Earlier text: WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOWThe Industrial Conflict in the Light of Revelation.
By Geo. W. Rine
THE GREAT CLASS STRUGGLE FORETOLD BY PROPHETS.
REPRESENTATIVE SIBLEY, of Pennsylvania, gave the following note of warning, in a speech in Congress:— Prompted alone by our love for rich and poor, by our love for the welfare and peace of our common country, let us warn you that the masses of the people are aroused. All over this fair land they are on their knees in prayer. Their wails have been heard at the throne of the Almighty. My friends, hunger and cold know no laws, and when these twin devils are let loose and you force them out upon the world, “Then woe to the robbers who gather
In fields where they never have sown;
Who have stolen the jewels from labor
And builded to Mammon a throne.
. . . . . .
“Then to him who hath reveled in plunder
Till the angel of conscience is dumb,
The shock of the earthquake and thunder
And tempest and torrent shall come.” Employing the term “Armenian” to designate the oppressed poor of our own country, Senator Tillman said in part:— The Armenians are here at your doors. In every city and hamlet of the United States they can be found, and I warn you they will not be held down for all time by the Turks who now oppress them. A day of reckoning will come unless there is no longer a just God in heaven, and when it does come, woe be unto those who have been among the oppressors of the people. . . . The sordid despotism of wealth, to use the phrase of Justice Brown, is already felt throughout the land. God grant that our country may be spared the enactment of such scenes as were witnessed in Paris in 1789. But the fair flower of liberty can not be uprooted or smothered by the noxious weeds of monopoly and class privilege without bloodshed, and a cataclysm which will give us a military despotism, or leave the country redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled. The conservative, far-seeing English scholar, Mr. Frederick Harrison, discussing the perils incident to congested wealth, declared: “The day may come when we will conclude to do away with the rich man altogether; and no socialist, no anarchist, no nihilist is doing so much to hasten the coming of that day as the rich man himself.” The statesmen and other great thinkers of Europe entertain the same fears as to the social outlook in their own lands. The late Conservative Prime Minister Salisbury, a British lord, declared in 1897: “From all I have seen and heard, I feel assured that there will arise in this country, and speedily too, a revival of that great feud between the house of want and the house of plenty.” That grim old warrior of Germany, Count Von Moltke, said just a few months before his death: “The days of war of cabinets are passed. The elements that now threaten peace are found among the people.” Referring to the frenzied greed of the capitalists and the hate and envy of the laborers, he said further: “These are the dangerous elements which are producing discontent everywhere, and may at any moment precipitate war, even against the will of the government.” Professor Ely, of the University of Wisconsin, perhaps the greatest authority on political economy in America, said, not long ago, that dynamite explosions are a local manifestation of an international devil, and added: “I must say frankly, that I believe we are just beginning on a terrible era in the world’s history, an era of internal and domestic warfare such as has never been seen, and the end of which only God can foretell.” Citations of exactly the same import might be given from the speeches and writings of eminent men of all nations, until we should have volumes of extracts. But the foregoing excerpts are sufficiently conclusive as proof that the prophetic foretellings of the same tenor, which we shall now briefly study, are about to meet their verification and fulfilment. The Prophets Foretell the Struggle.
