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Review and Herald, Vol. 80, No. 30.

Special Rates on the “GREAT CONTROVERSY.”

Review and Herald

Jul 28, 1903

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 28, 1903

Special Rates on the “GREAT CONTROVERSY.”

To All Members of the Young People’s Societies

All the State Tract Societies have arranged to furnish
Members of the Young People’s Societies
“THE GREAT CONTROVERSY”
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During the period devoted to the coming studies on the Great Controversy between Christ and Satan

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Lessons in the Youth’s Instructor

Beginning August 13, 1903
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State Tract Societies in the United States:

Alabama Tract Society, Atalla, Ala.
Arizona Tract Society, Box 284, Williams, Ariz.
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California Tract Society, 301 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, Cal.
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Chesapeake Tract Society, 903 Woodley Ave., Baltimore, Md.
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Iowa Tract Society, 603 E. 12th St., Des Moines, Ia.
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Nebraska Tract Society, 1505 E St., Lincoln, Neb.
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New Jersey Tract Society, 140 Sheridan Ave., Paterson, N. J.
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North Dakota Tract Society, Box 285, Fargo, N. D.
North Michigan Tract Society, 224 Michigan Ave., Petoskey, Mich.
North Illinois Tract Society, 324 Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill.
Ohio Tract Society, Academia, Ohio.
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South Dakota Tract Society, Box 686, Sioux Falls, S. D.
Superior Tract Society, Marquette, Mich.
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West Pennsylvania Tract Society, 246 W. 23d St., Erie, Pa.
West Virginia Tract Society, 673 Seventh St., Parkersburg, W. Va.
Western Oregon Missionary Society, 201 Second St., Portland, Ore.
Western Washington Tract Society, 309 Second Ave., N., Seattle, Wash.
Wisconsin Tract Society, 203 High St., Oshkosh, Wis.

Societies Outside of the U. S.

British Columbia Tract Society, 609 Gore Ave., Vancouver, British Columbia.
East German Tract Society, Grindelberg 15a, Hamburg, Germany.
Manitoba Tract Society, 438 Selkirk Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Maritime Tract Society, 311 Princess St., St. John, New Brunswick.
New South Wales Tract Society, 56 George St., W., Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Ontario Tract Society, Box 62, Brantford, Ontario.
Queensland Tract Society, The Arcade, Edward St., Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Quebec Tract Society, South Stukely, Quebec.
South African Tract Society, 28a Roeland St., Cape Town, South Africa.
Sweden Tract Society, Kungsgatan 34, Stockholm, Sweden.
Tasmania Tract Society, 198 George St., Launceston, Tasmania.
Victoria Tract Society, 473-481 Bourke St., Melbourne, Australia.
North England Tract Society, 19 Leyton Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, England.
South England Tract Society, 451 Holloway Road, London, N., England.

A Foundation of Faith

By L. A. S.

THE foundation of God's work in the earth is the foundation of faith. By faith, those who have established the enterprises connected with his cause will have moved out in the face of seemingly insuperable obstacles, of worldly opposition, and predictions of defeat by the opponents of the work. They have established enterprises and built them up to a state of prosperity which has attracted the attention and won the confidence of worldly people. But when this stage has been reached, then comes the temptation to conduct the enterprise on a worldly basis, to let it be governed by business considerations, the same as a common worldly enterprise. The danger is an insidious one, which too many fail to discern. When the interests of God's work demand that moves be made which seem foolish from a worldly point of view, many rise up in opposition and predict that such moves must end in disaster because they are not what would be called good business policy. They forget that the enterprises were started in the face of every prospect of failure from a worldly point of view; that people occupying this point of view derided them and predicted their speedy collapse and dissolution. They forget that the enterprises in God's work were not established on a foundation like that of worldly enterprises, but on the foundation of faith. They have proved successful not because probabilities of a worldly sort were in their favor, but because God was back of them, and his power was exercised in their behalf. To shift such an enterprise from this supernatural foundation to the foundation of a worldly enterprise, would certainly be fatal to its success in the work which it was established to do.
L. A. S.

A Testing Time

By L. A. S.

