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10 (848) T H is
sigas, which it is now aggressively endeavoring
to enforce, against the civil institutions and
religious enlightenment of the land. We therefore
declare our purpose, as a branch of the
Christian Church, in the use of scriptural means,
to oppose this conspiracy against our civil law
which guarantees religious freedom, and against
essential doctrines of the Christian religion.
The story of the struggle of the Reformed
faith from the time of Luther to the present is
a record of collusion between popery and the
civil power to resist and destroy the progress
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aiding gospel. Luther's hold stand which finally
shook Europe to its foundations, was opposed
by the papal authorities in collusion with the
imperial government. The sentence of excommunication
was pronounced by the Pope, and
was followed by the ban of the emperor. Like
conditions existed in Switzerland, France, Holland,
Scotland and England. The Reformation
in France, while the essential facts are more
pronounced, is typical of the conditions in other
lands. The king took part in the burning of
Protestants in the streets of Paris. A cardinal
wrote the Pope that France was half "Huge
not," as the Protestants were called. Catherine
de Medici, mother of the boy King Charles IX,
authorized the massacre of St. Bartholomew in
which seventy-five thousand Protestants were
butchered in their homes and the streets of Paris
and other French cities. Pope Gregory had
medals struck to commemorate the slaughter
and thanksgiving services were held in the
churches of Rome. It is estimated that within
30 years about 900,000 Protetants were slaughtered
in France under the joint authority of
Church and State.
If it be said that such facts are to be opposed
after they become a reality, but the principles
which have made them a reality are not the
business of the Church, on that basis the action
of our Assembly may be consistently resisted;
that is to say, we have nothing to do with evil
principles and policies which vitally affect the
pure gospel, but only with evil facts.
NOTES IN PASSING.
BY BERT.
No e.Yort is worth while unless
A Man's back^of it lies a worthy cause. To
Life. espouse a great cause makes a great
man. Causes are not man-made, they
are Go'd-made; he is the man of the hour who has
the discernment to see and the courage to grasp
and make his own the opportunity God lays before
him. When a true man sees and adopts the
cause it transforms him. He strives instinctively,
strives persistently, strives untiringly to become
as big as his cause. No man ever grows
bigger. However worthy or unworthy the crusade
upon which a man launches it is his true
measure, if it be something worth doing it has
the faculty of limitless expansion so that it always
keeps ahead and lures him on to a great
and splendid life-task. If it be unworthy it retards
his development and causes a continued
moral and intellectual shrinkage. A man's cause
is his ideal. In height, in depth, in length, in
breadth and compass a man's ideal is always
just DeyoiKl bis furthest reach. "A man's life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things
which he possesseth." By no means. A man's
life consisteth in the worth of the things which
possess him. A man's life is his task. A soldier's
life is his profession, to this he devotes
himself, for this he is willing to live or die. A
Christian's life is Christ, for whom and to whom
he gladly makes any sacrifice.
What is life? Is it a heterogen
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" This One eous mass of incongruities, inconThinp."
sistencies and incompatibilities?
So it 110 doubt often seems. A mere
casual observer might be excused for judging
that life was only a succession of Chinese puzzles.
So many things arise *in such short time
with apparently little or no connection with each
other. And so often it appears that the solution
of one difficulty has but slight bearing upon
tl ose which crowd upon it. Mirth in the family
follows death at quick intervals; a child is born
and dies almost as soon a* born. Loss follows
gain so closely that it tramps upon its heels, we
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and health are close companions. Ostracism and
popularity are but a day apart. If you stand off
and look at the things themselves life is scarcely
worth the struggle. But if you will take the
time to look carefully over the record of men's
lives and see how God has used the whole complex
system in a way mast orderly and beautiful
you will be forced to conclude that notwithstanding
appearances life is a most impressive
unity. All the many things can be shown to be
simply the varied manifestations and developments
of One Great Tiling, God's plan for each.
An engine has many parts, wheels and shafts
and bolts and belts and levers and so on, but it
is one engine. The various parts may have little
likeness to each other, but if they had you would
not have an engine.
But observe, everything that goes into the construction
of the engine may be present and yet
you may have only a scrap heap. These parts
must be put together in order and the whole mass
controlled by an intelligent master purpose. So
whether your life is to be a scrap-heap or a
mighty force will depend upon how much you
yield yourself to God to work his way untrammeled
in you.
