is 81°, and ranges in a year from 61° to 97°. “There are three well-marked seasons—temperate and dry from November to February, hot and dry from March to May, and temperate and wet from June to October.”
The soil is very fertile. Only about one-ninth of it is under cultivation; yet the value of the raw products exported in 1897 was $29,700,000. The principal exports are rice, corn, hemp, sugar, tobacco, coconuts, and cacao. The value of the hemp alone exported in 1894 was $12,000,000. The islands are believed to contain considerable undeveloped mineral wealth.
The population is estimated at 8,000,000. The islands are the home of many nationalities. Thirty different peoples or tribes, each tribe speaking a language or dialect of its own, dispute the right of possession. It is believed that the woolly-headed Negritos were the original inhabitants. They are dwarfs, the average stature of a full-grown man being four feet, eight inches.
The Negritos have been driven back or driven out by successive incursions of Malay tribes. The chief of these Malay tribes seems to be the Tagals, who have shown such a persistent determination to govern themselves, and perhaps their neighbors as well. They are numerous in the lowlands of Luzon, forming the principal inhabitants of Manila, Cavite, and other important places, and they are prominent in other islands of the group.
The Tagals are nearly all Roman Catholics, tho their old superstitions have not all disappeared. The Visayas, next in power and importance to the Tagals, are numerous in some of the islands, and are also Catholics. But there are many Mohammedans among the Malays, and some of the island tribes are pagan and savage. Besides these, the Chinaman is there in force, to stay and make money. So when Uncle Samuel took these islands to have and to hold, he brought under the American flag a rare medley of nationalities, languages, and religions, to say nothing of civilizations ranging from the wild men of the mountains to the priest-taught Tagals and civilized but “heathen Chinee.”
The priests and friars had things their own way for about three hundred years. During this time the Bible was not given to the people, and religious liberty was unknown. All this is changing. The people are beginning to demand and appreciate religious liberty. Here is an illustration: “An amendment to the school regulations, open for public discussion before the commission, was introduced, to the effect that as the prevailing church was Roman Catholic, all the teachers should be of that faith. The controversy showed very plainly that there is a public and general demand for a change from old lines. At Malibay the people defy the ecclesiastical authorities, claim the cathedral as municipal property, pay for a Protestant pastor, and attend his services with enthusiasm.” —Annual Report American Bible Society. But of course the priests will not permit Protestant influences to gain strength without opposition. Indeed, they have already made unpleasantness for members of their flock who showed a leaning to Protestantism.
In connection with getting the Bible into the Philippines, an interesting incident is told of a New York woman. She could speak Spanish, and down on the wharves she had a little mission for Spanish sailors. Some of the sailors were from ships trading to the Philippines. The woman got these sailors to translate into the Tagalog and Visayan languages the text, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” With a few other verses she printed this text on her own press, and by the Spanish sailors sent the beautiful message of love and hope to these two great Filipino tribes.
A little later the American Bible Society began operations. Advance sheets of the Annual Report of this society give some interesting particulars of their work. An agent was sent to Manila in the autumn of 1899, and the Bible Society and the missionaries are co-operating in the work of translating and circulating the Bible. Some of the Gospels have been published in some of the native languages, but most of the work of this character is still in the hands of translators and publishers.
The Bible Society already has its colporters in the field, tho in limited numbers. One of them gives an account of two months spent in the southern part of Luzon. He carried Chinese Scriptures, English and Spanish Bibles and Testaments, and Gospels in the Tagalog. In two months this colporter disposed of about 3,000 copies of the Scriptures. Among other interesting items, he mentions sending twenty copies of Tagalog Gospels into each of two islands where the Word of God had never before been known.
Another colporter, speaking of his experiences, says: “Travel thru the interior is tedious and trying, and accommodations are impossible. Always under military guard, still life is in jeopardy. God, however, richly repays. Everywhere we find men waiting for the Word, and in almost every town we are asked to send a Protestant worker.”
