What Is America Reading? w
MAY
Watchman
The
NEWSPAPER,
for the
NEWS
Vol. xxxviii, No. 5
Nashville, Tennessee
May, IQ2Q
Getting Nowhere, or Somewhere
THOUSANDS of people, marooned on housetops in a recent Alabama flood, moaned and cried and screamed in anguish for fear of being drowned, till they could be heard miles away. But this is an incident compared with the despairing wails of men everywhere who have lost faith and assurance out of their lives. They are legion, especially among the higher classes, and they are increasing every day.
Typical of the many who not only wander in their minds about where they are and what life means, but also get their woes into print, is a man, lately deceased, who wrote one of a series of personal experiences with religion which are appearing from time to time in the Outlook and Independent, Listen to him:
‘ ‘ Man, alone in the desert of a vast and unknowable awesomeness, has hung himself around with cozy explanations within which he may live unterrified. Now, for more than half a lifetime, I have been fumbling my way with impatient curiosity through these lovely illusions, and I came out, at last, on a sublimity of ignorance more uplifting than faith and as bottomless as despair. I have arrived nowhere, I am back where primitive man was when he began to invent his first religion. And I cannot invent one.”
Yet, in the face of this admission of absolute futility in his own life, he exalts to the skies his present system of belief, despises the fundamentals of Christianity, and makes all men gods, including himself, in these words: Man “may not know where he is, or whither he is bound, but he is on his way. He comes out of mystery; he moves in the midst of mystery; and there is nothing but mystery ahead of his hope. But surely the universe should be proud of him, and he should be proud of himself.” If this man, or the many like him, has believed for half a lifetime that man invented his own religion, that he lived in self-made illusions, then he never had faith, and is in no position to repudiate it and to aver that ignorance of it is more uplifting. It is passing strange that such men ridicule God’s
paradoxes and point with scorn to what they think are contradictions in the Bible, yet will cling to something that is at the same time uplifting and as bottomless as despair. Has consistency passed out?
When a man by his own willfulness, pride of superior intelligence, and belief in evolution, loses faith out of his life, he is of all men most miserable and unreasoning. He turns and rails at the faith he has lost, and thereby proves its worth.
The trouble is that these traducers of religion are lambasting a straw man. They are striking out at a religion that is not Christianity at all, but superstition and tradition. They think that the Bible teaching of God is that He is an old man with a white beard, stern and vengeful, yet withal loving by caprice; that the Bible teaches that the earth is flat and the sky is a blue dome a few miles high; that the fear of God is the sort of fear that poisons the body; that a child must obey parents regardless of right principles; that we should inhibit all angry feelings; that we should not be self-reliant; that we should crucify all sex satisfaction; that church should rule state; and that religion despises intelligence.
The wild and bloody French Revolution was directed against the teachings and practices of the Church, which the people had been made to believe were the teachings and practices of Christ. So today intelligent men are railing at what they imagine are Christian ideas and customs, but which are only rubbish that has been piled up around the Cross. They find fault with religionists for attacking science when they are ignorant of science, yet they themselves ignorantly attack religion.
To the wanderers in the mazes of uncertainty we would say in all kindness of heart: Get somewhere. Strip the religion of Christ of its accumulated accretions; get back to His person and words and acts. Ask God for faith in these. They will appeal to your highest intelligence, answer every longing, fit you to cope with life, prepare you for death, and assure you of a resurrection to life everlasting.
We know, for we have experienced.
Entered as second-class matter, January 19,1909, at the post office at Nashville, Tenn.y under act of March J, 1879, by the Southern Publishing Association, (Seventh-day Adventist), 2119 24th Ave. N. Published monthly (except October, when semi-monthly). Price 25 cents a copy, $1.00 a year.
PAGE TWO	THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE
Watchman
Art Irtterprei/er oftfie Times
Edited by Egbert Sruce T/xurbec
Magazine
WATCHMAN
MEANING.
. for ide/
Reaping the Whirlwind of Grime
Who Sowed to the Wind?
BiIHE youthfulness of many of the criminals in the United States, especially in our cities, is becoming a commonplace in “““9 American society. Hickman, Loeb, Leopold, Rice, Harsh, and many others are familiar names in the annals of American criminology. “Youthful killer,”
“girl bandit,” “student suicide,”
“outlaw,” and other such striking expressions, which a few years ago were almost unknown in American journalism, are today common terms in the columns of our daily papers. Floods of oratory have been loosed from the pulpit, the lecture platform, and through the press, in explanation of the reasons for these conditions ; and scores of remedies have been suggested, looking to the reclamation of this vast army of wayward youth. But the candid student of social conditions is forced to acknowledge that up to the present time there is not the slightest indication of escape from the awful calamity facing the American people as a result of the recklessness of large numbers of its young men and women.
The following quotation taken from the Outlook and Independent of January 2 sums up the situation in the words of Dr. Max Schlapp, “the most noted of the endocrinologists and for years a clinical student of the delinquent”:
“Any man moderately familiar with the indicia of mental and nervous disorders will find playing at every street corner in the modern city the ultimate tragedy of the race. He has but to stand and watch the passing crowd. In tffe gait and posture of his mortal brothers, in the eccentricities of carriage, the shapes of faces, the gape of mouths, the faulty play of muscles, the empty merriment or dull imperturbability of countenances, he will read the ruin of stocks may, 1929
and sense the sundown of peoples.
“Few can watch this promenade of specters with composure. Indeed, only the ignorant can survey the modern crowd with equanimity, for he who sees what passes today and knows what was yesterday also understands that this thing before him is a growing disaster.”
With these facts before us, one is more and more convinced that the problem itself is too little understood; hence the remedies suggested and attempted fail. It is the conviction of the writer, as a student of history and sociology, that so long as we place the primary blame for present conditions on the youth of our day, we are decidedly on the wrong track, and all attempts to find a solution for the problem in that direction can end only in failure, and ultimate disaster.
One of the basic facts of social science is that the individual is at any time in his experience the sum total of hereditary and environmental factors. As to the relative importance of each we are not here concerned; but we will agree that the individual has no control over physical and mental characteristics that he has inherited from his parents. We might even go so far as to assume that, in general, during the first fifteen to eighteen years of his life he has but little more control over the environmental factors with which he comes in contact. Again, the student of heredity denies the possibility of radical changes in basic characteristics from one generation to another; but the student of psychology knows that out of the environment that surrounds him, the individual selects, through attention and sensation directed more or less by choice, which in turn is largely controlled by desire, those things which enter into the development of his body, mind,
PAGE THREE
By Guy Herbert Winslow
“The most malign of all these dangers (which confront this nation) today is disregard and disobedience of law.”—Herbert Hoover in his inaugural address, March 7929.
Herbert Photos, Inc.
The criminals of Europe are better trained than our own, and have driven the police, as this Paris plain-clothes man, to wear bullet-proof vests, and carry helmets and shields of sheet steel for protection in skirmishes with desperate bandits
International Newsreel
Julius Rosenwald (right), President of Sears. Roebuck, and Co. and noted philanthropist, spends hours at Judge Sabath’s Court in Chicago, studying divorce conditions at first hand. Can his millions help cure the divorce evil?
and soul. We are forced to the conclusion, then, that the waywardness of youth is due, not to the fact that they are “innately” worse than those of preceding generations, but to the fact that the conditions into which they were born — conditions, by the way, provided by their parents and grandparents and over which the youth have no control — have produced a generation that is without parallel in the history of mankind.
Scrapping Age-Old Scruples
IT IS a generally accepted commonplace that the World War was the greatest catastrophe in the history of the human race. Men have spent much energy trying to measure the war in terms of its responsibility, number of lives lost, billions of dollars’ worth of property destroyed. But who has the power to evaluate the Great War in terms of its results on the youth of today, who were boys and girls of the most impressionable age during the years of that awful struggle? During those days fathers and mothers used every known instrument of instruction, psychology, and compulsion, through the press, from the pulpit and the platform, and by legislative act, to teach and force mankind to repudiate every moral standard that had been laboriously worked out and accepted during the course of human history. The attitude toward murder and falsehood will serve as illustrations.
Nations that had held murder in horror and the murderer as the worst of criminals “suddenly broke out in sturdy anthems of praises for killers and killing.” And it is not to be expected that boys and girls of five to fifteen years of age can well distinguish between “legalized” killing on the battlefield, and killing in an obscure hallway, a dark bedroom, or a PAGE FOUR
back street. “The boys [and girls] who are killing now were seven, eight, nine, or ten. They waged mimic wars with tin soldiers and they chose for hero worship the man who had brought down fifteen enemy planes, who had bayonneted twenty in a rush across the waiting trench.”
Falsehood as a Weapon
AGAIN, falsehood is a recognized ^and extremely useful, and hence a highly developed, weapon in modern warfare. I quote from a letter recently received from a New York publishing house announcing the publication of the book, “Falsehood in Wartime,” by Arthur Ponsonby, M. P.: “People must never [in time of war] be allowed to become despondent; so victories must be exaggerated and defeats minimized, and the stimulus of indignation, horror, and hatred must be assiduously and continuously pumped into the public mind. Lies are circulated with great rapidity. . . .
“‘There must have been more deliberate lying in the World War from 1914-1918 than in any other period of the world’s history. Everything was legitimate which could make the soldiers go on fighting. Any attempt to doubt or deny even the most fantastic story has to be condemned as unpatriotic, if not traitorous. This allows a free field for the rapid spread of lies.’”
It is a long step from the McGuffey readers, that formed the cornerstone of the education and training of our fathers and grandfathers, to that five-year period in world history when all moral restraint was swept away — when every phase of life that came in contact with our boys and girls was saturated with the worship of hatred, falsehood, brutality, and bloodshed. And today we are reaping the results, not because the youth of today are naturally inferior to, or worse than, those of the past, but because they have had forced into every physical, moral, and spiritual fiber germs that can breed nothing but the worst forms of excess and crime.
The boys and girls of any age appropriate those conditions, instruments, institutions, and customs transmitted to them by preceding generations; in this way alone is the continuity of history preserved. But how different the heritage of the present generation from that of any preceding age! And never in the history of the world has humanity reaped a more bountiful harvest from seed sown than At the present time. In place of love and reverence for the truth, we fed our boys and girls falsehood and lies; instead of teaching the sacredness of human life, we were butchering men (Continued on page 28)
THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE
What
Calendar
Reform
would, mean to the divine system of reckoning time and the requirements of God's word. Do we want to worship on a different day of the week each year? Will God be satisfied with a “ ing Sabbath"? The significance ofthe reform to lovers of liberty
‘By Charles S. Longacre
Herbert Photos. Inc.
Successive photographs of an eclipse. The accuracy of God's timekeepers is remarkable. Can men improve on His standards of measurement by tinkering with the week which He established?
HERE is perhaps no question that is creating a more widespread interest at the present time than the proposed new calendar that all the nations of the world are to consider adopting by 1933, if the Joint House Resolution 334, now pending before the Congress of the United States, becomes effective. This joint resolution requests the president of the United States “to propose the calling of an international conference for the simplification of the calendar, or to accept, on behalf of the United States, an invitation to participate in such a conference. ”
The plan submitted in connection with this resolution, a diagram of which appears on this page, is known as the Cotsworth scheme, which gives each year thirteen months of twenty-eight days each, or four full weeks exactly, with each month beginning with Sunday. The extra days at the end of each month of the old calendar arrangement are absorbed in the additional thirteenth month, called “Sol.”
However, there is an extra day left over, which is causing all the trouble.
The thirteen months of twenty-eight days each amount to 364 days, but the ordinary year has 365 days, and leap year has 366 days. This leaves an extra day to be accounted for in the ordinary year and two extra days during a leap year. According to the Cotsworth plan, these extra days are to be considered as “blank days,” and are not to be reckoned among the days in the weekly cycle. For the first time in human history, the sponsors of this scheme propose to destroy the unbroken continuity of the weekly cycle.
N‘
calendar
revisions
The Cotsworth Calendar
The above is the plan of the proposed thirteen-month calendar, with the exception of leap years, when an additional “blank day” will be inserted between the month of June and the month of Sol, but not counted among the days in the weekly cycle. This disrupts the present week, which has been unbroken in the history of man.
MAY, I929
Weekly Cycle Preserved in Past O DOUBT you have often heard men assert that the true days of the week were lost sight of in the calendar revisions in the past. But such an assertion is not supported by the records of past revisions. The historical data of these are all preserved, and we know exactly what was done in every case. The “Encyclopedia Britan-nica” bears unqualified testimony to the fact that the days of the weekly cycle as we have it today have never been altered in the past. Its language is explicit: “The week is a period of seven days, having no reference whatever to the celestial motions — a circumstance to which it owes its unalterable uniformity. . . . It has been employed from time immemorial in almost all Eastern countries; and as it page FIVE
M I	j
^ istWEEK	2nd Week	3rd week	4th Week
T I_____________________________j___________
H ISMTWTFSISMT WT F S I S M T W T F S| SMTWTFS Jan	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	I	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Feb	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	I	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Mar	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	|	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Apr	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
May	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
June 11234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	2? 23	24	25	26 27	28
Sol |	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |	8	9 10	11	12	13	14	|	15	16	17	18	19 20 21 | 22 23	24	25	26 27	28
July	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Aug	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Sept	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Oct	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Nov	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
Dec	1234567	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19 20 21	22 23	24	25	26 27	28
{Proposed New Month
Blank Day, or “Year Day.”
20
forms neither an aliquot part of the year nor of the lunar month, those who reject the Mosaic recital will be at a loss, as Delambre remarks, to assign to it an origin having much semblance of probability.”— Article “Calendar,” Vol. IV, p. q88, eleventh edition.
There is abundance of historical proof that the calendar changes and revisions in the past never altered the original order of the days of the week. Our present calendar has gone through a number of changes since Romulus in b. c. 738 introduced the Roman Calendar, in which he divided a year of 304 days into ten months. In b. c. 713, Numa Pompilius added two more months — January and February — thus giving 354 days to the regular year. He made provision that another month should be added every second or third year in order to give a true length to the year of 365 days. By the time of Julius Caesar the spring began about January 1 instead of March 21, and therefore, in b. c. 46, he made another attempt to reform the calendar to correct this confusion. He issued a decree that the year b. c. 46 should have 445 days, and that the year b. c. 45 should begin on the first day of January and have 365 days, and that each succeeding year should have the same number of days, but that each leap year should have 366 days, and that this extra day should be added to the month of February each leap year.
But none of these changes in the Roman Calendar, in the addition of extra months and days to correct their miscalculations as to the true length of the solar year, altered in a single instance the true days of the weekly cycle. The Jewish nation and the Eastern countries were able to continue the observance of the Sabbath as aforetime, and the weekly cycle was preserved unbroken during all these changes in the Roman Calendar, which only affected the length of the months and the length of the year.
