KING LEOPOLD, THE CONGO, AND ROME
STRONG appeal on the subject of the
Congo atrocities has been made to
President Roosevelt and King Ed-
ward VII. A Philadelphia press dis-
patch states: “At a meeting of the Confer-
ence of the Foreign Missions Board of the
United States and Canada, held in this city
on Saturday [Jan. 12], it was unanimously
agreed to forward to President Roosevelt, the
United States Senate, and King Edward, an
appeal in behalf of the stricken people of the
Congo State.”
This missionary conference speaks in the
name of forty missionary organizations, aud
concludes with this petition :(—
“In the name of humanity, of international
justice, of regard for the primal rights of
man, we would ask that you will use the full
power reposed in governments by the Supreme
Ruler in the interest of an immediate discharge
by the nations of their responsibility of guard-
ianship over the remnant of the humble peo-
ple who a generation ago, without choice of
their own, were brought out of their isolation
into relations with the world of men and
states.”
The responsibility for the terrible atroci-
ties to which the natives of the Congo coun-
try have been subjected since they came in
contact with civilization, rests upon King Leo-
pold of Belgium, who by international treaty
was given the position of trustee to admin-
ister the affairs of the country. King Leo-
pold has simply exploited the country to the
greatest possible extent for his own pecuniary
profit. His agents in the Congo State have
exacted of the natives the delivery of a cer-
tain quantity of rubber at stated intervals; and
if the natives failed for any reason to fulfil
these exactions, they were hunted down and
mutilated or murdered in the most barbarous
manner.
Fvidence which has recently been brought
before a commission of inquiry shows that
the white agents of IL.eopold have employed
cannibals to commit these crimes, their reward
being in part the privilege of feasting upon the
bodies of their victims, no age or sex being
spared. For years the cry of indignation
from all over the world against this inhuman
wickedness has been swelling louder and
louder, and Leopold, being forced to take
some action, has endeavored in every possible
way to confuse the mind of the public in re-
gard to the situation and hide the facts be-
hind a cloud of misrepresentation. “ For two
years,” says Robert E. Park in Everybody's
Magazine, this monarch has “made the Bel-
gian Embassy in Washington little less than
his Congo lobby; ” and “now that American
interest in the Congo has risen to a point
that might well cause its autocrat fresh alarm,
he has fortified himself by conceding 8,400,000
acres of the richest rubber country in the
world to a French-American-English company,
whose American head is that astute financier,
Thomas F. Ryan. Upon this powerful ally
Leopold depends to prevent the consideration
of the Congo situation in the coming Con-
gress.”
"THE WATCHMAN
. But of all the allies King Leopold has had
in this country, probably none has done so
much in his behalf as the Catholic prelate
Cardinal Gibbons, who has from the frst vig-
orously defended Leopold because the latter is
a faithful Catholic. These two Catholic al-
lies, one a leader in the business affairs of the
country and the other a leader in its religious
affairs, stand behind King Leopold, and it
will be of interest to note what action the
president and Congress will venture to take
upon the appeal which Protestant missionary
societies have now made to them in this mat-
ter. L. A. S.
BB
WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE WICKED?
AGES and philosophers have queried,
reasoned, and drawn their conclusions;
yet the question, What is the final fate
of the wicked? is still a live one. Da-
vid, the king of Israel, said, “1 was envious
at the foolish.” Ps. 73:3-12. Judging from
what he saw, he was led to exclaim, “ Verily
I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed
my hands in innocency. For all the day long
have I been plagued, and chastened every
morning. If I say, I will speak thus; behold,
[ should offend against the generation of thy
When I thought to know this, it
was too painful for me.” Verses 13-16. But
he adds, “ Until I went into the sanctuary of
God; then understood I their end. Surely
thou didst set them in slippery places; thou
castedst them down into destruction.” Verses
17, 18.
children.
