P*«^K^J /-■>r.v (^ LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. PRESENTED BY BX 6333 .H35 S5 1919 Haldeman, Isaac Massey, 184! -1933. The signs of the times _j The Signs of the Times /v ^^ftlOFPB/^ /; OEC 3 1926 BY I. M. HALDEMAN, D.D. PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH NEW YORK CITY SEVENTH EDITION PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL OF THE BIBLE 1721-23 Spring Garden Street Philadelphia Pa. • 1919 PREFACE Five of the articles in this book, '"Jericho Theology," "The New Religion," "Thinking Above What is Written," "The Devil's Righteousness," and "Mental Assassination," have been, already, published and cir- culated as pamphlets. The remaining numbers are printed for the first time. Each of these articles was, originally, preached as a sermon in the First Baptist Church. They have been somewhat changed. The language in which they appear was used in preaching them, but the sermon form, as far as possible, has been set aside. The prepositional distinction, the homiletical and constructive necessities, have been in great measure, kept out of sight. In many cases the narrative method, the descriptions and illustrations, legitimate enough for the living voice, and suited to a listening audience, have been omitted. This is notably so in the "Parliament of Nations," which, when delivered as a sermon, was embellished with full reference to history as corroborative evidence of the truthfulness of prophecy, together with descriptions of cities, events and persons, and fuller analysis of present day movements. It seemed proper, however, to omit all this in send- ing the discourses out in book form. The writer is convinced that the "signs of the times" call for a reading and study in this hour as never before. Heaven, and earth, and hell — the pro- fessing church, the nations and. now and then the clanging of nature's forces, bid us realize that we are on the threshold where the shifting of events, at any moment, may usher in that vast and solemn process, whose terminus ad quern is the Coming and Kingdom of the Son of God. I. M. HALDEMAN. New York, November, 1910. CONTENTS PAGE The Signs of the Times .... 5 The Faith 33 Progress of the Devil's Lie ... 63 Jericho Theology 95 The New Religion 123 Thinking Above What is Written . 150 The Devil's Righteousness ... 176 Mental Assassination 207 Present Day Miracles .... 244 Socialism 275 Emmanuelism 310 The Kingdom of Commerce .... 341 The Scarlet Woman 364 The Parliament of Nations . . . 405 The Zionist Movement .... 428 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "Ye can discern the face of the sky ; but can ye not discern the signs of the times ?" — Mat- thew 16:3. Jesus was at Magdala. He was surrounded by a multitude. They were clamoring for some signs or evidence that he was the Christ, the Messiah. He said to them: You can tell by certain conditions in the sky whether it is going to be clear or stormy, and govern yourselves ac- cordingly. Now, there are signs in the times, conditions, circumstances and events, foretold in your Holy Scriptures, which you ought to be able to read as clearly as you read the face of the sky. The prophets had foretold certain things concerning the Christ when He should come. They had said he should be of lowly mien ; that He would perform many healing wonders; that he would speak in parables ; that he would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; that he would not come with outward beauty nor winsome attraction ; that he would ride into Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass; that he would come in at a definite day and date, and that he would present himself in the temple as their king. 5 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES All these things had happened, were hap pening, and were about to happen. The Jews were called upon to be witnesses of these things and read them aright. They ought to have seen that they were the credentials of the Christ; that he who fulfilled them before their very eyes was none other than Messiah him- self. They did not so see. They did not read the signs. They were blind, and they were blind because they had turned away from the book that recorded them, and had listened and were listening at that very moment to the traditions of men rather than to the Word of God. They missed their ordained opportunity and, for two thousand years, have paid the penalty in an agony and tragedy 'that are terrible to contem- plate. There are signs for these days just as plainly foretold in Holy Writ, as were the signs of those days. They have been foretold by the Son of God himself and all his holy apostles. They are written in the Scriptures ; and yet, the church, as a whole, fails to read or note them, is ut- terly blind to them, and all the out-reach of their tremendous meaning. It has been foretold in Scripture that a time would come during the absence of the Lord when, in spite of the preaching of the gospel and the work of the church, the whole world would prepare for war, and prepare on such a scale as had never been dreamed before. THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 7 « Nation should rise against nation^"there should be wars and continual rumors of wars. The Apostle John, giving the last stroke in the pic- ture, testifies that the spirit of war should go forth, pervade the whole earth, assembling the nations together, and inspiring them to prepare themselves as for a last and desperate struggle. This prophecy is being fulfilled to-day. Never since the world began has there been such a spectacle— 'the whole world under arms. Wherever there is a nation worthy to be called such, that nation is making enormous efforts to equip itself for the emergency of war. Eng- land, so long content to have a great navy and a small volunteer army, is now making a su- preme effort to raise that army to an effective standard of 500,000 men. France is ready to respond in forty-eight hours with 500,000 sol- diers, mobilized and fully equipped. Germany has under arms and ready to march at a mo- ment's notice, 500,000, constituting the most perfect fighting machine ever put together. Spain has 100,000 veterans with the memory of Cuba in their hearts. Italy has ready near- ly another half million. Austria a full half million, trained, disciplined and magnificently furnished. Russia has a million men under arms — not merely reserves — she has these be- sides — but a million of men in barrack and camp, ready to fight, as never before. Japan has more than half a million, practically in the 8 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES field, and a full million of equally disciplined reserves behind them, soldiers whose desperate bravery electrified and, almost, appalled the world. China is moving everything that she may possess an army of 500,000 soldiers equal to the most modern demands, and, already, has an artillery among the best. As you come westward and sweep the circle of the old con- tinents again, you find Persia, the Persia that Rome never conquered, ready to take the field with troops furnished from western arsenals and instructed by offi- cers from western armies. You will find Turkey with 500,000 men ; and it is of tradition that, when soldiers fight well, it is said of them, no matter what nation they may be, they fight "like Turks." Greece has an army; the Balkans — the political lumber-room of Europe — more or less filled with smoking firebrands — is crowded with soldiers ; while Switzerland is a nation of soldiers ready to spring from their Alpine heights at the first sound of war. Every spring-time and summer these nations send out their armies to "ma- noeuvre," to fight imaginary battles, carry on imaginary campaigns, and always as their im- aginary foe, their nearest neighbor. Vast fac- tories are built for the making of guns and powder, and great arsenals for the storing of war material. Germany has one fortress in which she has deposited under steel locks and bars, guarding it night and day, vast sums in THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 9 gold as the sinews of war ; so that, in the event of hostilities, she may be ready to meet every demand. So complete is the preparation for war throughout the world that the number and location of every horse fit for mihtary duty are known, every strategic route in the possible enemy's country is marked out and mapped, every secret road and path described, while the nations themselves swarm with one another's spies, noting the means of defence and the easiest points of attack. Added to all this, the armies are no longer mercenary contingents, hired as the Persians once hired the Greeks, or England once hired the Hessians ; not armies made up of men who followed it as a trade and were open to the highest bidder; the na- tions themselves form the armies ; every man capable of bearing arms is enrolled. In France not even the widow's son is spared, and those who by reason of some physical defection can- not go to the field are called to occupy posts as clerks, as telegraph operators, or any other position that would otherwise demand the presence of an effective soldier. Not only is the armament on land ; it is on the sea. Ten years ago England had 300 war ships and was easily the mistress of the sea. In an unwise moment she determined to outdo all other nations by constructing vessels of the Dreadnaught type. The moment she did this she declassed her other ships and threw her- 10 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES self back in the race for supremacy. Germany seized tiie opportune moment and began con- structing ships of equal tonnage, and to-day can build them as well and rapidly as England herself; so well, in fact, that the number of them falls like a darkling shadow across the waters of the North Sea; and it is now no longer a question whether Great Britain can have a navy equal in range and power to any other two nations, but whether she can have a navy equal to one power, and that one Ger- many herself. France is awakening from her sleep of self- glorification to the fact of her actual maritime weakness, and is laying plans for construction by which she hopes to overtake her German rival. And now the news comes that Austria, never a sea power and with practically no sea- coast at all, has given a contract for the build- ing of seven Dreadnaughts of the super type, together with torpedo boats, torpedo boat de- stroyers and submarines. Spain has commis- sioned England to build her an up-to-date navy. Russia, profiting by her disastrous war with Japan, is launching a fleet that will be equal in power to the best navies of the world ; while Japan, night and day is seeking to jus- tify the prestige of her war with Russia, and anticipating a possible contest with the United States for the control of the Pacific, is unceas- ingly pushing forward the work of building a navy that shall surpass even that with which •The signs of the times 1 1 Togo astonished the nations of the earth. The necessity for a navy has invaded our own land. No matter how much political job- bery on the one side, and the inexcusable ig- norance or indifference of Congress on the other, may retard it ; no matter how much the worse than foolish talk of the peace advocates may hold back the appropriations for the work, this country, by the inexorable logic of her position as z world power (and under bonds to control the Panama Canal in the interest of peace) is forced to have, and will have, a bat- tle-ship navy second to none in the world. The nations of South America are seeking with fe- verish haste, each one of them, to build navies that are to be reckoned with, Brazil having just given orders to construct the largest Dreadnaught afloat. And thus the armament and preparation for war is going on. Steadily, the amount of money expended upon this preparation is increasing, until three- fourths of all the incomes of the nations will soon be spent. One of the startling things about it all is, that this state of affairs comes in after two thousand years of Gospel preaching, two thou- sand years of human progress, and in the cen- tury of, so-called, highest civilization. It is an amazing fact that after two thousand years of the most representative civilization and culture th? world has ever known, human governments \2 THE SIGNS Of THE TIMES i have no better way of deciding a difference than by withdrawing to the battle-field, there to blow out each other's brains, to kill, murder, burn and destroy, perhaps, all that it has taken a century to upbuild and perfect. The start- ling thing is, that the the nations that are fore- most in this preparation for bloody war are the, so-called, "Christian nations" of the earth. The preparation for war, then, is one of the signs of the times which the church is specially called upon to note and read. It has been foretold that during the absence of the Lord there would be enormous political changes within the countries occupying the territorial limits once possessed by the em- pire of Rome; and that these changes would cause the overthrow of absolutism in govern- ment, bring about the uprise of a red democ- racy, and the final federation of Western Eu- rope and a part of Asia under a common ruler. For the last hundred years all the marked political changes, constitutional and otherwise, have taken place in these states of Europe and Asia which once belonged to the Roman Em- pire. All the conflict has been on the lines of the old Roman Vallum, and the effort, con- scious or unconscious, has been to restore the outlines of the ancient empire. Monarchy has been limited, kings have been held in leash, the people have been enfranchised, democracy is the ruling power, and a democracy whose flag and symbol is becoming more and more each THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 13 day, the red flag, the symbol and sign of so- cialism and the rule of man. These changes and the increase of the war preparation, raise the question as to what will happen should these things continue. The prime minister of England has said that the situation is intensely grave. He says history shows that peace can be finally and success- fully maintained only when there is one su- preme ruling power or nation; that we now have eight world-powers, each struggling, in one way or another, to be supreme and each ready, at a moment's notice, to fight the other. Either, he says, there must be general war and destruction, or there must be a federation of all these governments under one common head. As such a federation of the powers of Europe and Asia would be the constituting of a unit of government within the lines of the old Ro- man Empire, the premier of England is, un- consciously, echoing the far-reaching prophecy of God's Word, which has declared that such a federation is coming. The recent sugges- tion (and made seriously) that the German Emperor should be elected head of ten allied world-powers as a general arbiter to keep the peace, is the corroborative shadow of coming events and anticipative of that prophecy which declares that this revived and federated Ro- man Empire will be divided among ten allied kings or powers, who shall elect over them- selves a supreme head as an agreed-upon ar- biter. 14 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES It has been foretold that during the ab- sence of the Christ, the church would repudiate sound doctrine; that teachers would be ex- aJted in the church who would deny the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and turn the people away from the truth. That time is upon us now. Men stand in our pulpits who deny every fun- damental doctrine. Every day three hundred thousand students in our colleges and institu- tions of learning are taught the unsacredness of sacred things. A leading professor in a college who is still a professed minister of Christ, scouts the idea that God wrote the law on tables of stone and, with an attempt at wit- ticism, declared that God never was a stone- mason at all. In our theological colleges min- isters of Christ deny the virgin birth, the sac- rificial death of the cross, while the doctrine of the literal resurrection of the body is laughed out of court. To-day there is a noisy, if not a strong, body of men in the church who, in the name of ad- vanced scholarship, are seeking to set the church with its back to the hereafter, to every- thing supernatural, and to make it a merely social, ethical and time factor. Side by side with this doctrinal down-grade, it was foretold that the church, professed Christians, should be "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God," and that they should have "a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 15 The prophecy finds its realization in the fact that places of public amusement obtain their support largely, if not mainly, from professed Christians; so largely, indeed, that when the "Lenten" season comes round, these places are forced, during the forty days in which such Christians suspend their campaign of world- liness, to cater to them, in some instances, by substituting for the theatrical or operatic per- formance, lectures, readings or plays that have in them some fancied approach to Christian maxims and principles. Indeed, were it not for the Christian public, it may well be doubted whether the amusement season could be main- tained at all, the richest and most liberal pa- trons being oftentimes the leading supporters of the church. In exact proportion as spirit- uality declines, ritualism increases. What the church lacks in power it makes up in form; and of many Christians and churches concern- ing their attitude to the Holy Ghost, who is the alone power of religion, it might not be inaptly said, as it is written of certain pro- fessed Christians in the days of the apostles, that they "have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." The doctrinal and spiritual departure of the church, therefore, is a sign of the times, ful- filled and fulfilling. It was foretold that during the absence of the Lord and, especially, as the Christian age should draw to its close, many false teachers 16 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES would come in the name of Christ, in his name do wonderful works, and deceive many. Christian Science is one of them. Christian Science is one of the most subtle and disastrous deceptions that ever entered the world. It comes in the name of Christ, quotes the Bible, and seems to hold every doc- trine of the Christian faith. It seems to do so, but, upon examination it will be found, instead, to deny every fundamental doctrine. It denies the personality of God. It denies that Jesus was the Christ. It denies that he died for the salvation of men. It denies that His blood, when shed upon the cross, was of any more value than when flowing in his veins in daily life, and thus, it denies the scriptural doctrine that, "without shedding of blood there is no remission." It denies that any one is lost, or that any one needs to be saved outside of the saving principle inherent in each in- dividual life. It denies the existence of sin ; no one has ever committed sin ; no one com- mits it to-day; no one will ever commit it. There is no need of repentance for sin ; no need of looking back and being sorry. Sin does not exist and never has existed. There is nothing therefore of which to repent. All that is required is to recognize the non-exist- ence of sin, and he who, in the eyes of the world and before every court of justice has been declared a sinner and a criminal, is in- stantly free, standing in his original and un- changed holiness. THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 17 Christian Science denies the fact of death. No one ever died. The grave does not contain a single corrupting corpse. The concept of death is the delusion of false and mortal mind. There is no death, for there is no sickness. Disease, sickness, pain and death are imag- inary, they (exist?) only in the false and un- real mind of man. Repudiate them, deny them ; they do not exist. He who has tuber- culosis, or typhoid fever, or an inward cancer, need call in no physician; let him recognize that sickness, like sin, is a lie, and he shall be delivered and be wholly well. Sin, sickness and death, do not exist because there is no matter. Nothing we see is real. The tree, the flower, the mountain, the sea, the round earth, the whole wide universe, these are the mere creations of the mind, and no more real and existent, than our own deluded thoughts. Our very body is a delusion and a snare. ■ The way to largest and fullest life is to recognize that these so-called bodies do not exist at all. We are all spirit, spirit is God, God is not an eternal person, but an eternal principle of good. We are all good because we are all spirit and are equal to God. We have existed as such from the beginning. None of us has ever been born. No woman ever gave birth to a child and no man has the right to be called a father ; what is called material existence is no more real than imagined sin, sickness, pain and death. There is no personal God, and there 18 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES is no personal Christ. Christ is simply a spir- itual idea. Christian Science is that idea, and Christian Science is the Coming of Christ. Christ will never come a second time in out- ward and personal glory as this same Jesus who was taken up into heaven, and declared so to be by the angels. Jesus was an idea, merged at last into the principle of Christ. Jesus has ceased to exist; He never was real except to the hallucination of the error-smitten disciples. The only Coming of Christ that the world will know about is the coming of Christian Science. Christian Science denies the infallibility of the Bible. The Bible, Chris- tian Science says, is full of error, full of fables and myths, and written by men under the dark error that matter exists. Christian Science, in short, denies, not only the Bible as the fully inspired Word of God; it denies the Father and the Son and thus fulfills the inspired por- trait of the Antichrist, as it is written : "Who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. He is antichrist, that de- nieth the Father and the Son." — John 2 :22. Christian Science is the shadow of the Anti- christ, his forerunner and herald, and is, in principle, that science of which the Apostle speaks when he says: "Science falsely so called."—! Timothy 6 :20. Here is a false teacher coming in the name of Christ, and with such power that, if it were possible, it might deceive the very elect. THF. SIGNS OF THE TIMES 19 Another false teacher coming in the name of Christ, using his very name and title is, Emmanuelism. Emmanuelism is an effort to lead Christian ministers into the formation of a clerical clinic. It is an effort to turn the ambassadors of Christ into a band of hypnotists. It is a move- ment which, in its final analysis, means the re- pudiation of the Bible as a book fully inspired of God. Emmanuelism does not believe in the infallibility of the Bible. It believes that much of it was written by men who were governed by the error and fables of the time. It denies that there are such things as demons or un- clean spirits, or that Christ ever cast them out. It accepts the fact that it is so recorded, and that Christ himself taught that He cast them out, but in view of this it leaves us the choice of one of two propositions : either Christ him- self was ignorant of the truth and imposed upon by the credulity of the hour; or, the record is the exaggerated and idealized con- cept of enthusiastic disciples who, themselves, were carried away by their own superstition, and who blindly imagined in Jesus the super- naturalism they continually sought. Emmanuelism would find in a man, not only all the resources of physical, but spiritual health. It is an attempt to turn man in upon himself, and by awakening his sub-conscious mind, or by allowing it to free itself from the imposition of the surface mind, assert itself 20 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES in its native purity and health, thus teaching man that his salvation lies wholly within him- self. Emmanuelism is a subtle handmaid of Christian Science, even though it be at pains to deny it, and, like Christian Science, be- cause it professes bodily cures, appeals to those who are more ready, always, to walk by sight than faith, by natural feeling rather than the quickening of the Spirit. A sign of the times is Emmanuelism — a sign that the Devil is at work, as foretold, not with hoofs and horns, but as an angel of light ; a sign that the time of the end is at hand when the air will be filled with "new" thought, and deeds shall be done that shall lead away and deceive the "many." It has been foretold that, preceding the sec- ond advent of Christ, there should arise a pe- culiar and special class distinctively called "rich men" ; that these would accumulate wealth in their hands to such a degree that the great laboring class would rise in bitterness against them. The sign is here ! Where once a millionaire was an object of curiosity by reason of his exception, now mil- lionaires may be counted by the thousands in this country, and the multi-millionaire is a common fact. So immensely has wealth been gathered into the hands of the comparatively few, that the lands and resources of the nation The signs of the times 21 are practically at their mercy. They form themselves into trusts and syndicates. They control the business and commerce of the world. They establish the schedule of prices. They mould legislation and are behind the courts of justice. Each day they are threaten- ing, not only the privileges of individual men, but the righteousness and the integrity of the earth. Grasping after more, never content, and determined to rule, their wealth is a min- ister to corruption, an inspiration to official dishonesty, and a menace to the peace and comfort of society. The Word of God tells us that in response to this condition of congested wealth and the power it makes and accumulates for itself, there would be the deep unrest and turbulent uprising of the people. The Apostle James tells us in language that might well have been v/ritten to-day, that this exaltation of the capi- talist and the bitterness of the laborer will eventuate in wild commotion, in the clash of class and mass, and in the destruction and mis- cry of those who shall have gathered gain and are called "the rich." He says: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. "Your riches are corrupted, and your gar- ments are moth eaten. "Your gold and silver are cankered ; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you. 22 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. * * * Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton [wanton in the display of luxury, while multitudes starved] : ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter." — James 5 :l-3, 5. The Word of God foretells that the people will break loose like the raging waves of the sea ; breaking over old landmarks and rising in their strength, carrying everywhere disaster and dismay, they will seek to overturn and destroy all established things. Surely that movement is here. To-day there are between thirty and forty millions of socialists, who are determined, in final consent, to break down, in one fashion or another, the present order of society. They look upon property as a crime and the landed proprietor as a robber. They consider the man of wealth as, in the French Revolution the mob looked upon the titled lord with his wide domain and privileges of birth, a tyrant, an usurper, an excrescence, and an imposition no longer to be tolerated. Socialists constitute an all-embracing broth- erhood. They repudiate the idea of nation- ality and patriotism. Nationality to them is simply the agency and instrumentality for the few, the subsidized implement of wealth, the bludgeon with which the individual is to be smitten '"o the ground that the few may con- THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 23 tinue to lord it over him. The army, to them, is simply the ultimate instrument by which the rich few maintain their tyranny over the many. In making appeals to patriotism and love of country, they seek to hoodwink the crowd, ready to turn thousands of their common kind into food for powder that they may themselves remain secure and keep their usurped power. So tremendous has been this propaganda against nationality and patriotism, so wide- spread has the poison been distilled into the souls of men in the various armies, that it is to-day a serious question whether thousands would not, on the eve of battle, throw down their arms, rather than fight each other; or, united as brothers in a common cause, turn upon their respective chiefs. Socialism is a flood tide rising steadily and invading every walk of life, and each breeze that sweeps across the earth carries with it the ominous roaring of the rising tide. Another .sign has the Word of God set be- fore men and bade them read. That sign is the foretold revival of the Roman Church. In the vision of the scarlet-clad woman, car- ried by the ten-horned beast of Revelation, God has symbolically announced that this church should again ascend to temporal as well as ecclesiastical power. That revival is already patent. It ought to be tremendously manifest to the most casual observer. It is numerically the 24 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES largest and strongest religious body in this country. Out of the thirty-four or thirty-five millions of enrolled church members, fully one-half, if not more, are to be found in the Roman Catholic Church, and the number is in- creasing every day. The percentage of its in- crease is more rapid than that of the nation itself; and the advance in every direction of authority and power is phenomenal. While Protestantism is broken up into all sorts of sects, and fragments of sects, filled with the spirit of unbelief, of rationalism, of scientific antagonism and downright infidel- ity, the Roman Church is a unit in doctrine and practice. To-day if men seek for intellectual and spir- itual rest, they cannot find it in the Protestant Church. There, every man has a psalm, every man has a doctrine, and the only thing sure in the leaders of the sects, the only thing about which they have not the slightest doubt is, that the leader of the other sect is wrong. What is taught to-day in a Catholic Church in Rome, is taught in a Catholic Church in London, Paris, New York, and the islands of the sea. It is a universal church with a unit of creed and faith, and offers to the man who wants a settled religious belief, a solidarity of doctrine, and an imperial assertion of authority to be found nowhere else. Its unbroken his- toricy, its splendid ritual, its wealth, and the genius which guides it, enables it more and THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 25 more to appeal to the multitudes, and that, in exact proportion as Protestantism continues its self-division and daily surrender. There is another sign of the times. That marked and distinctive sign is, The revival of Judaism. The Word of God has foretold that the spirit of nationality in Israel so long dormant, would awaken and revive; that with it there would be a widespread movement to return to Palestine; that there would be a turning of the face towards Zion, as it is written : "They shall ask their way to Zion with their faces thitherward." — Jeremiah 50:5. That movement has begun. It has taken the name of the "Zionist Move- ment," it is called "Zionism." All over the earth Zionist societies have been formed, bodies have been legally incorporated, and vast sums of money subscribed. Children are being taught that the day of Israel is at hand, and are speeding the ancient word, "Zion," from lip to lip. It would take a volume to tell all that the sons of Judah have done in the last hundred years, to record the advance they have made as factors in the history of the world. To give the names of those who stand forth as the representatives of human genius and the prog- ress of civilization; who are the masters in art, in literature, and science ; who are the composers of the world's oratorios, the com- 26 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES posers of our music, the authors of drama and the representatives of histrionic ability, the occupants of the leading professorial chairs in the leading universities ; in short, the lead- ing scholars of the world and those who thirst for knowledge and seek it at any cost and, at the same time, to attempt to give the names of those who are factors in business and con- trollers in finance, would be to give an in- terminable list of names, and every name — that of a Jew. They are to-day universal fac- tors in a world where society each hour be- comes more complex ; and this, all this, a wit- ness of the immense and immeasurable vital- ity of the Jew ; it is this vitality that is behind the movement that is called Zionism. Already thousands of the medium class have returned to the land of their fathers. The land, as foretold by Jeremiah, is being bought and sold at the very gates of Jerusalem. The Jew is already the pre-eminent factor in the once holy city. He controls its business and is the present guaranty of its prosperity. His synagogues are rising within the shadow of the Mahommedan mosques. His lamenta- tions for the city of the ancient splendors, and his prayer for the restoration of the former glory, and the swift descent of an avenging Messiah, resound every Friday beneath the moss covered stones of Solomon's wall, where thousands turn their faces and weep as they "ontemplate the past, reciting the penitential THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Z7 psalms, and whose same tear-wet faces shine as they sing of the day when Zion shall be as a garden planted of the Lord, and when the holy hill of the great solemnities shall be the place for the soles of the feet of him who is their promised king. The Turkish government has taken ofif the ban, and now invites the Jew to become a par- ticipant citizen in the covenant land. The people are returning according to the prophetic Word that (and they do not know it, they would not believe it though an ange! from heaven told them) they are returning there that they may endure the last and mosl terrible persecution of their race, and then (and this is their hope) that they may greet Messiah himself when he comes, meeting him as they will with the cry, "Lo, this is our God ; we have waited for Him." Isaiah 25:9; but, in that very cry repudiating the Gospel which they have disdained to hear through all the ages; saying, "Lo this is our God," meaning thereby that this is the Messiah for whom they always have been waiting, not the cruci- fied Messiah oflfered them by the Gentiles — nay — this is the Christ they have sought, the Christ of glory and triumphant power. So will they hail him, but he will show them his hands and his feet with the stigmata of th cross, and abashed, overwhelmed they wil cry out, "What are these wounds in thine hands?" Then he shall answer, "Those with 28 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES which I was wounded in the house of my friends." Zechariah. 12:6. Then will they look upon him as the one whom they pierced and be in mourning and repentant lamenta- tion concerning him, as it is written: "And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one is in bitterness for his first born." Zechariah, 12:10. It is of this time that the Apostle John writes. "Behold, he cometh with clouds ; and every eye shall see him : and all kindreds [tribes] of the earth [the land] shall wail because of him." Revelation, 1 : 7. This sign of Israel's return is confronting the world and crying aloud to an unheeding church. There is yet a climacteric sign of the times. A sign set forth as the witness of the clos- ing hours of the age and as bringing into view the threshold over which the Son of God shall surely come to his own. That sign is composite — earthquake^- in di- vers places (this is the testimony of the Lord himself), pestilence and famine, the waves of the sea roaring, tidal waves sweeping the land and, from above, the heavens adding their phenomena to the emphasis of terror. Within the last fifty years earthquakes have been of unusual frequency, increasing at an amazing ratio, till scarce a day passes that the THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 29 seismograph does not record the quivering of the earth as though she strained and moane3 and was in travail pain to be delivered of that new earth wherein righteousness shall dwell. Only recently, and without a moment's warn- ing, the earth yawned and historic towns in Italy were swept with their thousands into the awful gulf; in one night San Francisco was levelled to the ground. And pestilence has walked abroad. The dreaded plague of the East the last ten years has been travelling slowly but steadily west- ward. This year it is at St. Petersburg, in Russia, and the first touch of its clammy fin- gers has been felt in Italy. It has moved eastward at the same time and the breath of it has been breathed upon our most western shore. Famine has kept pace with earthquake and pestilence as one of the ordained trinity. In India thousands have been starved unto death and we have seen photographs of the so-called living, pictures of men and women and of chil- dren, whose bones spoke through their flesh. With increasing violence the heavens have flung their meteors upon the earth. The wild tempests have redoubled their fury. Now and again the heat of the summer's sun has smit- ten the cities till the gong* of the hurrying am- bulance has echoed from street to street. The icy blasts of winter have swept in upon the desolated country. Cyclones have risen sud- 30 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES denly with the south wind, a kirid, ominous cloud sailing before them like a monstrous winged presage of woe; there has been a crash of swirling thunders, and in an instant towns and cities have been obliterated from the map. The waves of the sea break loose as at Gal- veston ; or the rivers overflow as in China ; or rise and imperil the fancied security of such an inland city as Paris; or the sea again as- serts its majesty and thousands on thousands are whelmed to their death in the islands of Japan. Everywhere nature seems in arms against the earth, as though mighty giants filled with commission of judicial wrath were seeking to smite man from the face of it and teach him his littleness and decay, smothering his cries of boasting beneath the onslaughts of their power. These are some of the signs of the times. What do they mean? Their meaning is clear enough to him who cares to read. These things, the widespread preparation for war, the down-grade in the Protestant Church, the up-grade in the Roman Church, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, the increase of knowledge, the run- ning to and fro — rapid transit and rapid flight — the multiplication of human inventions, the disorganization of society, the uprise of mobocracy, the expanding cry that the voice of the people is the voice of God- the return THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 31 of the Jew to his own land, the stealthy but steady strides of pestilence and the sudden grip of famine, the shivering earth, quivering and breaking asunder, the waves of the sea roaring, the menacing heavens, loosened winds and multiplying storms, the outbreak of floods, the burning, scorching heat of the sun, and mens' hearts failing them for fear — every- where heart failure mixed with bold boasting and unconcealed defiance of God — what are these but the very signs pictured in the Word of God as antedating the advent of the Christ ? In every note of war, in every tramp of armed men, in every political change, whether in Europe or in Asia, in every bold denial of the Word of God, in the increase of knowledge and with it the increase of unbelief, in the false faiths coming in the name of Christ, in the extended wealth of the few and the in- creasing domination of commerce controlled by the few, in the rising of the multitude and the chorus of lawlessness which they sing, in the retreat of Protestantism and the advance of Romanism, in the homeward-bound of the Jew, in the breath of pestilence and the pinch of famine, in the uncertain earth and the frowning sky — read the plain writing of these "perilous times," which an Apostle said should come ; read the plain writing that the age of Gospel grace is drawing to a close ; that the Antichrist is at hand; that the days of the \ntichrist are casting forth their shadow ; and 32 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES that the hour is ripe for that moment when the Lord shall descend and gather His church to Himself, that He may take her out of the way of those judgments with which He will sweep the earth clean, and then bring her back with Him to reign in His glory here. The signs of the times tell us that the Com- ing of the Lord draweth nigh ; that the judge standeth at the door, and bid us be ready — should the Bridegroom come. THE FAITH ONCE FOR ALL DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS. "Earnestly contend for the faith once (for all) delivered to the saints." Jude, 3 This is called an age of progress. It is a time when old ideas are being set aside and new ones brought in. It is a time when the hammer of the iconoclast is break- ing to pieces many a heretofore cherished image. The spirit of modern progress claims to have wide vision and immense forecast. It talks in large terms. The word most fre- quently heard Ts the word "world," and used in an adjective sense. We hear of world forces, world powers, world parliaments, world congresses, world movements. The modern spirit repudiates the narrow and the sectarian. Its outlook is over and above all party lines. It demands absolute mental and moral freedom. Its standard is the scientific. Science must account for all things. Whatever cannot be accounted for by science. is to be regarded as forming a field for future experiment in which science, sooner or later, shall find the answer and give the demonstra- tion. It has no belief in the supernatural. There is nothing above nature. Nature may 34 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES be higher or lower, but nature is everywhere governed by the same laws. It only requires time to know these laws and apply them. Evo- lution is the one thing which unlocks the past, explains the present, and gives prophecies of the future. Whatever does not go along with the modern concept in its breadth of view, its sense of utility and reason, its practical relation to the changing mood and need of' the times, must be set aside as excuseless ob- struction, as criminal hindrance to the onward and upward march of humanity. The rallying cry is, "Keep up with the times — get together — organize, bring out and develop the latent forces in man." In short, the spirit of modern progress signifies the exaltation of the natural and material man as supreme. Whatever is to be done in this world worth doing, is to be done by him, in dependence on his own re- sources, and as a result of his skill in combina- tion, organization and self reliance. The spirit of modernism and naturalism has entered the church. In entering the church it finds itself face to face with an immense, deposit of old doctrine bequeathed from the New Testament Church. It finds such doc- trine as the fiat creation of the world and man, original sin, total depravity, redemption by blood, regeneration through tbe Spirit, salvation by faith, the resurrection of the body, the Second Coming of Christ, the felicity of heaven and the sorrows of hell. When it THE FAITH 35 enters the confines of the New Testament Church, it finds written over its doors these words : "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." As modern pro- gress forces its way into the church it finds carved above its altars in letters of Hght, the words: "Ye see your calling, brethren, how not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." All this means in simple terms that man is a lost, a ruined, and a helpless sinner, and that God alone can save him. It means that the resources and power of the church of Christ are to be found exclusively in the Spirit of God. It means that in the work of the f-hurch, God does not depend in final analysis upon the wisdom, the strength, or the genius of man; neither upon his intelligence or moral concept; nor upon his latest sug- gested "methods." In fact, it means the set- ting aside of the natural man, and is the decla- ration that the church of Jesus Christ, if it is anything at all in the world, is divine, is super- natural, and must be carried on to success through revealed concepts and ordained and fixed methods. 