Julius Caesar had decreed that the month of February should ordinarily have twenty-nine days, and during leap year thirty days. The intercalary day during leap year was not to be called the thirtieth day of February, but it was ordained that the twenty-fifth of February should be counted twice on leap year. Some have concluded that this arrangement altered the true days of the week. But the following illustration shows how the Jews who lived in Rome at this time counted the days of the week when the twenty-fifth of February was counted twice:
PAGE Six
You will observe from this calendar that the first twenty-fifth of February fell on Saturday and the second twenty-fifth of February on Sunday in the leap year of b. c. 44. This way of reckoning did not alter the weekly cycle among the Jews, and this is still the way the ecclesiastical calendar operates on the Julian Calendar to this day, according to the authority of the “Encyclopedia Britannica.”
The Roman Empire at the time of Constantine’s
Keystone View Co.
The only kind of church a “wandering Sabbath" would not affect adversely. The congregation meets in this one only once a year, at Slate Hill, N. J.
decree of a. d. 321 officially accepted the weekly cycle as handed down by the Jewish race and the Christian believers. However, none of the changes made in the transfer from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar and adopted by the various nations at different times have in a single instance altered the days of the original weekly cycle.
The Julian Calendar was not accurate, because it assumed the length of the solar year to be 365X days, whereas the exact length was a few minutes less. By a. d. 1582 this error amounted to ten days. Pope Gregory XIII made an attempt to rectify the error. He issued a decree that after October 4, 1582, ten calendar days should be omitted, so that the next day should be October 15 instead of October 5. The change from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar was not made by all nations at the same
THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE
JULIAN CALENDAR
b. c. 44___February_____b. c. 44
Sun. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thur. Fri. Sat.
______________1234
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
• 4---—— --------------------
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
25	26	27	28	29________
time. Spain, Portugal, and Italy first accepted the decree of Pope Gregory XIII, and the following illustration shows exactly how the change was made from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar at that time.
Roman figures are Julian calendar dates. Italic figures are Gregorian calendar dates.
The above illustration proves that the dropping of ten days did not interfere with the free-running week. Instead of writing Friday the fifth, they wrote Friday the fifteenth.
France waited till December of the same year, 1582, and it dropped the ten days of the calendar month by calling the tenth of December the twentieth, as indicated below:
Roman figures are Julian calendar dates. Italic figures are Gregorian calendar dates.
The change was again made on a Friday, but it was Friday the twentieth instead of Friday the tenth, and the weekly cycle was not disrupted by the dropping of the ten days. The dates of the month of December were changed but the days of the week were not disturbed.
England and her Colonies adopted the Gregorian Calendar 170 years later, in 1752. By that time it was necessary to drop eleven days instead of ten. An Act of Parliament ordered that September 3 should be called September 14. Accordingly, England and all her colonies made the change on Thursday, the third of September, as the following illustrates :
Roman figures are Julian calendar dates. Italic figures are Gregorian calendar dates.
The dropping out of the eleven days did not alter the weekly cycle. The second of September was followed by the fourteenth, and everybody in the English possessions wrote Thursday, September 14, 1752, instead of Thursday, September 3. may, 1929
Turkey, Soviet Russia, Roumania, Serbia, Greece, and the Eastern Greek Catholic Church continued the use of the Julian Calendar until just a few years ago. Turkey adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1917, Soviet Russia in 1918, Roumania and Serbia in 1919, and Greece in 1923. None of these nations broke the weekly cycle when they made the transfer. Greece and the Eastern Greek Church waited just 341 years before they adopted the Gregorian Calendar. By this time it became necessary to drop thirteen days out of the reckoning. The following calendar shows how it affected the monthly dates and how the days of the week were preserved intact in dropping the thirteen days:
Greece and the Eastern Greek Church made the change on a Sunday, and instead of calling it Sunday, October 1, according to the Julian Calendar, they called it Sunday, October 14, according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Grecians went to sleep on Saturday night, September 30, according to the Julian Calendar, and woke up Sunday morning, October 14, according to the Gregorian Calendar. Dropping the thirteen days did not alter the days of the weekly cycle but o’nly the dates of the month of October. It would have been Sunday, October 1, under the Julian Calendar if the change had not been made, but with the change it became Sunday, October 14, under the Gregorian Calendar reckoning.
All the nations of the past took special care in their calendar revisions to preserve unbroken the continuity of the weekly cycle. While the dates of the month in the other nations were not the same as the dates of the month in Greece before the change, yet the days of the week were exactly the same. When it was Sunday in Greece it was Sunday in all the other nations, though they operated under different calendars. Sabbatarians who observed the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week in England also observed the {Continued on page 27)
PAGE SEVEN
a. d.1582	October	a. d. 1582
Sun. Mon. Tue. Wed. Thur. Fri. Sat.
______1234	15	16
77	l8	IQ	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	2/	28	2Q	30
JI ._____________________
________JULIAN CALENDAR_______
a. d. 1923	September	a. d. 1923
Sun. Mon. Tue. Wed. Thur. Fri. Sat.
1	2
3456789 10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
_______GREGORIAN CALENDAR_____
a. d. 1923__October_____a. d. 1923
Sun. Mon. Tue. Wed. Thur. Fri. Sat.
First thirteen days not counted.
14	75	16	77	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31_____________
a. d. 1582	December	a. d. 1582
Sun. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thur. Fri. Sat.
______________1234
5__6__7___8__9	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31________________
International Newsreel
Premier Mussolini signing the notable agreement between the Catholic Church and the Italian Government
The Question Mark
Has been removedfrom “ the Roman .” IVhat does it mean to you and the
By Leon L. Caviness
Our observer at Geneva, Switzerland
IBLE students recognize that in the books of Daniel, Revelation, and other prophecies, nations are presented under the symbol of wild beasts. This is very logical, for the power of the governments of this world is force, and a wild beast is a natural symbol of force. On the other hand, the church is represented under the symbol of a woman, whose character corresponds to that of the church to be represented. This also is logical; for the power of the church is love, and a woman is the natural symbol of love. The church that has turned away from God and turned to this world is represented as a woman who has proved untrue to her husband. Then, too, we find the people of God sometimes represented under the symbol of a city; the true church being called Jerusalem and the false church being called Babylon.
There is, however, an ecclesiastical system that claims both civil and religious authority. We should not therefore be surprised to find this system represented in Scripture both as a beast, or the horn of a beast, and as a woman. But as God himself will not compel anyone to serve Him, this ecclesiastical system which claims the right to use force is repre-PAGE EIGHT
sented as a very wicked woman who has allied herself with the kings of this world and put to death the true followers of Jesus.
But what has all this to do with the Roman Question? There can be no conflict between civil power moving only in the realm belonging to the civil power, and the church moving in the realm belonging to it as a church. This was what Jesus had in mind when He said: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” But with a church claiming both temporal power and civil government there is bound to be a conflict, unless the civil power submits, to some degree, to the authority of this church. In other words, two powers cannot claim jurisdiction in the same realm without danger of a conflict unless one or the other of these two powers is recognized as supreme.
The papacy is such an ecclesiastical system claiming both temporal and spiritual authority. Historically, the bishop of Rome first claimed spiritual authority over his fellow bishops. On the removal of the seat of the empire to Constantinople, and by means of the spurious “Donation of Constantine,”
THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE
the papacy first began to claim a temporal supremacy for the pope. The decree of Justinian in 533 and the decisive defeat of the Ostrogoths in 538 give us two important dates in the actual establishment of this temporal supremacy.
Throughout the Middle Ages we find the popes exercising this temporal supremacy in varying degrees. A period of 1260 years from 533 brings us to 1793 and the French Revolution. The political doctrines of the French Revolution, which spread in a modified form to the whole world, did more than anything else to modify the conception of human society on which the papacy had depended for its unique position among civil governments. Then in 1798 we see France, “the eldest son of the Church,” actually laying a hand of violence on the pope and taking him prisoner. Later the armies of united Italy seized Rome in 1870 and took from the pope his last vestige of civil power. It was this last act that gave rise to the Roman Question. Since 1870 the popes have styled themselves “prisoners of the Vatican.”
In the past fifty-nine years there have been many attempts to find a satisfactory solution to this conflict between the pope and the Italian government; but up to the present, all attempts have failed. Of recent months, however, there have appeared repeated notices in the public newspapers and other journals indicating that both the pope and Mussolini were disposed to make concessions so as to bring this struggle to an end. The great difficulty on the one hand was the unwillingness of Italy to return the Papal States to the pope as temporal sovereign, and on the other the unwillingness of the pope to accept anything short of his reinstatement as a temporal sovereign.
Not a Surprise
MOST Protestant commentators have agreed that it is the papacy that is symbolized by the beast of Revelation who received the deadly wound, but whose wound was healed, so that all the world wondered after the beast whose “death-stroke,” as it is given in the American Revised Version, may, 1929
was healed. This being the case, they have looked for a restoration of temporal power to the pope and his re-establishment as the supreme ruler over all other rulers. We were not surprised, then, to read that the pope had called together all the corps of diplomats at Rome and announced to them at 10:30 Thursday morning, February 7, that an agreement on the Roman question had been reached between the Vatican and the Quirinal. This agreement was signed in due form Monday forenoon, February 11, by Cardinal Gasparri, the papal secretary of state, and by Mussolini, the Italian prime minister. According to a decision of the Holy See the text of these agreements will not be published until after they have been submitted to the legislative assemblies; but a resume was given out Tuesday, February 12.
Nature of the Agreement
THERE are three parts to this agreement, a treaty, a concordat, and a financial understanding. All three are to be ratified by the pope and by the king of Italy within four months, and they go into force just as soon as they have been
ratified by both parties. The treaty has a pre-amble and twenty - seven articles. The Roman Catholic religion is recognized as the only state religion in Italy. A papal state, called the “Citta del Vati-cano,” is established, in which the Holy See is* the only authority. The limits of this state are indicated by a map affixed to the treaty. This papal state is to have a railroad station from which there will be connection to other states. An agreement is included concerning the circulation in Italy of land and air vehicles belonging to the Citta del Vaticano. A list is given of the persons under the sovereignty of the Holy See, but residing in Italy, and of the privileges that the church dignitaries and the functionaries of the papal court shall enjoy. Italy recognizes the right of the Holy See to have diplomatic representatives and appoints an Italian ambassador to the Vatican. The papal nuncio in Rome is recognized as the dean of the diplomatic corps. The Holy See declares {Continued on page 30)
PAGE NIN£
International Newsreel
Vast crowds gathered in the plaza before the Vatican at Rome, waiting for the pope to come out and bless them
What Is America Reading?
The reading of a nation determines its thought and is an indication of its trend.—The book stores and the news stands exhibit examples of America's taste in reading.— Can anything be done to curb the enormous demandfor trashy and immoral	literature?—An in-
valuable standard as to what to read
'Bjy Art h u r Monroe
HANHARDT
HAT is America reading? ” asked the writer of an article in the Munich Illustrated Press recently. He then answered his own question by stating
that the American takes his reading material for the greater part from newspapers and magazines. He praised the grand array of periodicals, literary and political, and of newspapers with their great variety of sections, and observed that the thousands of enormous editions of dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies bore witness .to a great reading public; but this periodical reading is all at the expense of the book.
The question is vital: What is America — what is the world in general — reading? An answer will reveal much.
To answer this question in detail would necessitate the discussion of an endless amount of printed matter. Suffice it to say, there are as many journals as there are fields of human interest. One need but think of the better classes of magazines — the quarterly reviews, the literary monthlies, the political and news weeklies and monthlies. Then there are the large conservative dailies, and also the scientific, commercial, travel, and geographical publications.
Then there is the colossal mass of light reading— the story magazines that feature detectives, criminals, love affairs, and so on. The number of joke journals has increased rapidly, as have also those featuring nude pictures under the pretense of fostering physical culture.
This brief survey gives a faint idea of what is being read, and the book — of the making of which
H. Armstrong Roberts
What is read to them and what they read has much to do in deciding their future and the future of the nation
there is no end—has not yet even been mentioned.
All over the world we are living in the age of the movie, newspaper, magazine, cheap book, radio, talkie. Every one is reading and hearing — looking at and listening in.
We are also living in an age of speed and enlightenment; even though the latter must be imbibed on the go. The psychological effect of traveling at the rate of one hundred miles an hour has also been felt in the world of reading. Everything has become short. Short stories, short paragraphs, short news notes, short pithy headlines and lead sentences. “Short and snappy’ ’ is the catch phrase—he that runs wants also to read.
The boy who plays about the street, who goes to the cinema, who tinkers with a radio, will also be able to tell you the make of the passing automobile and will, perhaps, be able to give a salesman’s talk on
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the good qualities of its manufacture, for he has been reading the short, big-lettered advertisements and hearing propaganda “on the air”; but ask this same boy who wrote “Pilgrim's Progress,” “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” the “Sketch Book,” or similar works, ask him the names of a few books of the Bible and their authors, and he will no doubt hesitate.
“Give Attendance to Reading”
IN HIS first letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul told his young co-missionary to be an example to his fellow believers and said, “Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” This really meant that Timothy should not forget to maintain the reading of the Scriptures publicly in the church. This admonition by Paul to Timothy would certainly not be handled unjustly if it were torn from its context and used as a ‘motto by every one who reads: “Give attendance to reading”—to reading the Sacred Scriptures, not only in church but also at home.
Every one should read. Most people like to read. But the tastes in reading and the habits of reading differ widely.
There are those who read a jgreat deal, and include in their reading so-called polite literature; but they do not acquite from it true education or culture.
Some cannot help but read. Of this class there was a man in Munich who had a marvelous memory. He could quote Shakespeare and Goethe at will. He was a walking encyclopdia. Someone said of him that his head was crammed so full of quotations and facts that he could not think.
Reading and thinking go hand in hand. Otherwise the time is spent in vain.
A most dangerous type of reading that shuts out thinking is taking the upper hand in all civilized countries. It makes a sieve of the human mind, for those possessed of it are compelled to read what is modern,
—and what is modern is legion,
— to read what is in season.
Some who indulge in this type of reading are unhappy if they have not read the best-seller — the book that is in style.
They simply have to be able to converse on the latest publication off the press.
Perhaps this type of reading has done as much as anything else towards making book reviews, and therefore certain sections of newspapers and magazines, popular. 1 hose who have not the time to read the book itself must at least have scanned the book review, in may, 1929
order to be able to converse on it interestingly.
Thinking and reading should be so inseparably joined as to induce the reader to pass judgment independently on the book or magazine or newspaper before him. Too often what is read is declared good because some book reviewer has declared it so.
The products of the press are so vast that every literate person must have a measuring rod by which the good and the bad reading material may be judged. The printed page has been a mighty factor in enlightening the world, but all that is printed is not enlightening.
During the year 1928 an imposing International Press Exhibition was held at Cologne, Rhineland, Germany. There the development of conmunica-tion by word was shown from the first spoken sounds and first written signs to the great news-service associations and newspapers of today. Every kind of printed product was shown. The Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church, religious denominations, large publishing houses displayed their books and periodicals. Forty-three different countries and the League of Nations had special exhibits. The press was praised to the utmost.
