Your ShelfYour Projects

Review and Herald, Vol. 53, No. 6.

THE PROPHETIC CONFERENCE

Review and Herald

Feb 6, 1879

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 6, 1879

THE PROPHETIC CONFERENCE.

By L. C. Rogers

The following article from the pen of Eld. L. C. Rogers, Seventh-day Baptist, which we take from the Sabbath Recorder of Dec. 5, 1878, will be of interest to our readers:—
The Prophetic Conference was, as our editor remarks in the issue of Nov. 14, “a meeting of great interest;” and he adds: “We should be glad to give our readers a full account of the meeting, including the speeches made, but the want of space forbids this.” As an abstract will surmount the “want of space,” and be at the same time the fairest exponent of the Conference, we act accordingly, availing ourselves of the files of the New York Daily Tribune. The point to be reached is, What did the Conference say and do? Let them speak for themselves. Their use of the word “imminent,” as applied to the coming of Christ, seems to be, that this event is contingent, and might have occurred before this time. “That he [Christ] will come before many years,” the Independent in an editorial claims to be an integral part of the premillennarian doctrine. This is a mistake. That some of this school, and some who are not, believe in the soon-coming of Christ may be true. The following propositions were unanimously adopted by the Conference:—
1. We affirm our belief in the supreme and absolute authority of the written word of God on all questions of doctrine and duty.
2. The prophetic words of the Old Testament Scriptures concerning the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ were literally fulfilled in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension; and so the prophetic words of both the Old and the New Testament concerning his second coming will be literally fulfilled in his visible, bodily return to this earth in like manner as he went up into Heaven; and this glorious epiphany of the great God, our Saviour Jesus Christ, is the blessed hope of the believer and of the church during this entire dispensation.
3. This second coming of the Lord Jesus is everywhere in the Scriptures represented as imminent, and may occur at any moment; yet the precise day and hour thereof is unknown to man and known only to God.
4. The Scriptures nowhere teach that the whole world will be converted to God, or that there will be a reign of universal righteousness and peace before the return of our blessed Lord; but that only at and by his coming in power and glory will the prophecies concerning the progress of evil, and the development of Antichrist; the times of the Gentiles, and the ingathering of Israel; the resurrection of the dead in Christ, and the transfiguration of his living saints, receive their fulfillment, and the period of millennial blessedness its inauguration.
5. The duty of the church during the absence of the Bridegroom is to watch and pray, to work, and wait, to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and thus hasten the coming of the day of God; and to his latest promise—“Surely, I come quickly”—to respond, in joyous hope, “Even so; come, Lord Jesus.”
The first affirmation above is timely and refreshing. On this basis we ask to meet the framers of this document, to discuss the claims of the Bible Sabbath. It may be of interest to some to know who they are. The following resolution explains:—
Resolved, That a committee consisting of Willis Lord, D. D., of Columbus, Ohio; A. W. Pitzen, D. D., of Washington City; D. C. Marquis, D. D., of St. Louis; Julius W. Grannerd, D. D., of Baltimore; B. B. Leacock, D. D., of Newburgh; A. M. Morrison, D. D., of Philadelphia; W. R. Gordon, of New Jersey; J. J. Miller, of Berlin; Isaac H. Holdeman, of Wilmington; Myron Adams, of Rochester, and Jesse Gilbert, of Newark, be appointed to prepare a brief paper embodying the views of this Conference on the subjects presented during this meeting, and to report at this evening's session.
Professor George Duffield, D. D., of Princeton College, read a paper before the Conference. The following are the points of his argument:—
Premillennarians believe that a millennial era of righteousness and peace on earth before the advent is not to be expected, for the following reasons:—
Were the doctrine true, it would undoubtedly be prominent in the New Testament. It is not only not prominent, but neither Christ nor the apostles make any allusion to it.