The summing up of the colporter work for the year is “sales, 7,743; gifts, 349.” This means that the Word of God has been carried to several islands, and has found its way into many towns and hamlets. It has reached the people in their homes, the sailors on the sea, the lepers in their hospital, and the soldiers in camp and hospital. The seed of the Word has been sowed, and “what shall the harvest be?”
E. J. B.
READY
Ready to go, ready to wait,
Ready a gap to fill;
Ready for service, small or great,
Ready to do His will.
Ready to suffer grief or pain,
Ready to stand the test;
Ready to stay at home and send
Others, if He sees best.
Ready to do, ready to bear,
Ready to watch and pray;
Ready to stand aside and give,
Till He shall clear the way.
—Selected.
HEATHEN LANDS AND MISSION WORK.
Idolatry is real. “The Hindus of the present day firmly believe in the real existence of innumerable gods and goddesses, who possess in their own departments full and independent power.”
Life is excessively impure in the non-Christian lands. “Bad as impurity is in some parts of the West, it is much worse all over the East. In the most loathsome and unthinkable forms it is cutting into the best life of the young manhood of those vast regions.”
Sin is enthroned in the heathen lands. “Sin is enthroned and deified and worshipped. There is scarcely a single thing that makes for righteousness in the life of unchristian nations.”
The non-Christian religions are powerless. “There is no resurrection power in any one of them, and to the men who here and there are athirst for righteousness, and are groping after Him who is not far from any one of us, they offer neither guidance nor help.”
The harvest is great. “There are 175,000,000 Mohammedans, and 870,000,000 heathen and pagan.”
The laborers are few. In round numbers, Japan has one ordained missionary to every 200,000 people; Africa has one to every 250,000; India has one to every 300,000; South America has one to every 440,000; China has one to every 700,000.
The church sacrifices but little for foreign missions. The entire contribution of the Protestant Evangelical Church of the world is only $19,126,120 annually; that of the United States only $5,828,300.
The church gives but few men and women to missions. The entire Protestant evangelical mission force is only 15,460, including wives.
Missions are great civilizers. “All the government [Bengal] could do by its educational department, all that local self-interest could do, which gave them money, culture, and social status, produced a smaller numerical result than that which the missionaries have produced.”
The missionary work has far-reaching effects. “I assert it to be a fact beyond contradiction, that there is not a ruler, official, merchant, or any other person in China and Japan, Siam and Korea, who, in their association or dealings with their fellow-men in that quarter of the globe, are not indebted every day of their lives to the work and achievements of the American missionaries.”
A century of missions has been fruitful in converts. In all Protestant evangelical missions there are 1,317,684 native communicants, and 4,414,236 native Christians.
Missions develop true Christian life. “After long and careful inquiry, I believe the native Christians of China to be fully up to the average mark of our churches at home in essential knowledge, and above it in practise—societies of men and women in which the virtues of purity, honesty, self-denial, and charity are apparent.”—Burton St. John, in the Gospel in All Lands.
OUR WORK AND WORKERS.
The West Virginia Conference has two tents in the field the present season.
Canvassers in Finland have sold books amounting to $7,750 during the past year.
Successful medical missions are now in operation at Jaffa and Jerusalem, and three medical workers are laboring in Egypt.
In connection with the work at Balham, England, Brother J. S. Washburn reports the baptism of fourteen persons in the last four months.
The canvassing work in Missouri is in a prosperous condition, the last report in the Record being the largest ever made in the State.
The Southern Educational Convention is now in session at Graysville, Tenn. It was commenced on the 18th inst., and will continue till July 4.
Brother J. Vuilleumier has recently begun labor in Paris, and medical missionary nurses are working successfully at the watering places Niel and Vichy.
Kansas City, Mo., is now favored with the labors of Brother E. A. Merrell, who has had an extended and successful experience in other cities as a city missionary.