All that is good was shown. But bookstands that sell immoral pictures, stories, and pernicious literature were not reproduced. On the other hand, neither were lines of demarcation drawn between printed matter that is Christian and that is atheistic. Everything was placed side-by-side, but the immoral was, as nearly as possible, excluded.
Of course it is not the work of a secular exhibition to differentiate between the good and the bad. That is the task of the church — and better yet, the task of the individual. Every literate person ought to have in his hand the measuring rod by which all reading matter must be judged.
Apply the Measuring Rod
THAT measuring rod is the Good Book that has stood the criticism of skeptical reviewers throughout the centuries. It is the Good Old Book that contains history, biography, poetry, proverbs, social ethics, law, polite literature, diaries, letters. It contains something for every one, and everything it contains is for all.
“Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read,” says the prophet Isaiah.
The Bible is printed in more languages today than ever before and (Continued on page 32) PAGE ELEVEN
Paul Thompson
Happy in the anticipation of many hours of reading. But what is in the baoks?
Russia as an Object Lesson
to the World
Russia has the world’s largest army. Here they are seen on winter parade past the Kremlin, Moscow
The Soviet government sets the stagefor a great series of experiments in governing a vast nation. A survey of its progress and a prophecy of its outcome
By William G. Wirth
ITH unrest, dissastisfaction, and rebellion seething in the hearts of the Russian people because of the three factors I mentioned in my last month’s article (the tyrannous autocracy of the Czars, increasing industrialization creating an influential workers’ class who lived in the psychology of protest against exploitation, and the peasants’ demand for land), all that was needed was the pulling of the trigger, for the gun of revolution was loaded.
The World War was the occasion. If it be true that the ushering in of this cataclysmic conflict has changed the complexion of the world so that it will never be what it was before 1914, this is most certainly true of Russia. Russian autocracy welcomed this struggle, for they considered it would do what wars had done in the past: make the people PAGE TWELVE
forget their grievances in the patriotism of the moment. However, it did not work out that way. And this was largely the fault of the government of the Czar. The record of the graft in the Russian armies that participated in the World War is a sorrowful one. The soldiers were poorly clothed and insufficiently fed. They were often without needed arms and ammunition. What made a wretched situation worse were the pro-German sympathies of the Czarina, aided and abetted by that mystic monk Rasputin, of whom so much has been written since the days of 1917. This weird figure, who threw such a cloud over the court at Petrograd, did all he could for the Germans. The result was that, in many cases, the German general staff knew the plans of the Russian army attacks before the Russian officers knew them themselves. It is no
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wonder the Russian armies were so disastrously defeated in the eastern theater of the war.
As early as 1915 the morale of the Russian army began to break. The people saw thousands of their finest sons killed in a hopeless war. This slaughter, together with their already existing wrongs, caused them to revolt. ‘‘We want peace,” came from the country in general. ‘‘We want bread,” came from the workers in the industrial centers. ‘‘We want land,” came from the peasants. The revolution was under way. The Czar abdicated. The attempt was made to put his brother on the throne, but that failed. Then a provisional government was established, and this failed also. Kerensky followed, with his more moderate revolutionary ideas, seeking to keep Russia in the World War. We know what happened to Kerensky — how he had to give way to the more radical revolutionists and flee for his life.
Red Russia Born
THE Bolshevists now seized the reins of government. Lenin and Trotski were the leaders, and in November, 1917, Red Russia was born. Romanoff Russia had passed into history. The Bolsheviki, so called because they were represented as being the “majority” class of the revolutionists, came into power highly organized, thoroughly disciplined, and inflexibly dogmatic. That this is true is witnessed by the fact that they still hold the power in this great land today, when many were the prophets who declared the Soviet regime would soon pass out of the picture.
We must not get the idea that the Russian people in general favored Lenin and his group. As a matter of fact, the Bolsheviki represented only the minority group of the Russian population, found in the industrial regions for the most part. The peasants and soldiers went with them because it was the only thing they could do, since no other government was strong enough to command the situation. Then, too, the Bolsheviki made promises to the peasants, who make up about ninety per cent of the people, that they would receive the ardent desire of their hearts — land. Another factor that consolidated the people in general under the minority Soviet rule was the Allied attack on Russia. This only welded the Russians together, and made them stand that much stronger for the government in power. The Allies have themselves to blame if they wonder why Russia in general has been willing to accept the Bolshevik rule. Had they kept their hands off, things might have been different. It will be remembered that the European concert of powers made the same mistake at the beginning of the French Revolution. France, as a whole, was not at all sympathetic with the ardent revolutionary leaders of the Paris Commune. But when Austria and other powers decided to send an army against France to aid the king, then all France rose in defense against outside interference, which resulted, of course, in strengthening the Paris leaders in their may, 1929
grip and ushered in the terrible days that followed.
The reader will remember that in previous articles I have referred to the important prophecy of James 5 regarding the conflict between capital and labor, so marked a sign of our present industrial and scientific civilization and, at the same time, a pertinent sign of the soon coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to end the present reign of sin on this sphere of ours and to inaugurate His eternal kingdom of peace. It is the fourth verse to which I particularly wish to direct the reader’s attention at this time: “Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out. ” Here is a plain statement that the workers of the world in the last days would not be satisfied with their “hire,” or wages, or compensation from their toil, feeling that what they should receive was “kept back by fraud”; and further, they entered on a program of popular complaint and organized procedure to correct their wrongs by crying out in protest. All of which, expressed in Scriptural language, only predicts what Socialism has done, and is doing, in the world today in its war against capitalism.
Socialism — and by Socialism I mean all the various forms of it manifest in the one central idea of doing away with the private amassing of wealth through the private ownership of the means of production and distributing this wealth more evenly among the mass of the people — is a recent thing. It was not so long ago that Karl Marx, its chief apostle, lived in London and wrote his book, “Das Kapitol,” the so-called “Bible of Socialists.” And yet that movement which was hardly known a century ago has become one of the most important influences in our present world life. Its champions are found in every civilized land. Thousands of books have been written for and against it. Politically, it is potent, and a force to be reckoned and conjured with. See its power in England, France, and Germany today.
Socialism in Practice
BOLSHEVISM represents Socialism put into practice. When Lenin and his confreres came into power, the Marxian state was set up as they conceived it. There must be a new society wherein would be no controlling classes and no inferior classes and none undeveloped. All parasites — that is, those who do not really work — would be eliminated. All would be Qompelled to work, and the nonworker would be excluded from the franchise. Private land ownership was abolished, and all the land as national property was handed over to the workers without compensation. All the forests, the underground mineral wealth, all the live stock and agricultural wealth; all factories, workshops, mines, railroads and other means of production and transportation were taken away from private owners. In a word, the propertied classes were to be completely disarmed; (Continued on page 27)
PAGE THIRTEEN
A Nation Was Born
ABYLON, the seat of Satan, began at Babel. Spiritual Israel, the heirs of the kingdom of God, began with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre.
To Abraham also was given the promise that he was to be the father of a nation. That promise met its fulfillment at Sinai, where God created a nation whose history was to be a living sermon on the text: “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” History presents no more awe-inspiring spectacle than the birth of a nation. And among the nations of earth none had a beginning that even appr°ached in impressiveness and grandeur and importance that of the Hebrews, at Sinai, thirty-four hundred years ago.
On a plain at the foot of the tallest of the Sinai peaks are camped some three million people, fresh from Egyptian slavery and the Red Sea deliverance. There is about them an air of tense expectancy and ill-suppressed excitement. They look often toward the peak of the mountain, to which their leader has gone up to meet God and get from Him the plan of their future conduct.
A bearded, stately, long-robed figure is seen descending the mountain side. The elders of the people answer his summons and go out to meet him, and the camp follows behind them. He mounts a protruding crag and addresses the people:
“Three days from now,” he says, “the Lord will come down in the sight of all upon Mount Sinai. Sanctify yourselves and wash your clothes. And when the trumpet soundeth long ye shall come up to the mount.
“But take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death.”
In the encampment are interested visitors. Miners are there from the numerous camps of the Pharoah’s mines of iron, copper, and turquoise in the Sinai
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The temple of Ammon, Egypt, dating from the time of the Exodus
range. Egyptian priests are there from the temple of the cow-goddess Hathor — the temple high up on a neighboring peak whose smooth walls are covered with the inscription of a dozen dynasties. The miners are frankly awestruck; the priests are secretly so, behind their mask of supercilious contempt.
At the bidding of Moses the people scatter and set about their preparations, feeling the nearness of God as they had not felt it since the night of the passover, when they had sprinkled blood on their doorposts as a sign to the angel of destruction.
The Most Awesome Experience of the Race
FINALLY, on the third day, the signal blast of the trumpet is heard and the people assemble at the foot of the mountain. All are looking upward toward the peak, about which a dense cloud is rolled like a curtain. From the cloud lightning shoots at intervals, followed by the awful muttering of the thunder. “The sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.” Soon they hear a voice coming from the cloud-screen, a voice the like of which they have never heard. Awe-inspiring, resonant, and commanding, it carries to the farthest edges of the human mass. It is the voice of God giving to man the moral law’, Jehovah’s Ten Words.
And God spoke these words in their ears, saying:
And took a most unique and remarkable place in history. The greatest human lawgiver of all time guided its early destinies. Its annals in the diary of God
(Third in a series on the Christian Interpretation of History)
By Keld J. Reynolds
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“ I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.
“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor they daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them
is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
“Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
“Thou shalt not kill.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“Thou shalt not steal.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.’’
The voice ceased. In awed silence the people withdrew, requesting their leader to be thereafter may, 1929
the spokesman for God. The experience had been too much for them. They had witnessed the birth of a nation,—their own—and they had received their fundamental law and their rule of life from Jehovah himself.
These manifestations to Israel at Mount Sinai seem to have had a double purpose. First, they were to impress on the people the reality of the divine existence, the power and awful majesty of God, and His nearness to themselves. Second, they were to give the highest possible sanction to the laws that the people were to regard as an absolute obligation. The Jews might not have accepted any merely human legislator. They had to be convinced that all the laws and ordinances that Moses gave them were the laws and ordinances of God himself.
The Reaction from Sublimity
PROBABLY the sacrificial fires burned later and brighter than usual up in the temple of the cow-goddess the night after the giving of the law. The Hathor priests would be re-establishing their own confidence.
Later, under the influence of the suave, insidious and well-placed suggestions of these priests, and demoralized by the long absence of Moses, who had gone up into the mountain to get detailed instructions from God for the governing of the people, the Israelites made a golden replica of Hathor. The vision of God and His nearness had made them feel painfully small and inferior. Now they felt much more comfortable and important in the presence of an object of worship that was the work of their own hands and to which they themselves had attached attributes. This, and not absolute ignorance of the existence of God, is probably the basis of paganism and idolatry. Whatever may be said of others, at least the Jews knew better, and they paid heavily for their lapse when later they were made to drink the dissolved symbol of their sin. It must have been a bitter draft! And as long as they were camped at Sinai the taste of it must have come back to their tongues whenever they raised their eyes to the Hathor temple.
Whenever mankind faces one of its great moments — an event or a condition that is profoundly to affect human history — God always raises up a man to be His agent. In this case it was Moses. One of the despised race of the Hyksos, the “Child of the Water” became an Egyptian prince by adoption. And Egypt, land of civilization, of art, of science, of philosophy, gave up its secrets to the young prince. As a member (Continued on page 32)
page FIFTEEN
Wide World Photos
The innermost coffin of King Tut-ankh-amen, one of the great rulers of Egypt in the age of Moses and Israel
The News Interpreted
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President Hoover and a prosperity trio, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone
Family Quarrels	see that fighting against the inevitable
J RAMSAY MACDONALD, former is the same kind of sign of war. So he . Prime Minister of Great Britain, denounces a certain class in these words: sees a growing antipathy between “One type of mind is peculiarly England and America, and has grave pernicious in such circumstances, that of fears for future peace between these the apostle of the inevitable. It has two great nations of the world. In an an alluring air of detachment, and yet of article in the Nation he points out stoical submission to the decrees of the petty irritations that are inevitably Providence. Today it murmurs as in a leading to war across the North At- drowsy trance that great economic lantic. Yet he is not a jingo, and urges empires have always clashed and fought, measures for continued peace.	that capitalist competition has always
He sees in the very assurances of brought armament competition, and that friendship sure signs of estrangement, that, in turn, has always brought war. We quote: “The usual committees of Therefore, all that the United States friendship are being formed — always an and ourselves can do is to go on tempo-ominous sign—and the usual signals of rarily with our struggle for markets and a faith in doubt are being flown, such as rivalry, for possession of furniture and ‘War between the United States and Old Masters, and wait for the inevitable Great Britain is unthinkable.’ ” These clash and crash decreed since the begin-are unusual admissions to come from a ning of the world. Against this supersti-statesman. Perhaps if he were in office tion and misreading of history every he would not make them. Yet they are backboned sentiment of morality and true, and exactly coincide with the common sense must be up in arms.” Bible prophecy for this time: “When Yet he knows as well as any one that they shall say, Peace and safety; then “history repeats itself” in this regard, sudden destruction cometh upon them.” in spite of everything peace advocates i Thessalonians 5:3. But the peace can do. However, we depend not on this movers will never admit that their own saying, but on the word of God, that wars agitation for peace is in itself proof that will come. The editor takes his stand war seems to them inevitable, and that with the “apostles of the inevitable,” they are scared. They are fairly yelling in the sense that he knows what God to keep up their courage.	has said about war being inevitable,
And Mr. MacDonald is one with them and he would be recreant to his duty if in this. While seeing signs of war hidden he kept silent about it. We expect the in professions of friendship, he fails to reproaches of desperate workers for
PAGE SIXTEEN
peace when we warn the world of a certain Armageddon. But how much better this than that all of us be caught unexpectedly by it.
And what a commentary are this statesman’s fears on the much-stressed theory that common interests and better acquaintance between nations would eliminate wars! Are any two nations closer in every way than Britain and America? The worst quarrels are family quarrels. No, there must be another way for international concord. God give us peace, but save us from trusting in a calm that precedes a storm.
News of the Papacy
WE GROUP some developments observed in connection with the new papal state as it rejoices in its newly accorded civil territory and authority.
Official congratulations were offered the pope by the diplomats of many governments. Some refused this recognition. The French ambassador congratulated without home authority, and was called to task by his government.
Says Osservatore Romano, papal daily newspaper and official organ of the pope: “The small pontifical state is already super-national, free, independent, and neutral by its own nature, and not by virtue of accords among other powers. The Holy Father will know well how to defend the church’s liberty in the new order of things.”
Says the National Catholic Welfare Council (United States): “The Catholic
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Harry L. Stimson, newly appointed secretary of state of our nation. He comes from being governor general of the Philippines
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The ZS(ews Interpreted
Church is not a national church, but a universal society, and to the head of that society men of all nationalities owe the same spiritual allegiance. . . . That certain nationalistic groups (in the United States) continually attempt to make him [the pope] a ‘foreign potentate' is a proof of the necessity that the universal, supernatural character of his office be clearly recognized.”
