Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 5, 1881
THE SIN OF ACHAN.
By Ellen G. White
BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
(Concluded.)
THE Lord not only made known to Joshua the cause of Israel's defeat, but gave him definite instructions for the detection and punishment of the criminal: "In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes; and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof; and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households; and the household which the Lord shall take shall come man by man. And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath, because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel." The Lord did not immediately point out the sinner, but left the matter in doubt for a time, that Israel might feel their responsibility for the sins existing among them, and thus be led to searching of heart and humiliation before God.
In the morning the whole congregation assembled before the Lord, and a most solemn and impressive ceremony began. Step by step the investigation went on. Closer and still closer came the fearful test, until Achan was pointed out as the man whose sin had brought upon Israel the wrath of God.
And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done, hide it not from me. And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them, and behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it." A messenger was immediately despatched to the tent; he returned with the spoils, thus establishing the guilt of Achan, and vindicating the justice of God.
[For a Babylonish robe and a paltry treasure of gold and silver, Achan consented to sell himself to evil, to bring upon his soul the curse of God, to forfeit his title to a rich possession in Canaan, and lose all prospect of the future, immortal inheritance in the earth made new. A fearful price indeed he paid for his ill-gotten gains.]
Shall man declare the judgment upon Achan too severe? God himself pronounced the sentence, and shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Achan's confession was made too late to be of any value. He saw the armies of Israel return from Ai defeated and disheartened, with thirty-six valiant men sacrificed; yet he did not come forward and confess his sin. He saw Joshua and the elders of Israel bowed to the earth in grief in token of self-abasement. Had he then made confession, he would have given some proof of true penitence; but he still kept silence. He listened to the proclamation that a great crime had been committed in the camp of Israel, and even heard its character definitely stated. But he had not the honor of God or the good of Israel at heart, and his lips were sealed. Then came the solemn and searching investigation. How his soul thrilled with terror as he saw his tribe pointed out, then his family, and his household! But still he uttered no confession, until the finger of God was placed upon him.
So great had been his hardihood and persistence, that even at the last Joshua feared he would assert his innocence, and thus enlist the sympathy of the congregation and lead them to dishonor God. He would not have confessed, had he not hoped by so doing to avert the consequences of his crime. It was this hope that led to his apparent frankness in acknowledging his guilt and relating the particulars of the sin. In this manner will confessions be made by the guilty when they stand condemned and hopeless before the bar of God, when every case has been decided for life or for death. Confessions then made will be too late to save the sinner.
There are many professed Christians whose confessions of sin are similar to that of Achan. They will, in a general way, acknowledge their unworthiness, but they refuse to confess the sins whose guilt rests upon their conscience, and which have brought the frown of God upon his people. Thus many conceal sins of selfishness, overreaching, dishonesty toward God and their neighbor, sins in the family, and many others which it is proper to confess in public.
Genuine repentance springs from a sense of the offensive character of sin. These general confessions are not the fruit of true humiliation of soul before God. They leave the sinner with a self-complacent spirit to go on as before, until his conscience becomes hardened, and warnings that once aroused him produce hardly a feeling of danger and after a time his sinful course appears the right. All too late his sins will find him out, in that day when they shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering forever. There is a vast difference between admitting facts after they are proved, and confessing sins known only to ourselves and God.
While the Israelites were still encamped on the east side of Jordan, the tribes of Gad and Reuben, seeing that the country was favorable for their occupation of raising sheep and cattle, desired to settle there, and accordingly presented their request to Moses. The great leader was displeased at this request, supposing that these tribes were seeking to avoid the conflicts which their brethren must encounter in dispossessing the Canaanites. He said, "Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?" Moses feared that sloth and cowardice, the result of unbelief, prompted the suggestion, and that these tribes would incur the Lord's displeasure.
The men of Gad and Reuben assured their leader that they would not shun the burdens and responsibilities which the Lord had laid upon all Israel. After preparing homes for their families, they would take their position beside their brethren, in all their conflicts, until every man had come in possession of his inheritance. Moses consented to this, but fearing that these tribes might yet fail to keep their promise, he added, "If ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out."