The uniform and abundant teaching as to the relation of the church to the world during the present dispensation is inconsistent with the common doctrine representing the millennium.
The advent—not the millennium—is prominently presented in the New Testament as “the blessed hope” of the church, and is uniformly referred to as an event ever imminent—to be “looked for” with longing expectation.
The Saviour's repeated command to “watch” for his coming, because we “know not the hour,” is inconsistent with the idea of a millennium intervening.
The New Testament teaches repeatedly and unequivocally that the manifestation of the Messianic kingdom, and the advent, are synchronous events.
The apostolic church was premillennarian, as was the church for more than two centuries immediately succeeding the apostles.
The doctrine of a millennium before the advent is not to be found in the standards of any of the churches of the Reformation. By several of the confessions, as well as by the prominent reformers individually, it was expressly repudiated. It is a novelty in the history of the church suggested only one hundred and fifty years ago, and avowed by its authors as “a new hypothesis.”
Dr. Rufus W. Clark (Reformed,) read a paper on “Christ's Coming; the Blessed Hope as a Motive to Holy Living and Active Labor.” He said:—
St. Paul, in his Epistle to Titus, speaks of the Christian as waiting with joy for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. This passage may be regarded as an epitome of the exhortations, doctrines, duties, and hopes that abound in the Holy Scriptures in connection with the coming of our blessed Lord. There is not a doctrine of Christianity upon which the light of this great truth does not shine, and which it does not render more important and luminous by its radiance. There is not a duty pertaining to the Christian life that is not quickened and rendered more imperative by its power. There is not a virtue that it does not call into the highest exercise; not a motive in the human heart that it does not purify and strengthen; not a hope for the future that it does not kindle with a new and celestial fire.
In view of our appearing with Christ in glory, we are required to mortify the lusts of the flesh. This doctrine is presented by the apostle Peter as the great support under trials and persecutions. Paul presents the announcement of the coming of Christ from Heaven as a source of comfort. “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
Our doctrine is a powerful incentive to fidelity in the outward activities of the Christian life. It is thus presented in several parables of our Lord. Watchfulness in connection with our Lord's coming, is presented by Christ to his church as an important duty, in language indicating the deepest earnestness and solicitude. “Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.”
By the side of these glowing words of faith and practice, how cold and carnal appear the words of the Independent's editorial comment: “When the Lord will come, and how, is no concern of ours.” This sentence embodies the faith, undoubtedly, of very many in the dominant denominations, and of some in the smaller ones, and fully justifies the calling of the Prophetic Conference. I wonder if facts will justify the Independent's fling at the evangelists: “Some who did not take part were by their absence conspicuously present in spirit; we mean such men as Mr. Moody and Mr. Pentecost, who remained away simply because their presence might affect their work as evangelists.” And what a travesty of Scripture as well as of the Conference are the closing sentences of the Independent's synopsis: “There is a difference as to some points—as, for example, the amount of turbulence and bloodshed to follow the reappearance of Christ on the earth, and the ‘rapture’ of his saints in the sky.” What a cynical sneer is apparent in the quotation marks around the word rapture, and which is partially confessed a moment after. “We would not peer curiously into those closed leaves, into which the favorite angel dares not pry. But if others think that large thought and instruction is to be got from the prophecies, we would not seem to treat them with disrespect.” The above view and treatment of prophecy does not harmonize with my view of Scripture. See 2 Peter 1:19–21.