Let the reader note that the papacy is not content to be intern.ational — have to do with the citizens of all nations —but must be swper-national — above all nations.
Says Cardinal Dubois, of France: ‘‘The imagination is staggered when one comes to think of what will happen when a pope sets foot in New York.” We ask, Why?
The Papal State (size 160 acres) has a “Grand Army” of 350 soldiers. Recruiting is now progressing to enlarge it.
The pope, as a temporal sovereign, requested Italy’s king to release from Italian prisons four priests convicted of crimes. The request was promptly granted by Mussolini, anxious to please the new ecclesiastical-civil ruler.
The way is opening for the papacy to become a member of the League of Nations. During the World War, Catholics everywhere (especially in America), and some not Catholics, urged that the hierarchy was the only logical arbiter of peace. And that sentiment has increased since. The majority of the League member nations now have diplo-
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Edward J. Higgins, the new commanding general of the Salvation Army, who succeeded General Bramwell Booth
Herbert Photos, Inc.
The revolution in Mexico reminds us of the usual Mexican treatment of rebels. General Quijano, of the last revolution, standing before the firing squad
matic relations with the Holy See; and the League secretary general is a strong Roman Catholic. Papal envoys now have precedence of rank at all national capitals where they are accredited. How naturally may they be given first place at Geneva! Italy has been the one nation that has always stood in the way of the papal ambition to be peacemaker of the nations. Now that stum-blingblock has been removed. Let the Catholic Church once get the upper hand in world politics, and liberty in religion is gone. Already steps are being taken to extinguish it entirely in Italy. Masonry has been suppressed, and the public schools have been put under Church control.
Coincident with the granting of temporal power to the Roman Church came the announcement of a great Ecumenical Council to convene in Vatican City in 1930 or 1931. This universal conference of Catholic bishops is to discuss outstanding questions of faith and morals, and the Church’s authority and future. There have been only twenty such councils in the entire history of the Church, and during one period, from 1563 to 1870, there was none for three centuries. The latest one was in 1870, nearly sixty years ago. It is noteworthy that that 1870 Council was never finished, but was interrupted by the Italian invasion of Rome and the taking away of the temporal power of the pope. Now, just after the temporal power has been given back, another is to convene. Or is it that the former one is to be resumed after the interruption? Rome never changes. What she cannot
do in one generation, she does in the next. In 1870 the pope was declared infallible. What decree will the next Council make? On the day in 1870 when the infallibility of the pope was proclaimed, a terrible storm broke over the city of Rome. At the same time a warstorm was breaking over Europe. God stopped proceedings.
Now that Rome resumes its way and its sway, what may we expect? We may be sure that some pronouncement will be made in the relation of the church to the state. And there is no question, according to the prophecies of the word of God, but that the time is here for the power of Rome to make itself felt in “super-national” laws to enforce its dogmas, especially Sunday observance, the sign of its power. And we are constrained to believe that God will not again intervene till this religious dictator has gone the limit in opposition to freedom in religious belief and practice, and till the death decree is pronounced on those who persistently dissent. See Revelation 13: 15-17.
Then the unchanging God of true Christianity will take a hand, and Rome will change. The prophecy of it is recorded in Revelation 18 and 19.
New Gods for Old
Harry elmer barnes, Pro-
fessor of Historical Sociology, Smith College, and a leader in his special line, caused quite a furor in religious and scientific circles by urging before a recent meeting of prominent scientists that we need a new conception of God. Quick to catch at anything that will make (Continued on page 34)
MAY, 1929
PAGE SEVENTEEN
YOUTH --WHITH
IFE’S Bridge of Sighs —“the bleak wind of March, the dark arch, the black-flowing river”—must Youth cross it alone?
That is the side of life that Youth does not care to discuss. Gay, happy Youth would forget that sometimes the avenue of ife crosses the river in the shadows, unlighted by :he lamp of human love and sympathy. It remembers mly when a comrade plunges over the arch alone, md even then it soon swings back into the jostling Highways — to forget.
The Fullness of Life
THERE is much to make it forget. There is the constant hurry — life is so full! Youth must hasten through it to get its share of happiness. Happiness, it declares, is its due, happiness only it craves. But somehow in the gaining of that happiness it keeps breaking over the bounds set by Age. It finds itself often on the witness stand accused of revolution against the standards of society. For the most part it shrugs its shoulders indifferently at its accusers, and smiles knowingly at its sympathizers as they assert its frankness, its sincerity, for Youth feels that it is only playing with the toys of the society that condemns it; it knows it is frank and sincere only as it suits it best to be.
Youth finds itself in a world of its elders’ making— a world of great opportunities and responsibilities. There are opportunities for enjoyable work, fascinating research, alluring wealth, stirring adventure. Age has sought to provide well for Youth. It has endeavored to spare Youth the drudgery which it experienced, the suffering which it endured. It has decreed that so far as lies in its power Youth shall be happy, unfettered, untrammeled.
Youth heartily agrees with this attitude of its elders. But it knows, too, that Age has not solved satisfactorily the problems which confronted it in youth and which overbalance, for many, the happiness which Age has sought to provide. In the shadows cast by self-seeking happiness is still Life s Bridge of Sighs. Age has given Youth a heritage of war, crime, disease, social evils, political debaucheries, economic ills, divided homes, and a weakening church, incompetent, quarreling, and afraid.
How does Youth meet the situation?—Just as it has been taught by precept and example to meet it: by quietly ignoring the problems of life in pursuit of its necessary and lawful work; by endeavoring to account for its problems through scientific phenomena; by divesting its problems of their severity through intellectual diversions in literature, art, and music; by trying to solve its problems through well-organized social reforms; by commercializing its problems in a chase for wealth; by forgetting
TDAGLT? T?T(THTF£ttN
H. Armstrong Roberts	,
Spring, and Youth,
its problems in wild abandonment to pleasure; by denying its problems in the illegal obtaining of carnal desires, even at the expense of virtue and life itself.
There are many in the ranks of Youth who would gladly meet the issue fairly and step into the widening breaches of humanity. Some recognize the need and are struggling with these problems of life, death,
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R AWAY?
What promise is here!
eternity, but they are totally unprepared for the struggle. They see ever present with the beauty of man’s handiwork the scar of his sin; they hear when the jazz has died down, “the still, sad music of humanity”; they see lying close to cities of spacious mansions, the cities of the sleeping dead. And they are asking: “What does it all mean? Why are we here? Whence are we? Whither are we going?” may, 1929
©y Helen Gardner Davidson
Thinking Youth sees men — honest, persevering men — trampled underfoot, while intrigue and wealth raise the less worthy to phenomenal success. History seems to repeat its stories of graft and misery. The unsettled present gives no promise of a different to-morrow. Is there no relief from it all; must mankind forever push on in a calloused world of favoritism, a jarring, soulless world, with only a chance of reaching its goal through luck? Has the soul of mankind been denied even the order and fitness of things with which the natural world swings surely and swiftly through space?
There are many solutions proffered by Age, varying from the conservative theories and traditions of the established churches to the wild and weird orgies of Spiritualism. Teachers of countless “isms” propound their solutions in market place, cloister, and square. But there is one solution, proffered by a quiet, unassuming Man, that is overlooked by the eager searchers for truth. A few respond to His earnest efforts and ask for His remedy for the ills of earth. He leads them apart to a quiet place, by the lake shore perhaps, and begins His conversation with a little story. A man, He said, prepared his field for the sowing and cast into the furrows carefully selected wheat. “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. And the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? Whence then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy hath done this. And the servants say unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he saith, Nay; lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.”
The End of Imperfection
A SIMPLE story—yet these youth do not understand its meaning. Someone timidly asks Him to explain it, which He does in his clear, assuring voice: “ He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; and the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil: and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are angels. As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with fire; so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity; and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and (Continued on page jj)
PAGE NINETEEN
Every Man His Ow
HERE is possibly no subject that the mind of man has ever contemplated concerning which more extensive erroneous errors prevail than the subject of human life, health, and disease. In relation to almost everything else in nature, mankind is willing to acknowledge that there are fixed principles, permanent laws, and established order and system. To illustrate: If we affirm that in the vegetable kingdom all plants, from the smallest thing that has an individual existence to the largest tree, are constituted according to fixed laws — that the life, health, growth, and everything belonging to the nature and properties of the vegetable, are governed by the permanent laws that the Creator has established, and that He continually sustains — the truth of what we affirm is unhesitatingly allowed.
However, when we turn to the higher order of the Creator’s works and consider the human body, many will contend that human, life and health and disease are matters of entire uncertainty, governed by no laws, and subject only to the arbitrary requirements of God, or to the contingency of accident. They seem not to realize that there are any fixed laws of life, by the proper observance of which man can, with certainty, avoid disease and prolong his bodily existence. In our study, let us first note a few wonders of that intricate machine called the human body.
Ask the physican to give you an explanation of the heartbeat, and, finding no answer, he dodges the point. How does it happen that the heart is equipped to receive blood from the veins, where the pressure is the lowest, and yet is able to force it into the arteries where the pressure is the highest? Here again the question is answered by silence. Somehow this marvelous organ develops blood pressure and maintains the difference of pressure through the circuit, and thus makes possible the ceaseless circulation of the blood. We see in all this, the wisdom of the Infinite God.
As we all know, the normal heartbeat is about seventy-two strokes a minute, and at each stroke this muscular organ pumps from four to six ounces of blood into the aorta. This gives a total of more than 4,000 strokes an hour, or an equivalent to the lifting of a weight of thirty tons one foot high in a day. As one authority (Stewart) puts it, it is power sufficient “to raise the man himself to twice the height of the loftiest skyscraper in New York.”
H. Armstrong Roberts
Wholesome, appetizing food and a thankful heart. Stay away, doctor!
And yet this muscle weighs only about one pound.
Again, we take under consideration the eye, commonly called the “window of the soul.” What man or woman would consider a barter of his power of vision for any transient thing this world holds? We all admit that sight is priceless. This little organ is able instantly to focus rays from objects at a distance, ranging from a few inches to several miles, and to send the pictures to the brain for permanent registry.
Next, we notice the ear. Although this organ is so small that the hearing portion compares in size with a very small shell — a small snail, if you please — yet, this organ, consisting of a spiral, bony tube, has within it, and stretched across from side to side, “24,000 strings, varying gradually in length as stated, and resembling in general arrangement the strings of a piano.”—Howell. Think of it, nearly 50,000 strings in the ears of each person, tuned to appropriate sound waves ranging from the low bass to the high tenor, and then compare the size of this delicate instrument with that of our modern
PAGE TWENTY
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doctor .w
We need all our physiciansbut all of us, the doctors included, would be healthier and happier if each one of us would constitute himself a P. M. D. — Doctor of Preventive Medicine
Hans S. Anderson
Dietitian
piano with its equipment of 200 strings, more or less!
Again, let us consider briefly the voice. In all the realms of music, we must confess that the human voice is supreme. It is the voice alone that can awaken and stir the deepest emotions of the soul. Consider its varied qualities, its richness and melody, and above all, its individuality. One can recognize the voice of a friend speaking over the wire, though he be thousands of miles away. Says the Psalmist: “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139: 14.
Our Lease on Life
MEN and women everywhere desire to live as long as possible, and to know that their lives have been a success. Good health means ease of mind and body, repose, quiet, freedom from pain, disturbances, or injury. When one’s physical welfare is below par, and one is barely able to keep going the day through, that is “dis-ease,” whether the symptoms be the most serious or not, or whether it be called by some big-sounding name or not. When one is well, one is able to enjoy even greater physical and mental ease through maximum health. But this condition never comes merely by accident. may, 1929
Neither nature nor knowledge can produce health without the use of the right kind of food.
Science has been adding tremendously to our knowledge of food values during recent years, and is now able to point out with great exactness the part that the various kinds of food elements play in the maintenance of health. As American people, we take pride in saying that we have at our command a knowledge of the highest standards of living in the history of the world. We are living in a time when there is money, and comfort, and freedom; but at the same time we are finding out that we do not live long enough to enjoy these things.
The master minds in the affairs of the world today recognize that the health of its people is a nation’s greatest asset, and leading governments are beginning to see the need of educating the masses on health topics. Good health is, above all other earthly possessions, priceless. A man may have the keenest brains, and at the same time his ability may be paralyzed because he is not in the possession of good health; for this is the driving force that makes the gift serve him.
Food Affects Thought
WE ARE, in truth, products of what we eat. Every ounce of what we are is the result of what we eat. Some food constituents contribute to the enriching of the blood, while others enter into the structure of bones, teeth, and muscle. Therefore, our food is the key to the solution of our health dreams, and the answer to life’s riddle — how to secure and maintain the inestimable gift of health.
Health is often undermined by slow-working, unseen causes, acting for a long period of time, rather than by a sudden exposure to disease, or the accidental breaking out of symptoms. It now seems certain that the most important of these causes is improper diet. And if disease comes to us from what we put into our mouths, or from what we fail to put into our mouths, then disease can be corrected and cured by eliminating the cause.
Normal food, as received direct from the hand of nature, unprocessed and served in as natural a condition as possible, contains the same essential constituents of which the human body is composed. These several constituents being lost or given off by the body day by day, it follows that unless we eat foods containing all of these elements we shall suffer from inferior physical development, nervous instability, lack of endurance, and lack of resistance to infection, particularly tuberculosis, and to deficiency diseases such as pellagra.
Personal experience in driving a car teaches one that in addition to a good supply of gas in the tank there must also be sufficient oil for (Cont. on page 33)
PAGE TWENTY-ONE
By Ewing Galloway, N. Y.
The children of brown and yellow races in Hawaii learn to like milk
The Coming of CHRIST
HE work of Christ in coming to earth was definitely and primarily related to the law of God. To appreciate this best, it will be necessary for us to study the great object lesson the Lord has recorded in His word. The Lord bade Israel build for Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them. (Exodus 25: 8.) The remaining part of this chapter and the chapters following give a full description of it with its vessels and service. Space will permit us to mention only the salient points related to our subject.
In the second of the two apartments, called the Holy of Holies, was the ark of the testament, a chest covered with gold. Within were the two tables of stone upon which were written the ten commandments, the law of God. Above it was the mercy seat, made of pure, beaten gold, signifying its great importance in the plan of God. On either end of the mercy seat was a golden cherub with his face toward the other and toward the mercy seat and his wings spread on high covering the mercy seat. Between them and above the mercy seat was manifested the glory of God’s presence. From this place the Lord communicated with Moses His instruction for the children of Israel. Reverently and in the attitude of responsibility, the covering cherubim spread their wings over all in apparent protection and justification of the principles governing all.
Order in Heaven
IN THIS picture God would represent a situation in His divine government. We are likely to picture to our minds a very different condition. In heaven, it is thought, all are equal, all occupy a like position, all do good because they are good, all are wise to recognize the good, and as a result there is no prescribed order, no external mode of procedure. This is, however, a great error. The Lord represents the condition as very different, and we should not presume to be wise above what is written. “Order is heaven’s first law.” What of order and organization there is in the world is of God. Where there is a lack of it we have the footprints of the enemy. We read of “all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.” Ephesians 1:21, A. R. V. There are cherubim and seraphim in heaven. Adam was made the ruler of this world before sin entered. In the world to come the twelve apostles are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. God has provided a definite place and a definite work for every one of His children throughout the extent of His boundless universe.