Here is a lesson which professed Christians at the present day may study with profit. God's displeasure rests upon those who seek only their own ease and temporal prosperity, leaving their brethren to endure hardship and privation and to bear heavy responsibilities in the church. There is an unceasing conflict between the cause of truth and holiness and that of error and ungodliness. All who claim to be children of God must be armed for the battle. God has not left this warfare upon a few soldiers, while the others rest at ease. Said the great apostle, to his Corinthian brethren, "I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened." All who profess any interest in the cause of God, the advancement of truth, and the conversion of sinners, should be soldiers in the Lord's army. They should have one interest, one motive, one object, as long as life shall last. The great reason why so little is accomplished in the cause of God is indolence and indifference of his professed people.
"Satan's power is increasing, he is terribly in earnest, knowing that his time is short, he is working with all deceivableness of unrighteousness." Those who would escape his wiles must be vigilant and determined. If we would meet the demands for this time, we must put on the whole armor, and go forth with energy, perseverance, and unswerving faith. In God alone is our strength. Indolence and slothfulness, presumption and self-confidence, will alike bring defeat and destruction. God takes cognizance of the works of all. Those who have sought their ease, and shunned care, anxiety and labor for God's cause, may be sure their sin will find them out. Those who, like Achan, cherish selfishness, avarice and deception, may be sure that God's eye is upon them. As he searched out Achan, he will search them out, as he pronounced a curse upon Achan, he will surely pronounce a curse upon them.
Some may claim that these severe denunciations belong only to the Jewish age, that we are now in a dispensation of mercy rather than of wrath and condemnation. But New Testament history presents many instances which show that the same sins which brought the wrath of God upon his people anciently will bring his wrath upon his church to-day.
John the Baptist, addressed the scribes and Pharisees, who made high claims to learning and piety: "Ye generation of vipers who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? bring forth therefore, fruits worthy of repentance." And although Christ had such a love for humanity, as was never possessed by man or angel, he uttered the fearful sentence, "And thou Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven194[in light and privilege] shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee."
The judgment visited upon Ananias and Sapphira was to be a warning to the church through all time. The sin committed by these persons was similar to that of Achan, and the power of God searched them out and brought swift retribution upon them. He who bade Joshua, rise from his position of humiliation and search within the camp of Israel for the reason of their defeat, the same Jesus searched out the hidden iniquity of Ananias and his wife and told Peter what course he must pursue toward them.
While the servants of God are in constant danger of indulging a zeal that is wholly human, and while great harm is done by those who seem to be in their element in censuring, reproving, and condemning their brethren, there is fully as great danger of going to the opposite extreme, and making the sum and substance of Christian duty consist in love. The apostle Paul writes to his son Timothy, "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine." This work is just as essential to the prosperity of the church as is the exercise of gentleness, forbearance and love. Those who are consecrated to God will be as faithful to reprove and rebuke sin with all long-suffering and doctrine, as to comfort and encourage the desponding, and strengthen the weak. All who love God will show their abhorrence of sin.
THE DAY OF GOD.
By E. L. Wentworth
BY E. L. WENTWORTH.
THE earth moves on her varied course,
Day after day, year after year;
And many say, "So shall it be,"
And yet the Day of God is near.
Our lives pass onward hour by hour,
A sorrow there, a pleasure here;
Some laugh and mock at Christ and His,
And yet the Day of God is near,
They scorn His messages of love,
His pleading calls not forth a tear;
They follow their own wicked lusts,
And yet the Day of God is near.
O, listen to the Saviour's call,
And serve Him with a heart sincere;
Eternal life shall soon be years,
For hark! the Day of God is near.
South Windham, Me.
THIS GENERATION.
By Wm. Penniman
BY WM. PENNIMAN.
(Continued.)
"VERILY I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled."
In the preceding article we concluded our thoughts in reference to the spiritual signs, now being witnessed by the last generation. Some physical signs will now be presented indicating also that the coming of the Lord is near.