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.

EARLIEST IDEAS OF THE SOUL.

If the reader supposes that the first ideas which the ancients had of the soul were the same as those popular among us now, he needs to be undeceived. The idea that after the body dies, the soul, as an immortal, immaterial, conscious, and active personality, goes immediately to Heaven or hell, was not arrived at immediately, but grew out of the imagination, the poetry, the philosophy, and the laws of many ages. It is interesting to trace its gradual development.
The first idea that the ancients conceived of the soul, or spirit, as existing separately from the body after death, was that of a shadow, or shade, resembling the body in shape, but larger. This shade was supposed to be a very thin, misty, aerial, material substance. At first the shades of all, both good and bad, were said to be gathered together under ground in hades, or sheol. They were not permitted to visit the upper world among the living. They were said to be in a dreamy, sleeping condition. Gradually, by poetic imagination, they were invested with more life and intelligence, and were assigned employments in hades like those they had led on earth. Then a few were said to come up from their dreary abode, and appear to the living. They represented hades to be a damp, chilly, dismal place. They sighed to return to earth. The scene gradually changed, and they were invested with still more activity, power, and intelligence, and placed in a region of greater light, till a few privileged ones were raised to dwell on the surface of the earth, then higher in the air, and at last to Heaven. They then began to be invested with mighty power as demons, demi-gods, and gods, and were supposed to rule over the living. At last, after long ages, all the good were supposed to go to Heaven at death.
They had similar ideas with regard to the punishment of the wicked in hades. At first only a very few were punished, then certain crimes in all, and at length all the wicked were punished there at death. But this change in the minds of the people was very slow, and many ages passed before it was effected. Many testimonies could be presented on these points; but I can offer only a few here. The origin of many of these ideas is thus stated by Alger:— “The origin of many notions touching a future state found in literature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poetic reveries with which even the most philosophical minds, in certain moods, indulged themselves.” “Two general sources have now been described of the barbarian conceptions in relation to a future state. First, the natural operation of an earnest recollection of the dead; sympathy, regret, and reverence for them, leading the thoughts and heart to grope after them, to brood over the possibilities of their fate, and to express themselves in rites and emblems. Secondly, the mythological or arbitrary creations of the imagination, when it is set strongly at work, as it must be by the solemn phenomena associated by death. But beyond these two comprehensive statements, there is, directly related to the matter and worthy of separate illustration, a curious action of the mind, which has been very extensively experienced, and fertile of results. It is a peculiar example of the unconscious imputation of objective existence to mental ideas. With the death of the body, the man does not cease to live in the remembrance, imagination, and heart of his surviving friends. By an unphilosophical confusion, this internal image is credited as an external existence. The dead pass from their customary haunts in our society to the imperishable domain of ideas.” “Fancy and reason, thus set to work, speedily construct a thousand theories filled with details. Desire fathers thought, and then thought woos belief.”
This was the real origin of the notion that the soul lives after the body dies—imagination and desire.
Dr. Knapp, in accounting for this doctrine among the ancients, says: “They often had dreams, in which the dead appeared to them, speaking and acting; and in this way they found their wishes, and the traditions they had received from their fathers, confirmed anew.”
Even now, wishes, dreams, death-bed scenes, etc., etc., are the best proof which many have for the immortality of the soul.
With regard to the first conception of the abode and condition of the departed spirits, Dr. Knapp remarks: “Far more general was the opinion among the ancient nations that the abode of departed spirits is under the earth; because the dead are laid beneath the ground, and their bodies return to the dust. The souls, there separated from their bodies, were regarded as a sort of aerial beings, or shades. Taken as a whole, the ancient Eastern nations and the Greeks agreed on this point.”

HOMER’S ILIAD.