The cherubim standing on and covering the mercy seat represent a scene at the very center of all PAGE TWENTY-TWO
as related to God's law of the Ten Commandments
<By John W. Westphal
authority. “ He [Jehovah] sitteth between the cherubim.” Psalm 99: 1. His throne has for its foundation the principles of His righteous and all-including law, just as the tables of the law were beneath the mercy seat of the sanctuary. With the throne of the Eternal One as their own sure standing place, the cherubim shelter with their own person the Infinite One, the throne, and the law beneath it. They are given the exalted privilege and authority of making known the principles of the government of the heavenly King, and protecting it against the attacks of any enemy that might arise, or any question of its principles that might ever be raised.
Not that God needs the protection of any creature He has ever made. He is not, and never can make Himself, dependent on any one. If He did, He would cease to be God. The worlds He has made by a word He can as easily blot out in the same way. He has no fear of any. But to maintain and justify all His righteous acts in harmony with His law, and to safeguard the interests of those He has made, He has in His divine economy ordained that angels, two of them, exalted above the rest to covering cherubim, shall be sponsors to Him and to His children, to represent the interests of His throne. This is in principle nothing less than what He is still doing in choosing and ordaining His ministers to plead for the people before Him and to bring home to the people His just claims upon them. This does not signify that other angels do not have a similar responsibility. Every Christian has the same responsibility as the minister, although to a lesser degree, even though they, like the other angels, are not especially anointed, at least not like the minister and the anointed, covering cherub.
The Most Tragic Failure
WHEN, therefore, rebellion broke out in heaven,.
against whom and against what did the angels rebel? — Against God and against His law. The easy yoke and light burden that infinite love and justice had devised became to them an unbearable burden. With love, the basis of all true obedience, gone, they sought no longer the interests of the throne, but their own mistaken, selfish aims. They could see no reason for the existence of law when all were equal, or ought to be, as they conceived. Law to them was the restriction of this freedom, as it always is when it is no longer written on the tablets of the heart.
Here we see the wisdom of God’s arrangement in placing angels as the guardians of His throne.
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Wide World Photos
Dr. A. F. Futterer, of Los Angeles, dressed in Arabian costume. He is planning an expedition to Palestine to find the ark containing the tables of the Ten Commandments, which he believes is hidden in a cave in Mt. Nebo
This was their opportunity; here before them was the work for which they had been ordained of God. But where are the covering cherubim? We will first trace the path of only one.
We read of one fallen from heaven. “How art thou .fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the nations! And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Isaiah 14: 12-14, A. R. V. While the king of Babylon described in this chapter fulfilled these statements in a limited sense, they have never been completely fulfilled except in the being fallen from heaven — Lucifer. John saw and described the same scene as follows: “There was war in heaven: Michael and His angels going forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels; and they prevailed not, neither was their place may, 1929
found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.” Revelation 12:7-9, A. R. V.
To receive the homage, obedience, and following of this fallen angel-host in heaven, this rebel leader must indeed have been an angel of exalted position and of superior mental and physical powers, glorious beyond the host of his fellows. Who was he? And what was his position? The prophet Ezekiel described him: “Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God. . . . Thou wast the anointed cherub that covereth: and I set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee. . . . I have destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.” Ezekiel 28: 12-17, A. R. V.
Thus is this fallen angel, the highest created being, identified with the cherubim set for the defense of the kingdom of God. But how untrue to his trust, what a traitor to his high calling! Instead of proclaiming the love of God and defending His justice, he is the first to find fault; and not content to rebel himself, he uses his great talents and influence in leading into rebellion a large number of those who had once bowed with him before their Maker and who had joined with him in glad songs of praise to God. The law that had once been their delight, now became the object of their great hatred, even as they hated its Author.
From this attitude of hatred to God and His law he has never changed, and never will change. His opposition continues to the bitter end: “The dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of God.” Revelation 12: 17, A. R. V.
Among the fallen angels there is no one that compares with Satan, no other one that serves as rebel leader and who commands the obedience of all. He is “ the dragon ” with his angels who warred, “Beelzebub the prince of the demons,” “the prince of the power of the air.” In heaven there was only one equal to him, the other {Continued on page jj)
PAGE TWENTY-THREE
Herbert Photos, Inc.
That the guests of the Hotel Biltmore, New York, may be religious, a “meditation chapel” has been provided for their use
HERE shall we go for a good definition of religion? Try Webster, some one may suggest. All right, we will see what Webster says: “a conformity in faith and life to the precepts inculcated in the Bible.” Suppose you were asked to write a definition, what would you write? It would depend on whether you have seen real, genuine religion in operation, or a formality that is called Christianity.
Had I been asked as a boy to define it, I would have written something like this: “Religion is sitting for a long, long, long time in church, listening to a dry sermon you can’t understand, and reading the Bible when you want to play. ”
When I got into my teens my definition might have changed to something like this: “Religion means to have a long face, not to smile, to pray long prayers, and to go to church once a week, and never have a good time.”
The trouble with me was that in the church I attended I heard a lot about religion, but did not see much of it. And you can’t fool even a child when it comes to religion. Any child knows real Christianity when he sees it.
Not Like a Coat
TO MANY religion is a synonym for gloom, moroseness, and misery. To a good many, it is a cloak that may be put on as occasion demands and removed at will. This class are like the minister who became furiously angry with a man who had wronged him. He felt like fighting, but discovered to his disappointment that he was garbed in his clergyman’s coat, which rather restrained him from acting as he felt. He could not suppress the fires burning within him, and in order not to reproach the church he laid aside his professional garb, and clothed as an ordinary citizen, stood face to face PAGE TWENTY-FOUR
Are You
1'That raises the question, What is Religion? Here is a good outline of what it means to be religious and enjoy the experience
with his enemy. They then settled the question as best they could, after which he put on his ministerial frock and went on his way.
Real religion cannot be hung on a hook through the week and worn only when going to church. Genuine Christianity is the kind that is most needed in time of stress and strain and emergency. It is a part of us, and is never laid aside,— every hour in the day, and seven days a week a Christian needs his religion. It helps us to be kind to those whom we love in the home. And the man who is not a Christian at home is not a Christian at all. If your religion does not help you to be a Christian at home, there is something wrong with you or your religion.
Christianity should enable you and me to be straightforward, fair, and square in our dealings with our fellow men; in other words, it should mix with our business. Some people tell you that you can’t mix business and religion. If you can’t, either your business is wrong, or your religion isn’t right.
A Convenience or a Keepsake
TO SOME, religion is merely a door to society.
By attending a fashionable church they may mingle with the so-called better class. So they use the habiliment of the church as a passport to society. They may have their names on a dozen church books and not have one attribute of a Christian.
A little girl who had been playing in the attic on a rainy day, in ransacking through an old trunk, found her mother’s church letter. Hurrying down the steps as fast as her little feet could scamper, she cried joyfully, “Oh, mother, I have found your religion upstairs in the trunk!” Too many of us keep our religion stored away somewhere, and even our children might not know we possessed any Christianity. If we do have it, they will know it.
Webster says it is “conformity in faith and life to the precepts of the Bible.” In other words it is more than a mere profession, it is living the principles laid down in the good old Book. A mere profession means nothing.
A great many have the idea that religion is an overpowering emotion, a wonderful, flighty feeling, that sweeps over one, impelling him to do right, and which will at last sweep us right into the pearly
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Leligious?
By Charles L. Paddock
gates. In my twenty years trying to be a Christian I have had few such experiences. My natural tendencies are not in the right direction.
A Christian does right because it is right, and not because he feels like it.
He may have no glorious, soul-thrilling emotions, in fact he may not feel at all like doing the right thing; but if he knows it is right, he does it in the absence of any emotion or feeling. The world around him may be traveling a different road, but that matters not to the Christian.
Outward forms do not make a Christian today any more than they did in Christ’s day. The Jews had much form but little religion. Long prayers do not indicate virtue. They always make me feel that the individual is doing in public what he failed to do in the secrecy of his own private devotions at home.
A daily life is the best index to a man’s Christianity. “There is an eloquence far more powerful than the eloquence of words in the quiet, consistent life of a pure, true Christian.” What a man is, has more influence than what he says.
A tribe of gypsies camped on a well-traveled thoroughfare near the city of Boston. The queen of the tribe was a woman of unusual beauty and singular stateliness. She fell ill, and her fine, dark features took on the pale, waxen hue of one with an incurable disease. Her dark, piercing eyes lost their luster and were dulled by days of pain and nights of suffering.
She sent for a woman who had bought baskets from her and who had shown the gypsy queen unusual kindness. When the lady came, she advised that a doctor be called at once. The doctor told them she was smitten with a mortal disease and could not live long.
The kind woman offered to take the gypsy home with her, but she replied, “No, thank you, I have lived all my life in the open, and I shall die happier here.”
Religion Is a Life
THE lady visited the gypsy camp from day to day, always carrying some delicacy with her. Their conversation drifted to religious topics, and one day the gypsy queen said, ‘ ‘ I don’t know your religion, but mine is very simple. My mother died a Romany, but I will die a Burton.”
“ ‘A Burton’ ? What do you mean? ” asked the lady. “I have never heard of this religion.”
International Newsreel
A pastor of San Francisco preaches from a carpenter’s bench all equipped. Is this religion?
“When I was a little girl in Philadelphia,” the gypsy explained, “no one looked out for us much or cared for us. But there was one kind woman, a city missionary; her name was Burton. Every Sunday she came to visit our wagon home. She taught me to read the New Testament,” and just here she took from under her pillow a much-used, frayed little volume.
“Miss Burton took me to Sunday school and brought me back. She told me of Jesus, and how I must love others. She said too that if I loved Jesus I might someday live with Him in heaven.
“One week Miss Burton didn’t come. I never saw her again. They tell me she died of overwork. I was only ten years old. I don’t know where heaven is, but wherever it is, I know Miss Burton will be there. And I have tried to live as Miss Burton taught me so some day I may go and visit her, the best friend I ever had. This has been my prayer every day. Is my religion like yours, lady?”
Religion Is Attractive
THROUGH her tears the lady answered, “Yes, dear, my religion is the same that Miss Burton taught you. I wish I had taught and lived it so well. ” Does our religion draw others to the Saviour, giving them a desire to know Him because they have known us?
The Christian life is one of joy. It is hard for the non-professor to understand this, but it is true. And a Christian who is really happy and enjoying his Christian experience will be so full of it that it will shine out through his countenance. Jesus was the most joyful of men and went everywhere scatter-ing joy and peace and gladness. The New Testament is a book of joy. It opens with a song of the angels at the birth of the Saviour and {Continued on page 34)
may, 1929
PAGE TWENTY-FIVE
Did God Know
That Man Would Change the
Sjy W i 11 i a m
N DANIEL 7: 25, a charge is made that the power there represented by the “little horn” would attempt to change God’s times and laws: “And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.”
This power was also to make war with the saints (verse 21) and was to continue forty-two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty days. (Revelation 13: 5; 12:6.) The power here brought to view is papal Rome. The papacy was fully established in a. d. 538 and received its deadly wound in 1798 (Revelation 13-3) a period of just 1260 years. During this period this power was not only to persecute God’s people and put them to death, but it was also to attempt to change His law and His time. Now, the time that belongs to God is the seventh day. He calls it “the Sabbath of the Lord thy God” (Exodus 20: 10), “My holy day” (Isaiah 58: 13), and claims to be Lord of it (Mark 2:28). Now to change this time and set apart some other time as holy requires a change also of God’s law, since His law enforces the observance of His holy time. And although Christ declares that not a jot or a tittle shall in any wise pass from the law as long as heaven and earth remain, yet God charges that this little horn power — the papal church — will attempt to change it. He says this change that Rome would make would affect God’s time. Therefore the charge is that it would change — or attempt to change — the Sabbath.
Does Rome Admit Her Guilt?
ONE who was until his death considered the highest Catholic authority in America said:
“Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act: it could not have been otherwise, as none in those days would have dreamed of doing anything in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical and religious without her. And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.”— Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, Maryland.
In a small Catholic Catechism called “Abridgment of Christian Doctrine,” page 58, is the following: “Question: How prove you that the church hath PAGE TWENTY-SIX
power to command feasts and holy days?
“ Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday.”
We have this further testimony: “Question: Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept?
“Answer: Had she not such power,
. . . she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority.” —“Doctrinal Catechism.” pp. 174, 352.
And the Catholic Mirror, the official organ of Cardinal Gibbons, in its issue of September 23, 1893, said: “The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday. . . . The Christian Sabbath is therefore to this day the acknowledged offspring of the Catholic Church; . . . without a word of remonstrance from the Protestant world.”
A Challenge
THEN to cap the climax of confession, Father Enright, a Catholic priest of Des Moines, Iowa, formerly of Kansas, offered a thousand dollars to the one who would prove from the Bible that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep, and declared: “The Bible says: ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,’ but the Catholic Church says, ‘No, keep the first day of the week,’ and all the world bows down in silent obedience to the mandates of the Catholic Church.” Another catechism, “The Catholic Christian Instructed,” page 202 says: “Question: What warrant have you for keeping the Sunday, preferably to the ancient Sabbath, which was the Saturday?
“Answer: We have for it the authority of the Catholic Church, and apostolic tradition.
“Question: Does the Scripture anywhere command the Sunday to be kept for the Sabbath?
“Answer: The Scripture commands us to hear the Church. . . . but the Scripture does not in particular mention this change of the Sabbath.”
On page 15 of Volume 4 of “Clifton Tracts” (Catholic), in an article on “A Question for all Bible Christians,” this question in thus dealt with: “We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy, instead of Saturday, as we have for every
Sabbathf
H. Branson
other article of our creed; namely, the authority of ‘the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth’; whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God’s word, and the Church to be its divinely appointed guardian and interpreter; you follow it, denouncing it all the time as a fallible and treacherous guide, which often makes ‘the commandment of God of none effect.’”
Its Only Claims
IN THE Catholic Press, of Sydney, Australia, in its issue of August 25, 1900, there is this statement: “Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claims to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles. . . . From beginning to end of the Scriptures there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first.”
Cardinal Gibbons, in his book “Faith of Our Fathers,” in the edition of 1892, page hi, says: “You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.”
Again he says: “They [the Protestants] deem it their duty to keep the Sunday holy. Why? — Because the Catholic Church tells them to do so. They have no other reason.”—“ The Ecclesiastical Review,” February, 1914, Vol. 50, No. 2, p. 236.
The following question and answers will be found in “The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine,” by the Rev. Peter Geiermann, C. SS. R., page 50, 3rd edition, 1913, a work which received the “apostolic blessing of Pope Pius X, January 25, 1910:
“Question: Which is the Sabbath day? “Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day. “ Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
“Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church, in the Council of Laodicea (a. d. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.” (The date usually given for this Council is 364.)