In that remarkable prophecy given through James, to which I have so often referred, is introduced this sharp, straightforward warning and appeal to the rich who, “in the last days,” withhold a just wage from the laborer, and are therefore enabled to “heap up treasures.” “Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. . . . Your gold and silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire.” James 5:1–3. Does it not look as if we were about to witness the actual fulfilment of this awful prediction? Not for its own sake did our Lord foretell the awful impending social conflict, but that all those who love His appearing might know that “the coming of the Lord is at hand,” as the apostle expresses it in the eighth verse. The prophet Habakkuk says of the grasping rich living near the close of time: He “enlargeth his desire as Sheol, and he is as death, and can not be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all peoples. Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and that ladeth himself with pledges [bonds, stocks, etc.]! Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou shalt be for booty unto them? Because thou hast plundered many nations, all the remnant of the people shall plunder thee.” Ch. 2:5–8. It is evident that the remnant of the people must be the last people. Read also the first chapter, verses 13 to 16. Here the prophet represents the rulers of the mart, of the money tables, as dealing treacherously and swallowing up—that is, financially—the poor, who are more righteous than their oppressors. The poor are caught up in nets as fishes that have no ruler over them; that is, have no defense, no means of resisting the rapacity of their oppressors. “Therefore he [the oppressor] sacrificeth unto his net [unto his machinations, artifices, wily schemes] and burneth incense unto his drag [rejoices in his artful schemes by which he despoiled the helpless poor].” The late Senator Ingalls, in a speech in the Senate, delivered in the middle nineties, unwittingly uttered the following luminous comment on this prophecy. Discussing the marvelous rapidity with which the wealth of the nation501has been monopolized by the few, he exclaimed:— “It is, so far as the results of democracy, as a social and political system, are concerned, the most terrible commentary that was ever recorded in the books of time; and Nero fiddles, while Rome burns. It is thrown off with a laugh and a sneer as the froth on the beer of our political system. . . . By some means, some device, some machination, some scheme, some incantation, honest or otherwise, some process that can not be defined, less than a two-thousandth part of our population have obtained possession, and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite of the means they have adopted to acquire it, of more than one-half of the entire accumulated wealth of the country.” In a previous article, entitled “Lovers of Pleasure,” I endeavored to show how the votaries of wealth and fashion are reveling in luxurious and licentious pleasures, recklessly, with no thought of the claims of God or of their less fortunate fellows, upon them. The prophet Amos graphically portrays the awful retribution that will be visited upon these abandoned devotees of voluptuous and pompous pleasures, at the hands of their infuriated victims. In ch. 8:3, he declares: “And the songs of the temple [margin, ‘palace,’ A. R. V.] shall be wailings in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah: the dead bodies shall be many; in every place shall they cast them forth with silence.” Note also verse 10 of the same chapter: “And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations; . . . and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.” Verse 9 should be read in this connection as evidence that the prophet is delineating last-day events. These scenes are enacted at a time when the Lord is about to cause “the sun to go down at noon,” and to “darken the earth in a clear day.” The heartless greed and clutching avarice are trenchantly sketched in verses 4 to 6. Do not fail to read them, and with them read again the article of this series, under the caption, “Capitalistic Monopoly and Oppression.” We all know the story of the wonderful deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, under the visible leadership of Moses. We remember how the millions of Israel were defrauded, oppressed, and ground down under the iron heel of tyranny. All who accept the Bible as a revelation from God, know that the Exodus of the children of Israel was a magnificent type of the final deliverance of spiritual Israel. Israel’s land of promise, Palestine, is used throughout the Scriptures as a symbol, or type, of the eternal inheritance promised to the saints. We remember the awful plagues that were visited upon the Egyptians, the oppressors of God’s people. In the words of Amos, their feasts were turned into mourning and their songs into lamentations, and their mourning as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. This last specification was literally experienced in Egypt as a result of the last plague. “And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters. . . . And I have come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians.” Ex. 3:7, 8. We have several times referred to the statement in James 5, to the effect that the cries of the oppressed laborers had entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. And as He gloriously delivered His oppressed people in the time of Moses and Pharaoh, so He is now about to deliver all those who love and serve Him, from the hand of the oppressor. “Be patient, brethren,” “grudge not one against the other,” He counsels; for, “behold, the Judge standeth at the door.” The spirit of meekness is the opposite of the spirit of revenge and retaliation. Only the “meek,” in the words of the Master, “shall inherit the earth”—the earth rejuvenated and brought back to its pristine perfection. The meek will never resort to violence or any form of physical coercion. “Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” Ps. 2:12. CONCERNING GRANDMOTHERS.