He saw in the service of the sanctuary a
solution of this question, something that
showed to him that they stood in slippery
places. They were cast down to destruction.
The Levitical system was the gospel vailed.
It was God's kindergarten method for instruct-
ing humanity. Ps. 77:13. It revealed a
Christian experience after which the soul of
David longed and thirsted. Ps. 63:1, 2.
But what was there in the rites of the sac-
rificial system that particularly revealed the
end of the wicked? In Psalms 37 we have a
key that solves the problem. David says, “1
have seen the wicked in great power, and
spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet
he passed away, and lo, he was not; yea, [
sought him, but he could not be found.” Ps.
37:35, 36. Again he says, “For evil-doers
shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the
Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a
little while, ahd the wicked shall not be; yea,
thou shalt diligently consider his place, and
it shall not be.” Verses g, 10.
Let us examine the process as revealed in
the Mosaic economy. When an individual
sinned, he was to bring an offering and kill
it. The priest then presented either the blood
or the flesh before the Lord. Then the sinner
separated all the fat from the offering, and
the priest took it and burned it upon the
brazen altar. Lev. 4:27-20.- It was a sweet
savor to the Lord, for it represented the sin
destroyed while the sinner was saved. If the
sin is not separated from the sinner, the sin-
ner will burn with the sin. S. N. H.
57
“JEWISH” AND CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES
Tue following item from the Nashville
Christian Advocate expresses an idea which
has become fastened upon the minds of a
great many Christian people; that is, that the
Old Testament Scriptures are Jewish, and only
the New Testament Scriptures are distinctively
Christian :—
“The Sunday-school lessons for this year
are to begin with the Old Testament. It is
of the utmost importance that teachers and
pupils should remember that the Jewish Scrip-
tures, which are the Old Testament, are to
be read in the light of the Christian Scrip-
tures, which are the New. Only so do they
themselves become also Christian Scripture,
God was in those times revealing himself to
the Jews. In Christ he was made known to
the whole world. Christ is the key to the
whole revelation, Old Testament and New.”
The Bible itself makes no such distinction
as that of “ Jewish’ Scriptures and Christian
Scriptures. On the contrary, it is plainly
stated in the New Testament (1 Peter 1: 10,
11) that the “ Spirit of Christ” was in the
men who wrote the Old Testament and dic-
tated their utterances. This would certainly
make the Old Testament Scriptures Christian.
It is just as important to read the New Tes-
tament Scriptures in the light of the Old as
to read the Old Testament Scriptures in the
light of the New. Christ and the apostles
spoke and wrote the New Testament Scrip-
tures in the light of the Old Testament writ-
ings, quoting from those writings again and
again. The apostle Paul commended Timothy
because from a child he had known the Holy
Scriptures, and said that these Scriptures were
able to make him wise unto salvation (2 Tim.
3:15); yet Timothy had only the Scriptures
of the Old Testament.
The Saviour taught his disciples from the
Old Testament, and notably so after his res-
urrection, when he met the two disciples on
their way to Emmaus, and “beginning at
Moses and all the prophets, he expounded
unto them in all the Scriptures the things
concerning himself.” Luke 24:27. To say
that the Old Testament Scriptures were not
Christian until they could be read in the light
of the New Testament, is to speak disparag-
ingly of the Spirit of Christ and of the law
of God. A more egregious error could hardly
be made than this.
The Old Testament Scriptures are as much
Christian as are the New. The way of sal-
vation was the same in Old Testament times
as in the New, for there was only one possible
way of salvation in any age of the world since
Adam fell, and that was by faith in Christ.
Before Christ was crucified, men showed their
faith in him through a system of sacrificial
offerings pointing forward to the true divine
Sacrifice to come. After the crucifixion, this
system could no longer be of significance, and
faith in a Saviour who had died and risen
again was shown by the ceremonies of baptism
and the Lord's supper. But it was all the
same faith, the difference being only .in the
manner of its expression.
The New Testament Scriptures were written