58
by Jews no less truly than were the Old Tes-
tament Scriptures. The former are just as
much Jewish as are the latter. Christ is a
Jew, and “salvation is of the Jews.” John
4:22. All the gospel promises are made to
the Jews; not one is made to the Gentiles as
such. The Gentiles must become children of
Abraham in order to inherit these promises,
Abraham, the * father of the faithful,” was
as truly a Christian as was Paul or Peter.
The gospel was preached to Abraham. Gal
3:8.
It is “of the utmost importance ” that peo-
ple should relieve their minds of this idea that
the New Testament Scriptures have super-
seded the Old, and that the latter have ceased
to be of practical importance to the Christian
life. Such an idea blinds the mind to a cor-
rect understanding of Christian truth. It
leads away from the knowledge of God and
of Christ in their relation to the plan of sal-
vation, obscures the thought of Christ as Cre-
ator and ILawgiver equally with his Father,
disparages the Decalogue as a Jewish code
not suited to Christians, and fosters the idea
of a certain antagonism existing between
Christ and his Father, instead of the perfect
oneness described in the Saviour's prayer in
John 17. Until this idea is banished from
the mind, the meaning of the New Testament
Scriptures as well as of the Old will remain
in obscurity. L. A. S.
[11
y
EDITORIAL NOTES
A prsrarci from Manila reports the loss of
a hundred or more lives on the island oi
I.yte, which with the neighboring island of
Samar was swept by a typhoon on January ro.
ES
THE police of Boston continue to make nu-
merous arrests of persons who are doing sec-
ular work in that city on Sunday. The names
of four hundred such persons were secured
by the police on January 6. It is worthy of
note in connection with this that Boston is the
most Catholic city of large size in the United
States.
EI 2
AN effort 1s being made to sct up an mde-
pendent Catholic Church mn France. Henry
des FHoux is at the head of the movement, and
is supported by Archbishop Villate of Texas,
who is now in Paris. This movement grows
out of the pope's attitude toward the church
and state separation law. Its adherents will
of necessity repudiate the authority and in-
fallibility of the pope.
Ho
Tug Nashville Christian Advocate reports
the following: “A remarkable movement is
reported from Emmanuel Church, Boston.
Classes have been formed for the study of
mental healing. There is no disposition on
the part of the leaders to supplant the regular
On the contrary, a physician is
in each case. The movement has
religious character. Much
given to the subconscious-self
physicians.
consulted
no distinctive
weight is
theory.”
THE WATCHMAN
Thi danger of placing great power in the
hands of men without making them strictly
answerable to the public for the use of such
power, is illustrated by the cases of some lead-
ers of labor unions. At the trial in Chicago
of President Shea of the International Team-
sters’ Union, one witness “testified that for
$1,500, divided among five labor leaders, the
great teamsters’ strike was brought on in the
spring of 1903, which caused a loss of $9,500,-
000 to merchants and employees, besides in-
volving the killing of thirty men and the
wounding of many others.”
These five leaders had the power to inaugu-
rate this strike, and they did not feel ac-
countable to the public for the manner in
which they exercised this power — the public
could not depose them from office or otherwise
hold them to account for what they might
do — so for this sum of money, this pecuniary
benefit to themselves, they inaugurated a strike
which cost other people millions of dollars and
involved the loss of life. It was further testi-
fied that the garment workers at Montgomery
Ward & Co.'s paid money to another union —
in other words, bribed them — to inaugurate
a sympathetic strike. The possession and ex-
ercise of power which will greatly affect the
interests of the people, without any corre-
sponding degree of accountability to the people
which the latter can enforce, is contrary to,
and destructive of, republican government.
EJ
ON the subject of “Child Labor the Royal
Road to Crime,” George Harvey writes in the
North American Review: —
“One million seven hundred thousand chil-
dren, practically uneducated, arc toiling over
here, and growing up, darkened, massed, and
dangerous, into the American future.”