By Abbie Morton Diaz
[Mrs. Abbie Morton Diaz, in Woman's Column.] AND now, dear Mabel, as to dealing with a grandmother. The difficulties you speak of are incident to the situation. We find the same. It does seem, as you say, that if the subject fails to perceive what is for her own good, it should be made clear to her; tho attempts at this are not always effective. It is curiously true that at a late period of life an abnormal activity is likely to set in, accompanied by a mild species of head-strongness, and, as you have found, it is very trying to see a person determined not to rest when she can, just as well as not, and when you know it is what her system needs. I should advise that the ideal held up to her be one of repose. Persuade her that her days of doing are over. But let us thoughtfully ask whose inclinations are to be consulted, the subjects or ours? Life, you know, is activity, and activity is joy. Note its spontaneous outburst through the whole animate creation. To crush this out in any human being, to deaden it, to prescribe its limits, would not this be working against nature, and in the interests of decay? I wonder if we dare advise this; if it is quite the thing- for a younger person, as such, to contend against a sexagenarian, or septuagenarian, or octogenarian, or any genarian, as such; to venture to direct, to restrain, to criticize, and in various ways to assume the superiority of youth over age? Since life does mean activity, and activity is joy, has not our faithful grandmother and yours, and shall not you and I have, when we become such, a constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How They Became Convinced
By Editor
[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.] In 1891, a canvasser called at my home, and I bought several tracts, and a copy of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. He asked for something to eat, and while I prepared dinner he talked with my father, and we found that he was an Adventist. After my father’s death I was placed in other environments, and had charge of a little Sunday-school on the Weihkah River, in Washington, for a short time. In 1895-6, I was a servant in the family of a Methodist minister at Union, British Columbia. I could not unite with the church because I still kept thinking about the seventh day being the Sabbath. But I was not brave enough to ask any questions about it. One day, while walking home from church, I picked up a piece of paper to wipe the mud off a child’s coat, when my eye fell on the words, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” I threw the paper down, and made up my mind to think no more about it. When I returned to Aberdeen in 1897, I found that my sister and other friends had accepted the true Sabbath, and had been baptized. I attended a meeting at the Borden schoolhouse shortly after this, and a lady said to me, “You are not offended at the stand your sister has taken, are you?” “No, no,” I answered; “it is the truth, and I am very glad she has been brave enough to accept it.” “Aren’t you?” asked Sister Nellis. “Me?” why I’m a Congregationalist,” I answered. “I keep Sunday.” At different times I heard the Scriptures explained, and how beautiful it all was! I wondered why it took people so long to see and accept the Sabbath truth; and just at this point, when I was questioning God’s wisdom, is where Satan led me such a long, dark way, and I was deceived with his delusions. Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Christian Science, Hypnotism, and New Thought were held out to me as the real truth; and I almost lost my hold on the dear Saviour. After I had become quite paralyzed by the delusions I had been feeding upon, when I thought I hadn’t a friend in all the world, the word of the Lord, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee;” “His commandments are not grievous,” came to me like a living voice, and with such force that I was powerless to resist any longer. I knew God’s will toward me then, and that I should never have any peace until I accepted His truth. A sister sent me a little tract, “How the Sabbath Came to Me,” and after a careful reading, my Sabbath question was settled forever. Since 1898 I have kept the seventh day, and have been blessed and happy in so doing. LEPHIA BRYANT LARSON. “And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. I had been a member of the Christian Church thirty-one years when Brother L. W. Terry came to Rocky Comfort, Mo., to preach “the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Being the janitor of the church where he preached, I was one of his audience. After hearing him, I took the good old Book to search for the truth of what he taught. I asked the Lord to show me the scriptures on the subject, and then held the Bible in my hands, and let it come open itself, or, as I have since thought, the Lord opened it for me. At any rate the text that I have quoted was the first on which my eye rested. I also read Acts 18:4, 11 and many other scriptures. I am now a worker for the truth, with books, papers, and tracts, and in visiting my neighbors. I pray that the Lord will keep me at work in His vineyard, keep me filled with His Spirit, and give me a still better understanding of His Word. Mrs. D. A. BURGER. A LETTER TO A SUNDAY-KEEPER.
