Newspaper Page Text
September 25. 1912] THE
iness must have speedily passed. They rested in
the happiness they were giving.
When the Lord invited them to rest he knew
very well what was going to happen. He was
going to give them rest in a way they knew not
of. He was going to show them that fatigue and
weariness of the body could be wonderfully overcome
by the spiritual exhilaration consequent
upon ministering to the needs of others, that we
inav forcret our own in t-h?
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to others.
And still further, let us learn that if we do by
the blessing of God upon us bring help to some
our reward is not idleness, but a larger oppox*tunity.
Even the deseids become populous to
those who in Christ's name feed the hungry and
teach the ignorant.
"Give ye them to eat," said
A Place Christ to the disciples. Just
for Excuses, think how they might have excuscused
. themselves. First, they
were very tired. And then they had nothing to
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give, a nave uu iroume, upon tne supposition
that the disciples were like the average professor
of the present day, picturing to myself these men
looking at each other and saying, "How unreasonable
he is; he invited us out here to rest,
knowing how we need rest, and now he tells us to
wait upon these famished thousands; we are almost
ready to drop now, what will it be when we
have gone through this?" To which they might
add, "Give them to eat; where does he think
we will get it? We have nothing to eat ourselves,
we have no money to buy bread for suoh ft crowd.
It is impossible; it is unreasonable."
Suppose they had talked that way; what a
mistake they would have made. We need to
learn that the blessing is in proportion to the
apparent difficulties in the way of obedience. I
do not think that he ever lays upon us any injunctions
more apparently impossible than this,
"Give ye them to eat," to the worn out, emptyhanded
apostles. But in their willingness to
obey he gave them the needed strength and furnished
the needed supply, and rested and fed
them, and filled their souls with the blessedness
of knowing they had done in conjunction with
him a very kindly thing that day.
Excuses don't feed the hungry. Excuses don't
excuse. Obedience alone counts.
THE RECENT "ABOLITION" OF HELL.
The recent pronunciamento of the so-called
international mDie Students' Association,"
declaring that the Word of God does not teach
any doctrine of future punishment, and declaring
that the great majority of the preachers have
given up preaching any such doctrine because
of its known unpopularity and unwarrantableness,
has aroused more attention among secular
thinkers and writers than among religious. Ministers
and churches are more familiar than are
the secular press writers with the facts of the
matter. They are also better acquainted with the
source from which this pronunciamento comes,
its utter ignorance, its arrogance, its blind following
of a shrewd, scheming, money-making
leader. Knowing these, they have felt no inclination
or call to do more than simply make known
these facts.
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secular press, however. One paper says that
it does not khow what the "International Bible
Students' Association is, and doubts if these
"students" have burned many gallons of midnight
oil in quest of biblical information, but
that it does believe that justice is an undying
principle, and that somewhere, sometime, somehow,
meanness will be punished and virtue* rewarded,
both in proportion to their deserts and
neither exclusively. Another paper, and no less
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE S
an one than the widely known CommercialAppeal,
of Memphis, says editorially, under the
caption, "Hell as an Influence Upon the Diving,"
that were we to take out of Christianity
every article that declares punishment of any
sort for one who dies maliciously in sin, it believes
that the Christian system would fall to
pieces in a half dozen generations.
Perhaps the most notable of the secular discussions
of the matter is that of the Chicago
Inter-Ocean, whose editorial comments are as
lonaws: rne idea that justice is not an attribute
of God has become somewhat popular of
late years. It is a symptom of the same sort of
weakening of the mental and moral fibre which
is exhibited by the Hull House type of 'sociologist,'
with his notion that crime is 'environment,'
or 'disease,' and that criminals are to be
pitied rather than punished.
"We are taught, and we 'believe on the evidence
of both revelation and reason, that the
mercy of God is infinite. But so is, necessarily,
the justice of God. And, aside from the clear
Scriptural teaching, there is certainly nothing
illogical in the belief that he who dies a defiant
violator of the Divine Law, and a persistent rebel
against it, will after death suffer the consequences
of his sin in hell.
"Theologians of every school and sect agree
that the condition precedent to pardon and mercy
is repentance; what then 1 Is God to be mocked
by the violator of His laws ?
"To put the case in another way. We know
that nature?the laws which govern the material
universe?is essentially unforgiving. If a man
abuse his body by excess of any kind, the penalty
must be paid. By moderation and sobriety, the
scars of the self-inflicted wound may be hidden,
as a tree hides the passing slash of the woodman's
axe upon its bark. But the scar is still
there, and the scientist, coming perhaps a century
afterward, when the tree is decaying with
age, may lay his finger upon it.