Turning to Homer, the oldest of the heathen poets, who wrote about nine hundred years before Christ, we find that the ideas then entertained of death were that it was a sleep, and of hades, or the state of the dead, that it was a dark, gloomy, cold place under ground, where the mere powerless shadows of the dead existed in a half-unconscious state. Read a few quotations:—
“Silent they slept, and heard of wars no more.”
“And death in lasting slumber seals his eyes.”
“The soul, indignant, seeks the realms of night.”
“Oppress’d, had sunk to death’s eternal shade.”
“Add one more ghost to Pluto’s gloomy reign.”
“Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep, Shall neither hear the sigh, nor see thee weep.”
“And seeks the cave of Death’s half-brother, Sleep.”
Such expressions are frequent all through the Iliad.
Homer always describes hades as a dreary, gloomy place, thus:—
“When to grim Pluto’s gloomy gates he went.”
“Go, guide thy darksome steps to Pluto’s dreary hall.”
“By thy black waves, tremendous Styx! that flow Through the drear realms of gliding ghosts below.”
The souls there are described as feeble, shadowy, and voiceless.
“Then the wan shades and feeble ghosts implore.”
“To all the phantom nations of the dead.”
Finally, Homer, in his Odyssey, relates the descent of Ulysses into hades, and his interview with the souls of the dead. We give a few quotations:—
“Now the wan shades we hail, When lo! I appeared along the dusky coasts, Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts.”
Of the soul of his mother he says:—
“Now a thin form is all Anticlea was. Still in the dark abodes of death I stood, When near Anticlea, moved and drank the blood. Straight all the mother in her soul awakes, And owning her Ulysses, thus she speaks: Comest thou, my son, alive, to realms beneath, The doleful, dreary realms of darkness and of death? Comest thou alive from pure ethereal day? Dire is the region, dismal is the way. Thrice in my arms I strove her shade to bind, Thrice through my arms she slipp’d like empty wind.”
Ulysses complaining of this, his mother replies:—
“All, all are such when life the body leaves; No more the substance of the man remains; While the impassive soul reluctant flies, Like a vain dream, to these infernal skies. But from the dark dominion speed thy way, And climb the steep ascent to upper day; To thy chaste bride the wondrous story tell, The woes, the horrors, and the laws of hell.”
Of a great king now dead he says:—
“His substance vanish’d, and his strength decay’d; Now all Atrides is an empty shade.”
The soul of the mighty Achilles says:—
“Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom. Rather I’d choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air; A slave to some poor hind that tills the soil, Than reign the sceptered monarch of the dead.”
He would rather be a slave and live on earth than be a king in the land of spirits! How different, how exactly the reverse, of the modern ideas of the spirit land!
The following gives a good general idea of ancient opinion with regard to the state of the dead. It will be noticed that they all considered the soul material: “The disembodied soul, as conceived by the Greeks, and after them by the Romans, is material, but of so thin a contexture that it cannot be felt with the hands. It is exhaled with the dying breath, or issues through a warrior’s wounds. The sword passes through its uninjured form as through the air. It is to the body what a dream is to waking action. Retaining the shape, lineaments, and motion the man had in life, it is immediately recognized upon appearing. It quits the body with much reluctance, leaving that warm and vigorous investiture for a chill and forceless existence. It glides along without noise, and very swiftly, like a shadow. It is unable to enter the lower kingdom and be at peace until its deserted body has been buried with sacred rites; meanwhile, naked and sad, it flits restlessly about the gates, uttering doleful moans.”
Thus the happiness of the soul was intimately connected with that of the body.
With regard to the gradual development of their ideas of hell, ghosts, etc., he says:—
“First, then, from a study of the Greek mythology, we find all the dead a dull populace of ghosts, fluttering through the neutral melancholy of hades without discrimination. And finally we discern, in the world of the dead, a sad middle region, with a paradise on the right hand, and a hell on the left, the whole presided over by three incorruptible judges, who appoint the new-comers their places in accordance with their deserts.”
“The native Hebrew conception of the state of the dead was that of the voiceless gloom and dismal slumber of sheol, whither all alike went.” “But, after a time, these places in the lower world were divided, and the residences of the righteous and the wicked were conceived of as separate.”
We cannot fail to observe that the ancients, instead of having a clear and well-defined doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the conscious state of the dead, gradually developed these ideas, not from an early and clear tradition, but from the causes already given, and from others yet to be named. This is an important fact in our investigation, and it should be well weighed.

INFLUENCE OF THE POETS.

