A GREAT many people who would be shocked at the suggestion that they are infidels, imagine that faith is entirely consistent with a disbelief of many of the records of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament. They think that they believe the gospel, yet they make no scruple of pulling the Old Testament record of that gospel to pieces. There are many portions of the Bible that they are very doubtful about; and as for the story of Jonah, and the account of the flood, they can scarcely have patience with anyone who professes to believe them. The Bible account of the creation of the earth they regard as at the best only a beautiful fable.
Can one believe the gospel and disbelieve the Old Testament? Let us see. The apostle Peter speaks about the salvation of our souls, and says: "Of which salvation the prophets inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them which have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." 1 Peter 1: 10-12.
Read the above text carefully, and you will see that it states that the prophets of old ministered the very same things that are announced by those who preach the gospel. Then the prophets must have written the gospel. When Peter was preaching Christ in the house of Cornelius, he said, "To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins." Acts 10: 43. And the apostle Paul said: "Having therefore obtained the help that is from God, I stand unto this day testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses did say should come; how that Christ must suffer, and how that he first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the gentiles." Acts 22: 22, 23, R. V. Therefore whoever says that the Old Testament does not contain the gospel, says that the apostle Paul did not preach the gospel.
Suppose the position be taken that the story of the creation, and of the fall of man, is only a fable. If that were so, then there would be no gospel at all. For if there were no fall of man, there need be no redemption. So that if the account of the fall were imaginary, then we have the entire gospel built on a fable, which would make it also a fable. And, besides, if the story of creation and the fall of man be a fable, how can we know that the whole Bible is not the same? We must either accept the whole Bible, or reject it all. We cannot pull it into pieces.
Take the account of the prophet Jonah. Many people would feel almost insulted if it were intimated that they were so simple as to believe it. They say that it never really happened; that the great fish never swallowed Jonah, and that it would have been impossible for him to live three days in its belly. But Christ said, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Matt. 12: 40. Now if Jonah was never in the whale's belly, and could not have been, then we have the Saviour likening his death and resurrection to an impossibility. Therefore to deny the story of Jonah is to deny the foundation of the gospel.
It will not do in this case to say, as so many of the "higher critics" do, that the Saviour spoke of the things that were currently reported among the Jews as illustrations, taking the people on their own grounds without stopping to explain that those things were really fables. If the story were not true, the Lord knew it; yet he said that just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale, so he should be in the heart of the earth. If the story of Jonah were not true, then we have Christ saying that he would not be in the heart of the earth at all. Is it not better to believe a thing that we cannot understand, than to throw away the entire gospel? Who dare say that it is of no importance whether or not we believe all the records of the Old Testament?
The saddest part of this matter is that the people have not been led into this loose way of regarding the Bible by professed infidels, but by professed ministers of the gospel. It is they who are responsible for the current of unbelief that is carrying so many away. Indeed, one can scarcely pick up a religious journal without seeing more or less about the controversy that is now going on over the Bible. There is a controversy, for there are many ministers who stand for the truth of the Bible; yet there are so many ministers of high standing and influence who seem to be actuated by intense fear that the people will really believe too much of the Bible, that it is necessary to raise a voice of warning. We need not pass sentence of condemnation upon those ministers, but simply warn the people to beware of them as false teachers.
LESSONS FROM THE FLOOD.
We have just seen a sermon on the flood which, instead of seeking to strengthen the faith of the weak, is almost wholly devoted to an attempt to prove that there never was any such thing. Here are some of the statements. We give them because doubts in regard to the flood are becoming quite common. The preacher says: "No student of science is able to believe that any such flood as that recorded in the early chapters of Genesis ever took place in the history of the human race."
"We are not to take the account of the deluge for history infallibly inspired and rigidly accurate in all its details." "That view," he tells us, "is no longer held by persons of ordinary education." How easy it is to brush aside a proposition with the statement that no one of ordinary education believes it. A false fear of being called ignorant is at the bottom of a large part of the infidelity of these days.
But what about the flood? May we throw it aside as a myth, and still hold fast our faith in the gospel, and in the Bible in general? Let us see. Christ used the flood and its time as an illustration of the last days. "As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all." Luke 17: 26, 27. In the book of Hebrews we are informed who the "all" were who were destroyed by the flood: "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Heb. 11: 7. It was the world that was condemned by the preaching of Noah, because they did not believe it; and it was the world that was destroyed by the flood. Christ in person, and also through his chosen apostle, bears witness to this.