36 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Modern progress when it enters the church finds all this a hindrance to its ideas of suc- cess. It finds the doctrine of the fall of man and his helpless state by nature, the need of a second birth by the interfering power of God, a stumbling block to, and an arraign- ment of, the twentieth century doctrine of the brotherhood of man. It finds the doc- trine that the church must depend exclusively upon the Spirit of God, impracticable. It finds the doctrine that God does not depend* on human wisdom and genius, an absolute discouragement and a cruel blow to human culture and human development. It finds the doctrine that Christ is coming a second time, and might come any time, a menace and an absolute hindrance to multiplied moral and social plans for the bettering of the world; and because these doctrines and methods are a hindrance to twentieth century ideas, the twentieth century idea, the spirit of modern progress, demands that the old concepts and methods shall be modified, or set aside com- pletely, and the church made to conform to the age in which we now live. It demands that the church shall come down out of the air'; that it shall quit star gazing and begin to realize that it dwells fast and hard upon the ground ; that it shall pay less attention to man's future, and more to his present; less atten- tion to eternity, and more to time; that it shall be less elaborate about doctrine, and THE FAITH 37 more insistent about deeds. It demands that the church shall get rid both of theological rubbish and antiquated and useless methods ; that it shall carry on its work henceforth on an up-to-date and business-like basis. There are churches which have responded to this twentieth century demand. They have organized themselves on the most approved business and practical basis. There are churches in which you can get preaching, find a place for prayer and, side by side with it, a place for advanced athletics. Churches in which there are swimming pools as well as baptisteries, employment bureaus and help agencies. Churches that are divided into vast and graded departments. There are churches, indeed, in which the main building is rented out for stores and offices, for the buying and the selling of things — rooms and offices for the money changers and their tables. There is an auditorium for church services during the Lord's Day — and lectures, "refined entertain- ments," "humorous" and "grave," during the week. Rooms for committees and the vari- ous "secular" organizations of the church. In the rental from the business branches, the church secures a steady income. Through its many and varied humanitarian organizations, it secures contingents for its congregations. There is everything that can be desired in some of these "institutional" churches, from a sermon to a sandwich, from theology -to 3d THE 3IGNS OF THE TIMES And this is not all. Churches have not only placed themselves on a basis which is business- like, they have set asiJe every doctrine they could not modify, and modified every doctrine they have kept, to suit the need and the spirit of the times. There are men in the pulpit who teach that the Bible is more human than divine. Its history and science are not to be accepted seriously. The doctrines, specially those which touch the question of sin, redemp- tion and eternity, are to be translated wholly by modern thought. Whatever is averse to the idea of evolution, is to be expurgated. If the Bible is to be kept at all, it must be kept as the hand book of moral maxims and read in the light of man's larger knowledge. It is to be considered as having originated in the infancy of the human mind, having subserved a great purpose while man was still under the influence of feeling and sentiment, rather than the strong facts of knowledge and Investigation. There are those who talk swag- geringly about the need of big men in the pulpit, exalt human genius, and swear by the scientific spirit; and there are churches that love to have it so. In short, the drift of the hour in the professing church is, more and more, to conform to the times both in doc- trine and methods. And what then ? Well ! when yon come to make a cold and critical analysis of the church that is to-day THE FAITH 39 conforming to the twentieth ceniury concept, you will find that it is ethical and not spiritual. Its spirituality never gets beyond a refined ethics. It is economic, and not organic. It is reformative, and not regenerative. It is humanitarian, and not divine. Its rallying cry is sociology, and not theology. Its aim is to deliver men, not from the dangers of the future, but the vices of the present. Its ob- ject is benevolence, not holiness. It seeks to compete with great humanitarian organiza- tions. It would compete with the masonic lodge, the odd fellows lodge, the labor unions, the socialist club. It is fast becoming a society for competitive morality, and not the channel for declarative truth. It seeks to cultivate the original man and make this world a better and more attractive place to live in, and stay in. In fact, it is occupied with temporal, rather than eternal, affairs. And thus the church is endeavoring to conform to the twentieth century spirit — to its doctrines and methods. And yet — in spite of all this effort to con- form, whether it he in the diminution of doctrine, or the increase of organization; in spite of theological institutions, schools and colleges; in spite of ethical and benevolent schemes ; in spite of organization after organi- zation until, in some instances, the church it- self has become the servant and slave of any one of its minor societies, and the minister only 40 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES one of the many equally important and world inspired functionaries ; in spite of bureaus and departments ; in spite of the repudiation of every doctrine that is not pleasing to the natural mind, the professed church, as a moral and social force, is steadily going behind ; it is losing its grip on the multitude. This is evidenced by its failure to appeal to the en- thusiasm in men. That it does fail to awaken enthusiasm, is shown by the decreasing num- ber of young men, keen, alert, who are willing to devote themselves to the Christian ministry. Everywhere the church is suffering from a paucity of younger preachers. The lack of enthusiasm is shown in the falling off of liberal contributions, in the absence of the spirit of cheerful giving. The contribution of the aver- age church member to missions, home or for- eign, and the support of the local church, is so small that one hesitates to put the figures in print. If sentiment, love and devotion, are to be measured by liberality, then the modern church is not creating these sentiments. The weakness of the church is seen in the increase of irreligiousness and infidelity in the community. ' No matter though the preacher accommodate his doctrine to the latest scientific find ; no matter though he break down all the old standards and proclaim himself a liberal of liberals, even though the crowd may come for a while and applaud, they go away con- firmed in their infidelity', laughing at the little* THE FAITH 41 sop of modified doctrine which the preachei tries to give them. As for the individual church member, he is held to the Hne ot moral living, not because he is a member of church, not because its doctrines hold and secure him, but because it is a safe business and social proposition; because the law of utilitarianism to-day demands these things irrespective of Christianity. Thus in spite of its repu- diation of the old faith, and its multiplied or- ganizations, the twentieth century church is losing its grip. The secret of all this is plain enough except to the wilfully blind. The church has come doAvn from the high plane of the supernatural to the low ground of the natural. On the ground of *he natural the church has no chance at all. What chance, for ex- ample, has the church on mere natural grounds alongside of a masonic lodge, an odd fellow's society, a labor union, a social, or benevolent organization? What chance has a church which professes to stand for regeneration as the only ground on which a man can call God his Father, and his fellow man his brother? What chance has such a church with an organi- zation which will accept as a brother, Jew or Gentile, Trinitarian or Unitarian ; those who believe in the God of the Bible and those who do not. In respect to brotherhood the church has no chance at all, unless it drop the doc- 42 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES trine of regeneration by the Spirit, as well as redemption by blood. But suppose it does drop those doctrines, gives them up, or modi- fies them so that it means surrender, what then ? Clearly, it no longer stands for what it professes and, in the long run, men will de- spise it as the meanest of all things on earth — that which professes one thing and acts an- other. The secret of the church's failure lies in the fact that It no longer has a message from God. The church to-day, in the hands of some of its representative ministers and teachers, i"- denying that we have a distinct and unquali- fied revelation from God. How can the Bible be a revelation from God when, if the teach- ing of these men be true, the Bible is full of fictions and fables, full of questionable mor- ality? Such a book is not from God — it is from man, and man only. Instead of a mes- sage from God the church is giving a message from men, scientific men, philosophizing men, good men they may be — but only men. In- stead of a message about heaven, it is a mes- sage about the world. Instead of the affairs of God, it is the progress of man. Do men want to come to church to hear such a mes- sage as that ? Do men want to come to church to hear about sociology, criminology, peno- logy, politics, science and philosophy? Nay, when men come to church they want to hear about God and eternity ; whether there is such tHE FAITH 4S a thing; whether behind the vail of death there is a level stretch of sunshine and glad welcoming; or, whether the night shuts down close and tight, sealed with silence forever. They want, when they come to church, to liear something that will convince them that God is, that he thinks upon them, and desires to do them good. They want, when they come to church, to hear about something that will help them to live every day and hope for every to-morrow. They want to know \yhat the will of God concerning them may be, and how they may perform that will. It is not the noise of the earthly city and the stifling dust of it, they want to hear and breathe — they want to breathe the pure air of the heav-* enly city, and hear some notes of its unfail- ing harmonies. A church that is taken up with everything under heaven but heaven — with every sort of message, but a message direct from God and about God, has lost its message to men. When a church has lost its message from God to men, it has ceased to have the right to give any message at all. God set the church up in this world that it might deliver his message to men, inviting them to hear his Word and enter, by faith, into living union with his Son. God set the church up that it might speak, not to nations, but to "every creature-" ; that it might bring salvation, not to society, but to the individual in society. The church is not giving that mes- 44 THE SIGNS OF THE tlMJES sage. It has forgotten that "the power of God" in this age is not through temperance and reform societies, not through political pur- gation and legislative agitation, but that Gos- pel wherein righteousness is revealed from faith to faith; that Gospel which tells us that the nexus between man's need of righteousness and God's readiness to supply it, is faith in that crucified and risen Son of Gcd whom it pro- claims as the righteouness of God unto, and upon, every one that believeth. A further secret of the church's weakness lies in the fact that it does not speak with authority. This is particularly seen in the Protestant division of the professing church. Here every man has a psalm and every man a doctrine. The latest theological fad is, that in true re- ligion there is no final authority. For Pro- testantism to accept that is to accept its death blow. The only ground upon which Protes- tantism has any decent right to appeal to men is, that it rests upon authority, no less an au- thority than the Bible as the Word of God. Protestantism was born out of Romanism. It came out of Romanism. It came out as a pro- test that the church of Rome was setting itself up above the Word of God; that the church was claiming the right to fall back upon tra- ditions, upon the word of man. Protestantism not only protested against Romanism as the perverter of the Bible, but as the ultimate denier of the Bible. Protestantism came forth THE FAITH 45 and blazoned on its banners, "The Bible and nothing but the Bible." On this it staked all its claims. This was its rallying cry. It pro- fessed to speak with final authority. It thun- dered in the ears of Pope and prelate, church and council, a "thus saith the Lord," as the end of all controversy. And men listened, as men will listen, to the voice of claimed authority, even though it be a false voice ; for, it has been uncouthly but truthfully said, that "a lie well stuck to, is better than the truth half told;" half told, half heartedly uttered, or breathed out with apology, guess and doubt. Protestantism is throwing away its author- ity. It is to-day making a complete surrender. When men in the chairs of theological insti- tutions, preachers in the pulpits, and profes- sedly Christian writers, testify that the Bible is no longer to be accepted as fully inspired of God; that divine inspiration is to be found only in spots, and then, to be accepted only after being certified by a committee of recog- nized and modern scholarship; that Abraham and Moses are fictitious personages, the book of Daniel to a large degree an imposture, the synoptic Gospels an unfortunate compilation, John's Gospel an Alexandrine emanation, the book of Acts composed by some unknown writer who would, if possible, reconcile the Pauline and the Petrine factions by giving a measure of justice to each; that Paul made mistakes in his doctrine and was continually 46 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES hampered by his crass Hebraism ; and that the book of Revelation is so utterly absurd that it ought not to be bound up with the Bible at all ; when representative men teach this ; when some teachers testify, not only that Christ was not virgin born, but that he never would have claimed to be the Messiah, had it not been for the insistence of his friends; that his death was not a necessity, but due in a large measure to his own headstrong determination to go to Jerusalem at the wrong time and was, in fact, little better than a useless suicide; when this sort of teaching may be heard or read in the Protestant church, it is evident that Protest- antism is surrendering its only authority. When a church no longer speaks with authority it has no right to speak at all. For a church without absolute and final authority to arrest the attention of men, to bid them listen for five minutes, is a sorry spectacle and an ex- cuseless impertinence. It is because Protestantism no longer speaks with authority that it has lost, and is losing, its power with the multitude. The Catholic church is succeeding where Protestantism fails, just because it does speak with a claim to authority. While that church perverts Holy Scripture; while it travesties the Word of God; while it sets before men a Christianity that is treason to the actual truth of Christ: while it is a church that is represented in Scripture as a harlot church, an idolatrous THE FAITH 4> church, a church that shall, at the last, be de- stroyed from the face of the earth by the in- dignation and the wrath of God; yet, because it speaks with the claim of authority, claims to speak with the voice of God and makes no compromise with the modern spirit, it is com- ing into the middle of the highway, while Pro- testantism seems to be groping for the wall. The church is losing its power because it is endeavoring to carry on the work of God by mere machinery; depending upon organized method, instead of upon the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is like the wind — it comes and goes where "it listeth." You cannot put it into human harness, or control it by mere human planning. The Spirit has its own in- strumentality, that instrumentality is the Word and doctrine. Without the doctrine the Spirit will not work. You may try it. You may set aside every old doctrine you find in the way of modern ideas. You may ignore the unseen Spirit of God. You may call on the wise men according to the flesh. You may listen to their wisdom, follow their plans, and organize your church to suit the times. You may get every- thing fixed and nothing to do but press the button — and what then? Suppose after you have pressed the button, the Spirit of the liv- ing God does not see fit to work along the lines set down nor follow out the methods? The Lord Jesus has given us the picture of just such a state of affairs. He paints the pic- 48 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ture of a church perfectly organized; so per- fectly organized that the treasury was full, and the people congratulated each other say- ing: 'We are rich; we are increased in goods, and have need of nothing." It had so identi- fied itself with the spirit of the times and the place in which it dwelt; it had so completely given itself up to its own methods and re- sources, that the Son of God withdrew from it and stood outside the door as one no longer needed by them ; as one upon whom they were no longer casting their need and dependence. What a spectacle ! A perfectly organized church — a church with a full treasury and — Jesus Christ outside of it. That was the church of Laodicea; and, sin- gularly enough — Laodicea means, in the last analysis, the people's church, a church where the majority rule; where the voice and vote of the people determine in the church the things of God. To this splendidly organized church, this church abreast of the times, this church full of wealth and having no need, Christ turns and utters the most terrific ar- raignment. He says he knows its works. He knows it is neither cold nor hot. It is luke- warm. There is a little hot water and a little cold water. There is enough of religion to make ' it decent and enough of the world to make it attractive. There is no burning, fiery enthusiasm for Christ. There is no absolutely THE FAITH 49 outbreaking surrender to the world, the flesh and the Devil. There is a little of the Spirit and a little of the flesh, A little of Christ and a little of the world. It is, on the one hand, an adulterated Christianity, and, on the other, a refined worldliness. He wished it was either one thing or the other; either a warm, full hearted witness for him ; or, an absolute de- votee of the world. He wishes it might be wholly dependent on him, or utterly dependent on the world. Lukewarm water turns the stomach. It is an emetic. It makes those whc drink it vomit. The Lord declares this luke- warm church makes him sick. He cannot stand it. He will spue it out of his mouth. What a statement! A church so success ful, so organized, so rich, so mixed up with the world and its methods that it sickens God's Christ until he declares he will spue it out of his mouth. A perfectly organized, up-to-date church and Christ outside of it. Then he proceeds to analyze and lay bare its actual conditions. He says that with all its boasting it is "wretched, and miserable and poor (what a satire — a treasury full of money and yet — in the Lord's sight — poor) and blind (spiritually blind) and naked." He counsels the church (for in speaking to the angel, he is speaking to the church) he counsels the church to buy of him real riches, the gold that has been tried in the fire (faith) and white raiment (spiritual character). He exhorts 50 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the church to anoint the eyes (the understand- ing) with eye salve (the truth) that it may be able to see ; and then he declares that hence- forth his dealings will be, not with the church as a corporate whole, but with the individual. If there is any one in the assembly who will hear his voice (speaking through his Word) and will open the door, he will enter in and hold communion with him personally, even in that assembly ; but the church as a professing body he will repudiate — he will stand outside of it. It is a terrific picture. A rich, thoroughly organized, up-to-date church, pervaded with the spirit of the times, both in doctrine and method, and — CHRIST OUTSIDE OF IT ! A church, as a whole, so completely taken up with its own concepts ; so deaf to the voice and Word of Christ that he has to knock to gain attention ; and then, hopes to gain the attention and the response only of an individual here and there. It is a terrific picture and a terrific indict- ment. It has a great and far reaching meaning. It means you cannot exalt human genius and human wisdom in the place of the genius and the wisdom of God, and do it with impunity. You cannot call in the wealth and resources of the flesh and set aside the riches of ofrace and the resources of the Spirit without being repudiated of God. It means you cannot run THE FAITH 51 the church of Jesus Christ as you would run a machine, or a department store. It means you cannot substitute either human doctrine or human methods, rational interpretation and rational effort, for the faith once for all de- livered to the saints, and the methods once for all inspired of the Spirit. To attempt to do so is an insult to the Spirit. It is an accusation against the Christ of God. It is saying that when Jesus Christ founded the church two thousand years ago, he was short sighted, he did not see this century and its so-called practical needs. It is, indeed, an accusation. It is saying that the old doctrines are not the final utterance of the Spirit, and, therefore, not only not eternal, but not infalli- ble. It is saying that men like Jude and James, Peter and John, and the apostle Paul, did not know as much as some rationalistic preacher in the pulpit, and some self exalted layman in the pew. All this is an insult to Christ, the Head of the church. The nation of Israel was set aside because it refused to stand as a faithful witness for God. The Gentile church was brought in that it might be the spiritual temple of God, and the witness for a crucified and risen Lord ; and, so writes the apostle Paul, unless it stands by faith and in the faith, it will be cut off and set aside. The scene in Laodicea is an advance on the testimony of Paul. It is the Lord himself speaking from Heaven and with solemn voice saying. 52 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "I WILL SPUE THEE OUT OF MY MOUTH." It is the Lord's solemn warning that the church which modifies or denies his Word and substitutes human wisdom and fleshly energy for his wisdom and his energy, is on the edge of doom. Here then you have a clear vision of the church's failure and present danger. In its endeavor to be modern, to conform to the times, to be a twentieth century church, and not a first century church, it is repudiating that Lord who is alone its Head and Life. • And what does the apostle Jude say in anticipation of all this? He says, "Earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints." He is saying that the doctrine delivered to the church two thousand years ago, must be preached to-day. He is saying that the method and manner of the church two thousand years ago, must be the method and manner of the church to-day. If the twentieth century church tells us that man instead of falling down has fallen up ; if the twentieth century church tells us that the doc- trine of atonement by blood is the doctrine of the butcher shop, and must go; that the sci- entific spirit repudiates the resurrection of the body ; that the stories of the Old Testament are fables and the miracles of the New to be rejected; if the twentieth century church tells us that the church cannot get on if it persists tHE PAITH 53 in carrying a load of old and exploded doc- trines, on the one side, and the slowness and ineptness of antiquated methods, on the other ; if the twentieth century church tells us that the church must become modern in doctrine and business-like in method; if the twentieth century church insists on all this in the name of an up-to-date progress, then, by this concrete exhortation, Jude would tell us that we are to stand up and repudiate the twentieth century church. We are to turn and tell its apostles, its teachers, and leaders, that it is a dead failure spiritually, and instead of being ahead, is absolutely behind the New Testament church; that compared with the church of the first century, the twentieth century church is a mere weakling. Do you doubt it? Then let us take up the first century church on the issue of organization, plan and work; on the issue of modern progress and modern wisdom. Let us go back to Pentecost. Three thousand converted in one day! How was it done? Simon Peter was the preacher. How did he succeed? Did he stand up before the waiting multi- tude, deny the Old Scripture and give some new doctrine ? Nay ! He preached from a text written a thousand years before. He preached from the Old Scripture. Did he have a tent erected in every open lot 54 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES of the city of Jerusalem? Did he have an evangelistic committee visiting from house to house? Did he have a bureau sending out evangelistic literature as thick as leaves in autumn? Did he have fetching advertise- ments placarded on all the dead walls of the town? Did he announce attractive music by trained choirs that would vie with the choral service of the temple? Above all, did he have behind him an organized finance ready to meet every emergency of expense? Nay! He had none of these things. He did none of these things. He just stood up, a simple man, born and bred amid fisher folk, he just stood up and preached the truth of God in plain and simple terms, modifying nothing, nor giving rein to human fancy; and the Spirit of the living God, recognizing the Word as his familiar and chosen instrument, swept down upon the multitude. One day he preached, as already stated, and three thous- and turned to the Lord. Another day he preached from the same Old Scripture, and, this time, it was five thousand men who be- lieved — five thousand men, not counting the women and children. And yet, in this twen- tieth century, after an evangelistic campaign has been carefully planned, all the churches invited, a marvellous organization perfected, committee after committee created, after an- nouncement and reports of sermons and every THE FAITH 55 force utilized that can awakc*^ interest and put the people on the qui vive; when after weeks of meetings by day and by night, and the work of scores of well-known preachers, teachers, and the auxiliary corps of trained helpers from all denominations, a thousand persons, two- thirds of them women and children, profess conversion, we call it remarkable, a tribute t'' twentieth century organization and getting together — a witness that up-to-date Christian- ity is successful. Look at Paul in Corinth. What that name of "Corinth" evokes! Not merely the city of beauty, of commerce, of wealth and misery, but a city where vice was virtue and virtue vice ; where the very air was spiced with the breath of sensualism, and passion and shameless iniquity were enthroned in gilded palaces; where white hands stretched out and red lips sang siren songs ; where eyes of voluptuous wantonness en- treated man to sin, and fall, and be glad in his sin. A city where the lower vices and crimes surged through the black alleys of the slums in a tide of fetid wickedness and nameless horror of license and brutish gratification. The city of all cities that might well be called the city of the flesh. Not alone was it a city of mere sensuous gratification high and low, it was a city where the versatile, laughing, and free hearted Greek spirit ruled and reigned. From the Acrocorinthian heights, the city 56 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES caught the light as it flashed from Athenian Minerva's shield ; and to its easy, careless vol- uptousness, Corinth added the accent of Athen's schools and the partizanship of her philosophies. It was a city of art, of literature, of science, and the energy of human genius. To this city Paul came. He entered it without letter of introduction. There was no syndicate of rich laymen behind him. He had no organization. He was poor. He dwelt in the scantiest quarter of the city. He worked as a day laborer. Yet he preached. He preached the Gospel of a crucified and risen Son of God. He knew the cross was a stumbling block to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek. Yet he founded in that city, and out of the most unpromising material, the church which stands as the church of Gospel order for all the centuries. Look at this same Paul in Ephesus. He goes into that great city. He takes up the Old Scriptures, and, mark you, he was equally at home in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He could quote the poets. It would have been quite easy for him to have embroidered his discourse with choice selections from the an- thology of the hour. He was educated, cul- tured, deeply learned. He was not only a Jew, but a Roman, a free born citizen, and carried the prestige of that citizenship. If he had so chosen, he could have talked along the most advanced and philosophical lines. THE FAITH 57 Well ! What did he do? The record is before us. He takes the Old Scriptures, and from those Scriptures he preaches the old doctrine of redemption by blood. He preaches Jesus and the resurrection. He preaches from the very Scriptures which the twentieth century repudiates. And what happens? Something wonderful, indeed. Instead of taking the Old Scriptures and rejecting them, the people crowded to the public square, brought their infidel, their modern, and up-to-date libraries with them, and burned the books there, till the whole city was alight with the flame of the bonfire. Paul had no organization behind him. He did not bring himself into accord with the times. He just preached the Word and waited on God and the Spirit ; and the Spirit wrought through him. So it ever has been down through the ages. The greatest conversions have come when the church has got down on its knees, risen up, given itself to God, and then preached the old "faith once for all delivered to the saints;" preached it without modification, leaving the responsibility with God who gave the message. Thus the Spirit of God without waiting for human plans and human methods, has swept down upon the multitude and lifted them in tidal waves of salvation to the feet of Christ. The great force that has wrought in the world for God during the last two thousand 58 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES years is this "faith once for all delivered to the saints." It has proved itself equal to every age in which it has been preached. It is the light which alone can penetrate the world's darkness, the light which alone can reveal the truth concerning man and the truth concern- ing God. In it is the testimony of divine love, of measureless grace, and the seeking heart of God. It is the instrumentality the Spirit never fails to use in one way or another. Whatever there is of salt, of spiritual sanity in the world, has been produced by the "faith once for all delivered to the saints." Whenever and wher- ever it has been changed to suit the times ; whenever its statements have been minimized and its force diminished, there the church has failed, and the world, the flesh, and the Devil, have triumphed. It is, indeed, a striking sign of the times, that the church is so rapidly departing from the faith, and so eagerly accepting the new rationalism. It is a striking sign of the times, that with the refusal to endure sound doctrine, there is a growing and deepening spiritual darkness in the church, and restlessness and discontent in the world. It is a sign on one side, that the world is no longer interested in the church ; it is a sign on the other, that the church no longer has power to interest the world. It is a sign that the conditions so fully portrayed by our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles, is upon us; the time when the light VHP. FAMH 59 of God shall grow dim and feeble in the pro- fessing church. It is a sign of that time when the Lord will turn and cut off the worldly church, and, taking the true body secretly into heaven to himself, commence, once more, and finally, his dealings with Israel and the Gentile nations. The need of the hour on the part of all who would meet their Lord with joy and not with shame, is to stand forth boldly, as never before, for the "faith once for all delivered to the saints," and by word of testimony, by attitude of life, rebuke this subtle, insidious spirit of so-called modernism ; a spirit that, with all its wings of light, its smooth speech, its attractive preachments of morality and world wide de- mand for righteousness, its flattery of the nat- ural man, all its invitations to self reliance in the name of the larger Gospel, is none other than the Devil himself, transformed into an angel of light and companied by his faithful ministers, who are ministers of righteousness, indeed, but a righteousness that has no rela- tion to the blood of sacrifice ; and is unowned and unaccepted of God. The need of the hour is to stand for the old doctrine ; to look at the natural man as God looks at him; to take God's estimate of man, and not man's estimate of himself. The need of the hour is to faithfully preach as God would have us preach, as he said to Jonah, "preach the preaching that I hid thee ;" preach 60 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the truth that man is not ascending in the scale of Hfe but, on the contrary, still travelling the downward path which revealed its first de- scending trend when man in Eden listened to the Devil's lie, rather than to God's truth ; (that hour when leaning to his own wisdom he knew not God;) the declining path which first began at Eden's gates and has wound down through the ages to this very hour. The need is to proclaim faithfully the total inability of the natural man to understand the things of God ; that even though an angel from Heaven should proclaim them, they would still be foolishness to him. The need and the obligation upon every faithful minister of Christ is to pro- claim in language so plain that he who runs may read with smoothness while he runs, that the only ground of approach to a holy God is the blood of a holy sacrifice; that the way to life eternal lies through death, the death of an infinite substitute, no less than God himself, manifested in the person of his Son. In face of the demand that the church shall turn from the unseen and eternal things, to the things that are seen and temporal ; in the face of that teaching which makes the resurrection of Christ nothing more than the continuation of his spirit and influence in the world ; that teaching which makes Christianity only one of varied religions and puts it in the scale of mere comparative values, it is time for the ambassadors of Christ to speak and clearly THE FAITH 61 testify with the apostle of old, that there is "none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved," except the name of Jesus. In proportion as the wisdom of the hour discounts the perils of the future, it is more and more important that the preacher and teacher shall warn men in the very words of the Son of God himself, that it is better to pluck out an eye, cut off a hand or a foot, than having all these members, to take part in the second resurrection and from thence be cast into the lake of fire — the second death. It is time to lift up the voice, cry aloud and spare not. When the apostle Paul got a clear vision of the closing hours of this age ; when he saw that false teachers would arise in the church, and that the doctrines as delivered to the saints would not be "endured," he did not, like Elijah, fling himself down at the foot of a juniper tree and cry out that all was lost, that he was left alone; on the contrary, he said, "Preach the word ; be instant in season, out of season ; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and doctrine." The greater the disease, the more necessity for the remedy. The greater the peril, the more need of the rescue. Nor, indeed, should the true Christian be overwhelmed with the down-grade in the church, as though God had failed and his Word had proved untrue. Instead, let him see that the very characteristics of the times, the 62 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES very repudiation of the "faith once for all de- livered to the saints," is the fulfillment, line for line, of the apostolic and Christly words, and the dynamic demonstration that it is, indeed, and in truth, not the word of man, but the very Word of God. Let him look upon the present state of the church as a sign of thf* times; as a witness of the closing hours oi this age, the Coming of the Lord to take his true household of faith to himself, and, gird- ing the loins, let that Christian obey the ex- hortation of the apostle Jude to contend "earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints." PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL'S LIES "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Genesis. 