The influence of the poets and poetry aided greatly in the development of early conceptions concerning the state of the dead. The poets have always had a great influence in shaping the ideas and traditions of rude nations. No subject ever furnished a better theme for poetic fiction and imagination than that of the place and condition of men after death; and in none has greater liberty of fancy been taken than in this. Whoever wishes proof of this statement may look into the pages of Homer, Virgil, Dante, etc. These poets have given loose reins to their warm imaginations, to revel in the most horrid scenes. Their productions have been eagerly listened to by the people, and the effect has been marked and lasting. These poets were the ones who first taught the ancient heathen their religious tenets.
Thus writes Herodotus: “For I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer [poets] lived four hundred years before my time, and not more, and these were they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and declared their several forms.”
History abundantly shows that the fancy of poets has done more than anything else to build up this visionary doctrine of a hell and Heaven of departed ghosts. Says Enfield: “Every poet enlarged and molded the ancient fables according to the fertility or luxuriancy of his own fancy; so that they were not only increased from time to time without limit, but in many particulars so materially altered that their original features could scarcely be perceived.” Says another: “It is a common saying that the license of the poets caused greater injury to the ancient theology than all other things put together.”
The learned Mosheim thus candidly states the poetic origin of the popular pagan notions of hell:—
“It is notorious that those who embodied the dogmas of antiquity in verse, borrowed the coloring and embellishments by which they sought to gain for them a readier access into the popular mind from ancient history, and formed a certain discipline called in the present day mythology, compounded of the precepts of ancient philosophers and the legends of their own country. Hence they also obscured with the same ornaments and fictions the most simple doctrine of the state of souls after death, in order to beguile and conciliate the ears of the multitude who held in firm remembrance the affairs and exploits of bygone ages as handed down from their ancestors. First of all, the subterranean place itself, in which disembodied souls were supposed to be confined, was depicted by them in such a way as accorded with Grecian conceptions, and the manners of the times in which they lived. In the next place, being aware that that incredible multitude of souls could not possibly dispense with a leader and king, they selected Pluto out of ancient tradition, a certain king, probably of Epirus or some other province, well known to the common people for his severity, and assigned to him the sovereignty of the shades. On him they bestowed all the concomitants with which the kings of their own times were accustomed to be surrounded,—a palace, servants, wife, counselors, lictors, executioners, porters, and the like. But as they had founded so dreadful, dismal a community, in order to express all these, they were obliged to have recourse to the most hideous and horrible imagery. This is well known to the reader of Homer, Virgil, and the other poets.”
“That in the remotest ages dogs were chained to the doors of the rich and powerful for the purpose of deterring the approach of mendicants and thieves, is a fact which has long ago been demonstrated by learned men. The poets, therefore, considered it incumbent upon themselves to commit the custody of hell in like manner to a great and savage dog, which, to produce a more powerful impression upon the minds of the vulgar, they feigned to be triple-headed. For as the infernal dominions were divided into three parts, namely, Tartarus, Elysian fields, and the abode of souls not yet purged and proved, and consequently the door and entrance of this gloomy realm was threefold, it was reasonable that the dog placed at the threshold of hell should be endowed with a threefold head, in order to be able to guard all the inlets. In Homer’s time, kings had already departed from the ancient simplicity, and no longer adjudicated on the causes of their subjects, but had delegated this office to others. It was therefore proper to exempt the king of hell also from this labor. Hence they selected from the ancient history of their country those men that had formerly enjoyed a high reputation for justice and rigor, and were commonly regarded as the first examples of most upright, just judges, namely, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Æacus, whom they installed in that awful tribunal, and appointed as inquisitors of souls. And with respect to these judges they used the same expressions as though they perfectly resembled those whom they saw administering justice in their own times, either as regards the form of trial or any other characteristic by which a judge is usually distinguished from the rest of the people.
“As this region was believed to be situated underneath the earth, the road which led to it was necessarily described as rugged, dark, dreary, and unknown to mortals. Disembodied souls, therefore, would probably have missed their way, unless they had been furnished with a guide; probably, also, some of those which were weighed down by a consciousness of crime would have chosen to wander about on the earth forever, rather than descend into a place which they foresaw was about to be most dreadful and fatal to themselves. Even this inconvenience was provided against by the poets; for they assigned Mercury as the guide and conductor of the dead, and taught the people that he not only pointed out the way to errant souls, but compelled the reluctant to enter it. The rest I pass over; for I have no intention here of explaining the fables of the poets, or of trespassing upon the province of the philologer.”
This is a truthful and candid statement of the real origin of the heathen doctrine concerning the place and condition of the dead. Yet much of this is retained to-day in the Christian creeds as Bible truth!

SIGNS OF CHRIST'S COMING.

By Bishop Heber

The world is grown old, and her pleasures are past; The world is grown old, and her form may not last; The world is grown old, and trembles for fear; For sorrows abound, and judgment is near!
The sun in the heavens is languid and pale; And feeble and few are the fruits of the vale; And the hearts of the nations fail them for fear, For the world is grown old, and judgment is near.
The king on his throne, the bride in her bower, The children of pleasure, all feel the sad hour; The roses are faded, and listless the cheer; For the world is grown old, and judgment is near.
The world is grown old, but should we complain Who have tried her, and know that her promise is vain? Our heart is in Heaven, our home is not here, And we look for our crown when judgment is near. —Bishop Heber.

IS POLYGAMY FORBIDDEN BY CHRIST?