The prophet Joel (Joel 2:30, 31) predicts wonders in the heavens and in the earth in connection with the darkening of the sun and moon. The 30th verse reads: "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire, and pillars of smoke."
D. T. Taylor in The Christian, alluding to the aurora in the heavens, and to Joel's prophecy, says: "They have caused the knees of terror to smite together, and the scoffer to seek at once the place of prayer, on viewing with amazement God's wonders written on the trembling sky. Aug. 28, 1859, they were seen from California east to Russia, and from the West Indies north to unknown regions in British America. Five days later September 2, the aurora was visible all over the northern hemisphere, in America, Europe, and Asia, being witnessed by millions of people. The brilliant displays of 1870, said to have been more numerous than in any preceding year, were October 14, 23, and 24, visible from ocean to ocean, and from continent to continent in all northern lands. In Italy, the people of Florence and Rome beheld their crimson flashes and said it was a token of more wars and bloodshed in Europe. In the first ten months of 1870, there were witnessed over fifty remarkable displays in our latitudes, where the usual number in the whole year is but fifty. No pen or finger can describe their endless colors, their fantastic forms, their flashing splendors, nor the crimson glories of these celestial hosts arranged in panoplies of light, and marching, and gleaming, and dancing athwart the heavens in shapes of 'blood and fire, and pillars of smoke.' It seemed as if the visions of Pollok had become a reality, and the celestial concave which had but a little before looked serene,
'Now glowed like an oven, with God's displeasure hot.'
And did not science rob them of their terrors, and familiarity with the sight of these mystic flaming wonders prove their harmlessness, the whole world would bow reverently before the marvelous spectacle, and awed by their beauty and grandeur, exclaim with one voice, This is the finger of Deity. There is no resisting the conclusion that these electric coruscations are the strict fulfillment of Joel's prediction. And if modern science had not become practically atheistical to all divinely revealed events, it would at once behold the hand of the maker of the universe in these wonders, and openly acknowledge their relation to the prophetic word, and to the coming day of the Lord. But while scientific men admit their utter inability to explain these magnificent phenomena, they leave God out of the world which he has made, and ignore the working of his hand and the fulfillment of his word, and not only the scientific but the religious press, busy with trifles and occupied with worldly affairs, see no tokens of divine power and providence, and no signs of prophetic fulfillment in these marvels which are blazoned on the mighty heavens."
The preceding is a grand and truthful description of signs in the heavens. There are also many wonderful physical signs on the earth, but people become so accustomed to them that they do not see "the finger of Deity." This generation has not only witnessed famines and pestilences, but also "earthquakes in divers places." Scribner's Monthly of August, 1872, p. 496, contains a remarkable fulfillment of the prophecy in regard to "earthquakes in divers places." "The month of April, 1872, will long be remembered, and will occupy195an important position in geological history as the month of earthquakes and volcanoes. The series of disturbances in question commenced on March 26, with an earthquake at Independence, Inyo Co, Cal., and lasted for five hours, during which time the earth was never for a moment perfectly quiet, and every few moments heavy shocks, of a few seconds duration were occurring; in all there were more than fifty heavy shocks. During the disturbance, flashes of light were seen to issue from the Black Rock, a volcano of the Sierra Nevada range about fourteen miles distant. On April 3, the terrible earthquake of Antioch laid that ancient city in ruins. In this commotion the earth was disturbed over a considerable extent, the shocks being severely felt from Aleppo to Orfa beyond the Euphrates, and occurring at intervals for more than a week. On April 14 and 15, violent shocks of earthquakes were felt at Accra, on the Gold Coast of Africa, and these were attended by a hurricane which wrecked nearly every vessel in the harbor of Zanzibar. On April 24, Vesuvius again burst her bonds and became more active than at any time since the eruption that overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii; Europe, Asia, Africa, America, four out of the five great divisions of the globe, showing serious disturbances of their surface at almost the same time. It is as if Mother Earth was shaking the finger of admonition at those who deny the old geological doctrines, and advance the hypothesis that the globe is not fluid in its interior, but is solid through and through."