Again, the flood is put in the same list as the creation of the world and the general judgment. The apostle Peter says that they who scoff at the promise of the coming of the Lord are willingly ignorant of the fact that "by the word of the Lord the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." 2 Peter 3: 5-7. Whoever discounts the story of the flood, thereby discounts the story of creation, and also the promise of the coming of the Lord to judge the world. The same word that brought the flood upon the earth, created the earth, and will make it new again. The Scriptures, from Moses onward, testify of Christ, and they cannot be rejected without rejecting Christ.
Still further; if the story of the flood is a myth, then there is no comfort in the gospel. It is upon that fact, and the things connected with it, that the Lord gives us assurance that he will not forget us. Speaking to Jerusalem which is above, and is the mother of us all, which is now desolate, mourning the absence of her children, God says: "For this is as the waters of Noah unto me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee." Isa. 54: 9. Her joy and glory will be the restoration of her children, by the salvation of the righteous; therefore the assurance that God will save his people is no greater than6the assurance that there was a flood in the days of Noah. "As I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee." But if there were no flood, then the Lord did not swear that the waters of the flood should no more go over the earth; and so in that case we have no assurance that he will remember to save his people.
Again, we read the words of inspiration through the apostle Peter: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; . . . the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." 2 Peter 2: 4-9. If the Lord did that, he knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations; but if he did not do that, what then?—The only conclusion is that he does not know how to deliver the godly out of temptations. And so those who deny the story of the flood throw away all the consolations of the gospel.
More might be said in the same line, but this is sufficient to show that no one can lightly deny any part of the sacred record. It all stands or falls together. No, that is not correct; it all stands together; it does not fall, notwithstanding the assaults of men. "Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven." Ps. 119: 89. "Thy word is true from the beginning; and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever." Verse 160. We have written this to call attention to what is involved in setting aside any portion of the Bible, and to enable the reader more clearly to see that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. 3: 16, 17. It is all profitable, and all necessary.
A DANGER TO THE REPUBLIC.
By Converted Catholic
THE compulsory submission of Archbishop Corrigan to the authority of Monsignor Satolli, the papal delegate, is the most striking manifestation of the power of the Roman Church in this country that has yet appeared. The pope of Rome is lord and master of all who believe in him as the vicar of Christ, and Satolli is the pope's alter ego in the United States—lord and master of every Roman Catholic in our great republic. Until he forced Archbishop Corrigan to cry for pardon and mercy, people were at liberty to question the extent of Satolli's power. Now all must admit that his authority in the United States is supreme.
Nothing like this manifestation of the Roman power has ever before been witnessed in this country. To find a parallel we must go to Europe and to the middle ages, when emperors as well as bishops bowed beneath the yoke of the popes. History is full of instances where the supreme rule of the popes was manifested from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. The Emperor Henry IV. at Canossa, kneeling before Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII., and in penitential garb craving absolution and mercy, is only one of many striking pictures illustrating this formidable power.
The right to despose kings and other rulers, and release their subjects from all allegiance, has not only been claimed by the popes and embodied in the canon law of the Roman Church, but it has been exercised many times, and the civil power had to yield to the authority of the pontiff. The canon law of the church is as binding to-day as it ever has been, and the execution of its decrees is suspended only in cases where through adverse circumstances it cannot be carried out. If the pope of Rome should issue a decree releasing his subjects—all the Roman Catholics—in this country from their allegiance to the republic, he could enforce it by excommunication and interdict, and compel them at the peril of eternal damnation to execute his orders. That is the canon law and theology of the Roman Catholic Church. Such an order, however, will not be issued until the Romans are so entrenched in power that they will seem to be the defenders of the liberties of the country. The work will be done in secret when Americans are unprepared.
PARADISE RESTORED.
By H. A. St. John
BY ELDER H. A. ST. JOHN.
WHEN Adam and Eve passed out of Paradise, they bade it a long and sad farewell, and after a time it passed from sight if not from memory. The only gleam of light that came to them as giving hope of a possible return was the somewhat obscure yet intensely interesting promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. We fancy that when Eve gave birth to her first-born son, she clasped him to her bosom with maternal love, augmented with the hope that this was the promised Seed that would lead them back in some way to their Eden home. This seems at least to be hinted at, if not indicated, by the fact that she called his name Cain, which means, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." If such was her fond hope, she was doomed to a most bitter disappointment, for he became a murderer, and only took a long step farther away from their former Eden home of purity and peace.