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The Kansas City Catholic, on February 9, 1893, said:
“The Catholic Church by its own infallible authority created Sunday a holy day to take the place of the Sabbath of the old law.”
Thus it will be seen that God charges the Roman Church with the crime of tampering with the divine law in changing the observance of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. History testifies to the truth of the charge. The Roman Church confesses itself to be guilty. And thus the Catholic Church stands before the world convicted of tearing from its place in the very bosom of the law of God, the fourth commandment, substituting instead a counterfeit rest day, supported solely by tradition and not by any command of God.
Shall not we, as Protestants, cast away this unscriptural practice and doctrine of Sunday observance and follow the Bible, Jesus, and the apostles, in the observance of the true Sabbath, the seventh day of the week?
The great question is, What does the Bible say? If the Bible is not a safe guide, then we are all lost. There is no other anchor for the soul. There is no other ground for faith. Upon this old Book, which has weathered the storms of the ages, we take our stand, and by the grace of God we look forward with all confidence to the glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Russia an Object Lesson
{Continued from page 13) Socialism must reign. The exploitation of man by man must be abolished.
I said before that the Bolshevists represented only a small part of the people in Russia. Some plan, the Red leaders knew, would have to be devised to keep themselves in power against the tremendous population odds against them. This introduces us to their second principle of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Put in simple language, this means that the workers, and no one else, are going to run the country. This further means that Sovietism has no use for Western ideas of democracy and popular representation in legistative assemblies. Their system is frankly what they call it,— a dictatorship, — only instead of being a dictatorship of the workers, it is a dictatorship of those who lead the workers, the Communists.
This is shown by their pyramidal system of Soviet representation. Every locality or industrial center has a local soviet. This soviet elects representatives to the next higher soviet. The members of this higher soviet elect representatives to a still higher soviet; and this still higher soviet elects representatives to a soviet over it. And so it goes until it reaches the National Congress in Moscow, which national legislature, so to speak, runs the country in connection with the executive committee and com-
MAY, 1929
missars. Such a scheme, it will be at once seen, does not represent the people at all, so far as the whole country is concerned. It is a scheme of indirect representation, which allows the Communists by the time the top of the pyramid is reached to control the situation. This largely accounts for the fact that Sovietism has lasted so long in Russia. It cannot help but do it, when the people in general are crowded out before they can have anything to say. Mussolini and Rivera are not the only European dictators.
Admire Their Spirit
AS ONE studies Sovietism, while one -/jL cannot agree with the doctrines and programs of its leaders and is strongly opposed to them, knowing full well the pernicious influences in and behind them, yet the courageous devotion of its leaders to what they believe, their consecration to the cause of Communism, their self-sacrifice for its advancement, compel respect. Nikolay Lenin for years lived the life of a fugitive from justice. He had to hide from place to place and live in exile. As he himself expressed it, he “lived in a coffin.” Yet he endured all this hardship, suffered hunger times without number, and lived in poverty, all because he dedicated himself to the spread of his ideas. It is this spirit that made Sovietism successful in Russia.
There ought to be a great lesson for us Christians in this. The crying need of God today is for men and women who will, as these revolutionary leaders of Russia have done for the success of a bad cause, consecrate themselves wholeheartedly and self-sacrificingly to the success of God’s work on the earth. Jesus Christ showed that spirit in accomplishing our salvation. He gave up every honor and heavenly advantage that, through hardship, self-sacrifice and poverty, He might save us. May God help us to do the same for Him.
Calendar Reform
{Continued from page 7)
Sabbath on the identical seventh day of the week in Greece, though the dates on the calendar were thirteen days apart.
All this proves that the days of the week have never been altered by calendar changes and that “the order of the days of the week has never been interrupted,” as the “Catholic Encyclopedia” declares. These changes affected merely the length of certain months and years, but never in all history did any revision alter the days of the original weekly cycle. In fact, the calendar itself, together with the recorded changes made in it by various nations at different times, is one of the best means and furnishes one of the most reliable authorities in establishing the unbroken weekly cycle.
The astronomers and scientists themselves admit that, so far as human knowledge goes, the weekly
cycle has never been altered. Three scientists and one astronomer testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress, when the new scheme of calendar revision was under consideration, that they had no knowledge of any changes in the calendar throughout all the centuries that had in any way altered the weekly cycle. In answer to an inquiry sent out by the League of Nations to astronomers relative to the breaking of the weekly cycle, we briefly quote the testimony of five leading astronomers as published in the official “League of Nations Report on the Reform of the Calendar”:
“The reform would break the division of the week, which has been followed for thousands of years and therefore has been hallowed by immemorial use.”— M. A nders Donner, formerly Professor of Astronomy at the University of Helsingfors, page 31.
The Week Essential
ONE essential point is that of the continuity of the week. The majority of the members of the Office of Longitudes considered that the reform of the calendar should not be based on the breaking of this continuity. They considered that it would be highly undesirable to interrupt a continuity which has existed for so many centuries.”— M. Emile Picard, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences [France], President of the Office of Longitudes, p. 51.
“I have always hesitated to suggest breaking the continuity of the week, which is without a doubt the most ancient scientific institution bequeathed to us by antiquity.”— M. Edouard Baillaud, Director of the Paris Observatory, p. 32.
“It is very inadvisable to interrupt by means of blank days the absolute continuity of the weeks — the only guarantee in the past, present, and future of an efficient control of chronological facts.”— Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Lisbon, p. 74.
“The breaking of the continuity of the week, which has crossed the centuries, and all known calendars, still intact, and the universal use of this unit in the measurement of time are the reasons that oppose this change [of the calendar].”— Prof. D. Eginitis, Director of the Observatory of A thens, and a member of the League of Nations' Special Committee of Inquiry into the Reform of the Calendar, as appointee of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
All these eminent astronomers affirm that the weekly cycle has never been broken in all past history. Since the cycle of the week has been preserved from time immemorial, it must naturally follow that the identity of the days of the week has likewise been preserved.
For the first time in history (except when France during its short Reign of Terror attempted to change the week to ten days), an attempt is being made to alter the unbroken weekly cycle
PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN
through a revision of the present calendar. The following table shows how the proposed new calendar scheme would disrupt the weekly cycle once each year if it becomes effective in 1933 as proposed:
The above table shows how the extra day at the end of each year is dropped out of the reckoning of the weekly cycle. It illustrates the last week of December, 1933, and the first week of January, 1934, with the extra 365th day of the year left out of the weekly cycle, thus altering the days of the week each year. The last week in December, 1933, ends on Saturday, December 28. The next day, the twenty-ninth, is the extra “year day,” which is called a blank day in the new calendar plan, and which naturally would be Sunday if the regular order of the days of the week was followed. But it is not reckoned in the days of the week, and so Sunday, under the new plan is carried forward to the first day of the month of January, 1934. In this way the weekly cycle is broken regularly each year under the Cotsworth scheme, which is recommended for universal adoption.
During leap years the weekly cycle is broken twice, because two blank days are dropped out of the weekly cycle. It is proposed in the new plan to insert the new month of Sol between June and July, and to drop the extra leap-year blank day out of the reckoning between the last week in June and the first week of Sol. The following table shows how the weekly cycle is altered during 1936, the first leap year, as the extra leap-year day is dropped between June and Sol in the middle of the year:
Thus the weekly cycle is broken twice during each leap year, once in the middle and again at the end of the year; and thus the Sabbatarian who conscientiously continues to observe the original Sabbath on the true day of the Bible week is compelled to observe his Sabbath on a certain secular week day each leap year for six months, and for seven months on
PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT
a different secular week day, according to the new calendar scheme. The same would be true concerning the Sunday observer, if he desired to observe Sunday in honor of the true resurrection day on the original first day of the week.
The new scheme of altering the weekly cycle each year, and making the Sabbath as well as Sunday fall on different days of the week, is fraught with much evil foreboding to the moral and spiritual realm. When the governments of earth remove the moral restraints and safeguards of religion by legal processes, and trample with impunity upon divine authority and sacred institutions for the sake of expediency and mercenary gain in big business, it does not take a prophet to foresee the harmful effect such lowering of moral and religious
Some leading articles in the
June Watchman
We have been told by a critical social scientist that we need a new conception of God. What is Our Conception of God? By Allen Walker.
The final settling of the “Roman Question” raises An American Question. By William G. Wirth.
The Most Momentous Political Development of Today. By John Lewis Shuler.
Deathbed Repentance. Does God accept it? By Robert L. Boothby.
The Secret of a Healthy Body. By Daniel H. Kress, M. D.
Flies and Marriage. By Martha E. Warner.
Visiting the Haunts of Queer People in Africa. By William H. Branson.
standards is going to have upon the religious life of the people.
All the calendar revisers of the past took scrupulous care not to disturb the Creator’s own arrangement of the weekly cycle. They have recognized God’s authority to set aside one particular day of the week as holy time and that day has never been lost sight of by God’s faithful children. The lawmakers as well as the astronomers in all past ages who brought about the calendar changes in the monthly and yearly cycles, made an attempt to find God’s true length of His invariable and infallible solar year so as to be in harmony with His own correct measure of yearly cycles, but never before in all history have men had the temerity to change the divine arrangement of the weekly cycle and make it untrue. That bold step has been reserved for our day, and now religion and conscientious convictions are to be crucified upon a cross of
gold in order to facilitate big business and cater to the convenience rather than to the religious convictions of the world. Men should hesitate to rush in where angels fear to tread. This is another bold attempt “to change the times and laws ... of the Most High.”
Reaping the Whirlwind of Crime
{Continued from page 4) and women and children on a scale unequaled in human history; in place of inspirational and uplifting music, we gave them jazz; and instead of the dignity of honest labor with the ax and the hoe, we gave them gold to worship in place of God, to be secured by short hours and high wages, in return for a questionable equivalent of service or at the point of the pistol that was placed in their hand at birth. And with such a heritage, that nothing be lacking, we presented them with the most willing and efficient servant that crime of any age has possessed — the automobile.
Hope
WITH these facts and conditions before us we are forced to ask, “Is there any hope?” From the human source there is none; from the divine there is hope in abundance. And after thousands of years of consistent and, at times, deliberate repudiation of the true way to prosperity, peace, and success, when the world is on the brink of social, political, and religious chaos, it seems fitting that we turn again to the source of all true knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And we are not disappointed; we find definite instruction for such training as will secure the preservation of high ideals of truth, honesty, integrity, loyalty, and Christian service to our boys and girls and to our youth. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them. . . . Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and they sons’ sons. ” Deuteronomy 4:5, 6, 9.
Again we read: “And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand: and the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharoah, and upon all his household, before our eyes: and He brought us out from thence, that He might bring us in, to give us the land which He sware unto our
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President Hoover chose as the Bible passage to kiss y as he took the oath of office Proverbs 29: 18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. ” It was a choice inspired by a deep understanding of the character and needs of our lawless times.
One op the high lights of President Hoover’s inaugural address was as follows: “Our whole system of self-government will crumble either if officials elect what laws they will enforce, or citizens elect what laws they will support.” Obedience is the cornerstone of earthly governments as well as of God’s.
By poetic license a certain shot was once “heard round the world,” in the sense that its results affected the history of the world. By actual hearing, the inauguration ceremonies of President Hoover on March 4 were heard around the world through radiocasting. It no longer makes great demands on faith to believe such prophecies as Revelation 1:7: “Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him.”
Automobiles powered by radio are forecast by the president of the Marmon Motor Car Company. From a central generating plant cars will receive their power by radio, each car being tuned to its own wave length. Scientists will dream of such marvels and then make them realities, yet they doubt the power of God to hear the prayers of His people and to give them spiritual, mental, and physical power in answer.
Hygeia, health magazine, in its March issue, sounds a pertinent warning against the pernicious effect of the movies on the nervous systems of children. Pictures of situations that would tax to the utmost the endurance of adults, if actually occurring, strain beyond the breaking point the immature nerves of children, or else harden and brutalize. It is an exceedingly doubtful benefit such pictures do any one; but the evil done the children is tragic and irreparable.
The world’s most eligible bachelors do not marry flappers. Witness the type of women chosen by such prominent young men as Charles Lindburgh, John Coolidge, and Gene Tunney. The “jazz baby” type they passed by for young women of education and accomplishments, “home girls,” talented, studious, cultured, with more brains than mere beauty. The standards of womanliness set forth by a certain ancient Book are not out of date. Proverbs 31: 10-31.
Family Night, Unincorporated, is a new organization, with the object of combating over-organization, started by business men of Pontiac, Michigan. It differs from other organizations in having no dues, no officers, no meetings. Eligible candidates must be heads of families who “pledge themselves to spend one night each week rounding out the family circle.” If the conditions that make necessary such a movement as “family night” had been prevented by men being thoroughly on their jobs as fathers, many of our youth -would not now be the anti-social menaces they are.
A reunion OF alumni of the Reform School at Rahway, New Jersey, was perhaps the most unique event in the educational world within our knowledge. Two hundred men, now prosperous, happy citizens — one a bank president, one president of a board of education — came together recently to express gratitude to the school and to Dr. Frank Moore, for two decades superintendent of the school. Where there is real rebuilding of broken lives, there is always some kindly human builder. Where there is real salvation of broken souls, there is always the divine personality, the one and only Saviour, Jesus Christ.
MAY, 1929
It is curious that while from every comer of the earth come reports of evidence that a large part of dry land was once under water, so few people are willing to believe the record of God’s word that at one time the waters of the great deep were brought up over the highest mountains in a terrific flood.
“To believe sincerely and strongly,” according to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is more important than is the object of the belief. We confess being unable to understand how one can believe “sincerely and strongly” in what doesn’t matter. We much prefer the positive faith of the great Christian apostle who said, “I know whom I have believed.”
“The student of history will find nothing comparable to the swiftness with which we are rushing toward our fate. As a country allows itself to lapse into a condition of sophistication, irresponsibility, materialism, and other resultants of luxury and wealth, it loses its place in the sun.” This is the conclusion of a survey in the North American Review of the luxury and self-indulgence of the United States. The student of history has found only what the student of prophecy has long known that the Bible foretold of this age. But their conclusions are different. The student of history sees only some more virile nation superseding us in world influence. The student of prophecy sees the destruction of this whole effete world at the soon coming of Christ and the re-creation of “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” 2 Peter 3: 13-
“Out of the dusk comes dawn,” says a church billboard, “and out of the church comes civilization.” It is such faulty logic as this that turns thinking people away from the church. Dawn comes not from the dusk but from the sun, a power outside of, and antagonistic to, the dusk. Civilization is not the product of the church, but the result of the combined efforts of mankind to make the best world possible. Civilization is largely based on principles enunciated by Jesus Christ, and is more or less influenced by the church. But the true position and purpose of the church in the world is separate from, and often antagonistic to, civilization. Civilization exalts man in his life on earth. Through the church men are saved for a life to come. Churchmen who have become hazy in their view of the relation of the church to civilization should renew their acquaintance with the Gospel of John, chapters fourteen to seventeen.