3 :5. "The world by wisdom knew not God." I. Corinthians, 1 :21. The purpose of God concerning man is de- clared in his own words : "Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness : and let them have dominion * * * over the earth." Genesis, 1 :26. The invisible God would become visible. He would materialize his personality, and mani- fest his power in an individual life, a life that could be seen, heard, touched and ban- died. God would enthrone himself in human- ity, he would have the fulness of the god- head bodily to dwell in man. That was God's purpose concerning man. It is Incarnation ! Not incarnation suggested and defined in the councils of men some thousands of years later, but incarnation written on the very first page of Genesis, proclaimed by God himself, and sealed in the creation of the very first man. Incarnation is the primal cause of the 64 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES world's creation. It alone accounts for and justifies it. It lies at the very root of human- ity. It is its raison d'etre, its only right to be. Eden is the anticipation of Bethlehem, and Adam is, truly, "the figure of him that was to come." Humanity the revelation of God, God re- vealed through humanity — this is the meaning of man's creation, and the stamp of God's eternal purpose. The revelation of God through man, in- cludes the revelation of God to man. Such a revelation would bring man into intimate knowledge of, and communion with, the heretofore unseen God. It would make him a co-partner with the Almighty in the mysteries of being and knowledge. As the image of God, he would be the de- pository of his authority and government; as the likeness of God, he would reveal his con- stitution and character. By so much, man would become the very word, the exact vibra- tion, and the perfect reverberation of God's ■nind and thought. It was a great and high purpose, worthy of the infinite intelligence that proposed it, a fit suggestion of divine love, carrying with it the promise, not only of immeasurable honor and dignity, but timeless felicity. But the finality of this purpose was con- ditioned upon absolute faith. Man must take the place of a recipient, a dependent on the PROGRESS CF THE DEVIL*S LIE 65 Lord who created him. The condition was of pure logic. Faith is the only agency by which the less can be blessed of the better, the finite by the infinite. It is the way alone by which weakness may gain from strength, and ignor- ance from knowledge. It is the attitude which glorifies God. It confesses him as supreme. It brings him in as the source, as the only factor. It makes him all in all. The moment man should take the place of faith he would be like a cathedral window through which the pure light would flash in transfigured and comprehensive beauty — illuminating the worshipping soul within ; he would be as a perfect organ surrendered to the Master's touch, translating the silence of God into the music of understood promise and pledge. The moment of faith he would be- come the thesaurus of God-head, the deposi- tory of all the treasures of divine wisdom and knowledge. Faith would be the unseen but unfailing nexus by which, and through which, the eternal God would pour himself concen- tratedly, and yet fully, into this created being called man — making him the concrete of him- self in this world — God manifest in the flesh and, in truth, the visible, vicegerent God of the world. The Devil, that high and exalted intelli- gence whom, in marked contrast to man, the angels treat with dignity, dethroned from the rulership of the pre-existent earth, recognized 66 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES and owned God's purpose to make man a God manifest in the flesh, his governmental and moral representative upon the earth ; and he threw himself across that purpose with the determination to thwart it and still hold for himself, if he might, this world, of whose dominion he had been officially dispossessed. He raised the question with man as to this proposed method of dependent faith. He suggested a doubt as to the integrity of God's Word, that Word wherein God had set up the issue of the tree of knowl- edge and had legislated the prohibitive pen- alty. The Devil, at once, formulated a subtle accusative suggestion against the justice of God. God had forbidden knowledge to man, except as it should come direct from him. He had forbidden man to seek it. He had com- manded him to receive it from himself and then, only when he should have taken the place of dependent and expectant faith. Why should God do this? Did God know that man had in him already the germs of divinity? Did he know the moment man laid hold of knowledge for himself, he would for- evermore be delivered from the place of tutel- age? Did he know that with one bound man would take his place on an equality with God ; that his unfolding intelligence would put him on a par with the infinite power? Did he know that man would become an independent God, claiming his rights as God, and refusing PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL's LIE 67 the role of a serf? Was God afraid of man, and would he keep him in the place of limita- tion and make a servant of him, a minister to his own glory, keeping man in continual ignorance of all the resources which, as God was his creator, in the very nature of the case (man being his direct emanation) must now be fully dwelling in him ? Surely, man must see, such is the Devil's suggestion, surely he must see that God has an ulterior design and is not dealing frankly. And, after all, did God really say thus and so? Did God really forbid man the way of knowledge ? Was it God's very Word that man actually heard? These are the Devil's questions. And it is to be remembered through all time that the Devil began his work in the world with a question. An interrogation point is the sign of a question. That sign is in the shape and form of a serpent, coiled and ready to strike. It is a fit emblem. A question with an innuendo concealed within its apparent harmlessness is a coiled serpent. The ques- tion that raises an innuendo against the Word of God is a coiled, deadly serpent. When it strikes it leaves the poisoned sting of disin- tegrating doubt. The first question with an innuendo in it was asked by "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" — when he said with a hiss of hate in every word : "Hath God said?" 68 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "Hath God said?" Is it certain that this is God's Word? Is there any real evidence that God has spoken at all ? Having introduced the wedge of doubt the Devil suggests to man — for Eve represents the emotional side of man, while Adam sets forth the intellectual side — the Devil suggests to man that he put aside the demand of the Creator and, instead of walking by faith, walk in the light and by the right of his own in- hering reason. Let him search, let him exam- ine, analyze, taste, see, and know for himself. Let him refuse to accept anything on hearsay, and receive only that which he himself might demonstrate and prove. This, the Devil would have him realize, was the true dignity of man. To go mooning through the earth with the eyes shut and call- ing it faith ; to go groping like a blind man for the wall and attempt to justify that by calling it faith; listening for the fancied voice of God, and never getting beyond a weak and helpless dependence — that attitude was false, servile and shameful. Let man put the crown of reason on his brow, take the scep- tre of his own will, conquer by the force of his own genius, and then exercise the dominion which was his. Let him be a God in his own inalienable right — the true God of the world. Thus the Devil suggested and his hiss of in- nuendo grew into a bold and attractive prom- ise: PROGRESS OF THE DEV1L*S UE 69 "Ye shall be as gods." The issue was simple. It was an appeal to self exaltation and the dethronement of God in the soul. It was an issue simple and net whether man would walk by faith in God and come, through dependence on God, into his full inheritance ; or, whether he would walk by sight and depend on reason. Man set aside faith and chose reason. The effect of this attitude upon man is re- corded in Holy Writ: "The world by wisdom knew not God." In setting aside faith man turned his back on God. When man turned his back on God, Grod withdrew from partnership with man. For six thousand years this break in the faith relationship has been written in human history. For six thousand years man has con- tinued to eat of the tree of knowledge; for the flaming sword only kept "the way of the tree of life." For six thousand years he has battled with the problem of good and evil. For six thousand years he has studied and thought, searched and investigated. He has attained to much knowledge. He knows the composition of certain gases and the laws which govern them. He has climbed to the highway of exalted mathematics till he can, from that vantage route, measure the weight, the density and the speed, of the circling worlds. He can look out into the dark of the 70 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES infinite space and tell you that a certain comet has been blazing its way for years earth-ward ; he will tell you in what constellation it will appear and fix to a day and second, the date and the time, when it will arrive. He deals with figures that astound. Think of the tele- scope with which he sweeps a sphere of stars whose diameter is seven millions of years as light flies. Think of the audacity with which he measures Alcyone and tells you with as- sured conviction that it is a world in making and yet, as a sun, outshines the strength of twelve thousand of our own. On this highway of mathematics he will travel nearly three bil- lions of miles to where Neptune holds his nightly vigil on the frontiers of our solar sys- tem, and soaring beyond, away beyond, all vision, will speak of distance in figures that make the brain to swim and every nerve to quiver. He has applied his knowledge till it is a ratio of power. Mountains flow down at his presence and fill the valleys at his will. The desert blossoms when he commands, and the mines yield up their wealth. He moves upon the sea, and the restless waters own him as their king, bearing him aloft upon their high- est waves, and keeping him and all his costly freight on even level. Electricity, the last loosed angel of power, bends its neck, and owns the human lordship of the world. Land and sea are part of his conquered domain. PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL's LIE 71 and now, he is invading the realm of air, taking wings unto himself and seeking to fly to the uttermost parts of the earth and, as- cending sunward, endeavors with his own un- aided hand to reach and hold the highest throne of God. I do not speak of the analysis he has made of himself, the analysis of his body and mind. He has taken his body apart and put it to- gether again like a machine and says, loftily, I am greater than my body. He is now entering into the phenomena of the soul, and standing on the edge of the unseen, endeavors to throw the plummet line of his reason into the un- resounding worlds filled with forms and forces beyond the sweep of eyelash and the touch of finger-tip. When you follow nim along the pathway of what seems to be his actual achievement, he does appear like a very God. And when you realize that he is a creature who walks by sight and reason, it would look as though he had ful- filled the Devil's suggestion, made good the Devil's pledge, attained to the role of ruler- ship divine, and become an actual God. But his achievements are one-sided. They are all on the side of nature, and nature alone. In not a single instance is it on the side of nature's God. Today, he knows more about molecular action than at any time since his fall ; but, concerning the God who is behind molecular action, he knows nothing 72 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES at all. Take up the last and most scientifically stated definition of God, and it is the most conclusive evidence of his abysmal ignorance and the mental gulf between them. Indeed, in proportion as man makes advances in scien- tific knowledge, the farther away does the idea of a personal God recede from him, and his most scientific statement is, that God does not exist. By wisdom he knows not God. He knows good and evil. Yea, he knows the good he should do, and knows he cannot do it. He knows the evil he should shun, and knows he cannot shun it. He knows the problem of good and evil and cannot solve it. With the highest civilization, he carries the burden of co-ordinate crime. He spends mfllions to repress that crime, and like a black, foul immeasurable flood, it breaks over every dyke and pervades the land. He assembles his congresses to discuss pen- ology and brings forth propositions that might well make angels weep. He would demon- strate that evil is local, personal, and may be cured. To bring about this cure, he would turn his prisons into school houses, factories, shops, art studios and literary bureaus. He would make the congenitally depraved, the en- vironment villain, the sinner by suggestion, and the lawless lawbreaker, to feel honored and not punished by his prison sojourn. He would have him look upon that prison as the PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL's LIE 73 forcing house, so to speak, the incubator, of inhering divinity until, step by step, the essen- tial and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, is lost, and punishment becomes the badge of distinc- tion, and not the brand of shame. He knows not God. He cannot grapple with the problem of evil. He cannot govern him- self. He has tried every form of government and failed in all. With a world packed with plenty and room enough for every man and woman to have a home, it is the few who live in luxury and the many who are pinched by want. With multiplied inventions, with extend- ed knowledge, has come increased dissatisfac- tion and ever widening unrest. Never since the world began were the peoples in such commo- tion. Knowledge has increased and many run to and fro. The whole world is on the move, like waves of the sea that lash each shore, fly- ing over the land at incredible speed, climbing the mountains, crossing the oceans, plunging into this affair or that. Each day new schemes are devised, new plans arranged, to be thrown aside for something newer still. There is fever in the veins, there is nothing abiding. Call- ing the Twentieth Century the bloom of civili- zation and the highest expression of human genius, the security of that civilization and its hope for tomorrow, rest upon cannon and gunpowder as the only foundation. Each day, as civilization advances, armies are multiplied on land and Dreadnaughts on the s^, 74 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES In the exact proportion as the light of man's knowledge increases, his spiritual darkness deepens, and, at the very moment when he would reach out for the sceptre of continued power, he stumbles, and falls into the grave, a pitiable pile of breathless dust, leaving carved upon his tomb the interrogation point which the Devil bequeathed him at the beginning as his armorial bearing and device. Beginning life with a question thrust into his soul, ask- ing questions through all the days of his years, he goes out of the world with a question on his lips, and no answer to his crying. With all his wit and wisdom he passes on, and the dead thing called his body and which, while he lived, seemed to be all of him, becomes the self mocking witness that he aimed at God- head's throne and found a brute beast's grave. And thus, when the Devil in that far Eden time, whispered in man's soul that he should be as God, and that by virtue of his own rea- son and self resource, he told the great lie. Well did the Son of God say of him : "He was a murderer (a man-killer) from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, be- cause THERE IS NO TRUTH in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." John. 8 :44. He told a lie and, by reason of that lie, brought death upon man and, in this fashion, became the actual murderer of man. For six thousand years the world has paid l^ftOGRESS OF THE DEVIL^S LIE ^5 the awful price of listening to that lie. Every pain of body, every sigh and every tear, and the grave that is dug at last, these are the consequences of that lie ; and still, the world loves it and applauds it whenever told. So fascinating has that lie become ; so thoroughly is it in the blood, that each day man insists upon its truth and would have it taught to his children and his children's children. The immense progress which this lie is mak- ing may be seen in the trend of modern teach- ing as illustrated in our schools, our colleges, and universities. It is here it finds its great- est emphasis, its most active apostles; from hence it goes forth to propagate, pervade, and fill the earth until all the sons of men are charmed and fascinated as though a serpent held them with its subtle gaze and hypnotized them with its interpenetrating sounds. The basis of modern college and university training is evolution — a finding in nature all the forces which account for creation, and see- ing in man the highest outcome of these forces. Beginning with the lowest form of life, all forces work on and upward to man. Man comprehends within himself all the forces that have gone before. His personality is their product. So far as investigation goes he is the only personality in the universe. Nature's forces having evoked this personality are now ready to submit themselves to its investigation and domination. In creating man, nature has /b THE siCNs OF The Times created her own God. Henceforth man's com- plete rule and domination over matter will be only a question of time. The laws of na- ture do not change, they are fixed. The only thing which can change and develop is man's intelligence. As this intelligence increases by its use, man will know how to deal with law and force, and so apply them to his uses that he will be enthroned above them. It may take time. It has taken time, but his intelligence is now unfettered as it never was before. Through long ages it was held in the swaddling bands of fear and superstition; his fear and superstition gave occasion for the founding of those religions which imposed upon him, and held him in leash. He has broken loose. With the last half century he has thrown aside his chains and stood erect; as a consequence, the mightiest revolution in the realm of ap- plied science has come within these later years. When he has liberated his intelligence com- pletely, he will be in a position to dictate terms to nature's forces and out of them build the throne of his final domination. It will take time, it is true, but, it is only a question of time. Accept this proposition and the moral re- sults are inevitable. To such a man there can be but one infal- lible text-book — nature herself. Hence, to the scientific man, who looks upon himself as the nroduct of evolution and not the fiat creation PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL*S LIE 77 of a personal God— the Bible must go. To keep it would be to tie a millstone about the doc- trine of evolution. Either the Bible or evolution must go. But much more even than this ! As nature is the text-book and man the infallible inter- preter—and man is the supreme personality, then he is, and must be, a law unto himself. Admit this, admit that evolution must carry him on to his destiny, it follows that the past cannot coerce or control him; no laws, no concept made yesterday can have their vogue today. Given evolution and man as the high- est outcome, he must, more and more, feel that he is a law unto himself, his own arbiter and must, more and more, demand freedom from all temporary standards of moral or religious restraint. As he passes on and enters into new condi- tions, there must be new standards. The stan- dard of morals fit for a hundred years ago will not fit tomorrow. As he advances to the heights of individual freedom, he will see that the restraints that have been put upon the body and mind of men and women in the past were due to ignorance and superstition. He will say that the world is his; all things are his ; likewise all his endowments are his. Each man and each woman has the inalienable right to the freest and fullest exercise of those en- dowments, and any standard which interferes with this personal liberty, use and gratifica- 78 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES tion, is out of place in the widening world into which he is slowly coming as his own. Such a trend means, sooner or later, the repudiation of all religions which set up a su- preme God, all faith which claims an infallible Bible, and all standards of morals which fix a definite line of character, or limit the exer- cise of the personal volition. In short, the trend of modern education is to deny the Bible, the Christ of God, and the God of Christ. As evidence of the trend in modern teach- ing, listen to the utterance of some of the lead- ing educators of this country : "The welfare of the world," says one, "de- pends upon the spirit of man, and not upon the paternal love of a non-resident God." Another professor in a great university says : "The least creature of all mortals has more dignity and value than even an Almighty God, as that being is popularly conceived," and, of course, by this "popular" concept is meant the concept which comes from the Bible. One professor with great earnestness tells us that, "Whiskey, cocaine, and alcohol, bring tem- porary insanity, and so does a revival of re- ligion — one of the religious revivals in which men lose their reason and self-control. This is simply a form of drunkenness no more worthy of respect than the drunkenness that lies in the gutter." A third declares: PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL*S LIE 79 "Religious revivalism is a social bane. It is more dangerous to the life of society than drunkenness. As a sot, man falls below the brute — as a revivalist, he sinks lower than the sot." This is saying that such men as Wesley, Whitefield, and Moody — all men who have ex- alted the God of righteousness, set forth the Christ as the alone v/ay, the truth and the life, and exhorted men to turn from sin, iniquity and vice, by giving themselves over to the mastery of a risen and Holy Lord, were worse than drunken sots. It is saying that every man who seeks to lift men out of the slough and shame of sin into co-ordinate life and fel- lowship with this holy and living Christ, is below the filthiness of the brute beast of a drunken sot who wallows in the mire of the gutter and, in his drunkenness, prides himself upon the same advanced unbelief as that of the superior professor who so describes him. One eminent professor announces that New England became worthless when the Puritans ceased to drink strong drink. It is this professor who is the author of the epigram that, "New England has ice water, but no art." And this is the teaching of another before his class: "The religious hosannah is the outcome of a religious orgy." One well known woman professor teaches 80 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES her students that the stories of the Old Testa- ment are myths and fables, and that the New Testament record of the virgin birth of Christ is of no serious value. One advanced instructor teaches openly that marriage is not divine, that men and women are not joined together by any decree of God. Marriage is a simple contract, and, like any other business contract, may be broken at mutual will. Divorce is legitimate, and may be a means of righteousness. In- deed, some teachers go so far as boldly to de- clare that incest is not contrary to the laws of nature, or disapproved by any fanciekl ordinance of God. Thus the trend in college and university thought as expressed by some of its leading and most representative teachers and think- ers is, that man is the avatar of God and, in- creasingly, has the right to break down all laws and legislation which hinder the evo- lution and exaltation of the supreme person- alism in man. In this way, every day, thousands of the young men and women of the land are be- ing led to repudiate the God of the Bible and the standards of the Bible. Thousands of the very flower of our youth are being taught in- sidiously to set aside every law and pre- cept which does not give full and personal liberty, and are being led to believe Uhat they are in themselves as the throne of God and the final tribunal. PROGRESS OF THE DEVIL*S LIE 81 The moral consequences of all this are sure. It means, sooner or later, the total repudia- tion of the Christianity of Christ and the Bible by the educated classes, and the setting up in the name of psychology of a religion of actual materialism, cultivated license, and the self-satisfied proclamation that man is God. It is the old whispered lie of the Devil, "Ye shall be as gods." Thus far has the Devil's lie progressed. It has led man to attempt to reach by his own unaided effort, the throne and dominion God would have given him in full receipt for simple faith. It has led him to cultivate and develop the powers which God placed in him and which, if he had not fallen, would have required no long ages slowly and inadequately to reveal ; powers which, in his fellowship with God and in a body that would have be- come immortal, would have enabled him to achieve results which the highest attainment of science can never more than hint, which the Christ of God has outlined in his own miraculous deeds; and the power of which he bequeaths to those who are his, in com- ing days; assurance whereof is given in that wide reaching assertion wherein he says that he is going to the Father, and because he is going to the Father as their forerunner (as the guaranty that they shall be like him) 82 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES thiey shall do greater works than even he did while on the earth : tlie guaranty that in the coming days of their immortality they shall manifest powers surpassing what he revealed in the days of his mortality. But man, apart from God, and without this genius of Christ, has attempted in his own strength to reach the outlines of God's original purpose in him, and has succeeded only so far as to make it evident that he never can attain. The Devil's lie has led man in his outreach for the throne to become no more than "an animal working with tools," when he might have been long ago as very God in the exercise of a power where to will and to do should both have been present ; when he should have commanded, and it would have been done ; when his intelligence unclouded by sin, and his will in unbroken union with God, would have been the unobstructed channels through which the supreme God of the universe would have found infinite joy in expressing his limit- less power. The Devil's lie has led man to flatter him- self in his own eyes and, blinding him to the call of eternity, shuts him up to a horizon of time, and the accumulated dust of the crumbling years. The Word of God teaches that the Devil's lie will progress in the world till it finds its culmination in the exaltation of one man above all other men — a man who will claim PROCRESS OF ri-lE DEVIL^S LIE 6S to be God, and whose claim an applauding world will willingly allow. A man who shall be head and shoulders intellectually above the most intellectual of men; who will be en- dowed with the most extraordinary powers; whose ability in every direction will be so versatile and phenomenal that all the world will wonder after him, and his name be re- peated with amazement on every lip ; a man to whose profundity of thought will be joined the eloquence of tongue ; to whose genius of statesmanship will be added the heroism of a soldier and the prestige of a conqueror; a man who will be the supreme expert in all .^ociitihc investigation; wliu will be posbcb^cd of occult as well as philosophic powers ; who will be as much at home in the laboratory as he will be in the chair of dialectics. His knowl- edge will sound the depths of the unseen and bring forth secrets such as the world in its wildest imaginings never dreamed. Ris- ing above the arts of the mere prestidigita- teur, he will perform deeds in the name of science which shall seem as very miracles ; by his power, lifeless images and pictures shall be made to speak, fire shall be made to come down from heaven, and by reason of his inventions the earth will be filled with won- ders. He will be the greatest wealth accumulator the world has ever known. Midas-like, every- iWmo: he touches will turn to And this proposition is fundamental to Christianity. Go back to the days when Jesus walked the Judean hills or stood by blue Galilee. Mark that moment when a lawyer in the temple, I'HE NEW RELIGION 131 seeking to entangle him in his talk, asked him what was the great commandment of the law, and Jesus answered and said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and the great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two com- mandments hang all the law and the prophets." This is fundamental to Christianity. But it rests upon a basis such as had never before been dreamed of in any religion or philosophy. What is the basis on which Christianity ap- peals that man shall love his God and his neighbour as himself? Turn over the pages of the New Testament. Do the apostles point to the wonders of creation and by these appeal to men to love their Creator — God? Do they point to the East where it turns to palest silver, then to rose, to amber, and anon to infinite blue, as the day is born? Do they bid men watch the evening sky as the sun goes down and all the heavens become a field of winrowed glories, or a vast extended plain where imperial cities burn and flame as though some great torch from an angel's careless hand had fallen amid its palaces and towers? Do they bid men cast their glances upward where the Via Lactea spans the mid- night zenith like a royal highway along which the chariot of the king has sped, flinging from 132 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the rim of its whirling wheels eighteen mil- lions of suns and systems like wind-blown dust of powdered stars? Do they point to this world keeping its course in an unfaltering orbit about the sun, so that day and night for two thousand years have not lost a degree between them? Do they point to the spire of grass and the cedar of Lebanon, the wave upon the shore, the flower upon the stem, and the mountain ridges bolting the spinning earth together and say, "Behold the concrete thoughts of God — the everlasting thinker?" Do they talk continually in teleological speech of the adaptation of means to an end, and tell you that every atom of earth is the revelation of a design and that every movement in heaven above and earth below and the very depths of inertia and silence themselves pro- claim a designer? Do they draw attention to the providences of God bending above the helpless sons of men and demonstrate that the movement of the seasons from spring time to winter is the opening of his hand ? Do they present these things and bid men because of them give forth their love to God? They do not. They waste neither energy nor time in such collocation of human speech. And they are wise ! Let any man study nature. Let him study bacteriology, analyze the awful forms and forces of life pervading every square inch of THE NEW RELIGION 133 what we are pleased to call space ; let him look at some monstrous squid, some foul and un- speakable octopus, and ask himself honestly whether the Being who could make such an ap- parently useless horror has not in himself some such tendance of all-enveloping destruction, some such impulse of almost impish power? Let him face the inequalities and contradictions in human life, its sorrows, its disappointments and despair ; let him look at the grave whither he is going with brain and thought enough to know that disease and death are the absolute discords of earth, and that without a moment's warning he may slip within the silence and the corruption of that grave with no power to win a ray of light from its darkness or one note from its hard and paralyzing silence ; let him study all this and know that above human heartache, sin and woe no face of God is seen looking down in pity, no hand is stretched out to touch and help ; let him regard all this and analyze its meaning and he will spring to his feet and wonder with a shiver of horror in every lobe of his brain whether, after all, God is not a devil, a master of measureless power, a heartless aesthete, an infinite mathematician and machinist, an unfeeling personalism ab- sorbed in the contemplation of his fearful and inexplicable greatness, and wholly unconscious either of joy or sorrow, of life or death. Nay! the apostles never lay down a propo- sition which risks such conclusions. They 134 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES never point to nature and providence. They point to the darkest and most terrible spot on earth, the center of unspeakable anguish and agony, crimson with blood and vocal with untranslatable horror — the Cross of Christ. They point to that cross and declare that in the broken heart of God's Son, by all the woe he suffered, by the cry wrung from his dry parched lips, we are to see, to feel, to hear and know, the revelation of infinite and meas- ureless love — the love of God ; that, in that hour, through ways of righteousness, in the execution of inexorable law, God was revealing his love; that, in that hour, God himself in the person of his Son was enduring the judg- ment of his own law of righteousness against the sin and sin nature of sinful man, and seek- ing a way by which he might be just and yet the justifier of him who should believe on Jesus. And these apostles cry out and say, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins," "He spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all" ; and they cry, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." They ring the changes on the fact that it is because God so loved us and showed it in the substitution of his Son on our behalf that we ought to love him. And these apostles do well to do so. Love THE NEW RELIGION 135 must reveal itself through sacrifice. He who really loves another must, if needs be, die for him. When we look at the cross we feel that God in some strange, sad way is there seeking for us. And even though in the end his effort had been a failure, we feel that through the fellowship of suffering he has re- vealed his infinite and all-embracing love. No! not the splendors of creation, not the wealth of divine providence reveal his love, but thai cruel and mysterious cross of Cal- vary. And this cross of Calvary works. It works as the appeal to creatorship and providence can never work. It works indeed! Wherever that cross has been lifted up human hearts have been drawn as by an infinite magnet and lifted to God, the stoniest hearts have been melted and turned to hearts of flesh, and human love has poured itself forth in unceasing devotion to his name. And on the same basis of the sacri- ficial cross the New Testament writers appeal to Christians to love their fellows. If the infinite and holy God could come forth and take to himself a humarity in which he might die for us, how ought we for whom he died, "Children of wrath even as others," to love those who are in a category of antagon- ism to God no worse than our own. They say, "Hereby perceive we the love of God. BE- 136 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES CAUSE HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOE US." Mark it well ! ! God's love declared, not by creation's power and providential care, but by the un- speakable fact that HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR US. And then, because of this, comes the rest of that marvelous phrase, "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." This proposition then of love to God and love and service to man, rests on the basis of the cross. On that basis Christianity has gone forth to the uttermost parts of the earth and appealed to the coldest hearts. On that basis it has moved the sons of men till a flame of love to God and love to man has burned in a ring of unselfish glory round the world. And the new religion takes this proposition from Christianity, takes it out of its divine connection, cuts it loose from its inspired basis and annexes it as its own. Let me show you the meanness of it. One May night I was in the Roman forum. I had spent the day wandering through the ruins of the Caesars' palace. I had climbed the Septizonium and looking across to the Alban hills had dreamed of the Sabine farm, of Horace and his splendid lines. I came down and passed where Paul stood before the Caesar, came out and, for a moment, halted and gazed at the glory sky as the sun passeo THE NEW RELIGION 137 slowly westward to Ostia and the sea. Here where I stood Cicero had flung his philippics against a Cataline. There was the sacred way just turning over the Velian hill, and in my mind was the vision of the pageants that had swept thence to the Capitoline crest. I passed under the arch of Titus and in the coming twi- light began to lose myself amid the intricacies of the once imperial city. Suddenly I found myself face to face with a low building of common construction, but united to it, in some incongruous fashion, the marble fragments of an ancient portico. Somewhere in the Middle Ages, in the internecine strife of the fallen city, this portico from a noble Roman temple had been rent from its true relation and annexed to this plebeian heap. And this is what the new religion has done. It has stolen the portico of love to God and love and service to man; it has torn it loose from the temple of divine Christianity and its basis of the sacrificial Christ and sought to build it into this clay hovel of human inven- tion, claim it as its own and call it new. New! Whatever there is of religious value, of spiritual suggestion or hope in the new re- ligion has been stolen, borrowed or garbled from Christianity. What there is in it that is iconoclastic and infidel, is simply old infidel- ity in a new suit of clothes, speaking English instead of Greek, and wearing the mortar- 138 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES board hat and gown of an American Uni- versity president instead of the robe of a Greek or Latin philosopher. There is nothing new in the new religion. 3. The fallacies of the new religion. It is a fallacy to seek to build a religion without authority. What is a religion without authority ? Let me ask, what is a government without authority ? Look yonder at' Louis XVL in the Hotel de Ville. See how the mob put the red cap on his head, slap him on the back as a good fellow and shout liberty, fraternity and equality. Dignity and authority trampled under foot. The day that king allowed the women of the market, the brazen viragoes of the gutter, to draw him from Versailles to Paris, authority was thrown into the ditch and the transition from the palace of kings and the line of a thousand years of rule to the guillotine where the king lost his head and legitimate govern- ment came to an end, was a simple sequence to the hour when authority was dethroned. What is a religion without authority? Let me ask, what was the cause of the bloody war between the states? It was be- cause the word "nation" was spelt with a little n and the individual state with a large S, the one state of Virginia being able to borrow money at a cheaper rate than the government of the United States, The source of that fea,r- tME NtW RELIGION |39 ful war was the lack of governmental author- ity. Not till the word "Nation" was written in crimson capital letters on the heights of Gulp's hill at Gettysburg, and every white star in the blue field of the flag was made whiter by the purity of American patriotism; not till every red stripe was deepened by the heart's blood of the best life of this land; not till authority took the place of uncertain partner- ship, did this country draw the breath of a definite governmental life. What is a religion without authority? It is as a government without authority — it is anarchy, rebellion, confusion, conflict. What is religion without authority? It is as a man without backbone. There must be backbone, there must be framework on which to build muscle and tissue and or- gans if you would have a symmetrical, living man. Religion must have bones in it. It must be full of bones, and these bones must radiate from a central backbone. There must be a skeleton; a framework on which to build muscle and tissue and organ if you would have a symmetrical, living religion. To talk about a religion without authority is as childish as to talk about building a house without foundation, or tying a knot in a rope of sand. A religion without authority is an indescrib- able fallacy. )4() THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES It is fallacious to set up a religion which denies the deity of Christ. Admit that Christ was not God, then he was either the most arrant imposter the world ever knew or a poor, weak, degenerate, self- deceived brain. In either case he is not fit to be the head of a religion. And yet we are told with all seriousness that in proportion as we set aside the deity of Christ, relieve him from the burden of mir- acles, bring him out of the realm of the super- natural and grade him in the category of a good, but natural man, we shall exalt him into the wider love and fuller apprehension of the sons of men. How can you exalt an impostor or a weak- ling in the estimation of men? And if Jesus Christ was not God he was one or the other. In the language of the street I might well say, "What are you giving us ?" Is it thought we have no books, that we are confined in our reading to a five-foot shelf, or that there are no thought forces outside the Areopagus of New England? It is a fallacy to seek to build a Christian religion which denies the Trinity. What is the Trinity? t The next time God gives you one of those clear days which makes everything within you vital and vigorous, recognize it as due to the presence of that all-embracing mystery we call light. THE NEW RELIGION 14! And what is light? Light is one substance with three proper- ties, the actinic, luminiferous and calorific. In spite of the fact that the properties of light are distinct they cannot be separated from each other. Where the one is the others are. Where the actinic is the luminiferous and the calorific are. Where the luminiferous is the actinic and the calorific are. Where the calo- rific is the actinic and the luminiferous are. The actinic can neither be seen nor felt. The calorific cannot be seen but may be felt. The luminiferous is both seen and felt and is the revelation and expression of the other two. What an absurdity it would be to reject any two of these properties and call the remaining one light. Nay! light is one and yet three. Light is three and yet one. And Holy Scripture says, "God is light." God is one being— one God and yet three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In spite of the fact that the personalities are distinct they cannot be separated from each other. Where the one is the others are. Where the Father is the Son and the Spirit are. Where the Son is the Father and the Spirit are. Where the Spirit is the Father and the Son are. The Father can neither be seen nor felt. The Spirit cannot be seen but may be felt. The Son can be both seen and felt and is the revelation and the expression of I42 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the other two. What an absurdity it would be to reject any two of these persons of the God-head and call the remaining one God. Nay! God is one and yet three. God is three and yet one. And these three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God in which we neither confound the persons nor divide the substance. And these three in the one infinite Godhead work out in their indivisible unity, redemption, righteousness and final glory, in the name of Christ, and in their unity alone make Christianity possible. A mystery! Beyond all question. And what is a God without mystery? What is a God whose in- finity a finite mind can grasp? But between a mystery and a puzzle there is an Atlantic Ocean difference. The Trinity is a divine mystery, the simplest statement concerning which may well call upon all the intellect and heart in a human being. But a "multiplication of infinities" is a vulgar puzzle which might well produce laughter in the bottomless pit. It is a fallacy to set up a religion based on the processes of personal evolution and seek thereby to bring forth the divinity in an in- dividual life. You might as well attempt to gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles, or turn a stone into a son of God. It is fallacious to seek to build a religioO THE NEW RELIGION 143 which bids men look within themselves for hope. You mi£:ht as well exhort a man to look down tV-G ciater of a flaming hell. It is a fallacy to build any religion which ignores the controversy between sin and holi- ness ; between a being who hates holiness and a holy being who hates sin. It is a fallacy to build a religion which does not seek to bring the conscience of man into accord with the conscience of the universe— that is to say, the conscience of God. In a world where God invariably punishes every violation of his law before he forgives it, what folly, what worse than folly to set up a treaty between God and man which does not rest upon a basis of satisfaction rendered to God, satisfaction to his law, his govern- ment and being. What a fallacy to attempt to set up a religion which denies the necessity of atonement ; a necessity written into the very fabric of things ; written in the law of hered- ity ; written in personal experience and echo- ing in the words and the truth, "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap ;" revealed in every electric chair and hangman's rope and coming down to us with unabridged ac- cent in the unrepealed original law of God, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed." A necessity illustrated, repeated, typified, reannounced and affirmed from Eden's gate where the first victim is slain till that hour when Jesus cries "it is finished." 