We are living in an age of
A Suggested specialization. Recent events
Solution. have brought before us certain
words with considerable prominence.
The word " expert" for instance, and
the words "sociology," "sociological," "industrinl
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rest that lies deep-rooted in the human heart
and reveals itself in human relations. Men are
giving themselves to the solution of the departmental
difficulties of the human race. It is considered
that a single head of man's problems is
big enough for a whole school of philosophers,
theoretical or practical. So the sociologist takes
one section, the philanthropist another, the labor
leader a third, and so on. And certainly, if it be
possible to bring order out of the tangle in direction
he or they who render the service are entitled
to large honor. But all these have to deal
with man, the same man. It is the same individual
man who furnishes all the problems of a
philanthropic, sociologic, political, religious and
industrial maze. And this same inconsiderate
and mightily mixed up man refuses positively to
define the limits of his departmental problem, instead,
in a perfectly disorderly and perplexing
way jumbles the whole thing together. Now
every "expert" thinks his is the most important
work, if he did not he would have some other
department. So when each gives out his soiu
tion of the puzzle we are worse tangled than
ever.
What is needed is one great cause or principle
of life which can unify all these perplexing
problems. To settle them individually is an impossibility
so patent that no Christian student
is deceived about it. But if they can all be
brought under one head, if they can be seen to
be but the varied streams of a single.fountain,
and if we can find and treat this fountain, there
will be some hope of arriving in time.
J U T B [July 17, 1912
The One Principle which is all-sufficient fe
Christ's cause. If we corac to realize in a way
that truly grips us that departure from Christ
is the cause of this unrest, and the source of
every one of these problems, and then if we give
ourselves to the one thing of bringing men
back again to God we will have solved the question
and we will not until then. One great winner
of souls for Christ is worth all the sociological
and industrial experts in the world.
These tinker around the rim of the thing, he gets
at its very heart. Our need is for more loyal
men in the pulpit rather than more
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chairs in great schools.
ANOTHER HUGE MACHINE.
The General Assembly, in its recent sessions in
Bristol, approved of a recommendation and enoorsemem
of the plan to observe November ]7iM
as Home Mission Week. The Assembly s
m. tiou was as follows:
"We learn that 'he Home Mission Council, an
organization composed of the Home Mission
Agencies of all the Protestant Evangelical
churches of the country, has appointed Nnvpm
ber 17-24 to be observed as 'Home Mission
Week.' Our Secretaries of Home Missions have
asked us to request the endorsement of the Assembly
for this movement, and further to request
that the financial results of the observance of
Home Mission Week be appropriated to equipment,
and to swell the Semi-Centennial Fund.
Your Committee recommends that the General
Assembly give its endorsement to Home Mission
Week, and direct the money to be used as requested."
All this is well and good, and there will be none
in all the bounds of the church to hinder the
movement looking towards the quickening of the
interest of all the neonle in the <rreat. wnrk nf
Home Missions. In love for the cause and loyalty
to the church every one should do his utmost, in
the right way, to bring this work right to the
heart of the people, where it belongs and to lay
it upon that heart as a great burden given them
by Christ.
But now come- some plans and details, not
from our Committee, but from a Central Office
in New York. The Home Missions Council,
which embraces some twenty-seven Central
Boards, Committees, and Societies, and having
itr headquarters in New York, announces that
all but a few of its constituent organizations
have expressed their purpose to enter into a
campaign and to contribute the amount for
which they have been asked in order to make
the campaign successful. It announces, through
its Executive Secretary, Rev. Charles Stelzle,
however, that $40,000 in addition to what the
various Boards and Committees will give, is needful,
making a total of $50,000, to acomplish the
purpose of the campaign. A financial campaign
is now being pushed with vigor, from the Central
Office, to raise this full amount. The large
sum proposed to be raised is to be divided, approximately,
as follows: For office expenses, salaries,
stenographers, designers' fees, letterheads,
postage, etc., $10,000; for literature, posters,
etc., $15,000; for newspaper advertising,
$25,000. It is proposed to get out a series of
twelve posters, to be mailed in tubes, covering
"the twelve home mission subjects" which arc
to be extensively advertised. Every Protestant
Church in America is to "be -furnished with a
complete set of these posters. The daily papers
of at least one hundred of the largest cities are to
be used on every Saturday, iwith syndicate articles
which these papers will be asked to insert
at advertising rates. Editors are to he furnished
large amounts of material and to be asked to use