By Robert Kyle
East Smethport, McKean Co., Pa., H. M. Riggle, Cambridge Springs, Pa.—Dear Sir: Beginning on page 19, “The Sabbath,” we find these words:— “In the name of Jesus our Saviour, the Mediator of the new covenant, we defy Saturday-keepers to cite one text where the seventh day is commanded in the ‘truth which came by Jesus Christ.’ “One Advent minister in our presence, who was goaded and nettled by this positive demand, referred to Matt. 24:20, where Jesus said, ‘Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day,’ and said this was the command. Men who resort to such wrestling of the Scripture to support a decayed system are hard pressed for argument. “This text does not add a feather’s weight of evidence in favor of Saturday-keeping. [Sabbath-keeping, I presume you mean.] “It is no command to keep the Sabbath.” The Advent minister was not, as you think, hard pressed for argument. He referred you to a text, which is in the “truth which came by Jesus Christ.” This text embodies within itself arguments that will refute all the alleged arguments that the opponents of the Sabbath have advanced, or can advance, against the Sabbath as an institution. The claims that they make are, as far as I know, as follows:— - That the Sabbath was abolished at the crucifixion of Christ. Consequently not included in the new covenant.
- That every day is the Sabbath.
- That Sunday was substituted for the Sabbath, in honor of the day of Christ’s resurrection.
It is more convenient to consider the third claim first. Jesus spoke of the Sabbath unreservedly. His hearers could not understand Him to mean any other day than the Sabbath that they then knew. It follows that we must so understand Him. As He did not speak of any change in the Sabbath, we must believe it to be the same institution. As this is the last time that He spoke of the Sabbath before His crucifixion that we have any record of, it is, to us, the last. As He spoke of the Sabbath in connection with an event that is clearly shown to have happened after the crucifixion, it is forever settled that the Sabbath is included in the new covenant. The second claim is absurd when we consider the prayer. If every day were the Sabbath, then they would be praying for a favor which they could not expect to receive. The first claim is set aside by the existence of the Sabbath after the crucifixion. Hoping that by a careful study of God’s Word you will arrive at the truth, I am A Life That Tells on Other Lives
“I CAN not raise the dead, nor from the soil
Pluck precious dust. . . .
But I can live
A life that tells on other lives, and makes
This world less full of evil and of pain—
A life which, like a pebble dropped in the sea,
Sends its wide circles to a hundred shores.” “The universe is planned for good,” says an advocate of New Thought. So it is, and the plan will one day be in operation, and so to continue forever. But, because the universe is planned for good, we are not to conclude that all that is in the universe now is good. The infallible Word of the One who is goodness itself is very plain upon this point. Sin and sinners exist now, and, when the universe is all good, they will not be. The elements of this present world are to “melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein will be burned up.” God will never destroy that which is good; but, as the works of this present world are to be consumed, they are not good. There are to be new heavens and a new earth in place of the old. God would not make the change if they were perfect now. To alter that which is now perfect would be to make it less than perfect; and that God will never do. But He brings in the new in order that His plan for a good, a perfect, universe may be accomplished. When sin entered, the perfection of the universe was marred; but that doctrine which teaches that “whatever is, is good” virtually teaches that there is no sin; that there has been no fall; that there is no need of a Redeemer. It is a subtle deception, and multitudes are being blinded by its glamor to the ruin of their own souls. The church of Christ is confined to no one age or dispensation in the development of God's plan. The church of Christ is continuous from the time that God called out some from the slavery of sin, and they responded to His call. When John saw her in glorious symbol at the beginning of the Christian era, for five hundred years she had been travailing and longing for the conquering Son. That church brought Him forth, and rejoiced in His victories. The very word rendered “church,” ekklesia, means the “citizens regularly summoned” in the Greek Old Testament as well as the New. The One who calls is the “God of all grace” through Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ uses angels of light, uses His messengers among men, sends the Holy Spirit; but all of these abide by the faithful Word, and summon God’s children by its Gospel of warning and invitation. He calls from sin to righteousness; from selfishness to unselfishness; from lust to love; from Babylon to Jerusalem; from this world to the heavenly; from Satan to Christ; from the bondslaves of sin to the free service of God; the children of death to be sons and daughters of God. And he who yields to that call with all his heart, in the clearest light he sees, is a member of the called-out ones, the church of Christ. All this, and more, we have learned in former studies. While the church is in the world she is not of the world. Her warfare is not with flesh and blood. Eph. 6:12. The weapons of her warfare are not carnal. 