By Anti-Mormon

We constantly hear of new accessions to the ranks of those sadly misguided people, the Mormons; and I fear that in some measure other and purer denominations of Christians will be held responsible for this, because they have neglected to give scriptural and plain English interpretations of the seventh commandment. Most Christian churches, like the Walsall School Board, find it pleasant and easy to pass over the seventh as well as the fourth commandment without comment; thus leaving ignorant persons or those forgetful of Scripture quite at the mercy of false teachers. And even those who might be expected to know the Bible seem sometimes strangely ignorant of its contents.
There are people who say that polygamy and concubinage are not forbidden in the Bible. This is the Mormon doctrine; but the same thing has been said by those who profess to disapprove of these things, though they say they are not expressly forbidden. If not expressly forbidden, who has the right to declare that they ought not to be done? “The Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,” and “whatever is not contained therein, nor may be proved thereby,” is not to be required of any man. Unless we are to declare ourselves without any guide or rule of conduct, we must adhere to the declaration of faith in the Scriptures, and to the principle that whatever is not expressly forbidden in God’s word ought not to be condemned as sinful. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” But is not polygamy strictly and repeatedly forbidden? How can any believer in the New Testament say that it is not, when Christ himself has declared that it is adultery? Matt. 19:9; Mark 10:11, 12, etc.
Adultery is forbidden by the seventh commandment. The fact that for ages the Jews perverted the meaning of this command, as for ages the Christian churches have perverted the fourth commandment, does not alter the original and unchangeable meaning. Jesus Christ was not instituting a new law, but explaining the old seventh commandment, when he said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.” Matt. 19:9. Mark 10:11, 12: “And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.” See also Luke 16:18.
I suppose nobody will say that adultery consists in putting away the wife or the husband. Of course, this crime is not in putting away the first, but in marrying another, which would be adultery even if the first had not been put away. No one will deny this if he will contemplate the possibility of his own wife taking two or three additional husbands, though without putting the first away. Christ’s words make it plain that what constitutes adultery in a woman, constitutes the same crime in a man; and the original words of the seventh commandment make no distinction between man’s responsibility and woman’s.
This principle was understood even before Christ declared it. Malachi, the last of the prophets, reproves the men of Israel for their unfaithfulness to their wives: “The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue [margin, excellency] of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.” Malachi 2:14, 15.
How, in the face of these texts, particularly those from the New Testament, can any calling themselves Christian assert that polygamy is not expressly forbidden? I have heard people who were not Christians defend polygamy on the ground that it was practised by David and Solomon. These people overlooked the fact that both David and Solomon disobeyed the commandment, although it was especially impressed on the attention of kings. Moses, prophesying of the time when Israel would have a king, gave, by divine command, a special warning to kings to give heed to the law; particularly saying, “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself.” Deut. 17:17. This precept, with many others, was utterly disregarded. David multiplied wives to the number of sixteen, and Solomon to a thousand. But it should be remembered of David that he never transgressed in this way after the awful crime by which he obtained Bathsheba, for which his repentance was bitter and lasting, and his punishment terrible. He never afterward relapsed into sin against the marriage law; and it would be wiser for men to take example from his effectual repentance by which he regained God’s favor, than to excuse crime by the example of his wickedness, by which he risked the destruction of his soul.
As for Solomon, he multiplied adulteries as he did idolatries, so that his later life can be no example to those who wish to please God; but rather a solemn warning to those who may imagine that present wisdom will infallibly secure them against future folly. There is no wisdom save in the way God has set before us, that we should walk in it. As long as we abide therein, all is well; but if we turn aside, our former obedience is nothing; our former wisdom will but the more condemn our departure from the way.
Some people seem to be unable to comprehend the meaning of “concubinage.” They know what is called by that name now, and think that it cannot mean anything else. But the Bible term concubine means simply a wife, a slave wife, or one inferior in rank; but legally a wife, as we may learn from the fact that the man whose concubine she is is called “her husband,” Judges 19:3 and 20:4; he is called the “son-in-law” of his concubine’s father in Judges 19:5; and his concubine’s father is called “his father-in-law” in Judges 19:4, 7, and 9. Moreover, the ten concubines of David, that Absalom took, are called “wives” by the prophet Nathan, speaking the word of the Lord. 2 Sam. 12:11.
The law of God never recognizes any indiscriminate, temporary connection as otherwise than criminal, or any permanent connection otherwise than as marriage. People who honestly intend their union to be permanent are careful to ratify it according to the law of the land they live in. Those who neglect to do this, though human law may not bind them, are responsible under divine law, either as married persons bound by all the duties of marriage, or as criminals guilty of the crime mentioned in Numbers 25:1, and 1 Corinthians 10:8.
In view of the errors so industriously disseminated by the Mormons, and by dissolute, or ignorant, or thoughtless persons, it is an absolute duty to call attention to what the Bible actually does say about this subject. I do not think that any one who reads the Scriptures carefully, and with a mind unbiased by criminal inclinations, can possibly arrive at the conclusion arrived at by the Mormons,—that polygamy is not expressly forbidden by the Holy Scriptures, according to the teaching of Christ. ANTI-MORMON.

BUSINESS HABITS.