Generation after generation came and passed away, but the promised Seed did not appear among men. But that first promise of a conquering Seed was not allowed to lose its luster, but its light was increased and intensified from time to time by additional rays from the throne of the Eternal Father, through human oracles, his holy prophets. At last the long-promised and long-looked-for Seed came. He was born in Bethlehem, and the loving Father above said to his mother, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus," and so they did.
It is a central truth that, ever since Paradise was lost to the human race, the only hope held out by the Creator to the teeming millions of earth's inhabitants of a return to the perfect bliss of Paradise restored was through this Seed of the woman, the Second Adam, yea, the divine Son of God. The first time that the word "paradise" is mentioned in the New Testament is by the Promised One, the Lord Jesus, amid the agonies of the cross, in the promise made to the penitent thief, "Verily I say unto you to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." He was the first and only one born of woman that could truthfully make a promise of admission through his guidance and leadership to Paradise.
The reader will see at once that this promise of Christ forever settles the question as to the existence and preservation of Paradise. Now we know that Paradise is somewhere. It was not destroyed by the flood—it is certainly not upon the earth—and as it has been removed, the question recurs, Where is it? The first promise of Christ relating to Paradise was made to only one person, the penitent thief. But later the same promise was made to all overcomers. Said Jesus, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." The tree—the same tree of life—is in the same Paradise, awaiting the overcomer.
The apostle Paul in holy vision was caught up to the third heaven, Paradise. Hence we learn that Paradise is in heaven—in the third heaven. Certainly we are learning the whereabouts of Paradise, and this is not all. We have learned that the tree of life is in the midst of Paradise, and in the last chapter in the Bible we are informed by the Lord Jesus that the river of life is there, and also the throne of God and of the Lamb. Besides we are told that they are all in the New Jerusalem. Hence we have now found that it is indeed a blessed truth that God did preserve a portion of his original beautiful creation intact from the curse, that Paradise is now in heaven, that it is, or is in, the Holy City so graphically described in the book of God, and to its glories sinful men are invited. The conditions of admission will next claim our attention.
ASK THE LORD FOR WHAT YOU NEED.
By William Covert
BY ELDER WILLIAM COVERT.
ONLY He that created can be the rightful owner; the One who created all things must therefore be the possessor of all things. But much of what the Creator has put in this world was placed here for the benefit of man. Notwithstanding the fact that the accessible bounties of nature were intended for man, yet it is for his best good that man should ask for what he needs before appropriating these benefits for himself.
Are not valuable things worth asking for? What person with any degree of politeness would feel free to go to his generous neighbor's premises and help himself without first asking for privileges? Will he not also thank him for the favors which are granted?
But suppose that the one to be benefited did not know just where the thing he needed was to be found, and that he would not know the thing that he wanted if he should see it, would it not be quite essential for his success to make his requests known to him who was proprietor of all? Everyone can see that it would be far better for the needy one to communicate freely with his benefactor.
If it is to man's advantage in case of need to become acquainted and commune with the liberal among men, how much more is it for his best good to let his requests be made known to God before presuming to help himself to his bounties. How can man know what to ask for until he learns what the Lord has in store for him? But he cannot know, without an acquaintance with the Lord, what wonderful treasures are to be freely given to those who will freely and thankfully receive them.23The Lord wants to give his blessing away. He desires to give the very best things that he has in his treasures. It is his joy to point out that which is the very best for the suppliant, and then to urge him to take it free of cost. None are turned away empty. He says, "Him that cometh to me I will in nowise cast out." If he requires importunity, it is only because he has a rich blessing to bestow, which he desires shall do the most possible good to the receiver. It makes no difference how many are the wants nor what the perplexities, he wants to alleviate them all. It is often best for the petitioner to earnestly plead for what he needs, that he may become acquainted with its value.
The Lord wants man to believe that he wants to bestow his blessings upon him. If man's request is in harmony with his own best good, and there is no doubt at all in his heart about his receiving an answer, he shall have whatsoever he prays for. Mark 11: 23. In fact, that which is of the greatest consequence to man of all the gifts which God has to bestow upon him, can be received only through the avenue of faith. "Therefore I say unto you, That what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." The sweetest and the most important gift to man is the forgiveness of sins. Not only so, but it is the gift which the Lord is most anxious to find an opportunity to bestow.