"So, if a man continuously and repeatedly
abuse his body by debauchery, its wounds become
so many that he pays the final penalty by
extinction of tho Ivu^v'o 4 ?
v? v?\> a iiig. XlilVi 19 it llUt ill9U
possible that the sinner may so wound and scar
his moral nature and his soul, and so give such
offense to sins bring bo him such punishment
after death as to answer all human imaginations
of hell? If it be not so, then God is not infinitely
just. And which of the clerical or lay
shrinkers and shirkers of punishment will dare
say that?
"To deny the possibility of punishment for
the perversely sinful soul after death, to seek to
deny the existence of hell, is to deny the justice
of God and to uproot the moral sanction for the
punishments which human justice, for the indispensable
protection of well-doers against evildoers,
always has been, and always will be, compelled
to inflict."
All along men of sound common sense and
thorough scholarship have been savinc that the
inevitable effect of attempting to discredit God's
Word, as the radical critics have done, would be
to drive thoughtful people from the Bible rather
than attracting them to it, as the critics claimed.
The matter has been pretty well tested in the
biblical and theological schools, of which Knox
College, Toronto, is one. Andover is a notable
instance of total collapse from rationalistic
teaching and the Biblical department of Chicago
University and Union Seminary, New York, are
kept going only by the immense amounts of
money distributed in professors' salaries and
gratitutie* to students. Knox Colleare was once
a principal source of supply for the Presbyterian
ministry of Canada. "The Bible Student" notes
that Principal Caven, one of the most distinguished
educators of his day, and kndwn on
both sides of the Atlantic as a learned and devout
Presbyterian leader, was the former head of
Knox College; and that since his death, "in open
violation of its charter, Professors McCurdy,
McFadyen, and Matthews have made it a hotbed
OUTS (1089) 11
of rationalism." Attention is called to tne fact
that notwithstanding the flourishing condition
of the institution, "the graduating class had
decreased to an alarming extent, the number
of young men going into the ministry during the
year being only five." Principal Gaudier said,
"An announcement of this kind comes with
something of a shock and at first blush it would
seem as if we might soon have to close our doors
instead of going into new and larger buildings."
If the radical critics do not perceive by this time
that their teachings are a worse blight than hot
air from desert wfcstes, it is because they are
dazed by their own unbrideled arrogance and
insane lust of notoriety.
MORALITY AND RELIGION.
(Continued from page 3.)
pervading, all-regulating power in the Christian
heart. It is a spotless flower, planted and cultivated
by the divine hand, which sheds its fragrance
through the garden of the soul. It colors
the streams of thought, word and deed, which
flow from the fountain of our beincr Tt ?p
and delights in God; in the beauties of nature;
the mysteries of providence and the unparalled
glories of redemption. It assimilates its possessor
to the greatest and best Being in the universe.
By love to Christ the believer is actuated to
consecrate his talents, time, means, influence,
energies, and even his life, to his service. The
love of which we speak is long-suffering and
kind; does not envy; rejoices in the truth; thinks
no evil; bears, believes, hopes and endures all
things; is disinterested and humble, and is greater
than hope and faith, because it is more useful
than they are. It moves Christians to offer their
bodies as "living sacrifices" to Christ, that they
may enhance his declarative glory; it harmonizes
all the faculties of the soul, imparts additional
beauty and loveliness to constitutional
graces; and more than all other celestial gifts,
prepares the heart for a heaven of pure and
endless love. For love to Christ, ministers
preach, parents teach, martyrs burn, confessors
suffer, missionaries toil and all his faithful followers
unite in the efforts to usher in millenial
glory. Of this mighty power in the soul, which
thus manifests itself, the moralist, by experience,
knows nothing. He makes all the lines of action
terminate in self. Religion is unselfish; morality,
selfisfh. Religion is humble; morality, proud.
Religion exalts grace; morality, works. The
system of the moralist is, therefore, cold, narrow
and inadequate. It its to be feared that it has
many adherents. Let Christians, therefore, exemplify
by holy lives the truth of the golden
words: "For the love of Christ (Christ' love
to us) constraineth us; because we thus judge
tnat if one died for all, then were all dead; and
that he died for all that they which live should
not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto
him which died for them and rose again."?2
Corinthians 5:14.
Greenville, S. C.
It is announced, and appears to be a fact, that
the Turkish government, under the broader policy
which the regime of the "Young Turks"
party has brought in, is about to concede to the
Jewish colonies in Palestine autonomous rights.
The report gives it out that local autonomy is
to 'be given to each colony of one hundred or
inuic (jKiwiuN, mere are aireaay more than
forty such colonies in Palestine, including, all
told, about 15,000 persons, of the 110,000 Jews
dwelling in the land of their fathers. The same
rights are to be bestowed upon other nationalities
living in that land. The Zionist Movement
will undoubtedly be greatly quickened by this
concession.