Sabbath, July 6, has been appointed by the General Conference Committee as a day of special prayer and consecration for the work in foreign fields. A collection will be taken for the benefit of the publishing house in Christiania, Norway.
Four tents are placed in the field by Chesapeake Conference this session. The recent annual session of the conference elected Brother O. O. Farnsworth president; secretary and treasurer, Charles D. Zirkle. The office of the conference is at 903 Woodley Street, Baltimore.
Brother Wm. Saunders, who for years has been connected with this office as one of the directors of the Pacific Press Publishing Co., recently received the sad news of the death of his mother, Mrs. Christiana Tayler, in Lansing, Mich., May 22, at the advanced age of 93 years.
From Springfield, Mo., Brother D. P. Zeigler reports that six persons have recently taken their stand on the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, making eleven additions since the first of the year. A new church building is being erected, and work with the SIGNS is encouraging.
A report in the Workers’ Record, from Brother J. M. Rees, notes the organization of a church at Cotton, Mo., with sixteen members, and the dedication of a new house of worship. This meeting was followed by the baptism of four persons. The labor which brought about these good results was done by Brother H. M. Stewart.
A report in the Missionary Reporter from Belfast, Ireland, by Brother J. McAvoy, says that the work is growing in that city, and precious souls are being added to the church. A portable hall is used, which is moved from one part of the city to another. From 600 to 700 copies of Present Truth are sold weekly, and seven book agents are at work in the city and vicinity.
During a recent visit of Brother N. Z. Town to his old home at South Russell, N. Y., he had the pleasure of seeing his father and mother, his brother’s wife and her daughter, and a neighbor’s daughter received into the church at that place. Brother Town had come from his mission in Argentina, S. America, to attend the General Conference at Battle Creek, Mich. After the conference, in company with Brother F. M. Wilcox, of Boulder, Colo., he made this visit to their home. They held a few meetings while there, which bore good fruit. Brother Town returns to Argentina very much encouraged.
Brother J. W. H. Geiss, of Lawson, N. S. W., formerly a Church of England minister in Tasmania, and for some time editor of the Hobart Church News, has recently sent out a neat little tract, entitled, “To My Friends,” in which he gives his reasons for becoming a Seventh-day Adventist, and tells of the blessings that have come to him in consequence of taking this step. It is an interesting and very readable little document. In concluding it, Brother Geiss says: “I believe the time has now come when true believers in every denomination will join themselves with those of whom the Lord says, ‘Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.’”—Bible Echo.
On May 30, Brother G. A. Irwin and wife and Brother W. D. Salisbury sailed from San Francisco for Australia on the steamer Mariposa. Brother Irwin is to act as president of the Australasian Union Conference, and Brother Salisbury is manager of the Echo Publishing Co., at Melbourne. He had come to the United States to attend the biennial General Conference. A number of other laborers for that field, including New Zealand and other islands, had expected to sail at the same time, but were unable to secure accommodations on the steamer, and will sail at a later date. This, however, gave them opportunity to attend the California camp-meeting at Oakland. This company consists of the following persons: Brethren Wm. Woodford, wife and three children, C. W. Irwin and wife, L. V. Finster and wife, F. L. Chaney, wife and child, W. A. Hennig and wife, G. A. Snyder and wife, and Dr. Nettie Armstrong.
MISSIONARY LABOR IN BIBLE TRANSLATION.
By Judson Smith
[Judson Smith, D. D., Corresponding Secretary of American Board of Foreign Missions, in Christian Work.]