This is the testing time. Every soul is to be tried, and the foundation of every profession will be revealed. The result will show whether that foundation was the word of God, or the word of man—whether the soul was looking unto Jesus, or whether some human example was its guide. In this testing time, “lights that have been admired for their brilliancy will go out in darkness,” and those who have been depending on such lights will be left in darkness by their extinction. Those who have been influenced more in their religious life by the example of men than by the example and precepts of Christ, will have the weakness of their foundation revealed. Because some in high positions do not do right, others will do wrong, and perhaps depart from the faith. Such cases are becoming common. Often we meet with an individual whose faith has become weakened because the conduct of his brethren toward him was unchristian, or because he fancied it was. The next we know of him he has severed his connection with the church, and perhaps joined some of the more popular religious bodies. Because some persons did not treat him well, he has come to the conclusion that the seventh day is not the Sabbath, and that Christ’s return is not imminent. And by this he shows simply that his religious profession, while apparently as sound as any, rested not upon the solid rock of faith in God, but upon that which was earthly and human. We are warned of these days that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” We are prepared to see iniquity in the world, but when it breaks out in the church, how often it takes us by surprise, and we find the foundation of our faith severely shaken. It is iniquity in the church that is especially responsible for the lukewarmness of church-members. We must be prepared for the apostasy of any, even those in whom we have had most confidence. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever, and the faith that rests on him alone can never be shaken. Nor can anything that may come take God by surprise, or affect the triumph of his work; for “the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his.” “Have faith in God.” L. A. S.

The Sabbath a Test

By L. A. S.

As the Sabbath is the sign or memorial of the true God, so also it is a test of man's allegiance to God. By keeping holy the Sabbath of the Lord, men acknowledge him as their God, and testify that his claims are paramount with them to the claims of self and of the world.
The Sabbath commandment is set in the bosom of the decalogue, and he who faithfully observes that commandment will not be found violating other precepts of the moral law. The Sabbath is to-day the chief test of Christianity.
In keeping the Sabbath men are obliged to separate themselves from all that is in opposition to the work of God. They are made to stand inopposition to human traditions, and to keep aloof from the confederacies of men which are so characteristic of these times. There is nothing in common between God's Sabbath and the world. He who observes the Sabbath set apart by the Creator will every week be brought in conflict with the traditions, customs, and institutions of the world. Tradition upholds a rival Sabbath—the first day of the week. Popular custom sets apart that day and sanctions its observance by law. And the federations of men by which the world's activities are largely governed to-day are conducted upon principles and rules altogether at variance with the requirements of the Sabbath commandment.
The Sabbath commandment relates to work and to rest. The greatest problem of the day in civilized lands is the problem of work and rest; but what man has instituted for the solution of this problem is at variance with the law of work and rest ordained by the Creator. In the consideration of the labor problem the obligation of man to the divine law of weekly rest is not taken into account.
No man can belong to a labor union and observe the seventh-day Sabbath. There is not a worldly confederacy of any note to-day which makes any provision for such a religious observance. Their principles are not in harmony with it; neither is any need felt of such a provision; for observers of the true Sabbath feel no inclination to join with these confederacies. By the keeping of the Sabbath they signify that their trust is in God; that they depend wholly upon his arm, and not on the arm of flesh.
Thus at every point the Sabbath becomes a wall of separation between Christians and the world. It is at this day the chief test of an individual's Christianity. In this day the people of God are to be completely separated from the world and its errors, preparatory to the coming of the day of God; and in the Sabbath the means of this separation is provided. The great labor problem of the day will soon involve the question of Sabbath observance; and so fierce will the conflict become on this testing point between Christianity and worldliness that all the power of the world will be arrayed against those in whose lives the Sabbath commandment is honored. But while the Sabbath is a badge which marks its wearer for hatred and opposition in the eyes of the world, it is also a sign of the union with Him who is infinite in power, and who has everlasting victory over the world for all his followers. He who is wise and can see afar off will not shrink from the Sabbath test.
“Let good or ill befall. It must be good for me, Secure of having Thee in all, Of having all in thee.”
L. A. S.

Editorial

By Editor

A New Order of Things

A NEW aspect is coming rapidly over the face of affairs in the world and in the church. We are in a day of rapid changes. Events are shaping for the final conflict. The world has entered the rapids above the falls. A new power has been springing up from beneath and taking hold on all the world's agencies of evil; and on the other hand, a new power and light from above have been coming into the hearts of those who were alive in the cause of God. Of this new order of things the proclamation that “there shall be delay no longer,” and the reorganization that has come, have been the signal in the work of God. The future of this work can not be judged by the past. The facts and figures of previous undertakings furnish no basis on which to estimate the possibilities before us. We know that the work will be finished quickly and cut short in righteousness. To some it has appeared that the past few years have been indicative of a retrogression and falling off in the work; but viewed in the true light, these years have furnished stirring evidence that the final stage of the contest has been reached, and that the end is at hand. Soon, under the divine command, Go forward, God's servants will lighten the world with the final glory of the message. L. A. S.