That man may be encouraged to ask for this through confession, the Lord has caused it to be written: "I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." Ps. 32: 5. And again, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1: 9. Such positive assurance concerning things so great in value to man should fill his heart to overflowing, and cause his life to be enriched with deeds of love to others. "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." This love will be manifesting itself in love, because it is always active when it comes from the Lord. It is unselfish, and is ready to freely give when it has so freely received.
God bestows his bounties most fully upon those who become most liberal in distributing to others. Do not be afraid to ask of the Lord, thinking that there is danger of exhausting his resources, for giving does not impoverish him, nor withholding enrich him. Therefore, ask for all you need; for the admonition is to pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks.
Burlington, Vt.
NOTES FROM FRANCE.
By H. P. Holser
BY PASTOR H. P. HOLSER.
LAST night was almost a sleepless one for Nîmes, a city of Southern France, with a population of 65,000. The streets resounded with shouting, singing, laughing, and clatter of wooden soles of the constantly passing and half-drunken crowds. At intervals, hundreds of bombs were exploded, and fireworks displayed. The city is gay with Russian and French flags.
The occasion of all this was the Franco-Russian fête. What took place in this city doubtless occurred all over France. The nation seemed to be almost wild over the event. The celebration of the Fourth of July in America is a tame event compared with this.
The climax of these festivities will be reached in Paris, where the Russian guests will be given a banquet. At the close of the banquet 15,000 rockets will ascend and 320 heavy bombs explode. A building 250 feet long, planked by two pyramids 80 feet high, composed entirely of fireworks, will be consumed. In the center is a triumphal arch, surrounded by a colossus, holding commingled the French and Russian colors.
The displays on this occasion are to exceed anything of the kind that has taken place for twenty years. Souvenirs of the event will be struck, and the Russian guests loaded with presents, while a movement is on foot to make the czar a present of an Eifel Tower made of diamonds, costing half a million francs. It is doubtful, however, that the latter will succeed. At Toulon, also, the war harbor of France, where the Russian fleet of gunboats will maneuver, great festivities take place.
But why such a wonderful display, and such a lavish waste of means, when the masses are in misery and struggling for an existence? It is to strengthen the alliance between France and Russia, and to make uncomfortable and to scare the nations composing the Triple Alliance, especially Germany. France can never get over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. As a Frenchman remarked the other day, "If Germany had asked a few millions more, and not taken this territory, we would soon have forgotten it, but her act in taking a part of our country, always remains in our hearts." Instead of dying out, the desire to regain the lost territory is rather increasing, especially since the alliance with Russia. There is little doubt that France will improve the first opportunity to gain her end.
The great powers of Europe are now arrayed on two sides, and the relations are such that all might be easily embroiled in difficulty. The conditions exist, everything seems ready, and the constant wonder is how peace is still maintained. It is not so much the strained relation between the nations that makes the situation dangerous, but it is the critical internal state of nearly every nation of Europe.
If the nations do not soon have war with one another, they surely will at home, for the present state of the masses is unbearable, and, instead of growing better, becomes worse every year. And should war come, at home or abroad, it will not improve but only deepen the misery.
Thus, even from the human standpoint, there seems to be nothing but destruction in the future. And this is just what prophecy indicates. For years we have been expecting what we now see,—the nations ripening for the battle of the great day; the signs indicated by the prophecy, showing the great event to be at our very doors, are before our eyes. The moment that God's work in the earth is finished, the winds of war will be held by unseen hands no longer, and the closing struggle will be precipitated. Our only safety is in being constantly in a state of preparation to cross probation's line, "for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."
Nîmes, France, October 15, 1893.
THE "PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS."
By V. D. Manet
VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF SCRIPTURE.
BY V. D. MANET.
It is something of an astounding nature that anyone familiar with the word of God, and at the same time professing subjection to that word, could even for an instant persuade himself it were right to aid in the construction of the pantheon of unbelief last week erected at Chicago, under the specious title of the "Parliament of Religions." The majority of the believers in Christ and his gospel have been so amazed and dazed at the proposition that they have hardly ventured to argue a subject which seems so monstrous and unreal. The actual convening of such a congress was too much like holding a Christian convention for universal Christian divorce or world-wide Bible burning. It was hardly taken seriously. But as some of the hierophants of the new style of ecumenical council requested prayer to the God of the Bible for its success, a reference to the word and testimony of God may be in order.
The first parliament of religions known to sacred history was held in the green pastures and by the still waters of Eden Park, near the sources of the Euphrates. It appears to have been a summer school of religious-philosophy. It was apparently honored by the presence of at least one great intellect, who promised intellectual growth to the rest.