In not a few instances the missionary has first to reduce the language to written and lexical forms, to make the grammar and vocabulary of the language, before he can begin to use it in translation. Who can measure the time and effort required for such a task? In what other field of labor has anything like this been attempted? Hiram Bingham goes to the Gilbert Islands in the mid-Pacific, and finds the people with no literature, with no written language, with no one to teach him. Little by little he gathers the words of common usage from the lips of the natives, and learns how they are combined in phrases and sentences. Constantly he must compare what he has written down with what he hears, must correct mistakes, must acquire new words, must fix, if possible, the better usage. And at last he ventures to put the Golden Rule, the Lord’s Prayer, a Psalm, into the vernacular; then a Gospel, an Epistle; until at last, after many years, the whole Bible is rendered into this island tongue, and every one admires the great achievement. Between those first words taken from the lips of the unlettered people, and the finished Gilbert Islands Bible, what years of toil, what patience of soul, how vast and glorious the contrast! And this is perhaps the simplest form of the problem.
Burma’s debt to Judson is to be measured by all that he did for the uplifting of her people in character and habits, in knowledge and aspirations. But that which works deepest and most incessantly, which makes him to-day, fifty years after his death, the greatest benefactor that nation ever had, is the Bible which he gave them in their own tongue, the celestial guide of childhood, the solace of age, the fortress of manliness, and purity, and truth.
Morrison broke the path to the Christian renovation of China in many ways, but in none more signally or with more lasting benefit than by opening to that people the treasures of God’s Word, and giving the Bible a chance to be heard by the side of Confucian classics. Carey puts the scholarship of the world under a measureless obligation by his studies in Sanscrit, and his translations of the Bible, or portions of it, into more than thirty of the tongues of India. When as yet the work of evangelization could not be freely pursued, this dauntless spirit seized the occasion to make his message intelligible to the millions who should later come within its reach. No single missionary has ever wrought on so wide a scale for the Christian enlightenment of India; and thus “he, being dead, yet speaketh.”
Letter from Paraguay.
By E. W. Snyder
(From Atlantic News.)
THE latter part of February, in answer to a call prompted by an interest awakened thru our literature, we visited the National Colony. This settlement numbers 109 families, composed of representatives of the leading nations of Europe, with a sprinkling of Paraguayans. Allured by the government's offer of sixty-four acres of land free to each head of a family, many came with bright hopes for the future, which, in the majority of cases, have never been nor ever will be realized. Owing to lack of market and transportation, all that the poor colonist produces is sold at the lowest price, as the following will serve to illustrate: Bananas, five cents a bunch; sweet potatoes, thirty cents a bushel; rice, thirty-seven cents the arroba of twenty-two pounds; corn, thirty cents a bushel; sugar-cane, $1.50 a ton, loaded at the railway station. Clothing and dress-goods, being imported, come very dear; hence the colonist must content himself with a condition of having but little above that of the native. His house usually consists of a large room twelve or fifteen feet square, the walls being composed of a mortar made of earth and water, mixed without lime. This is applied to a framework of small poles. The roof of long grass is extended at one end in order to cover a space of the yard of equal area to that of the room, while the floor of all is only the earth. The outdoor sheltered space is employed as a sitting, entertaining, and dining-room; in fact, the warm climate enables one to almost live out doors. On entering we find his furniture of the most primitive kind. In one corner stands a home-made bed of rough lumber, while canvas cots occupy nearly all the rest of the available space. Two board benches serve as seats, while a box nailed up against the wall holds his few books and papers.
As we held up the brighter hope beyond this vale of disappointment, many received the news gladly. We left ten adults rejoicing in the light of truth in this colony, while others are asking for meetings in their neighborhood. Some gained the victory over the tobacco habit, which has bound them for years; and this being universal among both men and women here, to overcome it means a fight against hereditary appetite.
In conclusion we must say that our faith in the third angel's message as the Gospel for this time has been greatly strengthened by this experience.
Golden Text: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” Verse 7, A.V.
1 “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for 2 her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne 3 saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God; and He shall 4 wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more; the first things are passed away. And He that 5 sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He saith, Write; for these words are faithful and true. 6 And He said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of 7 life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son. . . . And I saw no 22 temple therein; for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, 23 are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun; neither of the moon, to shine upon it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the 24 nations shall walk amidst the light thereof; and the kings of the earth do bring their glory into it. And the gates thereof 25 shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night there); and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the 26 nations into it; and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie, 27 but only they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS.