2 Cor. 10:4. While she herself is in the flesh, she fights with spiritual foes. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Eph. 6:12. Therefore is the church represented symbolically in heaven, indicating her origin and the nature of her field of labor and conflict. She must have a head. Everybody, every organization, to do effective work, must have a head. Every organization must have a head fitted to its needs. It would be unwise to take one all his life a monk, and place him at the head of an army. It would be folly to take a sailor, and place him as foreman over a printing establishment. It would be suicidal to place the operations and discipline of a regular army in active, strenuous warfare in the absolute control of a farmer. Men demand trained leaders, successful leaders, skilled leaders, fitted by nature, by discipline, by service, to lead, to command, to instruct, to be the head. Such a leader, in the superlative degree, has the church militant, even Jesus Christ. “Behold,” says Jehovah, “I have given Him for a witness to the peoples, a Leader [“Prince,” margin] and Commander to the peoples.” Isa. 55:4. And what a Leader! He was with the Eternal Father before the world was; through Him the creative acts went forth: “Let there be worlds,” “Let there be light,” “Let there be a firmament;” He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, fought man’s spiritual battles in the flesh, died in man’s behalf, and rose a triumphant Conqueror, the God-man forever. For thus is it written of Him, “the Son of His love!” “In whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the Head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.” Col. 1:14–19. This is the Head of the church, both militant and triumphant. It is not His plan that a cordon of ecclesiastical police, a string of intermediaries, shall separate between Himself and His church, or Himself and each one of His children. For not only is7He the Head of His church; “but,” says an apostle, “I would have you know, that the Head of every man is Christ.” 1 Cor. 11:3. His headship is not alone with the congregate mass, but with the individual soul. The union between the head and the body is life-union. The head is bound to the body by living bone and flesh and cord and tendon and muscle and nerve and vein and artery. There is life-union, there is working union, there is sympathetic union. Even so is the union between Christ and His church. Out in the great world, unresponsive to his call, unregenerate men are “separate from Christ, . . . having no hope and without God in the world,” “alienated from the life of God.” Eph. 2:12; 4:18. But in Christ Jesus they “are made nigh” into life-union with Him. Eph. 2:13–22. This life-union and its results are beautifully expressed in the wonderful prayer of our Lord’s, recorded in John 17. Its very opening is vibrant with life: “Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee: even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He should give eternal life. And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.” He tells the Father that He had revealed to them God’s character, that He had taught them His Word. He declares that they are not of the world, and prays that they may be kept from its evil by being sanctified through the Word of truth, even as was He. And this life-union, this sanctification through God’s truth, is the basis, the essential, of the union He prays for, and the blessed results which are sure to follow: “That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them as Thou lovedst Me.” not by human law or ordinance, not by pope or priest or order, not by confederation or association or statute law, are God’s true children bound together. No human, fallible head is designed of Him to sit in His temple to direct its worship, to dole out blessings for pay, and curses at will. No, a thousand times, no. The “Head of the church,” “of every man,” is Christ Jesus our Lord, whose word alone is supreme, whose life only is power; who is in living touch and sympathy and life-relationship with every child of His. [Of the Gifts Bestowed upon His Church, and the Test of the Church, will we speak next.] WOULD you know the evidence of God’s love?