The Open Door in China

By W. A. S.

It is still true that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. Never, apparently, was there so great a readiness to hear on the part of the Chinese people. In the last Methodist annual report, a presiding elder of a district within the bounds of the terrible Boxer uprising, speaks thus of the present situation:—
In a brief survey of the year, as well as of the work of the district, one is constantly impressed with the results of the convulsion of 1900. The unexpected has happened. The Boxer movement with its persecutions and assassinations struck heathenism in the center of its power one of the heaviest blows it has yet received in China. The irony of fate has shown itself by putting into the hands of the church many of the places where Boxerism during its short day held high carnival. In one larger market town, where the church has a plant, on my last quarterly round it fell to my lot to occupy a room, with its adjoining bedroom, where the Boxer chief had held his court. I slept two nights on the same bed he had used. I held quarterly conference in the rooms where he had tried and condemned Christians because they would not burn incense to idols and worship them; sitting in about the place where he sat, I saw, through the open door directly in front of me, a tree on which hung the heart of one of our local preachers for days; on either side the door were columns supporting the roof of the porch of this building. To these posts the martyrs were tied while waiting to be taken away to execution. I walked along the via dolorosa they traveled to the river bank west of the town, where they met death; some of them by being burned alive, some of them by slow torture, some by beheading, and others by having their hearts torn out of their quivering bodies. There on the banks of that river I saw the bones and skulls of those who had triumphed through great tribulation. But now what has happened? The buildings where these thirty men and women were condemned for believing in the Lord Jesus Christ are now the property of the church, and a cemetery with the graves of these dead and a slab erected to their memory is near at hand, all the gift of the community where these atrocities were committed.
The same is true of other places; the influential men of these places seeking in this way to make reparation for the wrong which they acknowledge was done the church and its people. The crime of 1900 most of the people now confess, and if in wisdom and love we are able to take up the fragments of these societies, reorganize, and prevail on the living to seek by forgiveness of their enemies and fidelity to Christ, to show the power of the Christ life in the heart of the disciple, then we may look for great days in Zion when men shall come crying, “Men and brethren, what must we do to be saved?”
The awful experience has but opened out the door more widely for the speedy evangelization of China. Surely the Lord does not mean that opportunities afforded at such cost—of deaths and sufferings manifold—shall be met by us with hearts unmoved. God is dealing with the world, and preparing the way for a quick work. We must be quick to enter open doors. The effort just begun by us has yielded abundant evidence that God has prepared hearts in China for this last message. Pray that the Lord of the harvest may raise up re-enforcements for the little band of our missionaries in China—a half dozen, facing nearly a third of the world’s population.
W. A. S.

Protestant Tribute to the Papacy

By L. A. S.