The best people on earth were in attendance, and took part in the discussion of the interesting question raised as to the veracity24of Jehovah. The views of the higher critics of the time prevailed, and a new style of religion would undoubtedly have succeeded the ancient creed of the race at once, had not the owner of the park refused to tolerate the "parliament" on the premises.
Another parliament of beliefs and sacrifices was projected by a leading agriculturist and prominent citizen of the "outsider" class in Mesopotamia. This failed, owing to the refusal of God and good men to have anything to do with it. The projector afterwards indicated the nature of the liberality and charity animating his religion by martyring the good man who refused to aid him in laying the corner-stone of a pantheon of liberal belief.
There does not seem to have been any parliament of religions in the ark. The believers in such novelties all failed for some reason to engage passage in time.
The modern congress of creeds will have to get along without any authentic representation of the antediluvian faiths, save the time-honored consensus of belief of Noah and his family. If Ham had his "honest doubts," or Shem evolved any religious shams of the Buddhistic, or Brahmanic, or Theosophic, or Mormonistic order from the inner depths of his "verifying faculty," it is not a matter of record.
But if the people fresh from the ark failed to hold a free thinkers' convention at the foot of Mt. Ararat, the people fresh from the house of bondage did not fail to convene a parliament that honored idolatry at the very foot of Mt. Sinai, while the lightnings and thunders of God were condemning idolatry at the top of the mount.
That Egyptian cult (don't spell it colt, Mr. Printer, it was a calf) was represented in a golden god, before which the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bowed down and said, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!" The liberal and intellectual Aaron, as an advanced thinker, saw the necessity of preserving a niche for Jehovah in the Egyptian pantheon, and tried to stem the tide of idolatry by shouting, as he built an altar to the golden calf, "To-morrow is a feast to Jehovah!" But that lip service was all the honor Jehovah had in the Sinaitic parliament of religions. The people simply repeated their ascription of praise to Apis, and it was found by Aaron, as by many a popular prelate since, that it is easier to unchain the tiger of unbelief than to guide him into the paths of sweetness by a hurried whisper as he rushes on his prey. God knew how to deal with the synod of Sinai and Egypt. He sent Moses with a scourge of steel to whip it out of the sacred precincts, saying: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."
The sole and only parliament of religion which any true representative of Jehovah seems to have called, according to Bible testimony, was that arranged by the prophet Elijah, between himself and the prophets of Baal. The circumstances under which this was called, and the method of conducting it, are extremely significant. It was a time when Israel had been afflicted with three years of drought for idolatry. They were to be brought to repentance by seeing that the God of Israel, and not the gods of Phoenicia, held the power of heaven and earth. Elijah, by the Spirit, assembled the prophets of Baal and overthrew them. He met them with ridicule and not with honor and fellowship. He poured contempt upon their gods before Israel and the sun, and extirpated idol worship from the nation in one day. Would he have wrought this miracle of transformation had he parleyed and dissimulated with those priests of Satan, and divided Jehovah's honor with Baal?—Certainly not. Elijah understood that the first duty of religion was to honor the first commandment, and not to dishonor it.
Passing over some interesting parts of Old Testament Scripture, showing God's disfavor to religious parliaments in the sense of the Chicago Broad-church, of "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord," do we find the New Testament in any-wise more "liberal" on this all-important subject? To use a cant term of the neologists, is the Christocentric view different in any degree from the deocentric view as respects sharing God's glory with the gods of paganism, or of civilized imagination?—Most assuredly not. Peter proposed a camp meeting parliament, in the name of Christ himself, on Hermon; that was rebuked, because it divided Christ's honor with that of Moses and Elijah. The God who would not allow Moses to honor the followers of Apis, or Elijah to fellowship the followers of Baal, would not even allow Moses and Elijah to honor themselves by being the second and third persons of a trinity of dwellers in tents on Mt. Hermon. God looked down from the glorious windows of his palace in the skies to say to the proposer of such a division of religious honors: "There is only One to regard and build for. That is my beloved Son. It is attention to him only that can please the Father of lights." And so, though Moses and Elijah had been talking in glory about the crucifixion itself, they faded away from the presence of God's Son, and the disciples found themselves with "Jesus only." The Christ of God will not divide honors with those who receive him, much less with those who neglect or reject him.