—“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” This is the evidence of God’s love to you, sinner. You may believe; you may therefore be saved. And notice, and let the thought give you hope, you are not saved because of your love to Him, but because of His love to you. Plead His eternal, boundless love. “But,” says some doubtful soul, “If I begin to serve Him, I will not hold out to the end; I will not prove faithful.” And why? If you prove false, it will be because you prefer the false way. If you fail, it will be because you choose to fail. God “abideth faithful; He can not deny Himself.” So He speaks to every trusting soul: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Having given the greatest gift to save a race of rebels, think you that He will withhold a lesser to uphold His child? No, a thousand times, no. He is the beginning of the way that He may be its end. He will save now and save ultimately every soul that trusts in Him. He will go with you all the way. “Having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” Neither is the love of God a monopoly. It is not a characteristic of the Father and not the Son; nor is it the reverse of this. It is the essential nature of both Father and Son; and they desire to make it the essential nature of every responsible intelligence in the universe. God loved, and “He gave His only-begotten Son.” Christ loved, and He “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity.” Both are our Friends, both our Redeemers; for Christ and the Father are One. John 10:30. Both are pledged in our behalf. None others can condemn us if God is on our side, and He will not, if we trust Him. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God,”—but the apostle does not stop there,—“It is God that justifieth.” Rom. 8:33, 34. He only who can make out a good case against us is the One who justifies. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ,”—but not there does he pause. Truly the blameless life and spotless perfection of Christ condemn all, but this is not the thought. He only can condemn, “It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, . . . who also maketh intercession for us.” O soul, there is all help in God! Come to Him just as you are; cast yourself all broken upon His measureless love, and trust Him. He will cleanse away the sin, and clothe you in His own royal robes of righteousness; He makes you His child, partaker and heir to the exceeding riches of His grace. SELF INTEREST OR SELF SACRIFICE.
Every soul untouched by the converting influence of the Spirit of God will seek its own interests, its own exaltation, above the interests and preferment of others. But no interests of eternal worth, and no exaltation in the eternal kingdom, will ever come to any single soul that has sought for exaltation or put forward the interests of self. The spirit which actuates the true Christian, the winning Christian, who wins souls, and in that winning wins eternal life—that spirit “in lowliness of mind” leads a man to esteem others “better than himself.” That spirit leads its possessor to cease giving anxious thought to his own personal interests and begin to look to the interests of others. There is a wonderful lesson for us in this matter in the example of Christ. He could have stayed in heaven, honored by His Father and by the multitudes of angels, and have left man to meet the doom which his disobedience entailed; but He did not look to the glory of His own surroundings; He did not hesitate at the sufferings through which He must pass. He did look upon the interests of the fallen race, upon their sufferings, upon their doom, and then interposed Himself to suffer in their stead that they might again come into the inheritance they had sold to an enemy. The example of Christ in that great act is meant to be the example for our whole course of life. “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.” Phil. 2: 5-7. Let us notice what that led Him to do, and what the result is of what He did: “And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Verses 8-11. To what greater exaltation could any being in the universe possibly aspire? It is evident that to just such a station Lucifer did aspire, all for the glory of self and in the flattery-loving pride of a selfish heart. Through that ambition he fell, and carried with him a train of angels that saddened heaven and a train of consequences that has saddened the earth. There are the two examples, a shining and a terrible spectacle to angels and to men. The one is a beckoning hand, inviting to life and joy and eternal riches; the other a danger signal warning against the deepest sorrow, and a night of death that has no single ray of light. How shall we escape the one and attain the other? Because that in lowliness of mind and humility of purpose Christ took up a life-work for man, “wherefore also God highly exalted Him.” We ought also so to walk even as He walked. We, in our fallen natures, can do it only by His help; but that is promised; and that is the key to the situation. That humbling of self and service for man was the “secret” of success in Christ’s mission. That “secret” He has published as far and as wide as His Gospel has gone; and every son and daughter of Adam is earnestly entreated to make use of it, and triumph in the victory of Him who first employed it and made it known to man. Selfishness is foredoomed to failure. Make personal interests first, and there is no place for you in the economy