“Our conception of an all-wise God would be compromised if we thought He had finished His creation of man, knowing, as we do, how imperfect mentally are even the smartest people,” says an apostle of evolution. Our conception of an all-wise God would certainly be compromised if we thought the best He could do was to start a world imperfectly and depend on the blind gropings of evolutionary impulse in matter itself for any improvement. Knowing well how imperfect mentally are the smartest people (and those who claim to be the smartest are the advocates of evolution), we do not trust their cocksure theories, but prefer to believe what God himself has said about His own work. He says He “made man upright,” and that His “works were finished from the foundation of the world.” The present imperfection is degradation brought about by “an enemy," and is to be‘overcome, not by millenniums of evolution but within our own lifetimes, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump,” by the return of Jesus to destroy His enemies and make His friends “incorruptible” and “immortal.”
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The
Watchman ^Answers
This is a service department where questions pertaining to the Bible and its interpretation are answered for WATCHMAN readers. Anyone is free to address questions to the Editor, who puts himself under obligation to answer here only those that will be of general interest to our readers. Others may be answered by letter. Inquirers must give name and address, but these will not be printed.
Impurity in the Bible
Many people have said to me that parts of the Bible are unfit to read, such as Isaiah 36: 12.
This verse quotes what may be called indecent expressions. The translators of the King James version translated them according to the standards of decency of their times. No doubt we could make them sound a little less raw to suit our ideas of decency now. As to the expressions of such things for public reading, standards change. The conventions of good taste decree an expression indecent in one generation and quite acceptable in the next. This language was in the original Hebrew text, and if the Bible is to be translated at all, it is to be translated fully and accurately. As to why such expressions were used anciently, it seems that people were more plain spoken then than now. There can be no question but that such things must be referred to times without number in private, and over half the world today sees no indecency in giving them public expression.
The real question is why God allowed this to get into His record. Note that in this instance they were spoken by evil men, enemies of God and Israel. No descriptive record could show better what sort of men they were. But even if they had been used by God’s servants, they would have been no more pleasing to Him. Keep in mind that the Bible is a faithful record of both the good and evil men did. Always, however, in the Bible evil is plainly evil, stamped wTith divine disapproval. There is no deceptive mixture of good and evil. Adam and Eve fell because they knew good and evil. (Genesis 3: 22.) The great danger lay in their minds being so clouded by disobedience that they could not distinguish between good and evil. It is the deception that is in popular reading today that is leading youth and age astray. Every life must come in contact with impure language and acts. How much better to read the Bible, where evil is so branded and denounced, than to read the covert impurities of today that pose as pure literature. The safest way to deal with evil is to drag it into the open, and show it up for what it really is. Perhaps very young minds should be shielded from such passages, but surely they should be brought into contact with them before they meet the same thing from their companions on the street.
Evil Spirits from God
1 Samuel 16: 14-16. Would God send an evil spirit to trouble anyone?
This scripture is to be explained in the same way as the statement that God hardened Pharoah’s heart. (Exodus 11: 10.) Pharoah hardened his own heart so much before this (Exodus 8: 15) that everything-God sent, though intended to soften, only hardened it the more, because of the attitude of Pharoah himself. God does not tempt any man with evil (James 1: 13.) God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and sometimes He works in a mysterious way to accomplish His ends, yet He is always good and just and loving. Saul had rebelled against God, and cast Him out of his life. It was inevitable that an evil spirit should take God’s place in his heart, for there are only two classes of spirits, good and evil. Then how could it be said that God sent it? God sent it in the sense that He allowed it. He controls all things, even evil influences, that they may not go too far. Read Job’s experience in Job 1 and 2. He is the “Father of spirits.” (Hebrews 12:9.) He tolerates evil spirits for a time, that His great purpose may be carried out, but He does not instigate their evil works. Impose a weight on a weak man and it will weaken him more. Impose the same weight on a strong man, and its bearing will strengthen him. The difference is in the men — or their attitude — not in the weight or the imposer of it. So God’s tests may be to us evil or good, as we take them. God and His works and workers are “ to the one . . . the savor of death unto death; and-to the other the savor of life unto life.” And Paul adds, “Who is sufficient for these things?” They are somewhat hard to understand; but the Christian who thinks God’s thoughts after Him can understand.
fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He hath commanded us.” Deuteronomy 6: 20-25.
This plan is stated with added force in the words of the Psalmist: “He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.” Psalm 78: 5-7.
In this way alone can we restore our heritage; in this way alone can we reclaim our youth; and in this way alone can we preserve those ideals and those aspirations which make effort worth while and life worth living. In this way alone can we perpetuate the ideals that have made this the greatest nation of the ages; in this way alone prepare ourselves and our youth to enjoy the pleasures of eternity.
The Question Mark
(Continued from page g) that it will have nothing to do with any conflicts between other states or with international congresses concerning them except as it may be called upon by both parties to act as mediator. The territory of the Citta del Vaticano is therefore declared neutral and inviolate. The Holy See declares this treaty satisfactory and adds that the Roman Question is definitely and irrevocably settled. The Holy See recognizes the Kingdom of Italy under the dynasty of the House of Savoy with Rome as the capital. On her part, Italy recognizes the State of the Citta del Vaticano under the sovereignty of the Pope. The law of May 13, 1871 and all decrees or laws contrary to this treaty are abrogated.
The concordat has forty-five articles. The legal standing of the religious congregations and the free administration of church property is recognized. Ecclesiastical marriages are to be considered valid and registered by the civil authorities. Religious instruction is to be given in both primary and secondary schools. Catholic organizations are to be free to develop their activities outside of any political party. The concordat provides also that any further difficulties that may arise between the Holy See and the Italian government shall be settled in a friendly manner.
The financial understanding provides that in view of the events of 1870 the Italian government shall pay to the Holy See a sum of 750 million lira in cash and a
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billion lira in 5 per cent consolidated Italian bonds.
On Tuesday morning, February 12, there was held at Saint Peter’s a splendid pontifical mass in celebration of the seventh anniversary of the coronation of Pope Pius XI. Mgr. Locatelli, the first cardinal created by Pope Pius XI, officiated. In addition to the pope there were present twenty-six cardinals, numerous dignitaries of the Italian government, and the full diplomatic corps.The escort that accompanied the pope was preceded by the Swiss guard in their picturesque costumes. In the square in front of the cathedral was a crowd of about 100,000 persons who waited in the rain until the pope appeared on the balcony. Here he appeared as soon as the ceremony in the church had ended, and gave his blessing to the crowd that knelt in the rain. This was the second public appearance of Pope Pius XI, the first being on the day of his elevation to the throne of Saint Peter. For the first time since 1870 a detachment of Italian infantry, which had been stationed on the square, presented arms on the appearance of the pope on the balcony.
A New Era
THUS we have come to a new time.
The pope is no longer “ the prisoner of the Vatican.” The papacy no longer sits a widow, deprived of temporal sovereignty. The new papal state of the Citta del Vaticano may be small, but from this re-establishment of the pope as a temporal sovereign, the next few weeks and months may see further developments. There is even talk of the United States now appointing an ambassador to the Vatican. Many countries already have their diplomatic representatives. Should the United States send an ambassador, all the other countries that have not yet done so would quickly follow her example.
With the papal nuncio in Rome already recognized as the dean of the diplomatic corps in that city, why should not the pope hope to gain a similar recognition for himself among the rulers of the nations of this world? Perhaps before the readers of this magazine see this article, the new papal state may have taken steps looking for representation in the League of Nations. Truly Bible students can look for complete fulfillment in the near future of all Bible prophecies concerning the Papacy.
“The ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, who have received no kingdom as yet; but receive authority as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest,
MAY, 1929
Dried or Canned Fruits.—A s to vitamins and mineral salts, which are better, canned fruits, or stewed dried fruits? V. W.
Stewed dried fruits are better than canned fruits from the standpoint of vitamins, for canned fruits are usually cooked under pressure and that kills the vitamins. Dried fruits can bi soaked for twenty-four hours and then cooked just a very little. In that way they retain practically all of their vitamins and mineral salts.
Acid Urine. — I have been told by a physician that my urine tested acid. What does this mean, and do I have acidosis? B. E. N.
The urine normally should test acid, as it is an excretion of the body, and to keep up the alkaline balance of the body, the acids resulting from the process of converting food into tissue are excreted. When the urine tests alkaline, the acids are not being properly excreted, and a condition of acidosis may result in time, which will manifest itself in various ways; as a tired, worn-out feeling, stiffness of joints, and pains in muscles and nerves.
Nervousness and goiter.— I feel very nervous. Do you think I have goiter trouble? B. 0. N.
Nervousness may be a symptom of goiter or thyroid disturbance, but there are so many other causes for nervousness that are much more common that I would advise you to eliminate other causes first. The presence of some toxic substance in the body is very irritating to the nervous system and may cause extreme nervousness. This toxin very commonly comes from the gastrointestinal tract, due to poor elimination. Nerve tension, or nerve strain, may cause nervousness, because of the toxic condition it may produce. The presence of pus, however small, may also cause nervousness. The pus may be present in bad teeth or tonsils, in the sinuses of the head, an old gall bladder or appendix infection, or even in some remote part of the body. In brief, the outstanding symptoms of thyroid disturbance are: always rapid pulse, nearly always protrusion of the eyeball, some enlargement of the thyroid gland, nervousness and restlessness, and fine tremor of the hands, with general weakness, emaciation, anemia, and an increased speed in changing food into body tissues.
Swollen ankles.— My ankles have been swelling for some time. Do I have kidney trouble? F. A. P.
There are two conditions that commonly cause swelling of the ankles— heart and kidney disturbances. If the swelling is due to a heart condition, the swelling is usually limited to the lower extemities, and is much better following a period of rest, as a night’s sleep, but gets worse again after use. Hence the swelling is almost gone in the morning, and present at night. Swelling due to kidney lesion is general and not in the ankles alone. Also the swelling is present even after periods of rest, as in the morning as well as at night. I advise a good physical examination for you.
Immunity.—What is meant by immunity? What diseases give immunity? G. B. M.
Whenever any infectious agent invades the body, the body responds by putting out certain agents that combat the disease. As a result of this warfare, the infection is destroyed, and the body returns to its normal condition. There are certain conditions that call forth substances that remain in the blood from then on, and when present, prevent future attacks of the same disease. This protection is not always entirely constant, but the following diseases give an almost certain immunity for any second attack of the same disease: typhoid fever, typhus fever, measles, German measles, scarlet fever, small pox, mumps, chicken pox, and yellow fever.
Lack of hydrochloric acid.— How should a person behave at meals who lacks hydrochloric acid in the stomach? B.R. T.
With reduced or absent hydrochloric acid within the stomach, one should partake freely of acid fruits and fruit juices as the delicate organic acids of fruits will in a measure replace the absent mineral acid. Buttermilk and yogurt, because of their lactic acid, are also useful. Milk, well-cooked cereals, soft-cooked eggs in moderation, and the lighter vegetables as potatoes, carrots, and pumpkins are also well borne. Low protein and low fat is the rule, since protein foods require acid for digestion and fat foods diminish acid secretion. With retarded stomach digestion, mouth treatment — that is, mastication of foods — should be very thorough.
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How’s Your Health
Medtcal and hygienic information of interest to the general reader is given in this column
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where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate, and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. For God hath put in their hearts to fulfill His will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” Revelation 17:12-18.
What Is America Reading?
{Continued from page 11)
is scattered more widely among the peoples of the earth than any book in the history of mankind. But the question is pertinent: How many are reading the Bible for themselves? This Book that “is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works,” is lying dusty on many a shelf, because it is hard to understand —because it cannot be read so quickly as popular literature.
When the reader of the Bible passes a news stand and sees the array of technical magazines, he naturally thinks of Daniel’s words: “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” This same statement includes also many of the travel and geographical periodicals that witness to the rapid progress man is making in the world of transportation and communication. If this same reader scans the headlines of a newspaper and reads of great catastrophes in nature, or if he reads of new armaments and hairsplitting diplomacy that promise evil for the future, he is reminded of what Jesus said: “Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” When this same reader of God’s word sees the immoral pages of certain journals, he pushes them aside in sorrow, for he knows that the same Jesus also said: “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” When the conditions in the great churches are seen, the Bible student recalls such words as, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen.”
Thus example after example could be cited to show how the Bible can be used as a measuring rod by which modern reading material may be measured.
The world is reading everything but the Bible, even though the Sacred
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Scriptures can be found in practically all homes. But the man who reads the “sure word of prophecy” and makes it a rule of his life in this age of speed in reading as well as travel, will have placed upon him the beatitude found in Revelation 1:3: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.”
A Nation Was Born
{Continued from page 15) of the royal family, and therefore a priest, he became versed in the arts and sciences and theology of the Egyptian cultivated class. Hebrew tradition states that he invented engines for building and instruments of hydraulics and surveying. He conducted military campaigns under the great Ramses II with such success that he became very popular despite his plebeian origin. And then, through the accession to the throne of his foster-father, he became the crown prince. But he never forgot that he was a Hebrew. And when the time came for making a choice, he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to occupy the throne of the proudest nation of earth. Such was the man whom God commanded, after giving him forty years of spiritual preparation in Midian, to lead His people through the critical time of the birth of the nation, the period whose climax at Sinai we are considering.
Significance of Sinai
SINAI marks not only the climax of Israel’s formative period, but it is the point of convergence and divergence in the whole history of that people. The teachings and experiences of the fathers, and their own experiences in Egypt, were but a preparation for this. And in their desert wandering, as in all their subsequent history, whenever they needed to be reminded of their high calling, they were reminded of Sinai. Here the Jews were given a code of civil and judicial law that gave them a political entity as a theocracy, a God-kingdom. Here were laid down the foundation principles of all free government: that law must be accepted and supported, not by force, but by the conscience of the people themselves, and that reverence for God and recognition of His supreme authority is the very essence of good citizenship. And it was here that they were told that if they would be true to Jehovah He would be their God. Since a great enlightenment always carries with it a correspondingly great responsibility, it became Israel’s task to carry its spiritual light to all the nations of earth. And it was at Sinai that the Jews were prepared for this mission and were given their commission.
The great nations of antiquity, Israel, Kgypt, Chaldea, Greece and Rome, were
all schoolmasters. Through national discipline they all achieved at home some essentials of culture, which they then transmitted to the races on the fringe of civilization who had had a less fortunate upbringing. And their achievements have lived on, long after they themselves have turned to dust. Israel was the greatest schoolmaster of them all, for Israel made the most important contribution. Science and mathematics we owe to Egypt and Babylon, art and philosophy to Greece, and government to Rome, but salvation is of the Jews. The other nations had gods, but Israel had God.