It is not "as if Mother Earth," for God's hand is in the earthquake "shaking the finger of admonition" at those who deny that the "end of all things is at hand." A recent telegram (March 6), from Rome announces a terrible earthquake in the south of Europe stating that "the loss of life is appalling." And so it will continue, and we will continually hear in regard to God's wonders "what next, what next," till the coming of the great and final earthquake of which Paul speaks: (Heb. 12:26) "yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven."
Luke adds (Luke 21:25, 26), in addition to what Matthew records should follow "immediately after the tribulation of those days," that there shall be "upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." It may be seen from what has been written, or by those who know something of the history of the world during the past fifty years of this century, that there has been a196remarkable fulfillment of the prophecy concerning "distress of nations with perplexity, and that even now the hearts of political seers and many others are "failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth."
In regard to the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning "the sea and the waves roaring," D. T. Taylor, in "The Coming Earthquake," p. 49, says: "The increase of terrestrial disturbances, as predicted by Jesus, was to mark the last age above every age before it, and the ocean-tossings of course would accompany these disturbances. And in the ratio in which earthquakes on land increase, in the same ratio, it is seen that the ocean is fearfully turbulent, the same causes operating to produce both, as is admitted by Dr. Burnett." Mr. Taylor gives a condensed record of ocean disturbances from 1746 to 1869. This record is truly wonderful in regard to the frequency and destructive power of the ocean and tidal waves. We quote what he says of these disturbances of recent date as follows: "Since the midsummer of 1867, all the waters of the globe have been disturbed by the earthquake forces beneath them. A clergyman of Concord, N. H., has registered over twenty of these surging waves in as many different localities. Our own records make an equal number. These tossings of the sea would sometimes continue for a whole day. The New York Tribune asserts that they have accompanied all the most serious earthquake disturbances. Both the great ocean waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, have been agitated in their whole extent. We mention in particular the tidal waves at St. Thomas and all the neighboring islands, which were full fifty feet in height, there being three in succession; the great wave at Grenada Island, Dec. 10, 1867; that on the whole coast of South America, in August, 1868, in Peru there being eleven waves in rapid succession; at the Sandwich Islands, April 21, 1868, and subsequently at the Island of Juan Fernandez, at Japan, in New Zealand, and in New South Wales, during 1868; in Lower California, and Kamtchatka, August 15; at Chili, September 14; in the Caribbean sea, April 7; on the Mexican coast, in November; in Peru, October 13; in the Baltic sea in October; at Arica, December 13; in the Pacific ocean in the same month; and at the Sandwich Islands, October 21. The waters of the lakes in California and in Oregon have also been troubled. One lake in Oregon was utterly dried up. The shores of Texas have been swept by the terrible seas, and China has similarly suffered. The great lakes of the United States suddenly rose and fell, and tidal waves have been observed in the harbors of Boston and New York. On the 13th of August, Callao was all dashed away by the sea. The sea rose sixty feet at Hawaii, April 1st to the 13th, and ten villages were utterly destroyed. The shores of all the numerous islands of Polynesia and Australia must have been swept, and more or less submerged, by the seas that rolled westward from the coasts of Peru in August, and by those from Hawaii in April. The first-named waves dashed all night on doomed Hawaii, creating great alarm among the people. The great sea rolling out from South America in August, reached even the shores of Kamtchatka, ten thousands miles away. Never were these waves so numerous and so universal as during the past ten years. A writer in Harper's Magazine (March, 1869) speaks of these as 'that most horrible of phenomena—the tidal wave,' and says: 'How many struggling mortals has it swept back into the deep! What countless ships has it crushed against the shores! What mighty cities has it plundered of life and wealth, strewing their fine streets with the ocean sand, and peopling their palaces with sea monsters! In fact, the terrors of the earthquake are redoubled on the seashore, when we remember that its work of destruction is only half completed until the ocean has come up to share in its dreadful deeds.'"