A FORTNIGHT ago it was newspaper comment that all the world was watching at the bedside of a dying pope. To-day, all the world is pronouncing eulogies upon the departed pontiff. And in this respect, it is hardly possible to distinguish between Catholics and Protestants.
Have Protestants of this day forgotten why they are Protestants? If they have not, why do they give utterance to eulogies the benefit of which is derived not by the dead pope, but by the papacy, of which he was the head?
For in such a matter it is impossible to separate Leo the man from Leo the Roman pontiff. It is impossible to separate the head of the papacy from the body of the papacy. If Leo was, as Protestants now vie with one another in saying, a saintly man, inspired with a broad love for humanity, then, as certainly as ever two things were related to each other, it follows that the papacy is a saintly system, devised for the welfare of humanity, instead of that which Protestants have heretofore declared it to be. It is impossible to imagine a saint rising to pre-eminence through a system of iniquity, and finally standing at the head of and administering such a system throughout the world.
If the papacy is a Christian system, Protestants have no right to call themselves such; for why should there be any protest against Christianity? If the Catholic Church is Christian, why were there ever any Protestant churches? They could have originated only through the terrible blunder of their founders; for that which separates from Christianity thereby makes itself unchristian. To eulogize the papacy is to proclaim one's self without excuse for having separated from the papacy. Many Protestants are proclaiming to-day that they have no excuse for a church relationship separate from Rome.
But there was a cause for that separation, and no blunder was made in bringing that separation about. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate,” is the admonition of God to his people. God's followers are to be separate from the world. When worldliness gets into the church, it can sometimes be driven out by the reconversion or disciplining of those affected by it. Aleaking ship can sometimes be pumped out so as to be in a serviceable condition. But when the leak gets beyond control, the ship is doomed, and the only thing to be done by those on board is to get away from the ship.' A totally different course of action becomes necessary then from that called for while the prospect of saving the ship remained.
Luther and his co-laborers at first thought to reform the church. They would save the church by getting the worldliness out of it. But they soon found that worldliness occupied the seat of authority and power, that it governed and directed the affairs of the church, and that instead of being in a position to be cast out, it was in a position to cast them out. They found that there was no hope of reforming and saving the church, and that it only remained for those who desired to worship God in spirit and in truth to separate themselves from the church, and become an independent religious body. Thus a new Christian church arose, taking its name from the protest made by its members against papal errors and delusions. But in time the spirit of the papacy, which is only the spirit of every carnal heart, crept into the new church, and under its influence the human became more and more substituted for the divine, until the traditions of men rather than the living Word of God was made the foundation of belief and practice. Then another separation from the papacy became necessary, and a new church arose, distinguished from the others by its allegiance to the Word of God as constituting the sole foundation of Christian faith.
It was in this way that Seventh-day Adventists have been called out from the popular churches with which they were formerly identified. The controversy between them and the churches they have left is over the question of the supremacy of the Word of God. That Word teaches the binding obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath, the nearness of Christ's second advent, and the unconsciousness of the dead, which important doctrines, with others that might be named, have been made void in the churches through human traditions. Thus there is in these churches a modified form of the papacy, differing from the Roman papacy only in name and in the extent of development of the papal principle of the substitution of the human in the place of the divine.
The term “papacy” is from the word “papa,” from which also comes the word “pope,” signifying a system of church government characterized by the supremacy of one man over the rest, he being to them as a father to his children. Christians are expressly enjoined to call no man their father or their master in spiritual things, since they have but one Father, who is in heaven, and one Master, who is Christ. By the word of these alone are they to be guided in the way of life.
With this evil principle which puts man into the place of God there can be no compromise. Of the system which is built upon it nothing good can be said. There is no good in it, but evil only. Always, everywhere, and in every way it is opposed to the highest and most sacred interests of humanity. Its purpose is to thwart God's work for human salvation, by leading men to look to and trust in that from which no salvation can come. The papacy is the great world enemy of liberty, civil and religious. It is a monster, crimsoned with the blood of millions of righteous men.
Popes and prelates die, but the papacy survives. It is not a man, nor a company of men, but a system. What we say of the papacy we say of no man, but of the system which is the enemy of all men, Catholics and Protestants alike. It is sad indeed that men of distinguished ability, as was Leo XIII, will devote their lives to the extension of such a system in the earth. The death of one so misguided is a mournful tragedy, not because of the good of his life work, but because that work was evil.
To-day “all the world wonders after the beast”—all save the few who realize that there is no salvation in human traditions, wisdom, and authority, but only in the Word of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And God's message to the world to-day, in view of this, is: “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.” “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen; . . . come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
L. A. S.

The Spirit of Inquiry

By W. A. S.

ONE of the cheering signs of the times is the growth of a spirit of earnest inquiry among multitudes. While the great public may be more than ever wrapped up in worldly affairs, the Spirit of God is manifestly leading many to ask, as in that prophecy of this latter time, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” The question is repeated, as though to emphasize the earnestness of the plea.
And the answer of the watchman is an encouragement to the inquiring soul: “The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come.” This spirit of inquiry is of God, that honest souls may be prepared for the issues of this new time. At the early meetings this year I heard numbers of our brethren and sisters say that there seems to be a reviving of interest to learn about the truth in their neighborhoods. People who heard of it years ago, and decided that they would have none of it, are now inquiring about the reasons of our faith. Many are asking “the way to Zion with their faces thitherward.” We meet it on every side. It is God’s signal to every believer to tell out the stirring truth that the great day of God is at hand. Many a neighbor who before was indifferent will be glad now to have just such simple Bible readings as any Seventh-day Adventist may give. Let us sound the keynote by word and by literature on the right hand and on the left, in season and out of season.
W. A. S.