of the eternal realm. There are no “mansions” in heaven for us if we are dominated by that idea. Let us take to heart the lesson that is written for our learning, follow the example of Christ, and enter with Him into the eternal inheritance. In a former article we noted the test and failure of Babylon's “wise men” when called upon to tell a dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed. Owing to Daniel's courageous faith, the Lord had given him “understanding in all visions and dreams,” and now came his opportunity. He had requested, and been granted, time, on his promise to make known the dream. “Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions; that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his companions should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision.” Dan. 2:17-19. Daniel, notwithstanding his promise to the king, and his faith that God would help him to reveal the dream, did not assume an air of presumption. He wanted the counsel and the united prayers of his companions in faith, and he wanted them to share in whatever advantage should accrue from the revelation of the king's secret. Hence his desire for time, that they might seek God together. After an earnest expression of praise and thanksgiving to God for the mercy bestowed, Daniel went to Arioch, the king's officer who had been commissioned to destroy all the “wise men,” and asked to be taken before the king. But he first implored the officer not to destroy the wise men of Babylon. When Daniel was ushered into the royal presence, the king asked him if he was able to make known the dream, and the interpretation. This was the same demand that he had made of the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans. Daniel replied that these men could not show the king's matter, but he said, “There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the King Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.” This was just what he was anxious to know, and God chose the most striking way of impressing an idolatrous king's mind—by presenting in a dream a remarkable image. But Daniel did not proceed with the revelation of the dream until he had again disavowed any wisdom of his own more than other men. Thus he virtually placed himself on a level with the men who had so signally failed to tell the dream, and had brought upon themselves and upon Daniel the sentence of death. Such a spirit of meekness and self-denial, and kind consideration for men who had almost caused him to lose his life, could come only from the Lord Himself. Giving God all the glory for the wisdom necessary to reveal the secrets of the future, Daniel proceeded:— “Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.” Dan. 2:31-35. Daniel did not ask the king if he had given the dream correctly, nor did he wait for him to acknowledge voluntarily that it was correct. He knew it was correct, for God had given it to him in unmistakable vision, in answer to prayer. Without waiting for confirmation, he proceeded to give the interpretation, first reminding Nebuchadnezzar that he had been made a king of kings by the grace of the same God who was now instructing him as to the future. Notwithstanding Daniel's opportunities to seek honor for himself, he was always careful to make prominent the glory and power of the God of heaven. This was the secret of his success; for the Lord says, “Them that honor Me I will honor” (1 Sam. 2:30), and “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Luke 14:11. The interpretation of the dream (which will be the theme of another article) was such as to give information on the subject of “what should come to pass hereafter.” The forecast was not at all what Nebuchadnezzar desired, as the after record shows; but he had committed himself in the test given to the “wise men” of Babylon—“tell me the dream, and I shall know that ye can show me the interpretation thereof.” Daniel had told the dream, and the king's own proposition obliged him to accept the interpretation. The wisdom which Daniel attributed to the God of heaven had been fully substantiated in the telling of the dream, and this was the test which the king had set forth. The triumph of Daniel was the triumph of the God of Israel over the gods of Babylon, whose dwelling the “wise men of Babylon” acknowledged was “not with flesh,” and therefore could not give them any help. The God of Israel does dwell with them that keep His words (John 14:21, 23), and is therefore “a very present help in trouble.” Ps. 46:1; Heb. 4:15, 16. In acknowledgment that the wisdom that was in Daniel had stood the test, the king gave this testimony: “Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret.” This was Daniel's greatest reward for having withstood the king's test; but, in fulfillment of the king's promise, he received other rewards in material gifts, social honors, and political advancement for himself and his friends. These, however, were merely incidental. He sought first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and these things were added. Matt. 6:33; 1 Kings 3:5-14.