Again, tempests, hurricanes, and floods are more numerous in this age than they have been in any other, wonderfully making the words of the Psalmist true, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word." Ps. 148:8. We read in "The Coming Earthquake": "No less remarkable and terribly destructive of life and property have been the tempests, hurricanes, and floods of the past few years, and which always accompany the earthquake term." This record is quite lengthy, making the loss of life, wealth, dwellings and ships immense and astonishing. In only a few years preceding 1869 (as nearly as can be estimated) the amount of wealth lost by a few nations amounts to over $409,000,000. In respect to the loss of vessels the record says: "In the first week in December, 1863, there were 1,400 vessels of all descriptions and nations wrecked in the Mediterranean sea. From 1858 to 1866, the total casualties of all countries amounted to 11,711 vessels, of which number 2,513 were totally wrecked. The year 1867 swelled the total casualties at sea for all nations, to 12,513 vessels. Of this sum no less than 2,873 were totally lost, while the loss of life and property was doubtless correspondingly great. Indeed, we have not enumerated one-half the wreck and ruin occasioned by earthquake, flood, tempest, and fire.
"The earth has been made unsafe to dwell on, and the air has been filled with hurtling missiles. Each of the past ten years contributed a shower of aerolites, burning and falling in myriads into our atmosphere; the summer of 1868 saw a great aerolite of five or six tons weight fall in Tennessee; and an enormous bolide of burning stone appearing in mid-air over the city of Warsaw, in Poland, and bursting and scattering in ten thousand fragments all over the earth. This awful implement of destruction is estimated to have been over a mile in diameter! To crown this mass of 'fearful sights and great signs' ('from heaven'), in 1867, a star in the constellation Corona appeared to be on fire, and amid the wondering gaze of men of science seemed to disappear in the flames—a world on fire and consumed in the far-off heavens. (Fourteen of these burning worlds have been seen within a few years.) It is impossible not to see the hand of God in all these extraordinary wonders, these calamities and marvelous events, every year transpiring right before our eyes."
(To be Continued.)
Look Within for Faults
WHEN looking for faults, look within.
SOME INTERESTING CALCULATIONS.
A LECTURER in Music Hall, Boston, on a recent Sunday evening—Rev. W. H. H. Murray—is reported as dealing in glittering generalities of figures to disprove the theory of a final judgment of all men, and it would appear that his audience accepted his arithmetic as solid truth. We have nothing to do with his theology of the judgment, but there ought to be a judgment and condemnation in Boston of any one who delivers such trash to an audience having an ordinary common school education. He is reported to have spoken thus:—
"Now the population of the earth is 1,000,000,000, and a generation dies every thirty years. In every thirty years, then, 1,000,000,000 of human beings go out of the world and 1,000,000,000 come in. Forty years ago the church taught that the world was 6,000 years old. She don't to-day pretend to guess within 100,000 years how old the world is. Very well. What has been the population of the world since the race began? By what arithmetic shall you compute the swarming millions? Take the globe and flatten it into a vast plain, 24,000 miles by 24, and it would accommodate but a fraction of the human beings that have lived upon its surface. Where is the locality of the judgment to be, then? Can it have a locality?"
Now make the wildest conceivable estimates: suppose that the human race has existed on this earth 100,000 years, and that the population has never from the first day been smaller than this estimate for the present time, namely, 1,000,000,000. For the sake of easy calculation, instead of the estimate of thirty years to a generation, call it three generations to a century. There will then appear to have been three thousand generations of a thousand millions each, who, being assembled, require standing room. For a crowded meeting of men, women, and children, it would be ample estimate to give each two square feet of room. A square mile contains, in round numbers, 25,000,000 square feet, and 12,500,000 persons would stand on it. Therefore eighty square miles would hold a generation, and three thousand times that space would hold the population of a hundred thousand years. That is to say, 240,000 square miles would contain them, and, gathered in a parallelogram, they would stand in a space six hundred miles long by four hundred broad. They could be easily accommodated in one or two of our States.
Dead, and buried side by side, they would require only five times their standing space, or (say) 1,200,000 square miles, and the United States of America has ample wild lands as yet untwanted and unoccupied to give them a cemetery.