Labor Unions and the Government

By L. A. S.

The question whether the laws of labor unions shall be held superior to the laws of Congress has come up for settlement at the seat of the national government. Recently a foreman in the government printing office was dismissed by Public Printer Palmer because he was not a member in good standing of the book binders’ union. He took his case to President Roosevelt, and the president has reinstated him. The labor unions have for some years been accustomed to control the employment of labor in the government printing office, and it had come to be taken for granted that a word from them was sufficient to insure the discharge from the government employ of any person not to their liking. President Roosevelt, however, evidently conceives that the civil service is regulated by a higher law than the dictum of labor unions, and has given expression to this fact by setting the labor union mandate aside. “President Roosevelt’s attitude, that the laws of the United States are superior to the laws of labor unions,” says a Washington dispatch, “has somewhat surprised many members of the unions.”
The country has become accustomed to contests between union labor and individual capitalists or private corporations, but a struggle between union labor and the government is a new thing in the United States. Yet such a contest is bound to come, for the unions will encroach more and more on the prerogatives of the government until the point is reached where the question of supremacy between them must be settled. Few strikes have occurred as yet in the government printing office, but it is stated on authority that “it has required all the ingenuity and diplomacy of the public printer to prevent them.” A strike of serious magnitude is contemplated now, and will probably occur unless President Roosevelt consents to the redischarge of the foreman in question;for the labor unions have not by any means accepted the president’s action as a ready settlement of the matter. They are determined that the affair shall be settled according to their wishes.
The serious nature of a great strike when it occurs in a department of the government will be readily perceived. The plants of private corporations may be shut down indefinitely without serious inconvenience to the public; even a serious curtailment of the output from the coal mines can be endured. But not so with the government. Its departments must go on, or general derangement of business, and anarchy, will quickly follow. What would happen if, for example, a strike should for a long time suspend operations in the bureau of engraving and printing, where the money of the government and the postage stamps are issued? Yet it is in the power of the unions to shut down this department of the government.
With reference to the present situation a member of the president’s cabinet is quoted as saying: “Owing to the attitude of labor, it was deemed best that the president should make it plain that the national laws must govern. . . . Lately there has been a disposition on their part to interfere with the affairs of certain departments, and if this tendency is not checked, the government probably would be handicapped.” And a very serious handicap it would be, he might truthfully have added.
When labor unions can dictate the employment of labor in the departments of the government, they will have gone a long way toward running those departments, and thus of running the government. A moment’s thought will show that this must be so. We shall then have in the place of a popular government, a government by labor unions. At the least calculation these unions will exert an influence upon the government tremendously out of proportion to what the system of popular government entitles them; for they will interfere directly with the working of its departments, in addition to what each member of the unions can do by his vote, and what the unions can do by their influence in politics. Such an undue influence will be against free government, and subversive of it.
The government will not, of course, feel that it can tolerate a suspension of business in any of its departments through a strike of its employees, and it will adopt stringent measures to terminate such a strike when one occurs. Either the demands of the strikers will be quickly acceded to, or their places will be filled and work resumed at any cost. It is not anticipated, of course, that there will be serious trouble; it is not anticipated that the labor unions will be likely to ask better terms of the government than the liberal ones its employees already obtain. But it is human nature to ask more and more, and never to feel that the compensation received is quite enough; and we may expect that this quality will be made as evident in the future as it has been in the past. Experience shows that the more power an organization has to enforce its demands, the greater its demands will be.
The Washington telegram referred to states that “the union will present a strong appeal to the president to rescind his order and dismiss Miller [the obnoxious foreman]. The understanding is that if the president does not pursue the course which the union feels he will, it will then be for the bookbinders to decide whether they will go on strike or not.” Just now, “the advisability and practicability of a strike at the government printing office is seriously questioned, in view of its far-reaching effects.”
This is one of the things which is today causing “distress of nations, with perplexity.” L. A. S.