The housekeeper who has no business habits makes but a poor appearance beside the one who has them. The latter has a fixed hour and day for every domestic duty; the former has things done when she thinks of it. The one replenishes before an article is exhausted; the other runs round and borrows. The one knows just how long an article ought to last; the other is robbed before her face and eyes. The one makes her “rags” pay for her “tins,” and her grease pay for her soap; the other has to give ready money for both commodities. The one has her house-cleaning done in May; withthe other it always dangles along into July. The one can see a visitor at almost any hour of the day; the other has to hurry and skurry to make herself presentable. The one always has something in reserve if an unexpected guest must be asked to dinner; the other has nothing but an apology. With the one all goes smoothly, noiselessly, pleasantly; with the other the jar is always evident, the house and its mistress and its servants are forever in a snarl. The one has business habits; the other has no habits at all.—Selected.

OUR CASKET.

WHEREVER shame is, there is also fear. Those who are loving and lovable will surely be loved.
MUCH that we lament as change, we find, after thinking closer, is only development.
THEY who true joy would win Must share it; happiness is born a twin.—Byron.
THERE are many men whose tongues might govern multitudes if they could govern their tongues.
THE greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and have it found out by accident.—Lamb.
SILENCE is the perfect herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.—Shakespeare.
PHILOSOPHY triumphs easily enough over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.
To do good to men is the great work of life; to make them true Christians is the greatest good we can do them.
AFFLICTION is the divine school of virtue; it corrects levity, interrupts the confidence of sinning, and purifies the heart.
THERE is in man a higher than love of happiness. He can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.
SHOW me the man who would go to Heaven alone if he could, and I will show you one who will never be admitted there.
NOTHING is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life; nothing is great or desirable if it is off and away from that.
THE mind of youth cannot remain empty; if you do not put into it that which is good, it will gather elsewhere that which is evil.
“WHAT I have known,” says Dr. Priestly, “with respect to myself has tended much to lessen my admiration and my contempt for others.”
FISHERMEN, in order to handle eels securely, cover them with dirt. In like manner does education strive to grasp excellence.—Douglas Jerrold.
It is a row of empty houses that gets all its windows broken; and empty heads and empty hearts, and empty hands, are sure to come to grief.
WE were designed in the cradle, perhaps earlier, and it is in finding out this design, and shaping ourselves to it, that our years are spent wisely.—Lowell.
WRITE it on your heart that every day is the best in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is doomsday.—Emerson.
An irreligious man, a speculative or practical atheist, is as a sovereign who voluntarily takes off his crown and declares himself unworthy to reign.—Blackie.
SELF-LOVE is a medium of a peculiar kind; it magnifies everything which is amiss in others, at the same time that it lessens everything amiss in ourselves.
GRANT me, ever to esteem the wise man as the alone wealthy man; and as for gold, may I possess as much of it as a man of moderate desires may know to use wisely.—Socrates.
An old Hindoo, who had become a Christian, first had a Bible given him and then a clock. Said he: “The clock will tell me how time goes, and the Bible will teach me how to spend it.”

The Salt of the Earth.

By J. O. C.

Our Saviour said to his disciples, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” Every one knows in what the goodness of salt consists. It is valuable for its saving property. When that is gone, it becomes entirely worthless. But it may retain all its strength even, and yet not exercise any saving power. Any one who would pack meat in a barrel, and then place a sack of salt by the side of it, expecting thereby to save it, would be considered insane. With good reason too, you may say; for any one with the slightest knowledge of such things knows that salt placed in that relation to meat could have no effect whatever upon it. Yet there are thousands in the world who are virtually doing the same thing in their Christian experience.
Notwithstanding the Saviour has said of his followers, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” they do not seem to realize that they are to represent him. They seem satisfied to lean on their neighbors and friends without doing them any good.
If there is any point enforced in the language under consideration, it is this, that to be a real disciple of Christ one must exert a saving influence on others. This, however, cannot be done by simply living among them, but only by continual efforts to benefit them. Unselfish efforts to do others good may cost a sacrifice; yet as the salt can only impart its savor by exhausting itself, so it will be finally seen that our goodness consisted only in our willingness to spend and be spent in our Master's service, to save souls unto him. Without this we shall be “good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.” Who will have it said of them, “Ye are the salt of the earth”? J. O. C.
Continue reading: LONG SERMONS