But it is just as well before leaving the subject to say that the hundred thousand years of the reverend lecturer's imagination is as wild talk as his figures. Men of uncertain faith are very fond of saying that other men have no faith. Nothing can be more absurd than what he says about the church. The confused man who fell off a stage coach into the mud thought the coach had upset. Mr. Murray will soon find out that the church, whatever its denominational name, is a great deal more steady in its ancient faith than are he and others who would gladly convince outsiders that the old coach has actually gone over.
In his lecture as reported he makes a sad jumble of two distinct subjects—the age of the world and the age of the human race on its surface. The men who hold notions about the extreme antiquity of the human race have been very few, and have produced no sensible effect on the faith of the church or the general opinion of the world, and among what are called scientists, the present difference of opinion as to the age of the human race is limited to a comparatively short period. Bunsen's theory of a date B. C. 20,000 for Egyptian origins has vanished, and Mariette Bey's date of B. C. 5,000 for Menes (or Misraim) will satisfy the views of the most extreme among recognized men of sense.
The bone cave men have been met with the simple rules of evidence, which apply to their supposed discoveries as they apply to all questions of fact; and it is found that they have not proved in a single instance that human bones have been lying fifty, forty, or ten centuries in those caves. The theory that the Mississippi had been for forty thousand years depositing drift over human bones found in the deposit, disappeared in mist when Humphreys and Abbott, United States engineer officers on duty, having no theory to sustain, accurately observed and satisfactorily determined that the entire delta of the Mississippi has required only four thousand years for total deposit. It is no longer a question of religion against science, but a case in which common sense and a knowledge of the laws of evidence are demanding something more than assertion without proof, asking for facts in distinction from theory. On the whole it has become the fashion to laugh a little at the fantastic theories of science falsely so-called.
Meantime none of these theories have produced any sensible effect on the church or its teachings. There are just as many good people and just as many intellectual people as ever, who still believe and teach that the human race is about six thousand years old, and that a deluge has once reduced its population to next to nothing. Faith in the old record of Moses is so prevalent, and there are so many millions of educated and reasonable people holding it, that it is really worth the while of boys and girls, and perhaps some adults, to apply arithmetic to the facts as accepted by these good people of old and modern times. Thus in six thousand years there are one hundred and eighty generations, and as we know something by historic evidence of the sparse populations of former times in some parts of the world, and must make allowance for the deluge (which all nations believe to have occurred), we shall be more than safe in estimating one-half the present population as the average in all past generations. Then 180 generations, each of 500,000,000, gives us 90,000,000,000 for the whole human race. Graves of ten square feet for each would be easily found in each of quite a number of the States of the Union, and this assembly of all the generations of mankind would stand in a circle around Mont Blanc, Mount Washington, or Mount Sinai, so near that every eye could see the summit not fifty miles distant.
—Journal of Commerce.
THE EMPEROR AND THE PREACHER.
There are some preachers who are ever striving for dramatic effect, and who take much pains to prepare things beforehand for some unstudied burst of eloquence which they have carefully committed to memory against the appointed time. We remember one minister who requested another to occupy a certain position on the rostrum at a public meeting, that he, while speaking, might make allusion to one of his dear friends. The preacher did not propose to take part in that kind of “show business,” and so the eloquent allusion perished on the parent stock.
It appears that the chief court preacher of the Emperor William, of Germany, came to grief a while ago in showing off some of these tactics. Instead of preaching Christ and him crucified, he undertook to preach Queen Louise, and her glorified, and gave an elaborate and pathetic account of her interview at Schwedt, after the disastrous defeat of the Prussians by Napoleon at Jena, October 14, 1806, with her two sons, the late king and present emperor, whom she urged to redeem their country from disaster, and avenge the wrongs committed by France.