Note and Comment

By Editor

As substantiating what is said on another page about the Protestant world making obeisance to the papacy, we quote a few paragraphs from two papers we have had occasion to examine, one The Catholic Mirror, the other the New York Sun. Very many other papers have spoken to the same effect. The Mirror makes note as follows:—
Perhaps the most remarkable thing in connection with the pope’s illness, more so even than the vitality which has enabled the venerable pontiff to rally at critical periods, has been the outburst of genuine sympathy and sincere affection and admiration which has come from men of all creeds and of none in all parts of the world.
A few days ago we read that the Methodists in camp-meeting at Ocean Grove, N. J., had prayed for the recovery of Pope Leo, whom they eulogized in glowing terms. On last Sunday prayers were offered for him in many non-Catholic churches in all parts of this country. In some he was made the subject of pulpit eulogy, and many were the tributes paid to him, and indirectly to the grandeur of the organization of which he is the head. The mere fact of the existence of a feeling which in this country makes it possible for a Protestant ministry to pay tribute to the virtues and ability of a Roman Catholic pope is the most striking tribute to the beneficent character of the influence exercised on religion and humanity by the dying Leo that it would be possible to find. It is a far cry from the shouts of “antichrist” to panegyrics of “Leo the Good.”
The Sun observes:—
On Sunday prayers for the dying pope were offered up in several Protestant churches of whose services we have particular reports, and, probably, in many more. . . . They were indicative of a change in the attitude of Protestantism toward the Roman Catholic Church, which is one of the most remarkable religious developments of recent years. Even not more than a quarter of a century ago that church, by far the greatest in Christendom, was usually excluded from consideration by Protestants when they were discussing the means and agencies for the propagation of Christianity. The article on the pope in the Westminster Confession, in which he was described as “that antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition,” represented the prevailing Protestant belief.
Twenty-five years before, this whole country had been stirred by a political agitation against the Roman Catholic Church, which seemed to some prophets ominous of a religious war. That church, then comparatively feeble, has now grown into the strongest in the republic, yet, instead of the bitterness of hostility against it proclaimed and predicted by the old Know-Nothingism, there have come harmony and respect. In Protestant churches prayers were offered up for the suffering and dying pope. The Roman pontiff has become a Christian brother, and Protestants join with Catholics in celebrating the spiritual exaltation of his character, and the services he has rendered to Christianity. He was described by a Methodist preacher of New York on Sunday as “a leader of the great army of the Lord’s hosts,” a “spiritual commander-in-chief,” a “champion of the faith who has never wavered from the Catholic position and the theology of Thomas Aquinas,” “who has done much for the progress of civilization.”
Such a tribute to a pope from a Protestant pulpit would have been impossible when Leo XIII ascended the papal throne. The bitterness of the old Protestant controversy, as expressed in the article of the Westminster Confession to which we have referred, had been moderated even then, but it had not been mitigated to an extent which would have made possible such expressions in a Methodist pulpit, or in any other Protestant pulpit.

A True Sense of Proportion

DON’T make too much of trifles. Strive to acquire that true sense of proportion which will save you from mistaking molehills for mountains, or mountains for molehills. In other words, strive to discern what are the things of real importance in this life, that you may devote your time and energies to that which will count most in the end. It is great gain to be freed from the thousand vexations, annoyances, and worries that would naturally come to us if our eyes and hopes were not fixed on the higher things of Christianity. Christianity saves us from these vexations, not by preventing the things that would cause them, but by delivering us from the feelings which they stir up in the natural heart; by anointing our eyes so that we discern that these things are not mountains, but molehills. It is a sad thing for Christians to waste their nervous energy and shorten their lives over the “light afflictions” which are as nothing in comparison with the abiding realities of the kingdom of God.

Two Prayers

By Myra G. Plantz

One cried in earnest, pleading prayer: “Lord, take the burdens from my heart; Lift from my brow its crown of care, Take from the rose its stinging smart. Choose not the lonely, rugged way By dark Gethsemane for me; But lead me gently, day by day, In pleasant pathways up to thee!”
Another voiced his soul in prayer: “Lord, take no burdens that are best; For while my brow is worn with care, My spirit finds in thee sweet rest. Some souls but dimly see the light, Let me their loving helper be; And give me strength to climb the height That leads at last to love and thee!”
One lost his burdens, and repined In idleness, unloved, unsought, And learned the rose with thorn entwined Is sweeter than to cherish naught. One found in duty highest meed, While unseen angels near him trod; An almoner for souls in need, He passed through human love to God.
— Myra G. Plantz, in Christian Advocate.
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