608
other side or produce forgeries or perjure
testimony in support of their The
judges were well fitted to preside over such
a bar.
cases.
They are described as extortioners
who sought by every device to filch the money
of suitors to the last farthing, and when any
fraud was too glaring for their own perform-
ance, they had subordinate officials ever ready
to play into their hands.” ror. M.
(To be continued.)
SHoKX 8
GOOD TESTIMONY ON SUNDAY LAWS
ON. BOYD WINCHESTER, former
U. S. Minister to Switzerland, in a
recent article in the Louisville Courier-
Jouriial against Sunday laws, made the
following sensible observations ;—
“It 1s not the object of the state to edu-
cate its citizens morally by the employment
of coercive laws, or to direct those things
which belong to the inner psychic of man.
When the efficiency of law is exhausted, a
large field of conduct still remains over which
sound policy, enlightened morality, and the
precepts of Christianity exercise the only con-
trol that is possible. To attempt to estab-
lish the nature of our obligations by the legis-
lative square and circle, and to torture the
divine course into a theological diagram, is to
spend time and labor among ‘infinities and
unsearchables, and to heat one’s brain about
things impossible.”
To which the Nashville American adds :—
“ Between extreme and conflicting theories,
practical common sense may find sound lodg-
ment. Those who would enforce the old
Blue Laws, and those who would have the
open saloon and associate evils on Sunday,
will, let us hope, never have their way in this
country. There are many apparently sound
theories which it would not be wise to put in
practice. The citizen should have the fullest
freedom so long as it is not calculated to
make him a nuisance or an expense to others.
The law has no right to dictate a man’s re-
ligion or prescribe his code of morals; but
it has a right to say to him, ‘When you do
things that injure others, when you do things
that injure yourself and perhaps cause you
to become a public charge in a poorhouse or
madhouse or prison and your family a charge
upon the public, | will restrain your boasted
freedom.” Liberty is not license.
You
As a free man you
You have
no freedom to injure others. have no
right to be a vagrant.
have no right to cut off your arm or your leg
or put out your eyes, or poison yourself by
cating — or drinking. And the man can say
to the Jaw, You have no right to interfere
with my freedom to sing or dance or laugh or
play games or make merry with my friends
on Sunday, so long as I injure nobody, even
if my conduct does offend somebody who he-
lieves that Sunday should be a day of medita-
That
is a matter of opinion, persuasion, custom, or
tion and praver, of quiet and solemnity.
habit. The saloon is no part of Sunday free-
dom.”
THE WATCHMAN
When the saloon is prohibited on all days
of the week, as it should be, there will be no
question of Sunday legislation growing out of
an effort to minimize its evils. L.
SoS of
BY WHAT AUTHORITY
Twnr all-important question as regards any
system of belief 1s that of the authority on
which
AS.
it rests, Is it divine authority? or is
it human authority? We contend that divine
authority 1s the only good authority, and that
no man or set of men, however eminent, can
he sufficient authority for any religious doc-
trine. The world is full to-day of doctrines
which rest on no basis save human opinion,
speculation, or assumption, and would-be teach-
ers of the people proclaim their own religious
theories and ideas with as much assurance
as if they were quoting the language of Scrip-
ture. They seem to regard their own author-
ity as being nearly if not quite on a par with
the authority of the Bible. But in the day
of judgment it will be seen that those who
have put no difference between human au-
thority and that of the Bible. have made a
great and fatal mistake,
Human authority is also put in the place
of divine authority when men assume the right
to interpret the words of God; for the real
authority is in that which declares the meaning
of the language. If I ask my clergyman what
a text of Scripture means, and I believe that
it teaches a certain thing because he says it
does, my authority is not the Scripture, but
the clergyman; it is not divine authority, but
human only.
The word of God, the Bible, is the only
good authority in religion. “If any of you
lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth
to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and
it shall be given him.” James 1:5 If you
would know the meaning of the Scripture,
ask of God, its author. By his Holy Spirit,
who is the only authorized interpreter of the
Scripture, he has promised to guide you into
all truth. John 16:13. L. A. S.
EDITORIAL NOTES
RrcenTLy a ‘stockholders’ meeting of the
Union Pacific Ratlway share owners was held
at Salt
nearly
Lake City, which shows about how
representative railway stockholders’
There are 15000 of
stockholders, and
meetings generally are.
Pacific
seven chairs were provided for the meeting,
“No more seats were needed.” we are told,
the Union exactly
“inasmuch as exactly seven persons were pres-
Mr. representative, how-
ever, was able to poll over 71,000,000 votes,
and no one thought it worth while to demand
a recount.” These are the kind of facts made
use of as arguments for government owner-
ship of the railways.
ent. Harriman's
Tr has been decided that the Philippine As-
sembly or governing body, which has heen re-
cently created under authority of the United
States, <chal]l be opened without prayer.
Whether the principle of the separation of
church and state is more faithfully cherished
in Manila than it is in Washington, or whether
this action 1s due to religious conditions pre-
vailing in the islands, is not yet clear.
THE twenty-first annual report of the U. S.
Commissioner of Labor, recently made public,
states that from 1881 to 1905 inclusive, there
were 1n this country 36,757 strikes and 1,540
lockouts, involving 199,034 establishments, and
throwing 0,520.434 persons out of work. The
average duration of strikes per ‘establishment
was 23.4 days, and of lockouts 84.6 days, It
is stated that both strikes and lockouts suc-
ceeded oftener than they failed.
Tug plan of the Almighty is not to patch
up and mend “this present evil world’ so as
to have it continue on indefinitely, but to end
it. There is nothing this world needs so
much, and has long needed, as to come to its
end. God's plan is to have a new creation.
Rev. 21:5.
And as an earnest of this, he is creating new
all those individuals on the earth who are to
he subjects of his kingdom. “If any man be
in Christ, there is a new creation.” 2 Cor.
5:17, margin. Is there a new creation taking
place in your life? “Verily I say unto you,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God.” John 3:3.
* Behold, IT make all things new.”
RECENTLY Governor Hughes of New York
appointed a Public Service Commission to in-
vestigate the lmancial and political doings of
New York City's street railway trust. The
result was, we are told, a disclosure of dis-
honesty and unequaled even hy
the scandals in the great life insurance com-
panies. “A remarkable system of bookkeep-
was brought to light, “in accordance with
which large sums of the stockholders’ money,
expended for the creation of the desired brand
of public opinion, and for the purchase of an
imaginary railway, still appear in the books
as ‘assets.”” One item showed the sum of
$24,000, which had been paid to the leading
igure in the trust, charged to “expense ac-
count,” which leads the N. Y. IH orld to re-
mark that “such payments help explain the
suspense of metropolitan stockholders about
vanished property, and the of the
public from car straps.” It 1s the same story
that has been told by all the investigations
corruption
ing”
suspense
into the methods of modern * high finance.”
Is TUERE a connection between insanity and
tea-drinking?> A conviction that there is, is
coming over people in the north of Ireland,
where insanity is notably on the increase. A
[.ondon paper makes this comment on the sub-
ject :—
* Insanity continues on the increase in Ire-
land. Comparing the number of lunatics per
10,000 of population for 1871, England and
Wales had 30.4, Scotland 34, Ireland 30.5; but
in 1901 the figures were England and Wales
40.8, Scotland 4s, Ireland 56.2. There is a
widespread conviction in the north of Ireland