And God, after instructing Israel at Sinai, placed them at the crossroads of the nations, that His people might reveal Him to the world. It is a mistake to think of the Jews as a separate people in a geographical sense, as if they were isolated from the world. Their position in Palestine brought them into constant contact with the nations around them. Diplomatic missions and the caravans of trade from Egypt to Babylonian and Persian centers in the east, and to Asia Minor and the Aegean lands to the north, had to cross their lands. It was a true instinct that led them to mark in their temple inclosure the center of the world. That circle of marble pavement surrounding a low pillar did mark it then. How much it must have meant to the ancient world to have had, through the ages, in the very center of its active life, a people who conceived of the world as related in all its functions to God, and who gradually built upon this idea and from divine revelation the Old Testament, that remarkable diary of God, in which are recorded His dealings with mankind and the principles behind those dealings.
Only an ash heap marks the location of the temple of the Hathor priests of Sinai. Mankind has forgotten the cult of the cow. But the word of God that was given at Sinai stands forever, the measure of the civilization of nations and of the righteousness of man, the greatest single influence that has ever been brought to bear upon human conduct.
Nation Born to Work
THIS completes the third study of the hand of God in human affairs. To repeat the object of the series: it is to trace in history the great conflict between good and evil, the latter represented by Babylon, the former by Jerusalem, the city of the great King. The conflict is to end in the final triumph of Jerusalem. In Nimrod the rebel we saw the founding of Babylon; in Abraham, the prophetic founding of Israel. And now, at Sinai, we have seen the actual tangible birth of the nation that was to symbolize the power of good and of God in the conflict of the ages, and that was to bring even to Babylon itself the opportunity to repent. This missionary contact we are to study in the next number of the series.
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Youth—Whither Away?
{Continuedfrom page iq) the gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him hear.”
But this is only a partial answer to their questions: There will be an end to all this misery and sorrow, but when? These few youth seek another occasion to confer with the quiet, unassuming Man. This time, seated on the hilltop overlooking a beautiful city, He paints a word picture of the events to happen just before the harvest time. Against a background featuring the downfall of the beautiful city before them, the waging of terrible persecutions, the arising of many creeds, each with its prophets, the appearance of flaming signs in the heavens and fearful happenings on earth, he paints a world engrossed in the daily pursuits of business and pleasure, in rounds of banquets, nuptials, receptions. He foretells a movement that would proclaim throughout the world this coming of the end of time, and then closes his admonition thus:
Best Advice Ever Given
WATCH therefore: for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken through. Therefore be ye also ready; for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh.
“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath set over his household, to give them their food in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, that he will set him over all that he hath. But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord tarrieth; and shall begin to beat his fellow-servants, and shall eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he expecteth not, and in an hour when he knoweth not, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”
A few days later this quiet, unassuming Man sealed with His own blood on the cross of Calvary the plan which He had outlined to those youth there by the lake and on the hills of Olivet.
Of course, this plan is old, having been formed when sin first began its ravish-ings, but it is logical and sure and final. Let the youth whose hearts are filled with a longing for a peace that this world cannot give — and that it cannot destroy — steal away to a quiet nook with their Bibles. Let them spend some prayerful hours there while the Son of God tells the story of God’s great plan for the earth; of its culmination
MAY, 1929
in the present era; of the coming of the Son of God, and the final and total destruction of sin and its adherents — never again to rise to spoil the peace and order of God’s universe. He will answer their questions. He will solve for them the problems of Life’s Bridge of Sighs.
Age Must Answer
BUT other questions will arise, questions which Age must face on the witness stand: Why have you not told us about God’s plan? Why do not the leaders of Christianity follow God’s plan and hasten its fulfillment?
It is said that Admiral Nelson, the great British hero of Trafalgar, when informed by his lieutenant that his superior was signaling him to withdraw, put his telescope to his blind eye and calmly reported, “I see no signals.” God’s plan cuts across the path of mankind. Age would rather keep the Bridge of Sighs in the background than give up its own plans. It has put the telescope to its eye of doubt, and reports, “The Bible is largely a myth; Christ was a mere man,” and then sets about to create a Christianity after its own liking, a Christianity that denies the power of Christ to finish the work He began on the cross — the eradication of sin — in His way, a Christianity that substitutes for the cleansing blood of a guiltless Saviour the so-called moral life with its hidden avenues of sin. Upon test, such a Christianity reveals no solution for life’s problems. Is Youth not justified in rejecting it?
Those of Youth who are pondering the meaning of Life’s Bridge of Sighs, knowing well that it must be traversed by all, need not cross it alone. The Saviour will cross it with them. Human sympathy may fail in the shadows of sin and sorrow; human wisdom may falter in the maze of life’s problems; but the Saviour will go all the way across the bridge, comforting, guiding, upholding. When He shall appear to complete His plan, Life’s Bridge of Sighs shall be torn down, never to be built again. “The bleak wind of March, the dark arch, the black-flowing river” will have no place in His soon-coming kingdom of love.
Every Man His Own Doctor
{Continued from page 21) lubrication of the parts composing the engine, otherwise the whole machine will soon cease to function.
In co-operation with the human mechanism, the appetite will warn us when we do not receive a sufficiency of energy and building foods, such as starch, sugar, fats, and proteins, which in many respects bear a comparison to the gasoline in the auto tank. But the appetite cannot be depended on to warn us when we are getting insufficient organic mineral and vitamines (constituting the “oil” for the human engine). These essential constituents do not
bulk large enough to be noticed by the appetite, therefore it behooves every lover of health to see that his table is well supplied with foods direct from the hand of nature, including some kind of raw food at least once a day, such as lettuce, raw cabbage, carrot, sauerkraut; together with breads made from wheat or corn ground whole.
The vegetable kingdom is the great store of all nutrition, giving us the greatest variety of products from which to select the foods best suited to the climate in which we live, to our environment, and to our individual needs. These, with the addition of suitable quantities of milk, supply every dietetic need of the human machine.
Every person should study to be his own dietitian, for he should know what foods make for clean tissue and strong vitality. The health and vitality of the body are just as dependent on the food eaten as are the strength and durability of a mechanical machine dependent on the materials used in its construction.
The Coming of Christ
{Continued from page 23) covering cherub. These facts are evidence that Lucifer’s companion in responsibility did not sin, but instead remained loyal to God. We must see him, as the loyal covering cherub, take up the work of both, and alone, as the remaining specially authorized representative of God, proclaim and demonstrate at the risk of his own person and life God’s eternal love and justice and defend the throne and the law against the subtle, inconsiderate, hellish accusations of the evil one.
God Himself
WHO could this one possibly be?
We can best reply by asking who has taken up the work above described. To this question there can be only one answer. None less than the Son of God himself has taken the responsibility, which was also laid upon Him, to vindicate the justice of God and the righteousness of His law in the face of a determined and unscrupulous enemy, a rebel and a traitor. His work identifies Him with the unswerving, covering cherub who dared take issue with His trusted, but unfaithful, companion in the most momentous question that had ever been, or ever can be, raised.
The one was the Son of God, was God. The other was but a creature. Of all God’s creatures, he stood nearest the throne of the Father, and in powers and gifts, in beauty and glory, next to the Son of God. Between the representations of these two as related to the character and claims of God, the heavenly angels must choose. Had Lucifer in beauty and majesty, in talents and persuasive powers, not apparently approximated those of God’s own Son, they would have had little difficulty in deciding
PAGE THIRTY-THREE
between them. Those who took their position with Lucifer must have hesitated and debated long the solemn question before they took the awful plunge, and then only because they in some measure ascribed divine powers to their chosen leader.
But the cherubim were angels. Yes, and so is Christ called the Archangel. The fallen angel is called Lucifer, “the day star” and “son of the morning.” Of Jesus we read that He is “the bright, the morning star.” Lucifer said in his heart, “ I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. ... I will make myself like the Most High.” Isaiah 14: 13, 14. What a flood of light this throws on the situation! He refused to recognize Christ as Deity. He was jealous of His superior position. He asserted his independence of Him. “Jealousy is cruel as the grave. ” He would recognize no superior power. He must be equal to the Most High. Every star of God, including the bright, the morning star, must be subject to his throne.
Would God unite a creature with His Son to share in the responsibilities of His kingdom? Why not? Although in a lesser degree, is not this what He does now? Do we not share with Him the responsibilities of His work on earth? Does not what we are asked to do by His grace determine the salvation or perdition of souls He died to save? Are we not workers together with Him? Is not laid upon every one of His intelligent creatures the responsibility of showing forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light? Shall not “now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places ... be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose”? Ephesians 3: 10, 11.
What is more natural and wise from a right standpoint than that He should choose him who was from the creature side the connecting link between the Diety and creation, and connect him with Him who was from the divine side the connecting link between the Father and His children, to uphold the just claims of God? It is God’s great pleasure, although He never forgets His exalted position and never abdicates His throne in favor of any, to identify Himself with His children. In order to discharge His great responsibility — partially self-imposed, it is true — in saving the lost, He identified Himself with them in taking upon Himself human flesh, ever henceforth carrying in His person both divinity and humanity.
Thus it is that this nobler cherub, the Son of the infinite Father, took up His own task and that of His now fallen companion, and interposed His divine Person unto death to uphold and establish forever beyond question the just and unchangeable claims of God’s law. Thus did He fulfill His heaven-established mission.
PAGE THIRTY-FOUR
Are You Religious?
{Continued from page 25) closes with the song of the redeemed on the sea of glass. There is real satisfaction in doing what one knows to be right. There is joy without alloy in serving one we love. There is no hope like the Christian’s hope.
At the time of the Civil War a chaplain was walking over the battlefield after a fierce combat, ministering to the suffering, the wounded, the dying. He was dressed in chaplain’s uniform and carried a Bible under his arm. Stooping over a wounded soldier he asked if he might read some favorite passage from the Bible.
“I am so thirsty,” the young man answered, “I would rather have a drink of water.”
Hurrying away, the chaplain soon returned with a canteen of water. After the wounded man had quenched his thirst, he said, “ Could you lift my head and put something under it?”
The chaplain took off his overcoat, and rolling it up, tenderly lifted the soldier’s head and placed the coat beneath it for a pillow. “Now,” said the suffering man, “if I had something over me — I am so cold.”
There was no hesitation on the chaplain’s part. There was only one thing to do. He hurriedly took off his coat and covered it over the young man. As the chaplain leaned over him, the young man looked up into his face and said, “If there is anything in that Book that makes a man do for another what you have done for me, let me have it.’?
Having seen real Christianity in action, he was ready to listen to it; he wanted to hear about it. One reason for the callousness and indifference on the part of sinners is that they have seen little real Christianity in actual life.
We sing about it, we talk about it, we read about it, we print it; but do we live it? We have an abundance of doctrines, creeds, forms, and ceremonies—there is no shortage there — but what our old world needs is more real Christians. Our preachers can preach it, and it will fall on deaf ears if we do not live what the preachers preach.
Christianity is following in the footsteps of the Master, obeying His commands. A mere assent to the doctrines of Christ will not suffice. Devils may believe and tremble. We must walk as He walked.
The only Bible definition that mentions the word religion is found in James 1: 27: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
Genuine Christianity is Christ in the life, a principle that is alive and working seven days in the week, a principle that will be revealed in character and manifested in good works, lifting the fallen,
comforting the discouraged, feeding the hungry, speaking the kindly word, lending a helping hand to our fellow travelers.
Most of us make a profession of Christianity. May the Lord help us to live it!
New Gods for Old
{Continued from page 17) good news and stir popular interest, the newspapers and magazines bombarded Dr. Barnes for interviews and articles. He responded handsomely. The New York Times printed a long article in which he contended for his views, and both Current History and the Forum carried debates between him and certain churchmen. We know not how much wider his pronouncements have gone. Scientists were made resentful because he dragged religion into a scientific meeting, and church leaders are driven to battle because he so boldly attacked orthodox Christianity.
The contention of the learned professor may be summed up in a sentence: Since in the first place man invented God and religion, and now that experience and science have demonstrated that orthodox Christian doctrine is based on untruth and is out of date, therefore man had better invent a new God and bring doctrine to accord with science. It is evident that this policy would make man worship himself (for assuredly he who invents a god is greater than the god he invents) and would make Christians change their belief as often as science changes its conclusions, which is quite often at present.
In his debate in Current History Doctor Barnes makes an admission damaging to his own cause. He says, “The whole set of categories and concepts used by the scientists are manmade, and hence, embody the limitations of their architects.” This is very true, and we will let it stand.
But socioligist Barnes immediately evens the score in his own mind by adding: “This fact cannot, however, be used by the religionist as a basis for criticizing the pretensions of science, because the categories and concepts of religion are, likewise, the product of the human imagination and are, for the most part, drawn from a much earlier and less informed stage of human thought than the assumptions of the scientific ‘methodology.’” This is false, and we cannot let it stand. Some religions may have been of human origin but the Christian religion in its purity came by revelation from the Creator, not from a creature.
We can heartily agree with Doctor Barnes on two points, however. First, if man invented his own God and religion, then it is perfectly proper for him to invent a new conception of both right now. And second, there is much that is called Christian orthodoxy today that is not of Christ, and was man-made;
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it had better be revised or dropped. But the trouble is that our critical friend is looking at this man-made stuff, for the most part, and not at true Bible teachings at all, when he sees the need of a new conception of God. Here is his distorted view of what the Bible teaches :
'‘The old view of God as a venerable and somewhat gigantic being, resembling man in every detail, frequently taking up his abode upon this earth, and being at times accessible to call from his more faithful supporters; the notion of the earth as the chief product of the creative endeavor of God and the supreme object of his divine solicitude; and the contention that Christ could have been in any literal sense ‘the only begotten Son of God,’ offered up as a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of a small group of rather backward peoples dwelling at the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea — all such conceptions become easily and immediately recognized as primitive anthropomorphic [made in the image of man] and geocentric misapprehensions.”
We agree that many people believe this and perhaps some orthodoxies teach it; but the Bible does not teach it, and we have never believed it. True, the Bible pictures God by the attributes of a man; but we wonder why, in all this doctor's study of sociology and history and religion, he has not studied Hebrew imagery and literary figures of speech. No matter what the popular conception of earth and heaven was at the time the Bible was written, a sane interpretation of the Book does not “conceive of the cosmos as a small part of the present earth covered with an inverted blue bowl a few miles distant.”
Doctor Barnes, and the many school and professional men who believe more or less as he does, need first to know just what the whole Bible teaches before they criticize it; need also to distinguish between the pure teachings of God’s word and church traditions and doctrines that have no mention in Scripture; and need to get a conception of God and Christianity that may be new to them, but is old to divine revelation. We do not need a new God. We need a fresh view of the eternal Jehovah.
The worst is that the professor attempts to remove our God, and gives us no constructive conception of a god to take His place who would be satisfactory to either scientist or religionist. Romans 1:21-25 applies here: “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, . . . who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.”
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WORK that will help you to understand the Bible. It contains fifty-seven inspiring chapters which clearly set forth the eternal principles of the gospel. The author has given an extensive review of the prophecies, comparing their fulfillment with present-day events.
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Special Truths for Special The Cleansing of the	The Seven Seals
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The Return of Our Lord	The Relation of the Law to The Ministry of Angels
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Why Did God Permit Sin? The Nature of Man	Health and Temperance
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