144 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES and an apostle says, he "died for our sins ac- cording to the scriptures;" not only in fulfil- ment of the scriptures but according to the doctrine of the scriptures — that is — sacrificial atonement. Oh, the fallacy of a religion which does not satisfy the conscience of man with the satis- faction that satisfies the conscience of God. But why go further? Think of the fallacy of a religion which sets aside the supernatural, shrouds the grave in silence and shuts man up to a limited life of forty or fifty or sixty years — 3 quick, sharp pain — a gasp for breath — death — the grave clods and — forgetfulness. Is that the cure-all for the twentieth cent- i«t ury? Is that the latest thing the Athenian culture of the hour can give us? Is this the best product of a university course ? In a world of perplexities, tragedies and woes, has the Athenianism of the twentieth century nothing better to offer than a religion without authority, a faith without doctrine, and a Christ without character? For the heartache, for the memory of yes- terday's sin that bites as the sharp tooth of a ravening wolf, has the new religion nothing better to offer than the knife of the surgeon to cure the disease of the body; has it no medicine for a mind diseased, no remedy for the pain of the soul ? THE NEW RELIGION 145 As our eyes grow dim with age has it no vision of a holy city, a haven of rest ; when life's fitful fever is over here has it no nobler pulse-beat to give us there ? When we stand on the threshold of the five minutes after death can it do no better than take away from us all the sweet stories of heaven we learned at our mother's knee? When we stand at that place where the ways part, where time is no longer a high road and eternity unrolls a dim, uncertain route, can it give us no better sign-post than an interroga- tion point, no better direction than a guess? If it be so — then this new religion is the most forlorn, the most hopeless, the most fallacious, unintellectual, cruel, heartless, con- cept of human limitation, contradiction and confusion, ever invented within a dry, mois- tureless skull, to deceive and betray the troubled soul of man. For bread it gives us a stone, for a fish it gives us a serpent. Instead of a living, sentient, thrilling religion, it is a mummy, a juiceless, withered mummy. In- stead of setting us upon a foundation it flings us into a sea which has no shore and whose broken waves continually toss us into the deeper depths of unsounded darkness. Oh, New Religion! thy name is fallacy and thine outcome — despair. 4. What would happen if this new religion should become universal? Three things wonll happen.- 146 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES The world would become materialistic, lati- tudinarian and utilitarian. It would become materialistic. The moment you shut out the life and the world to come; the moment you shut man up to the life that now is, you have made him a materialist. He says, Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die. Let us seek and delve and lay hold of earth's treasures that we may enjoy earth's pleasure while we may. Shut out from God and a future in which to know and enjoy him, man is but a sensualist. No matter though his soul may fly on the wings of song almost to the zenith ; no matter though his genius may flash forth on every plane of aesthetic culture and refinement be found in every accent of his life, he is at the best only a sensualist, living, governed, and governing by the material senses, with no larger vision than the things that are seen, and no deeper in- spiration than the things which are temporal. The world would become latitudinarian. With a religion preaching anarchy in mind, there would come latitudinarianism — lawless- ness in desire and lawlessness in deed. With dethronement of authority in religion there would be overthrow of any settled standard in morals. What is considered to-day's evil might be to-morrow's good ; the wrong in one latitude might be virtue in another, and fixity of law in any direction would be resented THE NEW RELIGION 147 as a limit to human action and an appeal to anarchy in the name of freedom. The world would become utilitarian. Utilitarianism is self-defence. You have policemen in your cities not be- cause you love righteousness and truth in themselves or because you are specially inter- ested to maintain the integrity of your neigh- bor's meum et teum, but because you do not wish your own domain invaded. With lawlessness, moral and physical, breaking out as a consequence of materialistic latitudinarianism in religion, men would be forced to come together and erect some final standard in morals, some absolute and definite form of authority; and thus, in the end, in- stead of authority enthroned in grace and act- ing in love and benevolence to individual lives, you would have a centralized tyranny in which the personal hope would be sacrificed to the general concept. The world would be filled with educated and trained animals from whom all sense of a personal God would have disappeared ; a world in which all true perspective of personal re- sponsibility would be absent ; a world in which every advance in Athenian culture would serve to make man a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty and would cry aloud that he should come and sweep such a race of worth- less, fruitless beings from the face of the earth. 148 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 5. Finally, the prophetic import of this new religion. The import is clear enough. The Word of God has told us in unmistake- able language that in the closing hours of this age many will depart from the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the church will refuse to endure sound doctrine, false teach- ers will enter in, denying the Lord that bought them ; denying his virgin birth, his resurrec- tion and his coming again ; teachers who will turn the people from the truth and turn them to fables, the wisdom and conceit of men. Holy Scripture tells us that when these things begin to come to pass the true Christian is to look up, lift up his head for his redemption draweth nigh ; the Lord himself will come and will take the true church to himself and pour- ing forth his fierce but long delayed judgments on the earth, vindicate the righteousness and the truth of God. The New Religion is one of the signs of the times. It is a witness that God is making the wrath of man to praise him by verifying his Word in fulfilment of the very evils and iniquities it has foretold. Where do you stand ? Do you stand with the old religion, the re- ligion of your fathers and mothers, the re- ligion that has filled the world with sweetness ind light, carried it through the breakers of tHE NEW RELlGlOhJ 14'^ Sin and shame and given it the saving vision of heaven and God; or, do you stand with that new rehgion which denies the Bible of God, the God of the Bible, and rejects that Christ of the cross and the empty grave who has said, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me?" Do you stand with that new religion which begins with a doubt, ends with a guess, and has no to-morrow? Where do vou stand? THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN OR The Exaltation of Human Wisdom Above the Word of God "Learn in us not to think above that which is written." — I Corinthians 4: 6. "Thus saith the Lords of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you ; they make you vain ; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say unto them that despise me. The Lord hath said, Ye shall have peace ; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word and heard it? Behold a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked. "The anger of the Lord shall not return, un- til he have executed, and till he have per- THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 151 formed the thoughts of his heart : in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly. "I have not sent these prophets, yet they van: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. "But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil vi^ay, and from the evil of their doings. "I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. "How long shall this be in the hearts of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart: "Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams, which they tell every man to his neighbour * * * "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? said the Lord. "Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? "Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour." — Jeremiah 23 : 16-30. "The holy scriptures which are able to *nake thee wise unto salvation through faith '.yhich is in Christ Jesus. 152 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- ness; "That the man of God may be perfect, thor- oughly furnished unto all good works. "I charge thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead and by his appearing and kingdom ; "Preach the word ; be instant in season, out of season ; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and doctrine. "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine ; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears ; "And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." — II Timothy 3: 15-17; 4: 1-4. There is at present a widespread movement to exalt human wisdom in the Christian pulpit. This wisdom calls itself by the high sounding title of "scholarship." It professes to be scien- tific, philosophic and liberal. It finds its in- spiration in the research and achievements of human genius. Its authority is the text book of modern culture. Its apostles are the scien- tists, the philosophers and the advanced think- ers of the age. It places the Bible in a sec- ondary plane and demands that it shall be in- terpreted or modified according to the thought THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 153 of the hour. It Is dogmatic, laying down rules and setting up standards. It is intoler- ant and almost contemptuous of that preach- ing which bases itself alone upon a "thus saith the Lord." Its sacramental phrase is "Scholarship is agreed/' From tliis self- elected tribunal it warns all who do not agree with it that they are declassed and unworthy of an interested hearing. It is full of boast- ing. It boasts that it is advanced, up to date and sane. It boasts that it is driving away the fogs and mists which have hitherto gath- ered round the theologic arena and that it is slowly, but surely, bringing in the millennial era of a clear, self-respecting and reasonable religion. It is a movement wholly human in its origin, its method and outcome. Over against it stands the apostolic concept as expressed in the ministry of the Apostle Paul. He refused to allow merely human wisdom to enter his pulpit. He declared offi- cially that his preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, and he lays it down as a definite postulate that the Christian min- ister is to learn through contemplation of him and his co-apostles, "not to think above that which is written." And yet, if any man ever could have thought above the written Word; if ever a man could have spoken in the words of human wisdom and with scientific accent, it 154 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES was this man Paul. He was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. He had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest teacher of his times. He was not only versed in the Hebrew scrip- tures, he knew thoroughly Hebrew literature. He was an adept in the Talmud, that monu- mental work which requires years of study simply to master the outlines of its hair split- ting' definitions and the metaphysical ramifica- tions of its tortuous and subtle casuistry. He was a Latinist as well as a Hebraist. He knew Roman philosophy although it was taught by Greek professors. If he was fluent in Latin, he was at home in Greek, and in one of his sermons quotes easily and readily from the Greek anthology. All this education and cul- ture was added to a mind of extraordinary vigor, a mind keen, analytic, forensic, judicial. If he could pull apart he could put together. If he analyzed, he synthetized. His statements are at times concrete and absolutely dynamic. His conclusions are reached from premises stated with unfaltering precision. If he had desired he might have spoken in such fashion that his hearers would have been carried away with enthusiasm and crowned him at once as orator, logician and scientist. But he did nothing of this. He refused to follow such methods. He declared that he was sent not to preach with the wisdom of words, lest the faith of those who heard him should stand in the wisdom of men and not THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 55 in the power of Grod. He warns the Colos- sians against those preachers who would seek to spoil them with philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and he exhorts Timothy not to be seduced by the "oppositions of science falsely so called." To Paul, the science of that day, the gnosis of that hour; to Paul, the so called science of this moment, the science that laughs at the idea of miracles, ties God up in his own creation, makes him the galley slave of the laws and forces which he himself has created, turns this world into a vast chemical laboratory without a chemist, or a huge engine room with no suspicion of a supreme engineer behind it; the science that denies the God of the Bible, robs the world of the Christ of the Bible and, finally, shredding the Bible apart page by page, discounts it and wrenches it loose from the pulpit as no longer the inerrant Word of God : that science to Paul was, and would be, contemptible. And why not? What has science done that it is entitled to enter the Christian pulpit and set aside the written Word as no longer a full and com- plete revelation from God ? There are seven great riddles which laugh in the face of the most accomplished science. 1. The riddle of force and matter. We know absolutely nothing about the ra- tionale of force and matter that was not known 156 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES by Plato, Aristotle and Epictetus. They knew the immutability of force and nature. What- ever we know of application and relation has only heightened the essential mystery. 2. The origin of motion. Everything is in motion. The things we call solid are made up of atoms quivering with molecular action. The solid beam of iron or steel on which our giant constructions rest are so many atoms each separate from the other and all in motion. The bullet that speeds through air to its determined mark is, as has been well said, not a solid but a mass of moving atoms like a swarm of bees. The atoms in a pinhead it has been calculated would require 250,000 years to count; and these are sweeping about each other like so many revolving worlds. This earth with the stellar universe, even while you hear these words, has been plunging through new space at a speed terrific to contemplate and on a course to which it never can return. All is in motion and the great question is, how did this motion begin ; where and what was the power able to overcome the inertia apparently inher- ent in every atom and body ? And science can- not tell, it can only face the proposition and be speechless. And face to face with a fact for which it has no reason and no logic, it dares to simper about the impossibility of miracles, 3, The origin of life, THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 5 7 What is life? There is not a dictionary in the world that can give a decent answer. Science has no re- sponse that is worth repeating. What relation has mind to matter? What is mind? On what basis will a scientist ac- count for a spiritual deduction from the fact of matter? He cannot account for it. What is death? Death is an unsolved mystery. The scalpel and the knife of the physician have not been able to find the soul or the mind; the acutest instrument ever invented has not been able to get a single articulation from the other side of death. What is the process of life, what is its r";t-.iiir Kaiii ~,;;\- that life is a trial iu whicli at last the strongest and the best equipped must succumb. Schopenhauer tells us, practic- ally, that we are all fools living in a fool world, fooled with the idea and the promise of life. How life began, from what, and why it be- gan, are impenetrable mysteries to the most profound and lettered science. 4. The fitness and the adaptation of things in nature. Everywhere there is adaptation of means to an end. Nothing is jumbled, pell-mell, hit or miss. The keener the microscopic investi- gation, the more thoroughly it is demonstrated that all things are stamped with design and 158 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES fitted into relationships. What is the reason for this fitness? Why do certain forces at- tract and others repel? Why do qualities carry their continuance through all sorts of combination? Why do things keep to their nature and never cross or mix or get con- founded in their ultimates? And science cannot tell. It can give you a lot of formulas, fill your ears with words, fool you with what it calls the technical, and then land you in the final analysis, in the fact that your question has simply been pushed further backward and not answered, 5. The riddle of consciousness. Consciousness is that something or some- what by which I know that I am not you and that you are not I ; that I am distinct from that which is not a part of me. What is that by which I feel pain or joy or sorrow? The scientist will tell me that it is the telegraphic system in me called nerves, and that the nerves telegraph sensation from the register of the brain. But the brain is not I, the brain is only my signal board, my typewriter, it is one of my machines — it is not I — myself. What then is that final thing in me that knows and distinguishes sen- sations — that thing we call consciousness ? And science cannot tell — the riddle of conscious- ness laughs loud and long — but science is dumb. THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 59 6, The riddle of thought. Thought ! that is a great thing — a thought. I speak a word, it strikes on your ear, it enters your mind, it dissolves, it touches hidden springs, it becomes thought, it multiplies into a thousand other thoughts, each thought sug- gesting another. You think these thoughts in words not spoken and of which you are at the time unconscious. Scenes, ideas, conceptions, arise and march through your mind, your brain. At the utterance or sight of a word, or as the result of a sensation, you say, *T thought, I think. I had a thought about it." What is a thought? Ask science. Science will think thoughts but it cannot tell you what a thought is ; and yet, this incapable science rises up and wishes to say what shall be thought and not thought in a Christian pulpit. 7. The riddle of the will. There is something in the world stronger than steam, gasolene, dynamite, picric acid or electricity. That something is the human will. It carries men tip the mountain peak, it en- ables them to descend into the mines of earth. By reason of that will men leave home and friends and fortune. That will carries them in the wild charge up the steep ascent where the belching cannon are the mouths of hell. That will stands and defies any will however supreme. What is that thing within which is stronger than the hope of life and the fear of death? 160 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES And science cannot tell. What does science know about sin; that something in the world that is a poison, a weakness, a devil, a tyrant, an enemy, a temp- ter and utter destruction ? What does science know about transmission or that heredity it seeks to deny? What does it know about causation? Nay! science does not know the reason for the very first proposition in its own mathematics. Why do two and two make four? If you were offered a billion of golden dol- lars and given a billion of years to find out, you would know no more at the end of that time than you do now. There is not a being on earth can tell. Tv/o and two do make four and that is all you know or can know about it. There is not a scientist in the world can tell why. And yet this science dares to talk about the unreason of miracles. This is the thing that demands an entrance into our pulpits. And who are the men who would come in the name of science, the scientific thought, en- ter the Christian pulpit and demand the right to interpret the revelation from God? Who are these men and what is their title to exalt scholarship so called and human wisdom in the church of Christ, in the very sanctuary of the church ? Have these men more and better books than other men? Do they read more, search more? Are they better trained? Are they mentally superior to their fellow min- isters ? Are they more honest ? THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 61 To affirm so is to insult men whose right- eousness is as strong in fibre as the honesty of God. To affirm so is to insult men whose minds, whose genius, place them in the cate- gory of princes in the realm of intellect. To affirm so is to insult men who have brought their minds under a discipline more severe, more intense and more continuous, than that of the grenadier guards of the German Emperor. To affirm all this is to set up an indecency of self-conceit that might well bring the blush to a brazen image. And what have these men accomplished with their scientific method in respect to the Bible? They ran full haste to the pulpit, climbed into it and, panting for breath, told the gaping, terrorized crowd that it was im- possible for Moses to have written the Penta- teuch because at the date assigned to the Mo- saic authorship writing was not known. And then some thoughtless archaeologist dug up a whole town in that far Eastern land filled with books and bearing indisputable witness that writing had existed some hundreds of years before Moses was born. Then again these preachers with the scientific method came rushing out of breath to say that the four- teenth chapter of Genesis was absolute un- truth; that no such kings as recorded there ever existed. And then that same ridiculous archaeologist dug his persistent spade into the ground and turned over some stones bearing 162 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the very names of those kings and carrying the dust of the very age in which scripture affirmed they had lived. What have these men succeeded in doing but setting up first one standard of authority, then another, denying later on each standard in turn till, in the end, their science is more contradictory and out of joint than the Bible they seek to mend. What shall be said of this science but that at the best the moment it enters the Christian pulpit and begins to handle the Word of God, it shows itself to be nothing better than a worthless ecclesiastical shoddyism. And over against it stands the Apostolic concept and method as set forth pre-eminently by the Apostle Paul, contradicting the modern method and its so called scholarship and science — contradicting it in theme, authority and power. Consider the apostolic theme. The Apostle Paul did not preach the refor- mation of government. He never tried to crowd his church with "civic" meetings, filling his pulpit with ward agitators and town politi- cians. He never railed against the corrup- tions of the Roman empire. And yet those corruptions were all about him. He lived in an atmosphere of bribe taking and bribe giv- ing, such as the world has never since known. It is true, in some respects, the Roman govern- ment was the best the sun ever shone upon; THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 63 in others, the most corrupt, most vile and de- structive. And yet it is this Apostle Paul who says, "submit to the powers that be; for the powers that be are ordained of God." He never raised his voice or sent out his writings against the vice and licentiousness of the times. And yet that vice and that licen- tiousness poured their turgid tide all about him. He saw vice exalted as virtu'^ and virtue denied as vice. He saw sin glorified in panels of marble, framed in silver and gold, portrayed in pictures, and almost speaking in statues. He saw it in living and beautiful flesh, with eloquent eyes and extended, inviting hands, and words that caressed and claimed submis- sion to mad desire and shameless passion. He delivered no philippics upon the impur- ity of the world, to the world itself. He raised no testimony against ".he wrongs of society. And yet they were without number. At every turn he saw men toiling for a stipend. He heard the cry of unpaid wages. He saw sixty millions of slaves whose individual lives were not worth so much as a kenneled dog. So far from lifting up his voice against these things he exhorts to submission and peace. These were not his theme. He did not preach civilization and moral progress, but everlasting life. His theme found ♦^-'spression in the concrete utterance, "I determmed not 164 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." That was his theme. Consider his authority. His authority was primarily the old Hebrew scriptures, those scriptures which the scientist and the modern scientific preacher repudiate as a bundle of old wives fables and frauds ; the scriptures which Jesus Christ himself avouched as inspired of God, claimed as wit- ness to his person, work and office, and ex- pounded until the hearts of his disciples burned within them. "Thus saith the Lord," was his authority. Behold him there at Thessalonica for three successive Saturdays entering the synagogue and opening and alleging that Christ must needs suffer, die and be raised again the third day, and declaring that this Jesus whom he preached unto them was the very Christ. He reasoned, he exhorted out of these old scrip- tures. He went into the book of Leviticus, as his epistle to the Hebrews proves, and showed them how the five great offerings there recorded found their fulfilment in the cross of Christ. He pointed to the Tabernacle and testified that every board and bar, every cord and pin, and curtain and vessel, set forth the person, the work, and the office of Christ ; and that in Jesus of Nazareth every typical and prophetic detail found its completion and full fruition. THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 65 He set the written Word up as his authority. He went further. He laid it down as a law for every Christian, and specially for every Christian preacher and teacher "not to think above that which is written." And why not? Surely the answer is self-evident. Apart from the New Testament Jesus Christ is no more historical than some fabled character of human fiction. Cut out the New Testament, and all that Josephus says, or Pliny and the rest of them, as outside witnesses, is not worth the paper on which it is written. Talk about modifying, clarifying, editing the New Testament! The New Testament must be its own authority, just as the grain of wheat seed must carry the demonstration of its quality within. It must be all of the New Testament or none of the New Testa- ment. And, as the New Testament is the fruit of the old, it must be a whole Bible or no Bible. All the written word or none, as the supreme authority. And Paul sets up the written Word as supreme authority and or- dains that the Christian shall not think above that which is written. And why not be obedient to this law? This is the only book that gives an intelli- gent answer to the questions concerning the origin of creation. Listen to the opening words of the Bible. 166 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES In all language there is nothing so sublime as this postulate: "In the beginning God!" Where can you match that? All that you can think, the premise of every possible thought you can think through endless mil- lions of ages, in four words. "IN THE BEGINNING— GOD." GOD — here is the raison d'etre of creation Here is the statement that meets every ques- tion. Put this over against the so called scientific idea that creation originates in an infinites- imal atom, or the dull machine concept of uniformitarianism, of an eternally unbegun creation, a creation that springs out of un- thinking matter and not from original mind ; put these concepts over against the idea of a supreme personal intellect having all re- sources in himself and by the fiat of his will producing a creation whose every atom is stamped with the sign mark of infinite intel- lectuality and wisdom, and how utterly im- becile and idiotic they seem; and how, on the contrary, the idea of a supreme personality meets and satisfies the sense of personalism and intelligence in us. In other words, we feel that intellect must come from intellect, personality from personal- ity and the ability to say "I will" from some original force that said, "Thou shalt." And this satisfying an^^wer concerning the THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 67 origin of creation and the quickening of thought it brings, is to be found alone in the written Word. This book is the only one in the world that gives an adequate account of the origin of sin. This book tells you the immense truth that sin originated in the clash of two independent wills, the free will of God and the one time free will of man. God said "I will" and man said, "I will not." God willed but man would not, and God's defied will became in man the sin that has paralyzed the world for sixty cen- turies in its relation to the intellect and the heart of God. This book is the alone Word that gives an answer to the questions of life ; for it is written therein that in God as the infinite and all-sufficient environment, "we live and move and have our being." This written Word is the only book that pulls aside the veil after death, throws the flashlight of hope into an empty grave and gives the picture of an immortal man on the throne of the Highest. Learn not to think above what is written. The exhortation is justified. Consider the source of apostolic power. Not for a moment did the Apostle Paul or any of his co-workers depend upon any trick of oratory, or logic, or human attainment, or wisdom. There was but one power they sought — the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 168 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES And the Spirit is always seen operating in connection with the written Word. Look there at Pentecost — three thousand converted in a day ; at another time five thou- sand men alone. And the preacher Simon Peter with the smell of the fish scarcely off his hands. Simon Peter, who never saw the in- side of a school of the prophets. Whence his astounding success? In this, that he preached the written Word and the Spirit of the living God quickened the minds of the hearers and opened their hearts to receive it. And thus it has been down the ages. Wherever there has been a true revival it lias always been the operation of the Spirit in connection with and in exaltation of the written Word. And the reason is self-evident. The written Word is the tongue of the Spirit. Without the Spirit the Word is dead. Without the Word the Spirit is dumb. The Word is a seed. Without the Spirit it cannot germinate and quicken the soul. The rain and sunshine on the earth are of no avail unless the seed be sown within. Any revival without the Word has been fictitious and ephemeral. And here is the answer to the question "What is the matter with the church?" The matter is, the Word is not preached; or, when it is preached it is set forth v/ith an apology or openly falsified and denied. There can be no genuine revival till the THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 69 written Word is exalted and made supreme. You may make all the evangelistic plans in the world ; so long as some of the men en- gaged in the movement are apostles of the Higher Criticism, are advocates of modern scholarship as the standard of Biblical inter- pretation and statement, there can be no re- vival. How is it possible for a revival to take place in a church where the preacher throws doubt on the virgin birth of Christ, the resur- rection of the body and the integrity of Holy Scripture ? The Spirit of God cannot work through a lie — and such preaching is a lie. If additions come to such a church, if there are reported conversions, they are fake conversions ; they are simply the evolution of the natural right- eousness in the individual. The Spirit of God cannot fellowship the denial of the per- son, the work and the office of the Son of God. Let a preacher once get bitten with this idea of modern scholarship in his preaching and teaching. Let him begin to make Herbert Spencer and the rest of the ilk his source of information and inspiration, and it is a dead certainty that he will, sooner or later, end in re- pudiating the Christianity of the New Testa- ment and the Bible as the complete and in- fallible Word of God. Let a Church get under the spell of such teaching and eventually, but easily and un- I /O THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES consciously, it will begin to break down the standards and repudiate one by one the funda- mentals of the faith. And this is the ultimate to which that preaching leads which exalts human wisdom above the written Word of God, And I charge those who preach in this fashion with being sappers and miners in the church of Christ. They turn the pulpit into the wooden horse of Troy. It was a smart trick on the part of those Greeks to get inside the beleagured city and overthrow its gallant defenders at the walls. These preach- ers come into the pulpit in the name of the higher reason and the sanity of the hour, and then let loose a whole body of armed infidelity to knock down and destroy, if possible, the walls of salvation. This preaching is indeed subtle. It talks about Christ ! But what Christ? I answer, the Christ of Bethlehem and not the Christ of the cross. If now and then it is persuaded to refer to the cross, it means that the death thereon was not a penal sacri- fice but a useless martyrdom. It talks about the resurrection, but it means merely the con- tinued existence of Christ as a spirit filling a larger area of influence than when confined to his mortal body. It talks of righteousness, but it is d righteousness without blood; a righteousness in which Christ acts to the natural man as fire to hidden writing, his ex- THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 7 1 ample, his life as he lived it on the earth, serving to bring out the innate truth and goodness in every man. The Apostle Paul has given an earnest warning concerning this preaching. He de- clares that in the last days Satan will be trans- formed into an angel of light and his ministers into ministers of righteousness — a righteous- ness without blood — a devil's righteousness. The men who preach this sweetness and light may be the most honest men in the world, but their message is a lie and its outcome is an attempt of the Devil to destroy the truth of God. And this sort of preaching is a sign of the last times. The Apostle Paul has warned us that in the closing hours of this age the church will be filled with teachers who shall turn the pro- fessed followers of Christ away from the truth and shall turn them to fables. The Apostle Peter testifies that these teach- ers will deny the Lord that bought them and mocking at the doctrine of the Lord's Second Coming shall say, "Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the be- ginning of the creation." The Son of God has declared that as this dispensation draws to its end, the assaults against the faith once delivered to the saints will be made in his name and in the name of 172 THE SIGNS OP THE TIMES truth; that the perilous times of the church will not be because of the multiplication of iniquity and sin, but because of the claims of a Christianity not inspired of the Spirit; a Christianity that in the name of Christ shall do many wonderful works, wonderful enough to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect, but against whose deception the Lord has warned in earnest and unmeasured terms. He announces that at the close of this hour of grace and just before he descends to earth once more, the faith which he himself inspired will have waned and fallen away. This preaching then which seeks to exalt human wisdom at the expense of the written Word and makes use of the glamour of mod- ern scholarship to deceive even earnest men, is a sign that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh ; that he is coming to repudiate the pro- fessing church as his witness in the world, take the true church to himself and then go forth in judgment on a materialistic and god- less world. It is time, therefore, that the church should arouse. It is time that Christians should exalt the written Word as never before. Let every church write over its doors and over its pulpit, "Learn not to think above that which is written." Let the church make this written Word the test of membership and fellowship, refusing THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 73 to admit to full association any individual who repudiates its integrity, who does not accept its testimony. Let the church make submission to the writ- ten Word a test of the pulpit, allowing no man to enter it who does not base his speech unqualifiedly upon an unabridged "thus saith the Lord." Let Christians study that Word as they never studied it before. Here only can the Christian meet the Devil and overcome him. This was the method of the Son of God. To every assault of Satan he answered, "It is written." And this must be the method now. To achieve this method there must be a deep and earnest study of the written Word. The Christian who reads and studies everything else under heaven but his Bible is like the soldier who exercises with every- thing else but his gun or his sword ; when the enemy comes he is of no avail. The Christian who cannot give a reason- able answer for the hope that is within him — and he cannot if he does not study faithfully the written Word — the Christian who cannot give that answer by a "thus it is written/' is defeated before he begins. Let a Christian study the written Word and it will be a test to his own heart, it will tell him how much spiritual life he has in him bv the response he makes to that Word. 174 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Study that Word. If it reveals you to your- self, as when you look within a glass, at the same time it will set forth the provisions of infinite grace and become to you the nourish- ment by the way, giving you through the eternal Spirit the vigor required to live the spiritual life and make manifest your sonship with God, your partnership with the coming Christ. And, friend out of Christ. Out of Christ! what a phrase that is — it is time that you should arouse. Refuse, I pray you, to listen to these men who put a bar sinister on the Christ of God ; who keep his grave filled with a dead man's dust; who smile and mock and while they smile, deny the only Word that can give you hope. What can science do for you? It cannot minister to a mind diseased. It has no formula by which it can dissolve the sorrow in a tear, no power by which it can lift the burden of the heart. When you stand by the grave of the dead it has no voice with which to speak the words of comfort to the listening soul. It has no light that will pene- trate the gloom of death. It has no vision of the gates of life, it dare not bid you hope. It stands with its theorems and postulates and sees all its wisdom turned to folly in the presence of the great silence and the endless THINKING ABOVE WHAT IS WRITTEN 1 75 reach which, for want of a better name, wc call eternity. No, science can do nothing for you. There is no light or hope in anything but the written Word of God. This Word that has outlived the men who denied it. This Word that flings the sunlight of hope through the tear of despair and turns the night of weeping into the morning of joy. This Word that has sung its glad songs when all the world was out of tune, this is the Word you must hear. Hear that Word ! It is calling unto you in the rarest and clearest speech that ever was heard. It is bidding you turn to him who is saying to you, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Hear it, I pray you, before it is too late, before the door is closed and your priceless opportunity gone forever. Let me solemnly assure you that if you re- ject this written Word and the grace which it reveals, when you stand at the great tribunal, not of a Saviour but a Judge, it will be this written Word that will judge you, and the voice of the Great King will be heard in your ears saying, "You were exhorted, not to think ^bov that which is written." THE DEVIL'S RIGHTEOUS- NESS OR Cain Come to Town Again "And no marvel; for Satan himself is trans- formed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be trans- formed as the ministers of righteousness ; whose end shall be according to their works. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain. For they being ignorant of God's righteous- ness, ajid going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." "For Christ is the end of the law for right- eousness to every one that believeth. And this is his name whereby he shall be called, "The Lord our Righteousness." 2. Cor- inthians. 11:14,15. Jude 11. Romans 10:3,4. Jeremiah 23 :6. To those who are not blind or deaf to the signs of the times it must be evident that there is at this hour a world-wide, universal, special, and persistent demand for righteous- ness. A demand for righteousness in personal life, cleanness in the social relation, rectitude THE devil's righteousness I 77 in business, and purity in government. Con- ning towers are erected at every point of the compass, filled with alert watchers equipped with the latest appliances in the acoustics of testimony, and the lime-light of investigation, listening and looking for the slightest failure in individual and corporate responsibility. A false note in the accentuation of truth, a wrong quotation in the center of exchange, a breakdown in the family circle, or a line out of plumb in the civic and commercial edifice, are registered, and the vocabulary of an exag- gerated vituperation and the phraseology of a keen, analytical denunciation, are poured forth like a drowning floodtide to sweep away iniquity from the face of the earth, while exhortation climbs the gamut of appeal, bid- ding men to seek for higher and nobler things. This demand for righteousness finds its expression in the modern pulpit. The old- fashioned preaching of doctrinal sermons, the setting forth of the fundamentals of the Christian faith, have fallen into desuetude. The up-to-date preacher now gives us a fifteen or twenty-minute moral essay in which he exhorts his hearers to be full of sweetness and light, be kind and helpful, love justice, show mercy and, giving full measure and keeping even balance, walk on the plane of unques- tioned integrity. The sacramental phrase is, "Be good and do good." On this basis all shades of opinion find common ground. There 178 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES is a revelation of solidarity and brotherhood. This very unity gives emphasis and vigor to the demand for righteousness. It is said to make for finality in character. He who pos- sesses this character of righteousness can stand with confidence before any tribunal of earth. By the same token he need have no fear to confront the judge of the highest court. As such a character saves him here, it will save him hereafter. There is nothing more popular than this cult of righteousness. An examination of it, however, yields some curious results. It will be found that it does not depend upon faith in Christ. It is true it comes again and again in the name of Christ But the Christ it pre- sents is not the Christ of the cross. It is the Christ of Bethlehem, the Christ who walked the earth. He is described in glowing terms. We behold the beauty of his life, we feel the tenderness of his words, and recognize the helpfulness of his deeds. He is announced as the great exemplar, and men are asked to walk in his footsteps, to do as he did. He is said to have gone about doing good ; therefore men are exhorted to be good as he was good and go about doing the good he did : learning to be unselfish, to carry the burden of other hearts and make the world better for the living in it. But with all this panegyric of his char- acter and all the exhortation concerning his example, he never passes out of the environ- THE devil's righteousness 179 ment of Bethlehem, he never reaches the cross. On the contrary, when you push your investigation deeper into this attractive right- eousness, you will discover that it unhesitat- ingly repudiates the cross, refuses to accept it as the ground of approach to God, or as the source of a righteousness alone acceptable to him. The death of Christ is not necessary to the redemption of a single soul, and by no valid reason can it be proposed as the only hope of righteousness satisfactory to God. Pushing the investigation to the very core, down to the very roots, it is evident that this righteousness is nothing more nor less than the exaltation and exploitation of human nature, its culture and development, as all sufficient both for God and man. In short, it is the offering of Cain set up in the Twentieth century. You remember that offering. There was an altar piled high with grains of the field, cov- ered with fruit, the apricot, the pomegranate, and weighted clusters of purple grapes ; there were flowers in profusion and clambering vines, sending up their fragrance like unseen, unheard, but sentient praise; birds flying in and out amid the mass of mingled color like winged songs; over all the cloudless heaven of an Eastern sky pouring down its waves of golden light. It was aesthetic in proportion, and satisfying to Cain as the witness of his toil, his handiwork and culture. 180 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES And yet this offering was an audacious insult to God. It was audacious because of the personalitv and nature of Cain, his relation to God, the revealed truth of God, and Cain's persistency in presenting his offering in face of the truth. Cain was the first born son of Adam, born after the fall and bearing the image of his fallen father. He was outside Eden's gate. He stood on ground that God had judged and cursed. He was an exile from the divine presence, under the sentence of death, and at a niuial and penal distance from God which, in himself, he had no capacity to bridge. God, the Lord, had dealt with that incapacity. He had declared to the guilty man and woman who stood before him that he did not demand goodness from them. And this in the nature of the case. God is something more than goodness, he is absolute and essen- tial holiness. It is impossible for him to lower his standard. There is no possibility by which he could admit into fellowship and communion with himself those who stood upon a lower plane of character and quality. No man who is honest can afford to admit into close in- timacy and continued friendship with himself one who is less honest, and concerning whose future development suspicions are just. To do so would be to dethrone the man from his own professed plane of character. For God THE devil's RiCHtEOUSNESS 181 to admit into his intimate and rewarded com- panionship a being who was less than holy, and whose history must be a continued demon- stration of his inability to be holy, would be for God to cast himself down from the enthronement of his own holiness and destroy all final integrity in the universe. In default of holiness man must die and be destroyed from the presence of God. And again this is in the nature of the case. No genius who has a proper valuation of, and respect for, his capacities, will permit any production of his, which does not do him justice, to remain longer than the time it takes to destroy it. Every moment that this unequal work remains it is a reproach and a scandal to him. In self-defense he must, sooner or later, blot it out. Fallen man was a reproach and a scandal to God. Taking advantage of the liberty and freedom God had given him, man had marred the image and the beauty of God in him. As the handiwork of God he was a failure, a reproach and a scandal to God. There was nothing for God to do but, according to his own eternally written law of the survival of the fittest, destroy him from his presence. Hence the sentence of death. But, even if man could survive the shock of death, it would still be necessary for him to rise up to the level of the divine character and respond to it with a similarity in his own. Man could not survive the shock of death; 182 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES for, "in that war there is no discharge." Even if he could survive it there was in him now no power to rise up into the required character and holiness. Then it was, in face of this incapacity, this frightful gulf of destruction, that God revealed himself as the God of all grace. He caused an animal to be slain as a witness that before man could approach him he must expiate the guilt and the nature of sin ; that God must be satisfied in his law, his government and being, in respect to sin, before he could even deal with the fallen man. Then he took the skin from the slain victim and out of it made a covering for the naked pair as a testimony that, by reason of, and in virtue of, this sacrificial death, he would provide a character of right- eousness in which they might stand accepted and acceptable before him. And all this was simply a fore-picture of the cross of Christ. It was a prophecy that the death of Christ would be an expiation for sin; that it would satisfy the demand of God's righteouness against the sinner; that by virtue of that death, in resurrection, Christ would become the righteousness of the sinner who should come in his name, claiming his death ; that this death would be accepted as though the sinner himself had died under ijudg- ment, and the value of it placed to his credit, imputed to him, charged to his account, he would be freed from the guilt and the demerit THE DEVILS RIGHTEOUSNESS 183 of sin and, necessarily, delivered from the sentence of death. In resurrection the Son of God would become, not only the legal right- eousness of the believer, having answered for him in death, not only his representative righteousness, acting as his perfect character and spotless reputation in the court of holi- ness, but, as the Second man, the true Adam, the new head of the race, he would be the giver of a new and spiritual life, whos« every fibre would be the righteousness of God ; so that, in Christ, the believer would be accept- ed as the very "righteousness of God." Ap- proaching God on the basis of the sacrificial death of Christ, the believer would find in Christ complete and legal acceptance before God, and standing in the beauty of his holi- ness, would receive from him that new and Christ life which would enable him to walk in righteousness and truth before God. In simple terms, then, at Eden's gate, God taught the world that the only ground of approach to him and final identification with his righteousness and" life, must be by, and through, the blood of sacrifice. Cain knew this. He had been taught the Gospel of blood by his parents. And yet, in spite of it all, persisted in bringing to God an unbloody offering. And this was an insult ! In presenting such an offering he ignored the fact that there was a moral and penal 184 THE SIGNS OF FHfc. TIMES distance between himself and God. He ignored the fact that he was an exile from the pres- ence of God and under the sentence of death. He ignored God's demand for expiation by, and through, the sacrifice of blood. He offered to God the fruit of that ground which God had judged and cursed. He offered to God that which God had distinctly repudiated. He refused to accept God's estimate. He posi- tively denied God's Word. He set up his own word instead of the Word of Jehovah. He exalted self instead of God. And the picture is plain enough. Cain is the natural man. He is of the flesh and not of the Spirit. He is the first born and not the second born. His offering of the ground is the offering of the culture of the natural man. It is self-righteousness offered to God. It is the declaration that there is no moral or penal distance between man and God. It is the declaration that man is by nature a child of God. He may be a little off color, due to a thousand things over which he has not always had control, but he has all the elements of divinity in' him, all the roots of character sufficient, under proper culture, to bloom out and blossom into a life of truth and beauty, honoring to God as well as to man. It is not necessary for him to look apart from himself. He has in himself all the resources of righteousness required for time and etern- ity. What he needs is, to throw aside the THE DEVILS RIGHTEOUSNESS 185 superstitious teachings of an antiquated time. What he needs is, to set aside the theology of the butcher shop, recognize that the Father- hood of God is the supreme thing to believe in, that the Word of God is not confined to the Bible, that Tennyson and Browning are apostles as much inspired as Paul, and that the doctrines of Judgment to c&me, hell, and banishment from the presence of God, are the fictions of narrow and half-educated reli- gionists. He is to repudiate the idea of sacri- fice, sing to himself that God is in heaven and all is well in his world and, living according to the inward and perfect light, continue to offer to God the fruit of that earth, that nature, which God himself has made. And this offering of self-righteousness is an audacious insult to God. It sets aside God's estimate of man. And it is here the issue between God and man is Ijoined. The issue is as to God's esti- mate of man or man's estimate of himself. The truth is, it is not a question of what you think of yourself. It is wholly and altogether a question of what God thinks of you, as the natural man. You may have a good opinion of yourself. Your good opinion may be justi- fied by the best standards of the natural world. Your fellow men may find in you nothing to judge, and everything to commend. You may be the most righteous person on the face of the earth and engaged every day in 186 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES sustaining and proclaiming that righteous- ness. No matter ! your estimate and the esti- mate of your friends does not count. It all turns upon God's estimate, what God thinks about you as a natural man. And God has given that estimate in unmistakable terms. God has plainly said what he thinks of the natural man. He says there are none right- eous, no not one. He says all the world by nature has been brought in as guilty before him. He says there is no differ- ence. You may be of blue blood or brown. You may have a fine ancestry and a clear record in the eyes of men. No matter! he says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. He says the natural mind is enmity with God, not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. He says by one man sin entered the world and death by sin, and so death has passed upon all men. He says no man can be justified by the works of the law. He announces through the lips of a prophet that all our righteousnesses are in his sight as filthy, foul, putrid, pestilential and disgusting rags. Whatever may be the reasoning of God that leads him to that conclusion, that is his estimate. That his conclusion is just would be in the nature of the case, seeing that the God of all the earth must do right; but to those who follow from the premise of the unalterable holiness of God, the unchangeable THE devil's righteousness 187 and incapable nature of man, and the law of self-defense in God's character and righteous- ness, which will not permit the final continu- ance of that which is evil before him, and will not permit him to ignore or clear the guilty, or allow even his love to deceive him, this estimate of man and the correspondingly logical judgment and condemnation of him, must be self-evident. But whether it is or not; whether it commend itself to our senti- ment or reason, it does not matter, it is not our estimate that goes, but the estimate of God as revealed in his Holy Word. And God's estimate is that man is hopelessly lost in himself. In coming before God then with his own character as a certificate of entrance into God's presence, the self-righteous man repudiates and tramples under foot the esti- mate of God. The offering of self-righteousness rejects the meaning, and refuses to believe in the necessity, of the cross. It refuses to believe that the death of the cross was the antitypical fulfillment of all the sacrifices that went be- fore ; that it was the fulfillment of the burnt offering, the peace offering, the trespass offer- ing; that the death of Christ was the fulfill- ment of the sacrifice offered on the day of atonement and that this day in which we live, dispensationally, is the Day of Atonement, the day of reconcilation to God, the day in which a sinner may approach, bringing the death of 188 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the cross as his sin offering, his peace offer- ing, his trespass offering and his burnt offering. Self-righteousness does not believe the death of Jesus of Nazareth was a divine expiation for human sin. It is willing to ac- cept it as a moral sacrifice and martyrdom, but shrinks back aghast at the idea that God was in that hour dealing with his Son as a substitute for sinful men, and through his death working out, for all willing to accept him as such, a righteousness that should be the very righteousness of God. Self-right- eousness refuses categorically to believe in the necessity of expiation on the part of any human being. It denies the tremendous proposition that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. It denies the uncompromising proposi- tion that, "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." It denies the demonstrated logic of every day's experience that a clean thing cannot come out of an unclean. It denies the state- ment of the Son of God that that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. It refuses to accept the far-reaching import of that state- ment, the definite, dynamic conclusion that flesh will always produce flesh, that never, under any circumstance, can it produce any- thing but flesh, never, under any circumstance, can it produce spirit. It refuses to see how THE devil's righteousness 189 in this statement the Son of God testifies that between that which is born of the flesh and that which is boni of the Spirit there is a great gulf fixed which even God, speaking with all reverence, cannot bridge, much less any cul- ture by human effort. Self-righteousness denies the thunderous and climacteric words of the Son of God in which he declares that unless a man be born again he cannot even see the kingdom of God. This self-righteousness, added to all the denial it makes of the things of God so stated, has the hardihood to offer to God that human nature which he has judged and rejected. It sets aside God's own solemn Word, exalts the word of man and, in exalting the righteous- ness of man, denies the righteousness of God. In denying the righteousness of God, it denies God himself. And God does not allow us to wait long in knowing his response. He rejects the oflfer- ing of Cain and accepts the offering of Abel. Abel is the brother of Cain. He represents the second born, the second birth, the spiritual life and apprehension. He brings before God an offering, an offer- ing so terrible, so repulsive, that we turn away with a shiver. On a low mound of earth he lays a spotless, helpless lamb, and then with a sudden, quick stroke of his sharp, merciless knife, he cuts its throat till the crimson stream .stains all its beating sides. Every natural 190 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES sentiment rises up and repudiates the scene. Between the offering of Cain and the offering of Abel there is no possible . comparison. Everything in the offering of Cain appeals to the natural mind. It is aesthetic, it is beauti- ful, it bears witness to the toil, the strain, the labor and the industry of Cain. The offering of Abel has not one thing in it to recommend it to the sense of the beautiful in us. In con- templating it there is only a feeling of horror rising into antagonism and indignation against Abel himself. Our sympathies go out to Cain; we, unconsciously, admire him for what he has wrought. We feel in our inmost soul like denouncing Abel, driving him from our pres- ence as a cruel and senseless butcher. If, therefore, in the offering of Abel there cannot be found the most intellectual as well as spiritual reasons for it, the record of the scene with all its sickening and useless brutal- ity is enough to wipe that part of the Bible from the face of the earth and throw grave and just doubts upon the integrity of the rest. But the offering of Abel justifies itself at every point of view. In that hour Abel takes God's side against himself. He owns God's estimate as supreme and true. He says in effect : "O God! thy Word is true. I am a sinner in nature as well as practice. Thou knowest me altogether. Thou knowest I have no power of righteousness in me that can meet THE devil's righteousness 191 thy demands. I have inherited the sentence of death in direct descent because of what I am as well as what I do. According to thy judgment, thou who canst not He, I ought to die. I do not attempt to discuss with thee upon the justice of that sentence. Thou sayest it. It is thy Word. Thy Word is the end of all controversy. I surrender and own the judg- ment just. But, O God, if I take thee at thy Word concerning judgment I will also take thee at thy Word concerning grace. At Eden's gates thou didst provide a sacrifice by which my parents might come unto thee ; on the basis of that sacrifice thou didst cover their sin and give them the strength of a new and spiritual life. And thou hast said, by that tremendous act, that if I bring an offering of blood before thee thou wilt also accept me. I offer thee this spotless lamb as my substi- tute, I offer his death as the expiation of my guilt and nature in thy sight." In a word, Abel looked through this scene to the far away cross of Christ, and in the slain lamb saw a picture of the crucified, and looking there, by faith, offered to God the sacrifice which God himself had provided. In offering this slain lamb Abel took God at his Word, accepted his estimate, owned his righteousness, and took the place of dependent faith on God. The offering of Cain was more beautiful, but it dishonored God in denying the testi- mony of God. 192 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Abel's offering had no beauty in it. It was full of judgment, sin-bearing, sorrow and death, but it honored God in taking him at his Word. And God met his faith. Fire leaped from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. Abel was accepted and Cain rejected. And let It be remembered, the acceptance and the rejection had nothing to do with the two men in themselves. Abel was not accepted because he was intrinsically a good man, and Cain rejected because he was intrinsically a bad man. Noi Abel was accepted because his offer- ing pleased the Lord. Cain was rejected be- cause his offering did not please the Lord. And Cain had the same opportunity as Abel. God asks him why his countenance is fallen. He tells him that the sin offering (not sin as it reads in the text) the sin offering, Heth at the door. There were other sheep or goats, Cain could have taken a lamb or a goat and offered a bloody offering before the Lord and he would have been accepted even as Abel. He did not. He stood by his beautiful but insulting offering, and God rejected him. God rejected Cain's offering and from henceforth that offering is known as "The way of Cain." It is the way of Cain and not God. It Is the way of the flesh and not the Spirit. It is the THE DEVIL*S RIGHTEOUSNESS 193 way of self-righteousness and not the right- eousness of God. It is the way of Cain. And as the righteousness which is so popu- lar to-day is self-righteousness, then this righteousness is none other than the way of Cain come to town again. You may find this way of Cain at every turn. You may see his offering wherever you glance. You will find it in the latest maga- zine article, in the motif of the latest story, the drawing attraction in the theatre, the heaped up beauty in some modern pulpits, where its flowers are transformed into the rhythm, the philosophy, and the bloodless theol- ogy of modern poets ; it is the inspiration for the curriculae of many colleges and gives fragrance to baccalaureate sermons and com- mencement appeals. Wherever you hear men talking about the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, appealing to the sweet- ness and light within, and openly and posi- tively denying the need of the blood of atone- ment, and bringing Jesus Christ down to the level of a common and elder brother, you may know that it is the way of Cain setting itself up once more. And whence comes the sudden revival of this offering, this startling and widespread ex- ploitation of self righteousness, the righteous- iiess without blood? 194 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES The Apostle Paul tells us. In 2 Corinth- ians, 11:14, 15, it is written, "Satan him- self is transformed into an angel of light . . . .his ministers. . . as the Ministers of Righteousness." There are would-be thinkers who make light of the doctrine of the personality of the Devil. They spell devil without a d as they spell God with two o's. Good and evil is their scheme. And there never was a more unintellectual, untenable proposition in the world than that evil, in itself, is impersonal. Evil as an active property, as a force working in the world, does not exist apart from personality. The evil that is wrought in the world is wrought through personality and intellectuality. The combinations of evil as seen in human life bear witness at times to a keenness of intellectual- ity and a strength of individuality and per- sonality that are altogether beyond the ca- pacity of the immediate agent, who seems like unto one taken in the snare of a fowler, and hypnotized by suggestions entirely above and independent of his own. I am willing to believe that many of those who deny the personality of the Devil in such a light and easy way do not see the full con- clusion to which such a premise must neces- sarily lead them. They do not see that the denial of the personality of the devil is the equivalent denial of the personality of the THE devil's righteousness 195 Son of God and, in the end, the total destruc- tion of his character as a sinless man. And yet all this is true; for it is to be re- membered that our Lord Jesus is inducted into his work and office on earth through the gateway of the Devil's temptation. That temptation was either subjective or objective. If the Devil is not a distinct personality, then it was subjective; that is to say, Jesus was tempted from within and not from with- out. If this be so, then Jesus had evil within him. If he had evil within him he was not sinless. If he was not sinless within he could not be sinless in action. If he was not sinless in action he was sinful in nature. If he was sinful in nature he was not conceived through the Holy Ghost. He was not virgin born. He is not God the Son. He cannot be the Saviour and Redeemer of men. If the Devil was not personal, the character of Jesus Christ is irremediably gone. If the Devil was not personal, then Jesus Christ was not personal. The language which sets forth the one sets forth the other. The force of language in relation to the one must be accepted in relation to the other. If then Jesus Christ was personal, the Devil was also. And this is the doctrine of the Word of God. There are those who accept the person- ality of the Devil, but who limit his operations 196 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES and agency. They look upon him as the agent alone of out-breaking vice and sin. They associate him with all that is repulsive and brutal; all that is sickening and horrible. There never was a greater mistake. The Apostle declares that in this age Satan is transformed into an angel of light. He seeks to do his most subtle work, not as a repulsive, unattractive devil, but as an angel of light. He seeks to win by the aesthetic and the beautiful. His ministers are not the coarse and sicken- ing agents of a rank and repulsive wickedness, they are ministers of righteousness. The ministry of Satan in this hour is the ministry of righteousness. But what kind of righteousness? Surely it cannot be the righteousness that comes by way of the blood of the cross. The whole attitude of the Devil to that cross makes it impossible. Look at the attitude of the Devil to the cross. His one continual effort was to keep Christ from offering himself there as the divinely ap- pointed sacrifice. On the mount of temptation he tried to lead him to commit suicide by throwing himself from the roof of the temple. Failing in that he incited the crowd at Nazareth to throw him over the hillside and kill him ; nevertheless he THE devil's righteousness 197 escaped out of their hands. After this he put it into the mind of a lot of conspirators to induce him, if possible, to claim the crown of Judea and thus declare open rebellion against the rule of the Caesar. He hoped that conflict would arise and the Son of God be killed iri the melee. In the garden of Gethsemane he sought to drive the blood out of his veins; he tried to produce a hemorrhage and thus kill him before he could reach the cross. On the cross he tempted him with the su- preme temptation of his earthly career. He moved the people to gather about him and taunt him with his apparent helplessness ; say- ing unto him that if he were indeed the Son of God, let him come down from the cross and everybody would believe in him. Jesus knew that sixty thousand angels unseen were above him ready, if he so desired, to lift him from the cross; this is his own testimony. There was nothing for Jesus to do but give one glance and they would have so lifted him. Had he done so he could never have been the redeemer of men, and the hope of re- demption would have gone out in a devil's laugh. The Devil sought to win here and failed; for, shortly after that, the Son of God cried, "It is finished," and dismissed his own spirit. This persistent attitude of the Devil bears witness, in spite of the failure, that he was against the cross and hates the blood of it. 198 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES In the nature of the case then, when he sends his ministers out to preach a right- eousness, it cannot be the righteousness that comes by the blood of the cross. It must be a righteousness without blood. And as the righteousness that is now being preached everywhere is a righteousness without blood, then it is the righteousness which Satan is sending his ministers forth to preach. It is the Devil's righteousness. And in seeking to preach this righteousness the Devil is keen and wise. If he can suc- ceed in leading men to be good and kind, and pure, and righteous, without faith in a cruci- fied Christ, he has won a great victory. Suppose for a moment the Devil should lead this Twentieth century into a drunken orgy of sin and shame and outbreaking vice and in- iquity, what would happen? There would be a reaction to the cross and the blood of Christ. When, in the French Revolution, they took a bedizzened prostitute and putting the cap of licentiousness in the name of liberty on her head seated her on the high altar of Notre Dame; when the old church under the shadow of the Halles was invaded by the unspeakable men and women of that quarter and the quarters of Saint Antoine and Saint Denis and turned into a house of indescribable ill fame, and scenes took place there that chroniclers of the hour THE devil's righteousness 199 never dared to put upon the printed page in full; when the filth and stench, and unmea- sured bestiality of the gutters of Paris swelled and overflowed and flooded the city with their human sewage, their putridity, their reeking sensualism, lust and debauchery, the depths in this out-break of human wickedness and devilishness were so appalling, that there came a sudden halt, and a lightning- like reaction from democracy and republican- ism, from irreligion and infidelity, to legitimacy and intense Catholicism. Let the Devil lead the world into an out- break of unfettered sin and the law of utili- tarianism, the law of self-defence, would, in a great degree, drive the world to the foot of the cross and there cry for the expiation which that cross alone afifords. If, on the contrary, Satan should lead men to repudiate vice and sin and live lives of ap- parent truth and righteousness apart from the cross of Christ, he would throw them back in confidence on themselves and make the re- pudiation of the cross of Christ universal. And this is what he is trying to do. This is why he is preaching righteousness. He would like to see this righteousness established and practised everywhere. The Devil would be glad to see prohibition successful. Nothing would please him more than to be able to shut up every saloon and every house of shame. Nothing would please 200 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES him better than to see the world going on in the walk of decency and outward cleanness. It may be said the world is full of this out- breaking sin and shame, and that it is the Devil who in the last analysis is really the cause of it. This is true, and the explanation is simple enough. God is salt. To be without God is to be without salt. To be without salt is to be essentially corrupt. The Devil is without God. There is no God within him. He is without salt. He is absolute corruption. From that day when in the beginning he turned away from fellowship with God and became a devil because of this very separation from God, he has been growing more and more corrupt. He is like a leper. No matter what a leper may touch he corrupts it. His intention may be the best in the world, whatever he touches he corrupts. Whatever may be the intention of the Devil, no matter how much he may in- tend to keep a man clean, the very moment he touches him he makes him more or less cor- rupt. Nevertheless, in this age, he is making a supreme effort to minimize his power of re- pulsive corruption and achieve his own ends in leading men into a righteousness that does not go by way of the cross. To that end he is behind all movements that lead men away from the cross. He is willing that men shall believe anything but the efficacy of the blood. With him it is anything but the blood. He is willing that men shall believe in the Father- THE devil's righteousness 201 hood of God. That is a great scheme of the Devil, — to appeal to men to consider the fatherlincss of God. He is willing that men shall glorify the earthly life of the Son of God. He is pleased when men speak of his goodness and righteousness. It pleases him whenever Christ is held up as a good example to men. He is delighted whenever he can hear a preacher exhort his hearers to follow the example of Christ. He is willing that men shall grow pathetic over the sorrow and tragedy of the cross. He is willing that men shall see Jesus there as a martyr, as one who came too far in advance of his time — but, as a divine sacrifice — as shedding the blood that atones for sin and can alone redeem a soul from sin and the power of death — Never ! Anything but the blood. But the keenest and the most successful line of operation is to lead men to preach a righteousness without blood and to lead men to offer that righteousness in the belief that it is satisfying to God. This ministry of righteousness without blood is a masterpiece effort of Satanic agency. It is worthy of him who is called "that old serpent which is the devil and Satan." Remember it therefore well, the righteous- ness which is now abroad in the earth is the righteousness of the Devil, — the Devil's right- eousness. 202 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Whenever, therefore, you hear men talking about righteousness, test it and see whether it has the blood of the cross in it. In the cata- combs, when they wished to know if the dead body that was brought there for burial was the body of a true martyr, a faithful witness of Christ, they pulled aside the robe or winding sheet; if they found a small vial filled with blood, they knew that this had been a true and not a false martyr. When you hear or read of righteousness in this day, pull aside the fold of it and see whether it has the blood of the cross in it. When you hear preachers testifying that all men are the sons of God by nature, that the fatherhood of God is the pre-eminent thing, and that each man has in himself an equivalent power with which to meet the righteousness of God, you may know, whether these preach- ers themselves know it or not, and no matter how honest and true they may be, that they are the ministers of Satan, preaching a right- eousness without blood, a self-righteousness that denies the truth and the warning of God, and is nothing less than the Devil's right- eousness. And this ministry of bloodless righteousness is a sign of the last times. It is a sign of that time of which the Apostle Paul so clearly warns, in which the church shall depart from the faith, be turned from the truth, and turned to fables; when it shall be spoiled through THE DEVIL'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 203 philosophy and vain deceit of men ; when it will listen to the imaginations and suggestions of the flesh, to the word of man rather than the Word of God. It is a sign of that time of which our Lord foretold, that time when false teachers should come in his name and preach a righteousness and apparent truth that denies his name ; the time when men should talk in the name of Christ and lead men away from the true Christ. It is a sign that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh. That hour when he will secretly descend into the upper heavens to take those who have been ransomed by his blood and claimed it as their atoning shelter, to himself; and then, later, be revealed in unlimited judgment upon a world fooled by the Devil's righteousness and with- out the righteousness divine. It behooves every one to know where he stands. If you are building on your own righteous- ness, if you are offering that to God and ex- pecting to find security in it, then it is time you awoke and were undeceived. Hear again what God says : There are none righteous. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The sentence of death has passed upon all men. There is no righteous- ness in which you can stand before God except the righteousness wrougH tlr^ough the 264 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in him. All your righteousness, the very best though it be in the world, before him, is no better than filthy rags. It is time you awoke to the fact that the great issue in its last analysis is, the issue of the blood. That was the issue between God and Cain. That was the difference in final terms be- tween Cain and Abel. The difference between them was blood. Abel was accepted because he offered the blood of sacrifice. Cain was rejected because he did not offer it. That was the difference on the dark night in Egypt between the Egyptians and the Jews. The death angel went forth at midnight. Wherever he found the blood of a sacrificial lamb sprinkled upon the door of a house he passed over, recognizing that the blood was the blood of a substitute, that the lamb had died in their stead. Wherever he found a house without blood upon it, no matter what the character of those within, no matter how good they were, he entered and smote the first born. The difference between the saved and the lost in Egypt that night was the blood of a lamb. And that is the difference now. If you are saved for time and eternity, it is because you have by faith taken shelter under the blood of the Lamb of God; you have THE DEVIL'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 205 claimed Christ as your sacrifice and personal substitute. If you have not taken shelter under that blood, if you have not claimed Christ by faith as your sacrifice and personal substitute, no matter how good and honest you are, you are not saved, you are under the judgment and condemnation of a holy God who can by no means ckar those whom he considers guilty. It is the blood of Christ which alone gives title to heaven and the throne of God. Look at that scene in the seventh chapter of the Revelation. A great crowd of people are standing before the throne of God, and accepted of him. How did they get there? The Apostle John asks one of the elders who they are. He tells him certain things concerning them and then says that they "have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb." And then he adds the tremendous con- clusion : "Therefore are they before the throne of God." "Therefore!" what an expletive that is. "They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb, therefore are they before the throne of God." It is the blood of the lamb, the blood of Christ, that gives them title to the throne and presence of God. 206 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "The blood of the lamb." Never forget it! Not the flowers and the fruit of Cain's offering. Not the best culture of your human nature. Not the best in you. Not your goodness, sweetness and Hght. Not the righteousness without blood. Nay! and never ! The one and only thing that can give you title to the throne and presence of God is the blood of that lamb who was slain on the cross at Calvary, God's Christ, the seeking Saviour of men. May God lead you, if you have not already done so, to offer to God by faith the sacrifice which he at infinite cost has provided for you, and receive from him that new and spiritual life which will enable you to walk in the ways of righteousness and truth, be master over sin and self, and a living reincarnation of the Son of God on earth. Let me appeal to you to tear aside your own self-righteousness which is but a foul and loathsome thing in the sight of God, the concrete of self-boasting and actual denial of the true God, fling yourself at the foot of the cross, own the all-sufficient sacrifice, re- ceive the benediction of his grace and life, and know that you are in Christ, and in him the very "righteousness of God in him." Do this before it is too late ; before the swift descending Christ reveals your sad deception and summons you to a judgment in which your poor self-righteousness shall shrivel as a withered leaf before an all-devouring flame. MENTAL ASSASSINATION OR CHRISTIAN SCIENCE A Physical, Intellectual, Moral and Spiritual Peril Recently, the words "Mental Assassination" have been reported in the daily journals and repeated in conversation from one end of the country to the other. Assassination ! That is an ugly word. It brings a thrill, a shiver. It has in itself the power to depict a scene. It is night. A figure comes gliding down through the shadows of the street. It stops and contemplates a certain house. Then it moves with stealthy step to the rear of the building. A window is softly opened. Now the figure is standing inside the dining room. The dark lantern is lit. A subdued ray shows the gleam of something stcel-likc in the man's hand. His feet are shod with slippers. He finds the stairs. He goes up the steps with a tread as light and noiseless as a thirsty tiger 208 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES seeking its prey. He enters the sleeping room. The long, regular breathing tells that the owner of the house is deep in sleep. The light from the lantern is turned on enough to show the location of the sleeper's heart. There is a quick down-stroke, a strange thud, as when a knife strikes human flesh — a moan — and the hideous thing vanishes from the room — gathers its booty and disappears as it came. The next morning the streets are ring- ing with the newsboy's cry, "Alan murdered. Man assassinated." But this word "assassination" is now quali- fied. It is not assassination alone, but "Mental" assassination. The qualificative does not mod- ify the force of the word, it intensifies it. It does not take away the fact of death, it makes it all the more terrible. It announces a new instrumentality, it reveals a sure and subtle skill. The new instrumentality is mind. It is assassination produced by the operation of mind upon mind. Mental power is brought to bear upon another till the personality of that other is affected, the will power and the de- cision paralyzed. The person so affected can- not walk down stairs without risk of falling or stumbling, without danger to life or limb, can- not cross a street or get on a car without im- minent peril. The nervous system yields to the strain. It grows weak, fear becomes a torment, the mental pressure is terrific, there is a collapse, and the victim dies — has been assassinated, killed, murdered, just as much MENTAL ASSASSINATION 209 as though stabbed to death by a knife in the murderer's hand. This is mental assassination! Is such a thing possible? It is said to be possible. It is said to X)v actually true. A particular person, a young married woman, at her home one night, felt a strange, cold, icy blast blowing upon her, chilling her to the very heart. She plunged into hot baths, but could not arrest the icy chill. She under- stood what it was. A person she knew well, at that time distant many miles from her, one who had been her teacher in mental culture, in spite of the great distance that separated them, was now exercising malicious animal magnetism, was sending mental death waves upon her. She felt herself being paralyzed, upon the very threshold of death. She took up her New Testament and tried to read it as an antidote to this mental assault. At that moment her husband came in. He was the picture of terror, every nerve was unstrung. In getting off the train he barely escaped '• fatal accident. He felt he was being pursued, hounded, by some strange, unseen force, to his own destruction. All this is related with evident sincentj% with an intensity of dramatic fervor, with minuteness of detail and a sense of horrorism which surpasses even the language and the method of a Poe. 210 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Is it true? No matter whether it be true or not, such a concept is a disaster to any community. For any considerable body of men and women to believe in such a thing and be affected by it, living in constant dread as though the assassin were upon their tracks, looking with suspicion upon every face, and shivering in anticipation of the fatal but unseen blow, such a concept is a moral as well as intellectual disaster to any community. But if such a concept should arise from the midst of a system of religion, it would be enough to damn that religion, no matter though it came in the name of God and his Christ, and were borne to the door of every house on arch-angelic wings and amid the burst of high hosannas from angelic choirs. And this concept does arise from the midst of a professedly religious system. It arises from the midst of that system known as Christian Science. Christian Science gives occasion to this concept because it belongs to the category of mental operation. It gives rise to it because in its final analysis Christian Science is a lav less and exaggerated hypno- tism. Hypnotism is the operation of mind upon mind through the law of suggestion. A certain individual has a fancy that he cannot go down the street beyond a fixed point. At this point he balks and will go no farther. He has all sorts of reasons about it and cannot be MENTAL ASSASSINATION 21 1 persuaded to change his resolution. A friend who has an exceptionally strong will and a compelling power of mind suggests to him that he is guilty of a great absurdity, that there is every reason for him to repudiate his fancy and go beyond the hindering spot and, finally, prevails upon him to go. Another has a splitting headache or some nervous dis- order that incapacitates him for work. He is continually talking about his ailments to others. He makes a cult of them. He is wholly taken up with them. His friends fall into the habit of inquiring about them, dis- cussing them. His ills in reality become his occupation till he is nothing bettered but al- ways worse. A strong minded and strong willed friend determines to cure him. He be- gins by telling him how well he looks. He persists in telling him that. He suggests that he shows evidence of increased strength and vigor. He laughs at the idea of any real dis- ease, declares he needs more exercise, points out the very exercise he ought to take. So constant is he in the suggestion of health and strength that the sick man yields. He begins to think himself that he is well, f^'-nally, he says he is well. Soon he is so taktu up with his "wellness" that he forgets his illness. He is actually well. He finds his normal condi- tion. It is the case of the substitution of one will power for another, the weaker is rein- forced by the stronger. Having no definite 212 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES will of his own, he has been in the flotsam and the jetsam of his own weakness and the mis- directed wills of others. Having at last yielded to the strong will which suggests the positive health attitude, he is dominated and governed by it. It is an issue of wills. Christian Science takes up this issue. It divides humanity into two classes of wills, the dominant and the submissive wills. The dom- inant wills are the possible healers, the sub- missive wills are the patients. The aim of Christian Science is to cultivate each of these wills. It would increase the power of domi- nance in the one and the state of submissive- ness in the other. It is on this principle of the stronger and the weaker will that it seeks to produce its cures and extend its influence. And it has a basis on which to proceed. There is in each human being a greater or less de- posit by nature of curative forces. Every phy- sician knows that it is not his drug, his remedy, which finally accomplishes the cure, it is nature herself. The best any physician can do is to appeal to these forces, free them from their cloggings or hindrances and get them to work. On this foundation of the cura naturae Christian Science operates. Through the law of suggestion it leads the patient to appeal to the curative forces within him and permit them to act unhinderedly. It does not tell the patient that this is the process. It MfeNtAL ASSASSlNAtlON 2lS seeks to lead him to deny the existence of his sickness. It seeks by establishing the idea of negation, to allow the positivism of nature to assert itself; taking the hindering, objecting will of the sick man out of the way, the will that clogs and bars the true activities of the body, it points to the results of nature's loyal response to the yielded will and claims its proposition of no sickness proved. All this of course is mainly true and in lim- ited degree in the region of nervous disorders. So far, Christian Science has not restored a lost eye or a lost limb. Nevertheless, it must be noted that Mrs. Eddy claims these things can be done. She tells us in her monumental text book, "Christian Science and Health," that the lobster has no mind, and, just because it has no mind, when it loses a claw it imme- diately replaces it by another. Mrs. Eddy asserts that the moment we can minimize the capacity of our mind, the moment we can reach the mental state of the lobster, wc shall be able at will to replace any member of our body lost by accident or the surgeon's knife. Be that as it may, it is evident that the opera- tion of a strong will upon a weaker may lead it through the law of suggestion to bring about deliverance from many nervous troubles. But it ought to be equally evident that if this mental operation can produce a certain degree of good, it can also produce an enor- mous amount of evil. It ought to be clear 214 THE SIGNS OF THE TlMES that if any combination of strong minds and wills should 'be concentrated upon another mind and will ; if the individual upon whom this influence was discharged had faith in the power of these minds and, at the same time, was pervaded by an intense and constant fear — it ought to be plain enough that the indi- vidual under such assault would yield, might fall into a state of will paralysis, break down, become a mental wreck and die. Thus the en- trance of one will into and pervading the mind and will of another, is precisely like the robber or the assassin who stealthily enters the home of another. The very idea that one personality can be invaded, possessed, obsessed by the personality of another, is disintegrating, de- moralizing and, in proportion as it is ex- panded and made a fact of experience, be- comes an unspeakable menace, an indescriba- ble physical danger to the community. Thus Christian Science is a Physical Peril. Christian Science is not only a physical peril, it is intellectual bankruptcy. If to-day the teachers in our public schools were teaching that there is no chemistry, no mathematics, no applied science, the result to the scholars would be intellectual disintegra- tion and disaster. It would mean mental and intellectual bankruptcy. Christian Science is doing that very thing! It teaches that there is no chemistry, no mathematics, no applied science. It teaches MENTAL ASSASSINATION 2 1 5 all this by and through its fundamental propo- sition that there is no matter, that matter does not exist. If there is no matter there surely can be no chemistry. There are no original and radical elements, no qualities or distinct properties. There are no affinities, no repul- sions, no possible combinations, mixtures or products. To say that one thing is a gas, an other a salt ; that one thing is fluid and anothei solid; that there are deposits and precipitates, is absurd ; for, as there is no matter, there can be neither chemical properties nor substance. None of these things exist. Chemistry as a science, as a fact, is no better than the baseless fabric of a dream. If there is no matter there can be no mathe- matics, no addition, no minus and plus, no multiplication or division, no weight, density, form, measure, ratio or proportion. There can be no construction, no relation of part to part, no distance, no transit over that distance, no constructed means of locomotion. There can be no possible calculation. Astronomers tell us that the second on an astronomical meridian is equal to the twentieth part of the thickness of a hair, and that by means of this second, when used as the parallax of a star, its distance of over four billions of miles from our world may be accurately determined. Great mathematicians tell us that the undula- tion of the yellow ray of sodium is equal to the 590 millionth of a millimeter and should 216 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES be used as the invariable standard of measure with which to compute the infinite distances of the heavenly bodies. But if there is no matter, then there is no sodium. If there is no sodium certainly there is no yellow ray. Where there is no yellow ray there can be no undulaUon thereof. Where there is no undu- lation there is no measure and the suggested standard, the 590 millionth of a millimeter, is a fanciful fiction. No such computation or calculation is possible. Calculation itself is impossible. Without calculation there is an end of mathematics. There is, therefore, no such thing as mathematics. Mathematics do not exist. Christian Science teaches all that in deny- ing matter. Such teaching is intellectual bankruptcy. It is more than that, it is moral bankruptcy. The logic of no matter means that the uni- verse is a deception. All creation is a lie. Nothing we see, or hear, or touch, or feel is true. Our whole environment is a falsehood. That sunrise is a falsehood, a rank deception. Turn your gaze to the eastern sky. It is domed with darkness. Suddenly, the dark- ness is shot through and through to the zenith with arrows of light, each arrow tipped with gold and turning to streams of crimson fire. The blackness breaks into masses of grey clouds, and these flee away like scattered squadrons of a frightened foe before the on- MENTAL ASSASSINATION 2 1 7 coming of the king. The great dome is changed to a canopy of infinite blue. Other clouds rise and sweep forward like the king's retainers, clothed with fleece such as kings wear, fringed with purple and amethyst and heavy with gold. The sun rises, at first a thin rim of quivering glory on the low hori- zon, afterwards a blazing circumference, fill- ing all the world of earth and sky with out- spreading splendor; and then, at last, with the assured power of measureless strength, as- cending regally to that upper throne where for the day he reigns supreme. And all this is a lie, a deception, an error of mortal mind. Every ray of silver flashing, every gleam of golden glory, is proclaiming to our attentive souls that we have been fooled, deceived and trifled with — there is no sunrise and no wealth of changing color. Look at the sunset. View it from the deck of ship in mid-ocean. The great ball of fire swings slowly down to touch the wave, and then, turning to a wheel of fire, burns its deep rut of flame into the breaking wave, the waters rising up to swal- low its palpitating circumference, and the night dropping down from above to draw over it the deep darkness, as when a hood is drawn over the face of one condemned; there is a quiver of light like a great voiceless protest — then it is gone as a lamp blown out in a sudden wind, and far upward in the night sky the 218 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES calm stars serenely watch where a blazing world has been. But every ray of splendor from that sinking sun, every flame of color from that slow descending world, is a falsehood. There is no sunset, there is no color, there is no sun. Mark that storm at sea. Note how the heavens bend down. A dark cloud like a giant hand reaches to the very depths and entrails of the sea, gathers the waves in its fist, lifts them and flings them till they fall and rise again, bellowing as wild beasts bellow. The winds let loose among them like unseen tormentors with roaring voices and smiting whip-lashes, drive them ua a tumult against each other, filling them with foam and fury, and sending them to dash themselves with crash and thunder and hoarse cryings on the sounding shore, dragging with them masts and spars of sinking ships and bodies of drowning men and women. And all this scene is a lie — an unreal thing. No waves ever break, no winds ever wail, or cry, or sweep, no storm ever thunders above land or sea. There is neither land nor sea; for, there is no matter. That glorious landscape ! It is four o'clock of a summer's afternoon. The hills are all a-swoon in the soft encircling haze. The tree tops are turned to velvet browns and dusky greens. The brook babbles lazilv on its shining, rippling way, each MENTAL ASSASSINATION 219 whitened pebble glear.iing up through the parted silver of its flow. You lie stretched at ease in the shadows amid the sedgy grass and hear the hum of insect life, and dream your- self in a world where foreheads have no wrinkles and hearts no r^re, Well-a-day! it is all a dream. From first to last it is all a dream. There is no noisy brook, no hills that lie in misty depths, no over-arching sky of kindly blue. It is all a falsehood of those ly- ing things we call the senses. Yes, all is deception and arrant falsehood, a mean, deceiving hypocrisy — the clasp of hands, the touch of lips, the voice of promise, the covenant oath, the men and women and laughing children whom you meet. That woman with the rounded form, the classic con- tour, the shape divine, eyes whose depths draw down your soul, and whose hands reach out. to claim you as her own and make quick profit of your soft surrendered will; that man with the torso of an Apollo, the brow of an Olympian god, the gesture of imperial power ; that child with the sun-kissed ringlets and mouth of rosebud and smiles of innocence ; these, with song of birds and fragrance of flowers ; these things of earth, and all the shin- ing things of night which in that upper heaven we call the starry worlds — these are rank de- ceptions, creations of mortal error, founda- tionless in fact, figments of fancy, the fading spectres, the unreal ghosts of unreal and empty things. 220 THr: signs of the times And what does this environment of illusion, of delusion, deception and falsehood mean? It means the universe in which we supposedly live is making, not for righteousness, but for unrighteousness. This seeming creation by which we are surrounded being a falsehood in- spires to falsehood concerning ourselves. It is impossible to live in a world where all we see, hear, feel and touch, is untrue, without being inspired to untruth ourselves. Being un- der obligation to deny as real every out- ward and visible fact, our relation to ourselves and to each other can be only one continued falsehood, one maze, one round of deception, hypocrisy and false pretence. This is the logic of that fundamental propo- sition of Christian Science — no matter. Such a system with such a proposition means intellectual bankruptcy and moral deg- radation. Christian Science is a paralysis. It is a paralysis of all the sweet humanities, of all the helpful amenities of mortal life. It enables a mother to look with cold in- difference on the crushed, bleeding form of her child, crushed and bleeding from a fright- ful accident and say, "There is no accident. There is no matter. There is no pain. My child does not suffer." It enables the wife to look with unmoved calmness while her husband tosses in the throes of fever anr^ say, with even speech, "He MENTAL ASSASSINATION 221 does not suffer. There is no fever; for there is no matter in which fever can burn. Nay! the truth is — actually — he does not have a body at all." It enables men and women to walk amid the sorrowing and the troubled and shed no tears, because they deny the existence of sorrow, or want, or woe. It is true, that the clasp of a hand has helped many a weak soul to fight another battle. It is true, that in this busy life, a kind and sympathetic word spoken at the right moment has helped men and women to stand true and steadfast in the hour of trial. It is true, that a tear of fellowship with another's sorrow has sweetened the bitterness of that soul and enabled him to sing his song of hope in the night of despair and go for- ward to a better day; but this system, this professed religion, this Christian Science, par- alyzes all that. It denies the right of any human heart to have sympathy, or consideration for another's pain or woe. It teaches that to speak a word of sympathy, to let fall a tear, to weep with thos« who weep, to own and try to bear the burden under which another falls, is to sus- tain the false idea that men and women do have cares or sorrows or such things as heart ache and pain. Christian Science repudiates all this humanness and turns men and women into cold-blooded, self-centered, pulseless ego- tists; and if it could influence all the human 222 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES race to its inhuman conclusions, it would cre- ate a world from which the angels of mercy and love would flee in horror as from the midst of a race of frozen monsters. Yes, Christian Science paralyzes all that makes humanity helpful and attractive : all that saves the race from becoming a mob of incarnate devils. Christian Science is a system of absolute immorality. What would you say if every minister in the land were teaching that lying, cheating, swearing, drunkenness, robbery and murder were not crimes ; that there was no sin in any of these things? And yet that is just what Christian Science is teaching. Christian Science teaches that lying, cheat- ing, swearing, drunkenness, robbery and mur- der are not crimes ; that there is no sin in them. You hold up your hands in horror and say, "Nay ! it cannot be. No such system would dare to come before an enlightened com- munity and teach that." But Christian Science does do that. Christian Science teaches that, because Christian Science says there is no such thing as sin. Just as much as the proposition that matter does not exist is fundamental to Chris- tian Science, so is the proposition that there is no sin. Again and again Christian Science MENTAL ASSASSINATION 223 repeats that postulate. Over and over again in every imaginable form of statement it pro- claims that sin is not a fact, that there is no fact, no actuality in sin. Sin is a false con- cept, it does not exist at all. Now, if there is no such thing as sin, if sin does not exist, then no act of any kind can be sin. The man who fails to meet the standards of righteousness and truth, the woman who al- lows the ermine of her chastity to be soiled, have committed no sin. No matter what the world's standards may be ; no matter what the judgments of courts may pronounce; no matter what the legal, physical, moral, or penal consequences of any act may be, there is no sin. It will not do to say that the false idea that sin exists produces evil results. It is impossible! As there is no sin, no actual evil of any sort, no matter what the concept, the consequences cannot be evil or sinful ; for, here is a proposition that is utterly inviolable, it is this: where there is no fact of sin there can be no act of sin. What then must be the actual moral con- dition of an inner expert circle of Christian Science where men and women do not be- lieve there is any such fact as sin; and that no matter what the concept, or the yielding to the concept may be, there never can be an act that is really sin? What an amazing system by which the dishonored man ind the fallen 224 TH£ StGNS or THE TIMES woman may deliver both conscience and con- sciousness of every deed, or word, or thought of sin. In all this world there is no system of human thought so packed with the germs, with the bacilli, of casuistic iniquity and soul deception. Christian Science is an unspeakable social wickedness. It denies the need and the exalted place of marriage. It denies the need of marriage as the means for the reproduction of the race. It denies it on the basis of this far reaching proposition that matter does not exist. As there is no matter there is no such thing as a human body. As there is no human body, then no man ever begot a child, no woman ever brought it to the birth. As man has never been born and cannot die, the race has neither increased nor decreased. It remains in statu quo. It has, therefore, no need of reproduc- tion. Marriage is not a necessity to that end. When a Christian Science wife reaches the high altitude where its much married and di- vorced founder now dwells, she will see that the woman who wishes a child has no need of the agency of a human father; all she has to do is to think intensely on the subject and she. will bring forth a child; and this child, in the final analysis, will be an idea born of her Miental contemplation and brought about by MENTAL ASSASSINATION 225 self division — that is to say, on the principle of bacteria. Christian Science wives are to recognize that motherhood in the ordinary sense of the word is not the highest function of a wife. They are to recognize that marriage on a fleshly basis is utterly demoralizing and wholly disturbing to spiritual conception and must — as far as possible — be repudiated. Mother- hood, as motherhood has been understood since the beginning of the world, must be avoided. Motherhood avoided ! ! Motherhood put in the category of that which is below a woman's highest and noblest function ! ! ! This is the Christian Science idea of moth- erhood. Consider, I pray you, God's idea of mother- hood. I wish I could describe it to you. It is night in Judea. It is night above the little town of Bethle- hem. The heavens seem washed afresh with the waves of holiness and purity. Each world is as though newly burnished. Out there Orion gleams with his star studded belt. Above him the Pleiades scintillate like a handful of dia- monds flung down by the largess of a king. The constellations have sailed in together like a fleet of silver ships from an infmite sea. 226 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Two great planets in their rush to shine above the Bethlehem plains have come so near each other that the rim of the one seems indenting the other until they shine and glow like one vast, double star. From the heights far up, a great company of the tall angels of God come down to the borders of the softly sleep- ing world. Then a notable star detaches itself from the teeming heavens like a golden lamp let down by invisible chains and unseen mas- ter hands. Out of this swinging censer of flashing light and expanding splendor there floats upon the expectant air an incense of praise never before heard by the sons of men. And now it is the voice of the angelic choir that is heard. They sing and all the earth is still while the strange, heart-compelling music fills the listening ears of startled shepherds keeping their peaceful sheep. They look and they listen with awe-smitten souls ; and lo, these stars are throwing down their tribute of light and these glory angels are singing their song and lifting their chants above a new born babe. All heaven is moved, all the universe is in commotion, over a babe. There in a stable by the way-side is a pure virgin girl and yet — a mother. In her arms she holds the wonder babe. Childhood and motherhood find all heaven bending above them. God, the Almighty, has selected a woman's life as the gateway by which he might come into this world. The Infinite has become an infant. MENTAL ASSASSINATION 227 The eternal fatherhood owns and reveals di- vine sonship through human motherhood. From henceforth "Mother" is a holy name and childhood sacred vv^ith the touch of God. This is God's attitude to motherhood and childhood. But Christian Science degrades both moth- erhood and childhood. It degrades it to the level of merest flesh. In its eyes the love which leads a woman to give herself body and soul to the man whom she does love ; the love which leads a true man to exalt his wife as the purest and most wonderful thing in all the wide world and make her a radiant queen regnant over his life, ia Christian Science, after all, is no better than the animalism of the field and the stockyard. Christian Science in principle would lead every young man and every young woman who would reach the farther heights, to set aside the idea of mar- riage. In the inner circle of Christian Science marriage is looked upon as on the lower plane of mortal mind and not amid the alpine peaks of spiritual discernment. In order to attain to this altitude of serene deliverance from the flesh, not only should the unmarried continue unmarried, but the married should ignore the marriage bond except in sublimated and ab- stract relation. In the nature of the case, therefore. Chris- tian Science leads wives to be separated from their husbands and, not infrequently, h.usbanO? 228 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES to be separated from their wives. This sepa- ration is not always open but often in the secret of the family circle. Apparently one, and yet as far apart as though living in sun- dered worlds. Here is a man who worked and toiled all the day. To him when the day's work was over the thought of home was as comforting as the hope of a haven to a storm tossed mari- ner. When he entered the door his wife met him with a kiss, with arms about his neck, with a caress of love and heart's deep affec- tion that were like balm to his aching nerves, like fresh inspiration to his jaded will. But now — how changed all things. Since that wife has become a Christian Scientist, she has been taught that marriage is only to be tol- erated, that affection must be abstract and not real; that she must not yield to the maternal sentiment and influence of love. When her husband meets her she is kind and attentive, but there is an atmosphere between them. To him she seems, indeed, to be living in another world whither he cannot follow her. He no longer receives the kiss, the caress, the re- sponse of heart to heart, the unfolding of all the treasures of her love and sympathy. He feels as one who has been chilled by an icy blast. He goes forth and by and by his feet are found in other paths for promised peace and comfort — and lo — there is a tragedy in that house. MENTAL ASSASSINATION 229 Or, it is the husband who has become a Christian Scientist. His wife once looked upon him as the center and circumference of her home. It was her joy to love him and give herself wholly to him. But since he has become a Christian Scientist all that is changed. When he enters the home, he keeps her at a distance. To him she is now not so much his wife, the companion of his joys, as the subtle temptress of the flesh. If he should yield to her impulsive, natural attitude, she would drag him down, he thinks, to the low level of mortal mind — its fleshly illusions and spiritual destruction. Her heart cries out for love, and all that love may mean to a womanly and maternal heart. He steels himself against it. He dreads a Circe in the woman who wears his name. And she! she pines and shrinks away in an atmosphere that smothers and stifles every generous hope, every true and human impulse. A beautiful woman has told her story to the world. Christian Science entered her home and drew away from her the heart of him whom she loved and whose name she bore, of whose children she was the mother. She warns young women that Christian Science will de- stroy their noblest ideals and their purest hopes; that it appeals to the baser passion cf self end self's vv^ays, She exhorts them to 230 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES turn from it, to shun it as an evil thing, the source of sure and certain woe. Christian Science is a root of bitterness in the home. Men and women have told me and have written to me of the dark shadow in their homes since the blighting thing entered their portals. Christian Science does not openly forbid marriage. Openly it tolerates it and professes to set guards around it, but in secret discour- ages it. It teaches that marriage may for the present continue, but that celibacy is nearer right than marriage, the unmarried better than the married state. Left to itself, to work unhinderedly. Chris- tian Science will cast disrepute on marriage and break it down. Let it alone and it will overthrow marriage as the great, divine bul- wark of human society, the one uplifted dyke that keeps back the inflowing turgid tide of sensualism and black corruption. Christian Science would break down this defence, not all at once, but slowly, insidiously, and surely. When a ship comes to the ports of this country laden with pestilence and contagion, it is quarantined; and I say that this system. a system that gives rise to the suggestion of mental assassination; a system that is intel- lectually degrading; a system that paralyzes all the values of human comity, fellowship and sympathy ; a system that is downright im- MENTAL ASSASSINATION 231 morality and actual social wickedness ; a sys- tem that is a physical, intellectual, moral and social danger, ought to be quarantined and kept from the midst of decent society. But Christian Science is not only a social wickedness, it is a soul destroyer, a spiritual betrayer. It betrays Christianity. It is the Judas Iscariot of Christianity. It betrays it as Judas Iscariot betrayed the Son of God. Look at that scene of betrayal. It is night. It is half day and half night. You can see the great tree trunks, the old, gnarled olive trees, drawn in sharp silhouette against the changing sky. Men are coming and going with lanterns and staves. And now Judas comes up the green slope of the moun- tain. He approaches Jesus. He gives him the All hail and kisses him. Jesus steps back and says rebukingly, "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" Christian Science comes like Judas. It comes with the All hail of his name upon its lips. It gives him the kiss, and then it be- trays him. But it is shrewder than Judas. He sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver ; Christian Science sells him for many times thirty pieces of silver. It betrays him while it salutes and kisses him. It betrays him by denying everything for which he stands. Our Lord Jesus Christ stands for the personality of God, for prayer, for atonement by the shedding of blood, the resurrection of the 232 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES body, ascension to, and session in, heaven, salvation through faith in him, salvation through faith in him and in and through no other, the second coming, final judgment and everlasting punishment of the unrighteous. Christian Science denies all this. It denies the personality of God. God is not a person. God is only a principle. There is no God in the universe to whom a tired soul may turn and say, "Thou," and call for help. No God in the universe who can look down on that weary soul and say, "Thou art my child, come unto me and rest." It denies prayer. There is nothing for which to pray. No one to whom to pray. It denies the virgin birth. It denies that Jesus was the Christ, denies the reality of his body, teaches that he was not al- ways spiritual, not always free from error. He never made atonement on the cross. His shed blood wLo of no more avail than when flowing in his veins. He never shed his blood. He never died on the cross. While the world thought he was dead and bound in the tomb, he was alive, hiding from the gaze of men. He never ascended to heaven. At that point of so-called ascension he disappeared. He ceased to exist. He does not exist to-day. The Jesus idea has given way to the Christ idea. There is no heaven, heaven is only a state of mind. There is no judgment to come. There is no hell, and there are none who are lost. No one need.= "-^ be saved from sin. Ip MENTAL ASSASSINATION 233 Holy Scripture it is written, "Tliis is a faith- ful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sin- ners." Christian Science takes up that scrip- ture and makes it to say, "Christ Jesus came into the world not to save sinners, but to save them from believing they were sinners." Christian Science denies the Bible. It de- nies it as the infallible Word of God. It teaches that the Bible is a book full of errors, full of fables and fictions. It cannot be read safely without the key which Mrs. Eddy has invented. That key is her book. "Christian Science and Health," printed and sold at three dollars and a half a copy. No Christian Scientist must read the Bible apart from that book. Each Christian Scientist must purchase a copy. No Christian Scientist must lend or give away a copy. Christian Science by throwing doubts on the value of the Bible, charging it with error and falsehood, testi- fying that it has been put together and com- piled by men who were in the darkness of mortal mind, making it necessary to read "Christian Science and Health" in order that its fables and follies may be revealed and that the reader may not be led astray — Christian Science in doing all this, seeks steadily and subtly to betray the very citadel of truth. Follow Christian' Science and sooner or later you will reject the Bible. Christian Science i.> Benedict Arnold and 234 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Judas Iscariot rolled into one. It has all the treason of Benedict Arnold and all the sordid- ness of Judas Iscariot. Compare the founder of Christianity with the founder of Christian Science. Look at the birth of Jesus. He was born in a road- side kahn. He was so poor that he wore a seamless robe, the common, every day badge of poverty. He was so poor, as he himself said, that the birds of the air had nests and the foxes had holes, but the Son of man had not where to lay his head. He owned no real estate. He found his food sometimes in a cornfield, and when he died was buried in a borrowed grave. But look at the founder of Christian Sci- ence. She owns real estate and plenty of it. She has had a beautiful home, and all the comfort and luxury of a well conducted busi- ness. She has recently settled a lawsuit in which she paid over some hundreds of thous- ands of dollars. Jesus went forth and healed the sick with- out money and without price. This woman draws her income from the money of her dupes. Jesus went among the poor and the lowly. It was said of him, "This man receiveth sin- ners, and eateth with them." Christian Sci- ence does not go among the poor and the out- cast. It would not dare to do so. It dare not go into the tenement where men and MENTAL ASSASSINATION 235 women on the poorest food are barely living; where misery and disease do their deadly and their daily work. It would not dare to tell the woman burning with the fever of starva- tion that she is not sick, that she has no fever and needs no food. It dare not go into the wretched hovel where a broken hearted mother weeps above the only treasure she had, and the only solace of her aching days — her little babe. It dare not go to her and say the child is not dead, that, in fact, she never had a child — she never had more than an ideal, and all she has to do is to recall her ideal senti- ment and she will be happy. Look at this man, crushed, bleeding, every bone in his body broken, unconscious, breath- ing out his last breath while his wife, clad in her thin dress, and v^^ith her pinched cheeks, moans and croons above him and calls aloud the name to which he will never more respond. Tell me a Christian Scientist dare go to the silent crowd standing awe-struck above the mass of bleeding flesh and broken bones and say with cheerful and vibrant voice that the man is not hurt, he is not bleeding, not a bone of him is broken, he has never fallen, there has been no accident. A Christian Scientist dare not do that in such a crowd. If the Christian Scientist did dare do it and were a man, he would be driven from the midst with blows and hootings ; if it were a woman, they won) I mock her and insult her as a disgrace to 2S6 tHE SIGNS OF tHE TIMES that sex which ought to stand for all there h of love, of sympathy and tender help. Christian Science is not only a system of treason and betrayal, it is the most monumen- tal system ever Invented to fool the people. It fools Christians who are more taken up with their body than with their soul; who know more about the word of man than the Word of God. It fools the unsaved because it substitutes the cure of the body for the salvation of the soul, and makes the deliverance of the body equivalent to the redemption of the soul. It fools the unsaved by assuring them that they are already saved, guaranteeing their security for a price current with the times. It fools people generally and mainly because it comes on the same basis as any other patent medicine, bringing in its testimonials as evi- dence of cure, appealing to that which is ever the most quick to respond — the hope of re- lief from physical ills. It fools the people by talking about religion, offering its book as materia medica and turn- ing its treatment into the exercise of a paid dispensary. Christian Science is a false pretence. It pretends to be spiritual and to deny the animal, to be occupied with the soul and not with the body, and then finds its most lucra- tive field in the realm of the animal and the cure of the body. It denies matter, and builds MENTAL ASSASSINATION 237 churches of marble and granite. It denies matter, and prints its teachings in a material book and sells it for material dollars. It de- nies the existence of evil, and one of its most prominent teachers has been tried for error It denies accident or possible danger, and yet its founder was removed from one house to another in a special car — one locomotive pre- ceding the train and another following to keep the track clear. It denies the changes of temperature, and its founder was lifted out of her carriage carefully wrapped in sealskin, so it is reported, and borne by stalwart arms into the building from which she has never since been seen to emerge alone. It denies death, and is responsible for the suggestion of mental assassination. Christian Science is a perversion of divine order. God has set up headship in man. He has set it up in the family, in government, and in the church. In the public assembly of the church he has forbidden a woman to teach or to speak. He has commanded her to keep silence. Christian Science is a repudiation of this order. Christian Science exhorts a woman to break the divine command concern- ing silence and teaching. Christian Science exists because a woman did not keep silence, and because she persisted in her rebellious de- termination to speak and to teach. Christian Science is distinctively a female system. It is 238 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the peculiar invention of a woman. Its teach- ers and healers are women. It has In it here and there a class of male representatives. A certain witty dean once said that society was divided into three classes, males, females and priests. Christian Science is divided into females and some men with female ten- dencies. The Devil fooled the world through the first woman, he is now trying to fool the world through another woman. He led it into sin through the first woman, he would lead it away from the remedy of sin through the other woman. Christian Science has one supreme aim. Its aim is to take away Jesus Christ as the alone saviour of men. It denies his actual birth, repudiates him as the Christ, makes him to be as full of errors as other mortals, re- jects the atonement of the cross, says he never died, never was buried and never rose, does not exalt his name above every name, refuses to bow to him as Lord and God, teaches that he does not sit upon the