There were abundant opportunities to hold parliaments of religion, and compromise the honor of Christ, in apostolic days, but no such gatherings were held. Peter at Pentecost might have had a few "appropriate remarks" from some representative of Roman theology, or Grecian rationalism, or from some Jewish proselyte or Sadducean free thinkers, but he let no one be named or heard but Jesus Christ. His watchword constantly before unbelievers or opposers was: "There is no other name; there is salvation in no other."
Paul, too, had opportunities to put Christ on the same platform with Jupiter at Lystra, with Diana at Ephesus, with the whole Greek pantheon at Athens, but he exalted Christ alone. He was mocked and mobbed for refusing to compliment false and idolatrous faiths, and for adhering to the gospel in its exclusiveness and purity. The philosophers and rationalizers of the day called him a babbler, a madman, a pestilent and a seditious fellow, and said he was not fit to live.
Had he used religious language in a "parliamentary sense," he might have been a Socrates or Confucius, but he never would have founded the glorious church of Jesus Christ, or have written the epistles of the New Testament, or have led millions of souls to everlasting glory across the flood. The wisdom of this world was nothing to Paul. He looked only to the teaching and guidance and blessing of the Spirit of Christ.
All true workers for Jesus have walked in his path. Polycarp refused to offer one grain of incense to an idol. Luther abhorred the folly of Melanchthon in offering to compromise with Rome on the twin conditions of communion in two kinds, and clerical marriage, or on any conditions. Calvin, Knox, Bunyan, Wesley, and Spurgeon spurned the idea of lowering the cross of Christ to the level of the pope's toe or the hoof of the infidel. Imagine those mighty men entering the "Parliament of Religions" at Chicago. Imagine the entrance of the martyrs, who clasped their flaming fingers in glorious sufferings for God and his word, crying, "None but Christ." What would they say to hear Satan's religions be-brothered and exalted by "Christians"? They would cry with Paul, by the Holy Ghost: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." —Herald and Presbyter.
Doing All for God's Glory
By Fenelon
A soul which sincerely longs after God never considers whether a thing be small or great; it is enough to know that he for whom it is done is infinitely great; that it is his due to have all creation solely devoted to his glory, which can only be by fulfilling his will. —Fenelon.
Doctrine and Duty
By Talbot W. Chambers, D.D.
DOCTRINE without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.
Steadier Step
By Arthur Hugh Clough
I STEADIER step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.
—A. H. Clough.
ALPHA AND OMEGA.
By Julius H. Seelye
BY JULIUS H. SEELYE.
Let not my faith be weak,
Nor deem the thought too high,
That God's great love my love should seek,
From all eternity.
Love is his glorious crown,
And love his royalty,
The symbol of his shining throne
And its reality.
Let me not think it strange,
Or far my powers above,
That he, whom height nor depth can change,
Is changeless in his love.
Let me not wonder why
Love reigns in all his ways,
But let me look with loving eye,
Till wonder ends in praise.
Love is no mystery;
Its faith is clear and bright;
It needs no other leave to be
Than its eternal right.
—The Outlook.
A PUZZLE.
By J. S. Hatch
'Tis said a sage in days of yore,
Proud of the glossy cue he wore,
Did wonder much and sorrow more
Because it hung behind him.
And, musing on his helpless case,
He vowed the cue should change its place,
And hang before his handsome face,
Not dangling there behind him.
Says he, "The way to do't I've found;
I'll turn me round." He turned him round,
And round and round and round and round,
But still it hung behind him.
And round and round, and out and in,
All day, the puzzled sage did spin;
In vain; it mattered not a pin;
His cue yet hung behind him.
And, though his efforts never slack,
And, though he twist, and twirl, and tack,
There in its place upon his back
His cue still hangs behind him.
So reads the riddle; thus 'tis solved:
The Puritan of yore resolved
To make last, first, and then revolved
To bring before, behind him.
He was this sage, so wondrous wise,
Who thought God's order to revise,
And bring that round before his eyes
Which should be left behind him.
The Sabbath law he sought to change;
With twist and turn tried to arrange
To bring before him—oh how strange!
A day that was behind him.
To rest before his work begun,
And turn a seven into one,
He's whirled and twisted, tacked and spun,
But still he finds behind him.
The day he wants to find before;
And seven is seven, forevermore,
And one is one—and, as of yore,
His cue still hangs behind him.
—J. S. Hatch.
Pharisee's Righteousness
By St. Clement
The Pharisee's righteousness consisted in not doing evil; Christ superadded that we must do good.—St.-Clement.