Of course such a sermon, viewed in the light of the recent war between France and Germany, was deeply interesting, and moved all to tears and applause, except the Emperor. He sat stern and unmoved. After the oration was ended, he waited patiently until the preacher had laid aside his clerical robes and stood at the chapel door ready to go home, when he addressed him thus:—
“No such scene as you have elaborately described ever took place. The words attributed to her certainly expressed my mother’s sentiments, but all that she said to her sons was, ‘You see me in tears. I weep for the sad fate which has overtaken us. The king has been mistaken as to the efficiency of his army and its leaders; therefore we have been defeated, and are obliged to fly.’”
The preacher, thus corrected, could neither excuse nor defend himself. The Emperor added, “Let me advise you not again to give a sermon of this sort. My family and myself go to church to worship God and to hear the gospel preached; not to listen to flattering notices of our deceased ancestors.”
From which it appears that emperors are not always destitute of common sense, though preachers are sometimes woefully lacking in that respect. —The Observer.
THIS DAY: THAT DAY.
SHRINK not from any duty
That this day brings to thee,
And know if thou art faithful,
That day thou'lt gladly see.
A glorious crown, and holy,
That day will bring to thee,
And all of this day's trials
Will then forgotten be.
THE TRUTH SPREADING.
A LADY correspondent of the Herald of the Kingdom, writing from Hartford, Conn., says:—
One morning, during my visit in H., Dr. Stone [Baptist] preached on the second coming of the Lord. As there had been no previous notice of it I did not hear it, but was told by some who did that it was an excellent sermon. He remarked at the outset that, while he knew that the subject of the Lord's coming was distasteful to many, partly on account of the position taken by many who profess to be looking for the Lord, their mistakes concerning the time, etc., yet he felt that the subject was one of great importance, and one in which he was deeply interested, and that he must present it to the church. He thought the advent, or return of the Lord as he liked to call it, was near at hand, and he would rejoice to see him. In speaking of the different views of the millennium he said that, without a present, personal Saviour there would be no millennium to him.
I attended the evening service, and shall not soon forget it. After the opening exercises by the pastor, the meeting was left to the church to carry on, and not a moment was left unoccupied. The first one who spoke was a young man, son of a well-known minister in the city, and who is himself preparing for the ministry. He thought they should feel under great obligation to the Adventists for bringing out and keeping the subject of the Lord's coming so prominently before the church; and, notwithstanding all the mistakes they might have made, they were a standing rebuke to other professed Christians, for their indifference to so important a subject. He was followed by the pastor's wife, and quite a number of others, all expressing deep interest in the subject. One brother said he rejoiced that the subject had been brought up. He never heard but one sermon on it before, and had remarked to his wife only a few days before that it was strange that ministers did not preach about the Lord's coming more. He thought the subject of deepest importance, and, next to the thought of a crucified and risen Saviour, that of a coming Saviour was the most precious to him. Quite a young man, who had not been a Christian long, said he wished to live so that he would never be found in any place or doing anything that would cause him to be ashamed if the Lord were to come.
SPIRITUALLY DEAD.
MR. BEECHER is continuing his attempt to get up a revival in his church that will cure the cancer that ails it. The pastor and the deacons admit a want of spiritual life in the great congregation, and the former, at a recent prayer-meeting, said:—
"The good Lord of Heaven, is he not here, and what am I when he is present? It seems to me that you try to make me God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—whereas I am nothing but what I am." Those present discussed the situation, Mr. Beecher having requested a free expression of opinion. It is stated that several members of the church, in good standing, of both sexes, frankly avowed that they feared that one cause of the "spiritual death" was that too many people had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Tilton's confession was true, after all. Other members advanced various other theories to account for the lack of spirituality. There was no denial that something was wrong. All felt that effort was needed to revive the drooping faith and courage of the church. Mr. Beecher is now making such an effort. How far his revival shall be a success is still uncertain. Mr. Moody should hurry to the rescue of the great Brooklyn preacher. A little hard common sense and some plain gospel talk would do the Plymouth congregation a power of good.—S. F. Alta.
Self-Examination Before Judging Others
LET your zeal begin upon yourself; then you may with justice extend it to your neighbors.—Thomas a Kempis.
WHEN we know how to appreciate a merit, we have the germ of it within ourselves.—Goethe.