“Such is the summary of one phase of pres-
ent industrial and social conditions in this
country set down in his latest book by that
friendly yet perspicacious and fearless student
and forecaster, Mr. H. G. Wells. It is, we
fear, a fact as terrifying as the indictment is
terrible. If the evil
mand might be made upon local pride and
were segregated, de-
communal sentiment with reasonable expecta-
tion of responsive remedy; but, sad to say.
this is not the case. In Massachusetts —
“there she 1s: behold her!” — are ‘little naked
boys packing cloth into bleaching vats in a
bath of that bleaches their little
hodies like the bodies of lepers:’ in the South
there are ‘six times as many children at work
as there twenty and each
year more little ones are brought in from the
fields and hills to live in the degrading atmos-
phere of the mill towns;’ in Pennsylvania
‘children of ten and eleven stoop over the
chute, and pick out slate and other impuri-
ties from the coal as it passes them, for ten
or eleven hours a day;’ in Illinois they stand
‘ankle-deep in blood, cleaning intestines ani
trimming meat.” Altogether, the children be-
tween the ages of five and fourteen forced to
toil in factories, mines, and slaughterhouses
comprise nearly one sixth of our entire popu-
lation.”
Jacob Riis, noted as a philanthropist, has
chemicals
3
were years ago,
well said: “You cannot rob a child of its
childhood and expect to appeal to the child's
manhood by-and-by.
to make a whole man.”
Tt takes a whole hoy
5
AN effort was made at the recent constitu-
tional convention which met to frame a con-
stitution for the new state of Oklahoma, to
“put God into the Constitution” of that com-
monwealth. In order to make room for the
“God” of their conception in the Constitution,
those who were back of the attempt sought to
take justice and liberty out of the Constitu-
tion. These persons, who represent the Na-
tional Reform party in this country, came he-
fore the convention with the demand that the
following be adopted as the Constitution's
preamble :—
“We, the people of the State of Oklalioma,
recognizing Almighty God as the source of all
authority in civil government, the Lord Jesus
Christ as the ruler of nations, and his revealed
will as the standard hy which to decide moral
issues in national life, in order to form a state,”
ete.
This would exclude {rom political recog-
nition in the new state all who do net admit
that the civil power should enforce the will
of Christ by the civil law. If the true “ will
of Christ” were enforced upon people it would
do less harm than to enforce “his revesied
will” as defined by a set of fanatics who want
to be conscience in the matter for alt the vest
of the people, or as defined by any tribunal
composed of finite, erring, and moi: or less
prejudiced human minds. But th:
Christ is to be done in the earth, not hy hav-
ing it forced upon people by the civil law,
but through the work of the gospel! agencies
will of
which accomplish results by changing the
heart. The revealed will of Chrisy, is that
people should love their enemies and forgive
all who injure them, even ‘seventy times
seven” times if they shall say, “I repent”
Matt. 18:21, 22. It will not require much
thought to show that no civil government couid
long exist if it should undertake to forgive
offenders — thieves, murderers, etc— as often
as they might repent or profess to repent of
their misdeeds. The mercy of the gospel, ex-
tended by the civil government, would soon pit
an end to the government, and the justice of
the gospel, meted out by the civil government
to the transgressor of God's will, would soon
put an end to the transgressor; for the penalty
of sin is death. The government could not
execute justice without destroving the smner,
and could not show mercy without destroying
itself. Hence it is utterly outside the province
of civil government to concern itself with the
“revealed will” of God, further than to se-
cure to the people liberty in the enjoyment of
their natural rights. God alone, through his
divine government, can be both just and merci-
ful to the sinner, because justice for the sin-
ner’s transgression has been visited upon a
vicarious Sacrifice, Jesus Christ. Civil gov-
ernment and religion,— the state and the
church — belong in wholly separate spheres
of action.
After considerable discussion, the conven-