(1) What did the prophet see in the vision presented in this lesson? Why should there be a new heaven and a new earth? Verse 1. Note 1. (2) What next did the prophet see? Verse 2. Note 2. (3) What did he hear? What did the voice say of the dwelling-place of God? Verse 3. Note 3. (4) What will then be done for sorrowing humanity? Why will there be no more of these effects of sin? Verse 4. Note 4. (5) What was the prophet then bidden to behold? What was he bidden to do? Verse 5. (6) Who did the voice declare the speaker to be? What promise did He make? Verse 6. Note 5. (7) What promise is given to the overcomer? Verse 7. Note 6. (8) Why was no temple seen in the city? Verse 22. (9) How was the city lighted? Verse 23. (10) Who will walk in this light? Verse 24. Note 7. (11) What is said of the gates of the city? Verse 25. Note 8. (12) What shall be brought into the city? Verse 26. (13) What things shall not enter the city? Who only shall enter? Verse 27. Note 9.
NOTES.
1. As the sinner, by entering into covenant relation with Christ and being cleansed of sin, becomes a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17), so this sin-cursed earth, by being purged and transformed thru the action of God’s purifying fire, will come out a new earth. The atmospheric heaven, also, of which Satan is the “prince” (Eph. 2:2), will be purified and made new in the great “day of the Lord.” See 2 Peter 3:10-14.
2. The New Jerusalem is “the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (verses 9, 10 of lesson chapter). When Christ shall have received His kingdom from the Father (Dan. 7:13, 14), of which the New Jerusalem is the capital, then will the saints be called to the “marriage supper of the Lamb.” Then will be the great celebration described in Rev. 19:5-9.
3. “Tabernacle,” in verse 3 is used in the sense of dwelling-place, and not as a place for priestly service, as in Heb. 8:1-3. The sanctuary service is all ended before Christ takes His kingdom, and the New Jerusalem has no temple (verse 22 of lesson).
4. Wiping away tears in the new earth signifies not that there will be tears there to wipe away, but that all cause of tears will have been annihilated when former conditions, including sorrow and death, have passed away.
5. Promises to the thirsty soul are numerous in the Scriptures. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,” etc., is a prophetic promise to be fulfilled in Christ. Isa. 55:1. Among the blessings pronounced in the Sermon on the Mount is, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” Matt. 5:6. Again Jesus says, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:14. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Rev. 22:17.
6. “Shall Inherit These Things.”—The Common Version reads “all things,” and this agrees with Rom. 8:32: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” The Christian is a joint-heir with Christ (Rom. 8:16, 17), and He says of His inheritance, “All things that the Father hath are Mine.” John 16:15.
7. “The Kings of the Earth.”—The earth will be peopled by the Israel of God, the spiritual seed of Abraham; and the twelve apostles are promised twelve thrones over the twelve tribes. See Gal. 3:29, and Matt. 19:28. The names of the twelve tribes are on the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem, and the names of the twelve apostles are on the twelve foundations of the wall. Rev. 21:12-14. The twelve apostles will be the “kings of the earth.”
8. Free Access.—The gates of the city will never be closed. They “shall in no wise be shut by day,” and it will be day all the time in the city. Nor will the view of the city be excluded at any point, notwithstanding the great height of the wall; for the wall is of jasper, the finer specimens of which are transparent.
9. “Shall in No Wise Enter.”—It must not be inferred that there will always be in existence on the outside of the city those things which are forbidden to enter. Before the wicked are finally destroyed, and the earth purified, the city will have come down upon Mount Olivet (Zech. 14:1-9), and after the resurrection of the wicked, Satan will gather them around the city in an attempt to take it by force. But none of them will be able to enter it, and at this time will be their final destruction by fire from heaven. See Revelation 20; also article, “A New Earth,” on page 7 of this paper.