infinite throne, and that he is not in heaven at all. In short, it turns his body into an apparition, his blood to nothingness, his cross to a myth, his death to a fiction, his burial to a mockery, and him- self to a personality that never was real and no longer exists. Christian Science is a peril of perils. It is a peril to the health and security of a community. It is a peril to it because it re- MENTAL ASSASSINATION 239 pudiates the system of medicine, the skill of the physician, throws the sick into the hands of charlatans, binds them up in the bonds of ignorance or fanaticism, makes them a disaster to themselves and channels of contagion and disease to others. It is a peril to Christianity. It is a peril, be- cause it puts on the robes of Christian pro- fession and hides its real antagonism under the plea of a higher and more spiritual con- cept. It is a peril to Christianity, because it re- peats the name of Christ, wards off suspicion and then, slowly but systematically, seeks to deny him. It is a peril to Christianity, because it quotes the Bible as its authority, professes to be its best interpreter and then, in the dark, seeks, little by little, to wrench it loose from the place of faith and absolute confidence. It is a peril to the Christian, because it talks of God and the Father and, step by step, leads the Christian to see that God is not a person, and Fatherhood but a name. It is a peril to the Christian, because while it talks to him of Christ, it leads him softly and insensibly away from Christ, or quite be- yond him, where he is his own saviour, his own Christ, and his own very God. It is a peril to the Christian, because it leads him eventually to deny the Lord who bought him, anrl thus brings him dangerously near 240 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES that threshold where swift destruction falls on all who finally deny hini. It is a peril to the unsaved, because it stupe- fies him on the edge of a precipice, closes his eyes to mortal danger, cries peace when there is no peace, and allows him to plunge head- long into a hopeless and unredeemable eternity. Christian Science is a sign of the times. It is a sign of that time of which our Lord forewarned when he said false teachers would come in his name and deceive many, doing many wonderful works and deceiving, if it were possible, the very elect; that time of v/hich an apostle warns when he said the church would give heed to teachers who should turn them away from the truth and turn them to fables; that time of which an apostle warned when he said it would be nec- essary to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints; that time when the professing church would listen to wander- ing spirits and doctrines of demons; that time when spiritual apprehension would be so low- that evil and false doctrine would find easy entrance to its midst : when the hope of tlie church, the Coming of the Lord would, be set aside, and the apostles who proclaimed it de- clared to be mistaken ; in short, that time of which the Son of God specifically warned when he announced that the faith would dis- appear from the earth, and that its waning and MENTAL ASSASSINATION 241 absence would be the threshold and witness of his Coming. Christian Science is a sign that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh. It is a witness that the forces of heaven and the forces of hell are gathering for the battle of the great day of God Almighty ; that Satan is getting himself together for his last des- perate act; that in this bold and yet subtle at- tempt to counterfeit Christianity through Christian Science, he is paving the way to set up the man of sin, the son of perdition, he who is the final incarnation of himself; that all things are moving forward to that moment when the Son of God will secretly and sud- denly withdraw his Church of regenerated be- lievers from the world to himself and then, when the evil is fully headed up, will descend with the Church in outbreaking indignation and wrath upon Satan, his confederates, and all who have been seduced and entangled by him. Christian Science is a witness of all these things and is, therefore, a warning to every spiritual mind, a cry to every hearing ear. As one set for the defence of the Gospel and called upon to declare the whole counsel of God, I lift my voice and word against it. I warn that it is a pestilence, a fever, a miasma, a poison. It is Satan's masterpiece, Satan's disguise, and the sure destruction of every unwary soul who yields to it. 242 TME SIGNS OF THE TIMES In describing it and warning against it, every symbol of evil may be used, every meta- phor of iniquity mixed, all the collocation of terms known to human language cxliaustcd, and then, when this has been done, not enough will have been said, nor emphasis sufficiently given, to paint it, picture it, denounce, and warn against it. I warn you to shun it. I exhort you to flee from it. Refuse to admit it into your house. If it comes in the name of friendship, do not receive it. Refuse absolutely to discuss it or hold controversy with it, any more than you would clasp hands with a leper or lie in his foul and fetid embrace. I call upon you to turn from this evil thing which smiles and speaks under its breath and, while it whispers, steals away that name which is above every name, the name which guaran- tees forgiveness of sins, opens the close shut grave, brings immortality to light, illumines the way to heaven and the throne of God, gives peace here and glory there; the name over which angels sing, before which angels con- fess, and at whose mention the whole universe must, finally, bend the knee — the name which is above every name, whether named in heaven, or in earth, or under the earth — the name of Jesus. Turn, I pray you, from that pestilential and shameful thing which would blot out the name, the person, the work, the present priestly MENTAL ASSASSINATION 243 office, and the coming glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Turn before the Lord himself descends in judgment 0:1 those who have not exalted his name above every name, and who have not owned him as Lord and God. Turn from tliis thing which, calling itseli' Christian Science, is neither scientific nor Christian and, beneath its indecent defiance of science and its treacherous betrayal of Christ, conceals the face of Antichrist and the form of Satan. Note. — Since the above was written, Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy has died. A physician testifies that her death was due to pneumonia. Her appear- ance in death was that of an old woman. In face of this event — a question arises : Why did she die? She taught that there is no such thing as death. No one ever died. No one does die. Death is an error. To think oneself dead is to be deceived. Why then did she allow herself to be deceived? One of her representatives explains her death by saying that she passed her last days ''in error." Think of it! The head and founder of the Christian Science Ghurch, the author of a book without error — ending her days in a state of error — and denying all for which she and her Church have stood. She denied old age and became a withered old woman. She denied disease and died of pneumonia. She repudiated death and became a lifeless corpse. What shall be said? What can be said but that the Devil who deceived her forsook her at the last. What can be said but that in the Great Hereafter, at the final judgment, she must meet that Christ whose actual death and resurrection she denied, and answer for the souls whom she entangled and led away into hopeless perdition through herSatanically inspired words. PRESENT DAY MIRACLES "And Jesus saith unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying I am Christ; and shall deceive many." Matthew, 24:4, 5. After He had finished His discourse in the temple, Jesus went forth. His disciples came to Him to show Him the great buildings of which the temple was composed. He said to them that not one stone should be left standing upon another. The disciples were astonished. What manner of man was this who, with a word, set aside the nation's pride and glory, and with calm assurance spoke of coming disaster. He passed on out of the city. They fol- lowed in silence. Together they crossed over the brook Kidron. They went with Him up the slopes of Olivet. On the mountain's brow He sat down. Unable longer to control their wonder, the disciples besought Him to tell them when the destruction of the temple should be, what should be the sign of His coming, and the end of the age. While they were questioning Him, He was gazing at the scene unrolling at His feet. He had a wondrous outlook. Jerusalem lay before Him under the sun- Jf^RESENT DAY MlftACLES 245 shine of a cloudless Eastern sky. The tem- ple, its walls like a piled up mass of carved and gleaming snow, its roof studded with golden spikes that no bird of passage might stop or stain it for an instant, crowned the sacred hill of Zion. Like a huge, uplifted rock in the midst of a swirling sea, it stood there, while wave after wave of splendid light swept over it in an amber flood, flecking the marble walls with shine and shade, illumin- ing them in the open with the pink of hidden flames, and in the darker courts to colder grays or deepening blues. On either side the houses of the town retreated as though the temple were too glorious, too awe-inspiring for common approach. Detached, uplifted, as though it would summon the very heaven to be its proper dome, it remained there like the concrete note of a silent song, a chiseled poem, a thing of beauty, a ceaseless joy to the eye of man to gaze upon. In the farther distance the mountains walled themselves round about the city like giant sentinels ordained of God. Tabor loomed up dark and solemn with the memory of the mystery-laden Transfiguration ; and Hermon, exalted, majestic, sublime, lifted himself above his fellows, clothed with spotless white like the sacred robe Of some more than mortal priest, and from his immaculate heights sent down the distillation of his crystal dew like a benediction to the holy place on Zion. 246 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES On every side of the city the ground fell away in folds, as though a tossing sea had suddenly been turned to stone while yet its billows surged and rolled. Some of the rocks were painfully barren, and red, and brown, and livid, as though scorched by penal fires ; the very air that swept over them seemed to have in it the breath of curses, such as those which sounded from the sides of Gerizim in days of old. Others of the rocks were cov- ered with countless wild flowers, massed to- gether in a riot of color. Everywhere the harsher features of the landscape were soft- ened by the dusky green of olives, the sober mourning of the cypress, and the kingly dig- nity of the palm. The valley of Gehenna from time to time sent up its heavy column of smoke, now and then, like a black veil, shut- ting out the beauty of the temple; here and there the fires of the burning offal glowed luridly — as though the dull gates of that fore- warned "hell fire" had opened on the glow- ing embers of the "damned" in woe. The hill- sides were filled with tents and impromptu constructions to hold and shelter the million numbered horde that had come from the utter- most parts of the earth to keep in judicial blindness that passover, whose typical beauty was to find its divine but tragic fulfilment in the sad-faced man of grief who sat there, and watched it all. And as He sat and watched it all, He saw PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 247 far beyond the rim of the circling mountains, far beyond the end of this day so swiftly drawing to its close. The centuries opened their vista to his gaze. He saw Jerusalem surrounded by a trench and, surmounting the trench, a wattled fence, both trench and fence making a depth and heighth so great that those within the city might not go out, and none without might enter in. He saw the Mount of Scopus and all the surrounding hills clothed in scarlet, and- this scarlet, the uni- form of Roman soldiers. He saw the bronzed eagles of Titus, and knew that Rome had come to destroy the guilty city. He beheld the starving thousands. He saw the indescribable scene of famine and horror within the be- leaguered town. Then the final assault, the capture, the holocaust of slain, the dead and the dying, the city leveled to the ground, the plowshare drawn over its foundations, and Zion become, as it had been foretold, a "ploughed field," the nation carried away into captivity, and become Vi^anderers throughout the earth. Nor did his vision rest there. He saw on down the age to its close. He saw kingdom rise against kingdom, and nation against na- tion. He heard the sound of war and rumors of war. He saw sunken-eyed famine and filthy-lipped pestilence walking check by jowl through the high places of the earth. He saw lawlessness and all the dark brood of 248 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES anarchy, socialism, vice, open iniquity, v/aning faith and nameless sin, crowding into view. Nowhere did He get the vision of Gospex triumph, or a converted world. Not once did He obtain a glimpse of the purple and the gold of millennial days during His ab- sence. On every side He saw increasing spiritual coldness a'-d threatening woe. He saw coming, a time of tribulation, which He calls, "Tribulation, the great one," a tribula- tion such as the world had never known be- fore and never shall know again ; a time of terror so great that if He, Himself, should not interfere no flesh could live. Foreseeing all this. He turns and warns His disciples in language so plain that none can miss the meaning. He warns not only of these things but of a peril more serious than all others combined — more serious because more subtle. He warns them against the peril of an apparent goodness and righteous- ness coming in His name ; a goodness and righteousness which will seek to certify them- selves by wonderful works, by deeds of heal- ing, and by words that breathe and offer peace. The peril against which He warns is not devils coming with hoofs and horns ; not sin outraging every sense of decency and propriety, but messengers, like angels of light, inviting to so-called ways of pleasantness and truth, v/earing the name of Christ with such easy claim, using His speech, proclaiming His. PRESF.NT DAY MIRACLCS 249 doctrine, and accomplishing sucli wonders in the realm of bodv and soul in His all-appealing name that, if it were possible, tlicy should deceive the very elect. That peril is upon us now. At this present moment there are three sys- tems in the worM which come in the name of Christ and, in His name, profess to do many wonderful works. Each system is a rank peril to truth and the souls of men. These three systems are : ROMANISM. EMMANUELISM. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. Consider Romanism : From the very beginning Rome has pro- fessed to work miracles. Again and again cases are reported in which by the appearance of the Blessed Virgin, a spot of land, a rock, a cave, a tree, or a fountain, has been invested with healing powers. Each year there is a pilgrimage of thousands to Lourdes. From waters of the fountain, and those wKo are time to time at the height of the season, so it is said, the Virgin appears there, troubles the privileged to enter the waters or catch a glimpse of the Virgin's face, are healed im- mediately. Relics of the true cross are to be found all over the world, preserved with jealous care in the cathedrals or churches of designated places. The bones of saints are 250 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES carefully guarded, as well as the hair of mar- tyrs, and the blood of prophets. In the city of Naples there is said to take place from time to time, the miracle of the liquefac- tion of the blood of Jeremiah. By touch, or even sight, of these relics multitudes are re- ported to have been cured, the blind receiv- ing their sight, the lame throwing away their crutches and leaping for joy. Recently, in this city of New York, the more or less au- thentic bones of "Saint Anne" have been on exhibition in a Roman church. Crowds have visited the place and most startling cures are proclaimed. Emmanuelism is another system of pro- fessed healing. It actually takes the name of Christ. It is called, and everywhere known as, Emmanuelism. It takes its name from the Church (an Episcopal church in Boston) where the system finds its headquarters. It professes to cure disease by the operation of mind upon body. It claims that in operating in this fashion it is using the very means and methods of Christ himself. As in Romanism, some startling results are said to have taken place ; nor is there any reason to doubt that many of these reports are true. Christian Science is still another professedly healing system. It not only comes in the name of Christ, but professes to be true and original Christianity with an added illumina- PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 251 tion of truth. Its special object is not to cure the world of the fact of sin, but to cure men of the folly of believing in the fiction of sin ; not to cure men of actual disease, but to demonstrate that disease does not exist; that there is neither sickness nor death. Its text book, like a patent medicine circular, contains a long list of the names of those who are ready to certify that they were once under the delusion of disease, imagined them- selves sick with every kind of ill from head- ache to cancer, were unhappy and wholly mis- erable, but now, thanks to Christian Science, have become perfectly sound and possess a quietness and peace that might well be the envy of many worried and tempest-tossed Christians. These wonders are being performed (so it is reported) daily; and there is every reason to expect they will be multiplied. This is an age of wonders, wonders in the sky, wonders in the earth, wonders in the realms of science and philosophy. Beyond doubt we shall yet see wonders in the realm of therapeutics be- yond anything now known, and increasingly performed by these three great systems, Ro- manism, Emmanuelism and Christian Science. While these systems have wrought in the name of Christ, none of the wonders per- formed by them have been produced either by the Spirit or the power of Christ. These systems are not of Christ. That they are not The apostle Paul declares that at death the (believer "departs to be v.'ith Christ" ; and he afTirnis that the intermediate state, the state between death and resurrection, is an advance PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 257 over the present life, it is "far better." — Philip- pians, 1 :23. To the thief on the cross the Son of God said: "To-day shalt thou be with me in para- dise." — Luke, 23:43. (Paradise! not Purga- tory.) Rome teaches that the Christian cannot go directly to Christ as his great high priest. He must have some one who will intercede for him with Christ ; some one who is holy and without sin. As no one is holy, or without sin on earth; as only those can be holy and without sin who are finally in Heaven, then Rome turns to the saints who have been ex- alted and enthroned in Heaven and constitutes them as the intercessors with Christ. Among these intermediate intercessors the Blessed Virgin, "ever virgin," has the pre-eminent place. Mary is enthroned in Heaven by the side of her exalted Son, and those who would gain the ear of the Son must arouse the in- terest of the Mother. This question of the Virgin's intercession was settled by the Lord Jesus before He died. He settled it at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. His mother came to Him on behalf of the people gathered there and told her Son that they had no wine. His answer was a tremendous and far-reaching interrogatory. He said: 258 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" — John, 2 :4. He did not repudiate her as His mother, nor yet as a woman, He testified simply that she had no pre-eminent place of intercession before Him in matters which called for the exercise of divine powers. He himself has said: "No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me."— John, 14:6. And lest it should be said, "True, no man cometh unto the Father but by Hiin, yet in order to come to Him at all it must bi by the intercession of some one with Christ who will make Christ willing to intercede with the Father," He himself settles it in one striking, undebatable sentence : "Him that cometh to jME I will in no wise cast out." — John, 6 :47. Rome has falsified ! There is nothing be- tween the seeking soul or the worshiping saint and the great high priest. There is no need of any saint, no matter how holy, to introduce us to the "Alan in the Glory," the "Advocate" on high. On the contrary, we are exhorted to "Come boldly unto a throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." — Hebrews, 4:16. We are told that we may have "bold- ness to enter the holiest (Heaven) by the blood of Jesus. By a new and living way which He has consecrated (opened) for us, PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 259 through the vail, that is to say, his flesh" : that we have a "high priest over the house of God," and are therefore exhorted to "draw near in full assurance of faith." — Hebrews, 10: 21-22. Rome takes away the Scripture from the people. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, "Search the Scriptures * * * they are they which testify of me." — John, 5 :39. The apostle Paul commends the Bereans as being more noble than those at Thessalonica, because they "searched the Scriptures daily." —Acts, 17:11. Rome declares that the Church is founded upon Peter as the rock. Our Lord Jesus Christ declares that He himself (as the deathless Son of the living God and, there- fore, the Son who would triumph over death, rise from the grave, and become immortal) would be the abiding foundation on which the souls of men might build. Paul says, "That Rock was Christ." — I. Corinthians, 10:4. Peter testifies that Christ is the Rock. "A rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word." — L Peter, 2:8. Rock in Scrip- ture is the symbol, not of man, but God, as it is written, "My soul waiteth upon God * * * he only is my rock and my salvation." — Psalms, 62:1-2. Rome teaches that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the Church. It is not true. He gave him the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. "I 260 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatso- ever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in Heaven." — Matthew, 16:19. The kingdom of Heaven and the Church are not the same thing. All who are in the Church are in the king- dom of Heaven. All who are in the kingdom of Heaven are not, necessarily, in the Church. The Church is the BODY of Christ. The kingdom of Heaven, in this age, is the outward profession of Christ. The Church has in it only those who have been made partakers of the divine nature and are indwelt by the Holy Ghost. The kingdom of Heaven has in it both good and bad; those, of course, who are regener- ated, being in the Church, and those who are not regenerated, being simply professed members of the Church. The Church is not the kingdom of Heaven, but the body of Christ in the kingdom. There are no keys to the Church. The keys are only for the kingdom. The keys of the kingdom were two in num- ber. Those keys were, The Gospel and Bap- tism, Peter used them on two occasions, and two only : on the day of Pentecost and at the house of Cornelius. At Pentecost he opened the PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 261 kingdom to the Jews; at the house of Cor- nelius to the Gentiles. The authority to bind and loose was not given to Peter exclusively. It was after- ward given to all the disciples as representing in principle the whole Church. It was not given in this fashion till after He had risen from the dead and communicated to them the Holy Ghost ; for, the Church did not come info existence until that definite moment. This is what He says to the Church antici- patively through the disciples : "Whosoever sins ye remit, they are re- mitted unto them ; and whosoever sins ye re- tain, they are retained." — John, 20:23. He is making the Church the depositary of doctrine and authorizing her through her min- istry, whether in pulpit or pew, to announce, on the one hand, to all who should believe the testimony concerning Him, the loosing of their sins, and on the other, the bind- ing or the damnation of sin to all who should reject their testimony; for He had said, "He that receiveth you, receiveth Me." — Matthew, 10:40. And, consequently, those who should reject the messengers of Christ would be counted as rejecting Him. In other words, He is announcing to the Church that He authorizes her to proclaim forgiveness of sins in His name and sealed and assured con- demnation to those who reject Him. In such binding and loosing all Christian?, 262 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES in measure, participate. From this it is evi- dent that Peter's keys went no farther than opening the profession of Christ in this stage to Jew and Gentile. His power to lose and bind was only in common with the rest of the apostles. Rome exalts Peter into primacy as bishop of Rome. The Son of God gives no ground for such primacy. ITiere is not a single line in Scripture to indicate that he ever was inside the city of Rome. The only apostle who is recorded in Scrip- ture as having lived in Rome is the apostle Paul. Peter never wrote a letter to the church at Rome. Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans. Paul is the only apostle who ever did write a letter to the church at Rome. Peter never wrote a letter to any church. He wrote two letters, but these were not to local assemblies. He wrote them as general let- ters to Hebrew Christians wherever "scat- tered." Paul wrote fourteen epistles. Nine of these letters were to the churches. To Paul nnd not to Peter was given the revelation from heaven that the church is the body of Christ. To Paul alone was given the PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 263 revelation concerning the mystery of the church. Peter was not the apostle of the church at all. Peter was the apostle of the Circum- cision. Paul was the apostle of the Gentiles ; and he tells us why: "That I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." Ephesians, 3 :8 ; that he might make known unto them "that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body." — Ephesians, 3 :6. He was the apostle of the Gentiles that he might bring to them the knowledge of the church, this great secret that had been hid- den from the ages. It is Paul, then, and not Peter who has to do with the church. Not to Peter, but to Paul alone was given, "the care of all the churches. "II. Corinthians. 11:28. If the care of all the churches exalts the care-taker into the place of the supreme bishop or overseer of the church then Paul, indeed, and not Peter, was the supreme bishop of the church. Rome claims temporal sovereignty. Our Lord declares that his kingdom is not of this world ; his actual kingdom has not yet been set up. Rome makes the Pope the vicar of Christ on earth. Or.r Lord Jesus Christ announces that the Holy Ghost is the vicar, his vice- gerent. Pie says : 264 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name." —John, 14:26. The claim of Rome and the office of the Pope are the seals of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. On great feast days the Pope is carried into St. Peter's on the shoulders of men, placed on the high altar of that wonderful temple, and there, practically, worshiped as "The Holy Father." In this scene there is a foreshadowing of that moment of which Paul speaks, when Anti- christ, the "man of sin," shall sit, "in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." — n. Thessalonians, 2 :4. From all this it must be evident that Rome is "apostate" Christianity. She is an apostate church. She is a false church of Christ and, therefore, a false Christ. In the very nature of the case such a sys- tem cannot be owned of the Holy Spirit, and cannot exercise the power of Christ. The miracles, therefore, professedly per- formed by Rome are not the miracles of Christ. Let Emmanuelism be tested by the word of God. The healings wrought by it are not of Christ. They are not, because, 1. Emmanuelism claims that its cures arc produced by the subject himself exercising PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 265 his own power of mind ; or, by yielding to the natural power of mind in another. 2. Because by its own text book, "Religion and Medicine," Emmanuelism confesses that Jesus Christ, while to a certain degree an ex- pert in psycho-therapy; while able to operate through, and upon, the sub-conscious mind ; while pure and good, and all that, was limited. He was limited in his intelligence. He believed in demons, in evil siprits, in demoniacal pos- sessions and was, largely, bound by the ignor- ance and the superstition of the times. Fur- thermore, Emmanuelism teaches, the disciples of Christ were unlettered, uneducated men, under the impressions of the age in which they lived. The reports which they give of the teachings and the doings of Christ are colored by their superstition, their ignorance, and their exaggerated partisanship as his fol- lowers. Their testimony cannot be accepted as final. Only those portions can really be tolerated which have received the recognition of modern scholarship. In short, Emmanuelism teaches that Christ was limited, and his disciples unreliable as biographers. A limited Christ and an unreliable New Testament ! There you have Emmanuelism with the vail off. Will any one pretend that a religion, or a work, which holds such an attitude to Christ, 266 THE SIGNS OK IHE TIMES is honored by his Spirit and his power? Nay! though it stood under the dome of the richest cathedral ever built, clothed with sanctity and, in the name of Christ, doing deeds that were very miracles, even the miracle of the dead raised to life again, it would not be the work of Christ, nor of the true ministers of Christ. All that has been said of Romanism and Emmanuelism is to be said with a millionfold greater emphasis of Christian Science. Christian Science comes in the name of Christ and denies everything for which Christ stands. It denies that he was actually born of a virgin. The virgin did not give birth to a body, she gave birth simply to an idea. It denies that Christ cast out demons, healed the sick, or raised the dead. He never raised Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus never was dead. He only thought GO. Jesus went to the grave to arouse him out of his false and foolish idea that he was dead. The whole story of his resurrection is the story of a monumental deception. All that concourse at the grave, the theatrical roll- ing away of the stone, and the loud cry to Lazarus to come forth, were nothing better than mere pretence. There was no death and there was no actual resurrection. So far as Christian Science treats the matter, the Son of God acted no better than an Eastern fakir PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 267 before the eyes of a befooled and wondering crowd. Christian Science denies that the blood of Christ was of any more avail when shed on the cross than when flowing through his veins in daily life. Christian Science denies that Jesus shed his blood at all. Christian Science denies that Jesus Christ died. All the time the people thought he was dead he was alive and hiding in the tomb. Jesus and Christ are distinct. Jesus was the apparent material man. Christ was, and is, the eternal principle of truth. At the so- called ascension, Jesus disappeared forever and Christ ascended. Christ did not ascend as a person to heaven, Christ is nothing more than a spiritual principle. There is no ac- tual heaven. Heaven is a condition of the mind, and when the principle of truth has as- cended into the place of dominion over the individual, that is the ascension to heaven. Jesus does not exist. He never has existed, except in the imagination of men. Christian Science denies the Second Com- ing of Christ as a personal fact. Christian Science claims that the discovery made by Mrs. Eddy was, and is, the only Second Com- ing ; it was the second coming of truth. Chris- tian Science denies judgment to come, future punishment, and hell as the final abode of the lost. No one is lost. No one needs a 268 tHE SIGNS OF tHE TIMiE^ saviour; for there is no sin. No matter how sinful and wicked men may appear, the mo- ment they recognize that sin does not exist, that they have never sinned and never can, they are free, pure and holy; free, pure, and holy as they always have been, but, this time, to their own awakened and happy conscious- ness of it. Christian Science denies that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. It says that it is fallible, full of errors, myths and fables. The only book that is absolutely free from error, that never makes a mistake, and is perfect in every line, is the book written by Mrs. Eddy herself. Christian Science is a crime! It is a crime against morality. It denies the existence of sin. It is a crime against society. It exalts wife- hood above motherhood, and advocates di- vorce. It advocates divorce in the nature of the case. It does this because the author of this religion — Mrs. Eddy — has herself been married and divorced. The stream cannot rise higher than the fountain. Christian Science does not believe in mar- riage as the highest and best thing; if pushed to the ultimate of its principles it would abol- ish marriage altogether and open the sluice gate of unspeakable disaster to society. Christian Science is a crime against the health of a community. It denies the fact of PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 269 sickness, <.nd declares that doctors should, with all medical remedies, be abolished. It is a crime against intellect. It denies the creation and the existence of matter. All things that can be seen, touched, heard, or felt, are non-existent — they exist only in the im- agination. In short, Christian Science is a system which denies science, is itself a travesty on science, a mockery of logic, and a vender of words without knowledge. Christian Science is a guilty thing, a de- ceiver and an Antichrist. Will any one with a sane or an honest mind claim that a system which exalts a wife to live above marriage; which suggests that children may be brought into the world solely by mental operation; denies sin, sickness and death; denies the existence of matter, anni- hilates Jesus, destroys the personality of Christ, and rejects the Bible as a mass of old wives' fables, setting its own book as an au- thority above it ; will any one, looking into it and seeing it as it is, have the hardihood to say that the healings and cures and wonders wrought by such a system, have been wrought by Christ and his Spirit? It is impossible! Neither Christ nor his Spirit has any re- lation to such a system. There can be no relation between Christ Jesus and the system 270 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES which denies him and bankrupts all final faith in him. None of the present-day miracles, there- fore, wrought by Romanism, Emmanuelism and Christian Science, are of the Spirit and power of Christ. By whom then, or by what power have these miracles been wrought? I answer, there is a personage in the universe who has the power to produce all these things. From the third chapter of Genesis to the close of the Bible, he is recorded there as the tireless adversary of God and man. So great is his dignity that even the archangel Michael could not bring a railing accusation against him. He is shown to be as versatile as powerful. He reveals himself, now as a serpent and then, as an angel of light. He is called the prince of the powers of the air. Scripture testifies that he can, at times, send the winds, the tempest and the lightnings. He has the power of disease. He caused Job to be smitten from head to foot with a loath- some sickness. Our Lord Jesus Christ says that he bound a certain woman with an in- firmity for eighteen years. Scripture assures us that he has the power of death. This great personage is the Devil and Satan. I am not addressing, and I have no contro- versy with, those who do not believe the Bible. With that educated and cultured class PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 271 of ignorance which has no more knowledge of the Bible than an inert stone has of a quivering star or a burning sun ; with that self-satisfied culture which turns away from the Bible with the same indifference that a blind man would turn away from a master- piece of Michael Angelo, I have neither in- clination nor time to waste words. I am writ- ing for those who accept the Bible as the in- fallible Word of God. To such I say: You are now face to face with the fact to which the Bible gives unfaltering and unmistakable tes- timony, the fact of a person who has power over the atmosphere ; who may cloud it or clear it; who can, when he is permitted, make it a channel of disease and destruction ; who has power over the body and over the mind ; who can use the minds of men to suit his own will, fooling them, blinding them, and leading them captive with the deception that they are acting in their own proper right and freedom. Here is a power that can inflict disease or withhold it. A power that can kill or keep back, to a degree, the shaft of death. Here is a being who seems like a God ; a being who, indeed, in Scripture, is called the "God of this World." Here is a personage who could produce the psychological movements of the hour, and who could, if he so willed, bring about through his agents, the so-called cures or miracles. And because these systems at 272 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES bottom are a denial of Christ, are in spirit and sum antichrist, and Antichrist is the final and climacteric manifestation of the Devil, then it may be said, with unhesitating con- fidence, that these cures and wonders wrought by these specialized systems, are wrought by none other than the Devil himself. The Son of God teaches plainly that these wonders will be increasingly a peril to the world. They will deceive those who are not the elect of God. They would deceive even the very elect of God if it were not for his holding power. They have deceived multi- tudes. They are deceiving them to-day. Thou- sands of a certain class in Romanism, another and more mental class in Emmanuelism, and still another class in Christian Science who are not ignorant and uneducated, but who are more sentimental and more sensuous than in- tellectual, a vast number of ailing men and women, and a large number who are governed purely by imagination, will be carried away and, if they abide under the delusions, will prove that they are not the elect of God. More and more Romanism will appeal to the ecclesiastical side of the human mind. Em- manuelism will appeal to the psychological side. More and more Christian Science will appeal to the female area of mind and to the female characteristic of mind in some classes of men. And because the peril will increase and become intense, the Son of God PRESENT DAY MIRACLES 273 from his seat on the brow of OHvet warn- ingly says : "Behold, I have told you before." These deceiving wonders performed in the name of Christ, as they increase in emphasis, bear witness that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh. He himself has said so. He has said that when all these things be- gin to come to pass, we, as believers, may look up and know that our redemption draweth nigh ; that the Lord is even at the door. It is a witness that this age, like the river that at last reaches the brink of the cataract, is about to sweep over and plunge to its fall. These very signs say to us in the loudest possible speech, THE LORD IS COMING. The Coming of the Lord means the call- ing up into glory of all who own him as Saviour and Lord. It means, after that, the immediate and eternal damnation of all those who have been deceived and hoodwinked by these false sys- tems and who have not recovered themselves from the snare of the Devil. Wherefore I charge you and beseech you, you who read these lines, if you have in any way been entangled in these deceptions, to flee out of them and take wholesome and per- fect shelter under the blood of the atoning Lamb of God; cast yourself in absolute de- 274 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES pendence upon the grace, the mercy, and the keeping power of a covenant God, an un- failing Christ, and an abiding Holy Spirit. Make the risen and glorified Son of God your high tower, your fortress, and your sure de- fence. His solemn words of warning for all ears are these: "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders ; insomuch that, if it were possible, thcv shall deceive the very elect. "BEHOLD, I HAVE TOLD YOU BE- FORE." SOCIALISM There is no stint or poverty in nature. Pro- vision seems to have been made for all. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea, and the most infinitesimal degree of animal and insect life appear to find ample sustenance and sufficient area for the exercise or enjoyment of their functions. Logically, it should be expected that man, the head of crea- tion in this world, would find, individually, the same plethora in respect to himself. Looking at the world as a dwelling place for man, there is every reason to expect that one would be able to enjoy as much of the wealth and bounty of the earth as another. There is room enough for every one to have a home and large domain. There is wood in the for- ests, coal in the mines, gold, silver and tin, in the earth's veins, brass that may be dug from the hills. The lakes and rivers teem with fish, and the sea sends its bromides with health salutations to all. The wheat and corn, fruit and vegetables, are ready to respond with the same largess to the effort of each ; flowers bloom in their beauty till even the desert is made glad. The sky is over all with the same blue by day, and the same shining stars by night. The sun, the rain and the dew, ar^ 276 tHE SIGNS OF tHE TIMES continually at work, with no respect to per- sons. There is air enough for all to breathe. In short, provision and equipment enough for each individual to stand on an equality of possession and hopefulness with the other. This might well be expected from the ful- ness of nature. It requires only the most casual observation to see that such is not the case — that the re- verse is true. Practically, to-day, the world is, as it has al- ways been, in the hands of the few. It is the few who own the land and its resources. The few who control the product of mother earth, and benefit of the value of human labor. The few, relatively speaking, are rich, and may live as kings live, without the care of to-mor- row's expense, without fear of yesterday's debt. A multitude live without actual pov- icrty, but within lines that are circumscribed, and where it is necessary, always, to keep the sentinel of economy on the walls and submit to the law of limitation even for legitimate demands. There is the vaster multitude who eke out existence. They are the toilers, the hard workers in the chain gang of labor, as much under the whiplash of daily service as a slave beneath the blows of a master. Their life consists in realizing the things they can- not have. They live close to the earth, are hewers of wood and drawers of water, have little chance to see the sky, because of the sdtiALisKi If') close attention they must pay to the ground on which they walk, and, in the final analysis, are little better than machines wound up by the inexorable hand of necessity, set going for a certain number of minutes each day, and repeating the movement till something in the machinery gives way, and they are thrown aside into the dump heap of the grave as mere scrap material whose only value may be to fer- tilize the dust of which they soon become a part. A spirit of protest is rising against this con- dition. Men are asking themselves persistent ques- tions: Is there such a thing as the privilege of birth? Have some men a better right to the earth's endowments than others? Is it of the law and nature of things that multitudes of human beings should be no better than dumb driven cattle, and not so well cared for, sufjfering a misery that brutes do not know ? This spirit has been organized in flesh and blood, and is making itself materially felt in every quarter of the earth. It is an organized revolt of the mass against the domination of the class. It is an organized accusation against the injustice of poverty and the narrowness of life. It is a revolt and an equipped deter- mination to break down and completely over- throw the partitions erected by man in the domain of nature. This protest calls itself — Socialism. 27S THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Socialism finds large encouragement from the past. Within a hundred years men have broken away from the restraints of an artificial society. Privilege of birth has been denied and destroyed in the blood of those who claimed it. The divine right of kings has been rejected and the absolute monarch made to know his limit. The wage earner has increased his wage and minimized his hours of toil. The laborer has made himself a political quantity to be reckoned with. Socialism has become a force. It is multiplying with great rapidity. Its voice has grown loud enough to be heard in parliaments and halls of legislation. Armies and navies are infected by it. The brother- hood of man has become a regnant idea. The barriers of nationality are broken down by it. The distinction of flags is repudiated and one flag alone, the red flag (the symbol of the common blood of man) is upheld and owned as the flag of socialism. The concepts and methods of socialism arc varied. The aim is one. That aim is to de- stroy the present order of society and erect upon its ruins a new, in which it shall be a law that a man is a man, and that each man has all the right of the other man. Whatever the divergent lines along which they move, the outcome of socialism is the same. The eventuation is identical — it is the exaltation of the community. In spite of the tallying cry of individualism, the ultimate is SOCIALISM 279 communism. There is and must be the com- mon property, the common fund, and the gen- eral distribution. Sooner or later the organ- ized effort of socialism must lead to a tyranny — either the tyranny of the community, or the individual — who, perforce, must control the community. The varied propositions which grow out of the socialistic principle are both logical and suggestive. By some it is proposed to abolish marriage. The woman has the same right of her body as the man. Man and woman shall be equally free. Love is not to be bound by any law save that of its own. Where love wishes to go it shall be free to go. As there is no limit in the exercise of love among the brute crea- tion, there should be none among men and women. A woman may have as many hus- bands, and a man as many wives, as they shall elect. Love is to be a communal quantity as well as the product of the fields. Children shall not belonrj to any special man nor v/oman. The state is to be the father and mother of the child. The child is to own and recognize the state as such. The children are to be con- sidered as the common produce of the com- munity, and the community is to obtain from them the reciprocal benefit of the protection it gives — in the increased asset of labor. The theory of socialism is that each shall help the other ; that aggregate toil means in- 280 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES dividual comfort. It is a community, a part- nershio, in which each one contributes to, and receives from, the other, in the general sum. It is to be a unity of life powers working for the common good, instead of each individual going off at a tangent and coming together only that they may grapple with and destroy one another — a destruction that is the legiti- mate corrolary of selfishness — the rule of the inequality of man. Socialism in its attempt to build a new so- ciety fails to recognize that human life is in- dividualized by its inc(]uality. One mountain is known from another because it is higher or lower, or has some special deposit of rock or strata. One country is characterized by rivers, another by lakes, another by forests, and still another by deserts. The product of one land is dififerent from another. Examination of the earth's construction will show inequalities ; and the very unity of the earth depends upon the fact that some mountains are higher than others, some rivers deeper, and some lands rich in the precious metals which others do not have. The same inequality is to be found in human life. Its individuality is its inequality, its inequality is its individuality. Some men have one endowment, some another. Some men have capacity to work individually, some men have power to make the multitude work, using them in their several abilities like so manj^ hands and feet for their own individuality. SOCIALISM 28 1 In the very nature of the case, sooner oi later, socialism must meet this ordained and constitutional inequality in individual life. Sooner or later, there must arise in a socialistic community the extra quality and characteristic of a few or one ; and this quality or character- istic becoming dominant whether in one direc- tion or another, and, given time for develop- ment, must be the destruction of the actual basis on which socialism seeks to build. Socialism fails to recognize the nature in man. That nature manifests itself in self-ex- altation, self-interest; and where self-interest is at work, there must be, sooner or later, the clash of paramount claim. This clash can be hindered only by a combined or individual force, and thus, in the nature of the case, the communal interest becomes such only in name ; it is an interest in the hands of the few or the one, and is distributed according to the will of the final determining power. Socialism carries in itself the seeds of its own destruc- tion. It is conceived in revolt and born in lawlessness, and lawlessness must be its final offspring. The lawlessness of socialism will exercise itself within certain limits and then, at last, in obedience to its own inherency, must revolt against final limitation. Socialism may be described under various titles. There is a scientific and a radical so- cialism. There is yet another which is the 282 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES latest and is thoroughly startling — it is known as Christian Socialism. This new cult of socialism might well be called "Ministerial" socialism," for it is among Christian ministers that it finds its expression and power. Two elements enter into and form this new socialism. On the one hand actual unbelief in respect to the doctrines and the faith of the church. There are those in the ministerial ranks who say we are not so certain about the supernatural side of the Bible. We are not so sure of its integrity as a revelation from God. We do not really know anything about the future. All we actually know is the present. The need of the hour is the practical. Let us join hands with the things that are seen. Let us take hold of the natural man and build him up. Let us establish a right kind of society here. Instead of taking up the time to talk about the robe of divine righteousness, let us go to work and see that men have good coats for their backs. Instead of getting men ready for heaven, let us get them ready for earth. Instead of talking about a holy city on high, let us make a sanitary city here below. In- stead of seeking to defend the character of God, let us make good the character of man. Instead of racking our brains about spiritual food, let us look to it that v^-e have good nat- ural food. In short, instead of spending our forces upon a possible eternity, let us meet SOCIALISM 283 the demands of actual time ; let us build a so- ciety in which the brotherhood of man shall become a realized fact, and where, in the king- dom of the brotherhood of man, each human life shall be sustained by every other life. These teachers declare that the church has a right to exist only as it becomes the instru- ment for such a society ; that the church which is not working to better human existence here, the church which is not seeking to bring about the days of heaven upon earth, has no business to talk about a heaven to come — has no busi- ness to be at all. There is another class of Christian ministers who believe in the Bible, but accept its doc- trines only on general lines. They modify and interpret the doctrines to suit their con- cept. To them Jesus Christ is the great so- cialist. He came into the world, so they say, to bring about a new condition of things in it. He came to rebuke the unnatural order of so- ciety. He came to be a reformer, a reorgan- izer of society. His relations, it is pointed out, were not with the class but with the mass. He was born in poverty and wore its badge. He went among the people and made himself one with them. His teachings were a constant arraignment of society, his one effort, to estab- lish the brotherhood of man, enforce the rule of unselfishness and love. The church, so they teach, is the continuation of Christ's concept, and, in exact proportion as it follows the ex- 284 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ample of Christ, the church will be the ex- ponent and advocate of socialism ; that true socialism is Christianity, true Christianity is socialism. In face of these assertions it is well to raise the question: Was Jesus Christ a socialist? Was he a reformer? I answer in the negative. He was neither .1 socialist nor a reformer. If he were a reformer, why did he not lift up his voice in protest and accusation against governmental corruption ? The government under which he was born and under which he continued to live was the government of imperial Rome, Rome, while the most magnificent in strength, the most limitless in power, and, while giving benefits and civic blessings in some respects never since equalled, was, nevertheless, the most cor- rupt of governments. It was made up of bribe givers and bribe takers and fattened itself off the spoils of the people. But, so far from protesting against its corruption, its iniquity and vice, he took a Roman coin bearing the effigy of Caesar and bade men go pay their taxes to sustain this government, saying that they should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. At another time he bade one of his disciples to cast a net into the sea, and when he had caught a fish therein, finding a piece of silver in its mouth, commanded him to go pay taxes for himself and the disciple. SOCIALISM 285 If he were a reformer, why did he not protest against war? War, according to socialism, is the instrument of the few by which, at the cost of the lives of the many, they maintain their power. He had a great opportunity to protest against war. In Rome a soldier went into the army, not for three or five years, but for twelve or fif- teen and even twenty years. War was the trade of emperors and kings, war was the business of life. Each day Jesus could hear the tramp of the legions. He knew they were going to or returning from the fields of slaughter. He never raised his voice against war. On the contrary, he said he did not come into the world to bring peace, but a sword. He said that his presence in this world and the things he taught would set a man against his brother, divide families, and be the hand of war itself. Not only did he refrain from any protest against war, he went so far as to announce that during the whole time of his absence from this world there would be wars and rumors of wars, nation should rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. If he were a reformer, why did he not lift up his voice against slavery? At that very hour Rome had one hundred and twenty mil- lions of subjects. Of that number sixty mil- lions were slaves, the lives of many of them 286 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES not worth the price of an inferior dog. Slaves everywhere, bending under the rod of the master. Not once, not in a single instance, did he say a word against slavery. On the con- trary, he recognized the tlistinction between master and servant. He said, when a servant docs his work docs the master thank liim. "I trow not." If a reformer, why did he not take up the question of the saloon? The saloon was at every corner. Everywhere wine and strong drink flowed like water, and men were sodden with it. Not by a single word did he warn men against this disaster or lift up his voice in protest. Instead of the reputation of a re- former with the multitude, the people cried out that he was himself "a wine bibber and a glutton." If he were a socialist, why did he not take up the issue of labor and wages? He saw the rich living oflf the unpaid toil of the poor. He saw those wlio were paid receiving a stipend, toiling from morning to night, and barely able to keep body and soul together. And yet he raised no word of pro- test. He never inveighed against the rich, de- nounced their corporate trusts, their illegal combinations, their predatory encroachments, and demand that the hours of labor be short- ened, the remuneration be increased and legiti- mate wages paid. If he were a socialist, why did he not lift SOCIALISM 287 up his voice against poverty, testifying that property as then possessed was a crime and wealth a robbery? Why did he not denounce poverty as the product of the privileged few and, while accusing the rich of their unlawful power, appeal to the poor to claim their right of equal share, and thus banish the sin and shame of poverty ? Why did he not do this ? He did not do it ! He had an immense opportunity. A girl who loved him took an alabaster box full of costly ointment, poured it on his head and feet till the whole room was filled with the fra- grance of her devotion. Some one suggested that this was a great waste ; that the ointment might have been conserved, sold for three hun- dred pence and given to the poor. The sug- gestion came from Judas — the thief and the final betrayer of the Son of God. Judas, the betrayer of Christ, is the only Socialist among professed Christians of whom the New Testa- ment gives a record. It was the Lord's op- portunity to take up the issue presented, rebuke the waste and advocate the claims of the poor. He did nothing of the kind. He rebuked the socialist who proposed it. He not only rebuked him, he declared himself satisfied with the waste, because the woman, he said, had wrought a good work upon him ; she had discerned his person and work, and had anointed him against the day of his bury- 288 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ing. He went farther, and declared that so long as he should be away from the world poverty and the poor should continue. Not by one word did he suggest that the church which he was to found should take up the issue of poverty and seek to abolish it from among the sons of men. Not once did he inti- mate that his teachings followed out through the coming centuries would cause the elimina- tion of poverty, the decrease of the poor. In- stead, he said that so long as the church should continue in the world poverty would remain, the poor should continue. It was the plain denial that he expected the church to work, testify, or legislate against poverty. It was the plain denial that he was a socialist — a plain denial that the church would be the advocate of socialism. He gave an emphasis to the continuation of poverty by the facts of his own life. He was born in a stable. He wore a robe that was the badge of poverty — the seamless robe. There were times when he had diffi- culty in finding food, his disciples plucking ears of corn from the wayside. He had no certain dwelling place. He said foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, but he did not have where to lay his head. When he died he was wound in offered linen and buried in a borrowed grave. He illustrated the fact of poverty by his life and proclaimed its continuance by his words. SOCIALISM 269 And why talk about him as an example for socialistic endeavor? His example cannot be followed in any wise. He saw the hungry multitude, his heart was touched with compassion and he would feed them. But it must be remembered that this same multitude were without bread and food, not because they were a lot of poverty-stricken beggars on the edge of starvation, but a crowd, like any other crowd, away from the base of supplies. He would feed them because they had followed him and were in need of nour- ishment. He takes a few loaves and blesses them, then breaks them, gives them to the disciples, and the disciples hand them to the people till all are satisfied and twelve baskets full of fragments are left over. What would such a method of making bread go round do to-day if it were possible? It would destroy the bakery business and cause a revolt in trade. But who can perform the miracle ? Why, then, let it be repeated, talk about following his example ? How did he pay his taxes ? As already sug- gested, by bidding a disciple go out and fish till he found a lost piece of silver in a fish's mouth. If that example were to be followed we would have the whole business community going a-fishing to find silver in a chance fish's mouth. It is said that he went about doing good. And this is the socialist idea of Christ. It is 290 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the emphasis, so they say, of the great doctrine of altruism. But how did he do good ? According to the record, in every single case, by a miracle — a miracle puts his '"good" in a category beyond that of example. Test him by the demands of practical life and it will be found that he was the most im- practicable man who ever lived. Hear what he says about going to law : It a man sue you for your coat, give him your cloak also. If he demands your everyday coat, let him have your overcoat as well. He tells those who are smitten on one cheek, instead of landing a blow on the offender, to turn and let him smite the other cheek. Surely, that would be a death blow to socialism — it would put an end to mob rule, to picric acid and dynamite, the civilizing and renovating instrumentalities of socialism. Does he visit schools, colleges, institutions of learning, the schools of the prophets, and deliver discourses on the practical side of life? Does he teach economy, the laying up of treas- ure, the getting ready for a ripe old age and the rainy day? Does he advocate the savings bank and the deposit of values against the demands of time? He talks about saving money. He advocates the putting of it in bank — ^but where. I pray you? He says we are to lay up our treasure in SOCIALISM 291 heaven, and not on earth at all. Here rust will accumulate upon hoarded treasure, or thieves may break through and steal; money laid up in heaven is alone secure. Listen to him intently and you will find that he is not talking about this age but that which is to come, not about the present but the fu- ture. He is discussing, not what we shall have here, but what we shall have in the there. The outlook of Jesus Christ was not on this world. There is one tremendous fact which proves it. That fact is his continued absence from this world for two thousand years. If he had been anxious to change society, why did he not stay here? He who could turn water into wine and raise the dead could have remained untouched by death, unwithered by age, if he had so willed. So, remaining, he could have wrought all changes he desired. If he were opposed to sickness and disease why did he not stay here and go about the world healing the sick ? He required no drugs, no medicine, no surgeon's knife; he could speak and it would have been done. If he were opposed to death and the dark- ness of the grave, why did he not stay and raise the dead ? Why did he limit his ministry to three years and confine his operations to the insignificant land of Palestine? Why did he not stay and keep pace with the years ? It 292 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES would have been as easy for him to have walked upon the wide oceans as upon the nar- rower sea of Galilee. If storms had met him on the way, his "peace, be still," would have hushed their noise, his word of command have held the waves in leash. He could have gone from shore to shore where the dead were lying, whether in bed, on bier, or in the Lazarus grave ; he could have spoken, and the dead would have risen to life in our midst, as well as there in Bethany. O, if he were against all this sorrow and anguish and defeat and excuseless misery and mystery of death — why did he not stay and with his mighty power, his mightier love, overcome death and bring in the constancy of life and the vigor of health — Why not? If he were interested in the progress of civ- ilization, why did he not stay and guaranty it? He could have settled the questions of geology and astronomy. He could have de- fined electricity and set forth the laws of its application. Instead of allowing men to dig wearily in the earth, or scan with blinded eyes the far-off stars, or waste their limited mo- ments in the laboratory, he could have spoken just the word of truth and science. He who could multiply bread and fishes, raise the dead and still the storm, and do all this without the need of tools, he could have told men how to live, how to build, how to sow and how to reap, how to reach life's worth and fulness. SOCIALISM 293 If he had been interested in the develop- ment of this age along the highway of its noblest possibilities, why did he not stay and teach and show? He could have stayed. He said so. He said no man could take his life from him unless he so willed. He had power to lay it down and he had power to take it again. With such power he could have bulwarked himself against any approach of death. He could have stayed here if he had so willed. Why did he not stay and banish war, slavery, drunkenness, crime, iniquity and vice of every sort? He cast out demons — why could he not cast out such devils as these ? Say not a word further about his ante-mortem life and possi- bilities of power ; take him at his own words after he rose from the dead, wdien he said that all power was given him in heaven and on earth. Be it so. If he were a socialist, if he desired a perfect society among men as well as among angels, if he were here to blaze the way of evolution by precept and principle, why did he not call a halt on his upward path to glory, stay and, even then, exercise ^^is claimed omnipotence to produce the ideal condition which eloquent men, in his name, say he came into the world to produce? The answer is clear enough — it is inevitable — his outlook was not on this present world. That his outlook was not on tl:is present 294 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES world is shown by the purpose of his absence. Why did Jesus go away after he had mas- tered death and when the plenitude of his powers was upon him? His disciples pro- tested at the very mention of his going, were broken-hearted at the thought of it. He tells them the reason of his purposed going. He was going into heaven, there to prepare a place for them. He was not going to some distant part of the earth ; he was going to die ; he was going to rise from the dead ; and then, in the might of his resurrection strength, he would ascend to heaven, and in that place, beyond measure of distance, he would prepare a dwelling place for them; heaven and not earth was to be the abode. And let it be remembered he is not holding out heaven to the individual disciple, but to the corporate body, offering heaven to them as a final abode when the church should be com- plete. All this settles the relation of the church to the present age. The church as such is here in the process of formation as the body of Christ. Its process condition, and the objective of its completion, bear witness that it is not here as a perma- nent but a temporary institution. The church is in the world as a pilgrim and a stranger. A pilgrim is one who is away from home and on his way home. So surely as Christ, the head, has ascended to heaven, the church, as SOCIALISM 295 his body, must ascend there as well. So surely as Christ is the bridegroom and dwells in heaven, the church, which is his bride, must be presented to him and dwell in heaven also. Heaven, and not the earth, is the ultimate of a complete and triumphant church. That there may be no mistake about it, the Lord himself says to his disciples, after an- nouncing to them that he is going away into heaven to prepare a place for them : "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself ; that where I am there ye may be also." — John 14:3. It is a simple and direct promise to come and take the church out of the world. It is not a promise to the individual that in some circumstantial or providential way at death he will come in spirit to the dying believer. There is no such paucity of thought as that in his promise. It is a promise to come himself, not to the individual disciple, but to the collective body, to the whole body of his disciples, and take them clean and clear, and at the same time, the whole of them, out of the earth. It is the express declaration that there is a term to the presence of the church on the earth ; that the Lord is coming to remove the church from the earth to heaven. The outlook of the church, then, is not on this age, but on one to come. The church is not here as a factor of society, as a reorgan- 296 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES izer, as a reformer, but as one who passes through the world, even as her Lord passed. A tree, primarily, is not in the earth for the sake of the soil in which it grows ; it is in the soil for its own sake. It is in that particular spot of earth that it may draw out of it the material for its own upbuilding, and at a cer- tain stage of growth is not infrequently trans- planted to another location. The church is not here, primarily, for the world, but for its own sake, that it may take of the world according to the ordained purpose of God and build into itself that membership foreseen in covenant intention. That it will be transplanted to the garden of the Lord is certified in his assur- ance to come and take it to himself. That the Lord did not expect the church to better the world, or that the world would grow better, in the sense of spirituality, during his absence, is manifest by his own statement, by his express teaching. In his discourse upon the Mount of Olives he looks down the possible centuries and de- clares that in that coming time there will be wars and conflict of nations to the end ; that human selfishness will be the enthroned power ; that lawlessness will be multiplied and the love of divine and spiritual things wax cold ; that the fires of passion will up-leap and burn and the flame of faith and Christian hope grow dim. He predicts the character of the world's civiUzation in the closing hours of this age. SOCIALISM 297 He says it will be as it was in the days of Noah. We know what it was in the days of Noah. They were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage. It was a time of arrant materialism, a time when the appetites and passions of the natural man were let loose without stint. We know that it was a time when the earth was filled with violence, and although the Gospel was preached through Noah by the very spirit of Christ for one hundred and twenty years prior to the flood, the hearers were few and the tes- timony of grace went begging. We know that it was a time when the thoughts, the imagi- nations, and the intents of the heart were evil, and evil continually. The Son of God says the end of this age shall be like that. There was a civilization and culture in that age as well as this. When Cain went out from the presence of God he founded a city. There were workers in iron and brass ; there were builders of organs and players on instruments of music. Life had its force and its fashions. Side by side with the culture was the crime and the shame. The climax was an impossible human society in spite of the faithful testimony of God. The Son of God says the end of this age will be as it was in the days of Sodom. It shall be a time in which righteous men, like Lot, shall vex themselves unceasingly, and 298 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES dash themselves hopelessly against the increas- ing on-rush of godlessness and sin. What the Lord teaches he inspires his apos- tles to teach. Paul testifies that so far from the church producing a spiritual change in the social con- dition, the professing church itself will be subject to the moulding influence and power of the world, will depart largely from the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and that the condition in society will be so antag- onistic to the true teaching of the Word of God that he calls it by the definite title of "Perilous times." The apostle James writes as though he had dipped his pen in twentieth century ink. He declares that wealth will be accumulated in the hands of the few; that the wage of the laborer will be held back; that class and mass will dash against each other; that the rust on the wealth of the rich shall eat their flesh as it were fire; that they have heaped their treasure for the last times ; that the injustice of the hour, and that in spite of the supposedly moulding influence of the church, is so great that the Lord, as the very judge, is repre- sented as standing at the door. Christian socialism is an effort to change the predicted course of this age; an effort to Christianize men by bettering their physical and social state. In holding out such hopes it is setting up SOCIALISM 299 a false light in the world's moral and spiritual darkness. It is giving a pledge that cannot be redeemed. It is denying the whole tenor of the earthly life of Christ. It is shutting its eyes, not only to the divinely predicted course of things, but to the logical necessity for the course ; to the fact that without a distinct, new creation, human society must, in the very na- ture of the case, in exact proportion to the exaltation of its own resources and rule of its own wisdom, diverge more and more from the plane of divine and spiritual things. This world, in its present age, is like a sinking ship. Every attempt of socialism, Christian or other- wise, to better the age socially, is the folly and the futility of those who would go on board a sinking ship and, while the waves were rush- ing in and the ship slowly but surely sinking, spend their force in clearing out the state- rooms and decorating the panels. It is the folly of a man who spends his force in seek- ing to bridge a bridgeless gulf. Neither Christ .nor Christianity are in the world to reorganize the society of the natural man, elevate him, or appeal to his own re- sources. What, then, was the mission of Christ and, consequently, of the church? I answer — He came into the world not to live, but to die. He came to die that he might establish a basis on which a holy God could be just and yet justify a guilty sinner. He came that SOO THE SIGNS OF THE tlMES he might redeem man from the judgment of death and the power of sin. He came that he might recreate him as a new humanity, make him a God-enthroned being, and give him an immortal and glorious body which should shine forth at last in the beauty and splendor of his own resurrection body. This is the meaning of his presence in yon- der heaven to-day. He is there as the new head of the race. He is there to communicate from the head- quarters of omnipotence, by the instrumental- ity of the Spirit and the Word, his own very life and nature; fashioning those who own and confess him into his spiritual image here and now, that he may clothe them with his outward image by and by. In the light of his office work at the throne of God, we may read the work into which the church is called during his absence. The church is here in his name to testify to the hopelessness of the old Adamic nature. The church is here as the concrete denial of the doctrine of evolution. She is here to say that as the incarnation of Christ was not the taking up of the old Adam humanity into union with God, but the creation of a new and distinct humanity in which God was enthroned, so membership in the church of Christ is not by any fancied elongation of the old nature into a spiritual environment. The church is here to testify in language that cannot be misun- SOCIALISM 301 derstood that the natural man receiveth not the things of God ; that he cannot understand them; that they are pure fooHshness to him. The church is here to testify that when you can gather grapes of thorns and figs of this- tles ; when you can bring spirit out of flesh, or make corruption the virgin mother of holiness, then can human nature, either by the aid of the church or its own evolution, build a society whose foundation will be eternal and whose relationships shall have in them the accent of continual and unbroken peace. Not before. The church is here to testify that the only so- ciety that can abide on the earth and turn it into the paradise of God is a society in which God is the enthroned and supreme power, and that this enthronement can come only by a distinct, new genesis, a genesis as real and actual as the old ; that this new genesis comes from above and not from below; that except a man be quickened from above and be made a partaker of the divine nature, he cannot enter into the true kingdom of the brotherhood of man and God, The church is here to enunciate and re- emphasize the dogma that Christ risen from the dead is the new head of the race, and that alone through him can come the new and spir- itual life. The church is here to point the world back to the cross, proclaiming that in that cross Christ became a sin-offering for the world at large, and a substitute, in particular. 302 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES for every sinner who by faith should claim him as his personal sacrifice for sin. The work of the church is to exhort men to offer up Christ, by faith, to God as their all-sufficient propitiation and perfect substitute The work of the church is to point the world to the risen Christ, not the Christ of Bethlehem, not the Christ of mortal flesh, but the Christ of the empty tomb, the Christ who shines in an im- mortal body, in a triumphant humanity, on the ultimate throne ; point to him and bid them own him as the recreator of their humanity, as the source of the new, the spiritual, and the endless life, the life that will enable man to reign, and rule, and rejoice, in a society which shall be none other than the kingdom of the brotherhood of the sons of God. The church is not to go out and raise the false, delusive hope that man can be repaired like a broken piece of furniture and made good as new, or that he is like a closed tel- escope, only needing to be opened out that he may get the true and delivering view of God. The church is not to sing the Lorelei song that the world is growing better because, for- sooth, we have rapid transit, chemical analysis and progressive aviation ; sing the Lorelei song that identifies Christianity and civilization, that makes civilization the choral note of Christian- ity, while every moment the world, like the deluded rower in his fated skiff, is drawing nearer and nearer to the swirling whirlpool SOCIALISM 303 of destruction — the judgment climax of the age. The church is to point the world to the only hope — the Coming of the second and per- fect man, the true king and saviour of the earth. And this is the true hope. And this is to be the final solution. When he comes whose right it is to reign, he will give to every man, wrought of God in him, his true place. Then every man shall sit beneath his vine and fig tree, none daring to molest or make afraid. The knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as waters the face of the deep, war shall cease, peace shall reign, and the perfect so- ciety, made up of a new and God-enthroned humanity, shall come to its own at last. The law of life in that new and perfect so- ciety will be, not the law of self-exaltation, but the law and will of God established in the soul. Then the true personalism of man will be re- vealed. Then men will say, it is not I, but Christ. I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me. Then man will find that his true center is God. In God he will live and move and have his being, and live and have that being intelligently. The nexus between God and man, the guaranty of the perfect coming life and ultimate society is — Christ. The universe in its final term is Christo-centric. A society that is not centered in Christ must be in the flotsam and the jetsam of continual antag- onism with itself and the nature of things. In 304 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Christ is the alone secret of the unity of life and the fulfillment of the highest social rela- tions. Only when humanity is related to Christ as the body is to the head will the indi- vidualism of humanity function to the glory of the head and the perfect expression of human- ity's distinctive membership. The work of the church, then, is to get men into Christ — get Christ into men; begin to build up the foundation for the perfect society by bringing the recreative process of Christ to bear upon individual life, presenting each man, as Paul says, perfect — in Christ. This work will not change the general so- ■ ciety of the world in this age of the natural man. God himself for three years and a half walked in visible personahty in it. He walked in it, talked in it, taught and wrought in it, in the personality and individuality of his eter- nal Son; but human society, under obedience to that law which exalts self and not God, slew him through the vulnerability of his hu- manity, in the tragic death of the cross. The church has been in the world for two thousand years. When it stood nearest to the fountain head ; when the very breath of Pentecost was still warm in its veins, and the voice of him whose Word upholdeth all things, was still vibrating in their ears; in spite of the regenesis of hu- man lives and the illumination from divinity, the world society went on its way, changing SOCIALISM 305 here and there its forms, uttering new cries, but remaining at heart the same old society, the society that sets up man and not God. The Spirit of God has been at work in the world specifically for two thousand years, transforming the sons of men, illumining the darkened souls, filling the moral landscape with bursts of divine glory; and yet it is not the spiritual but the natural man who rules the world; the very socialism of the day, even when presented in the name of Christ, however smoothly it talks, means always, in the final analysis, the dignity of the natural man; it means that in the natural man are to be found the capital, the assets, and all the resources for the highest and most perfect manhood; and alas, alas, it is to this natural man that men who call themselves the ambassadors of the Christ and the apostles of a perfect social- ism are appealing for the realization of their dreams. In spite of that cross flinging its bloody shadow over human nature and echoing in the cry of agony from the lips of the for- saken Son of God, the old judgment of the flood, that the end of all flesh, both good and bad, had come before God, that in the natural man there is nothing on which God the Al- mighty builds his hopes, there are those who call themselves the ministers of the gospel of the grace of God, who fail to see that their very administration is a witness that the pres- ence and the work of the church in this world 306 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES have not been able to change the old concepts, the old pride, and the lingering accents of the devil's lie, "Ye shall be as gods." The church when true to its functions will always be rejected by the natural man, and the Spirit of God be resisted. The natural man will never accept the thesis of the church that he is without spiritual resource, or that he cannot, in his own energies, build a tower whose top shall reach to heaven and lift him above any coming flood. That the church, and the Spirit of God in the church, have held the flesh in check, is the testimony of the Son of God himself. He teaches that the church in this age is as salt and light. As salt, the church preserves the world from total corrup- tion. As light, it shines in the persistent dark- ness of the natural man. The men and women in whom there is the deposit of the divine life, in whom the Christ nature is dominant, and who are guided by the Spirit, restrain evil, act in the resistance of righteousness to un- righteousness ; but, with all this, it is only a portion of humanity that is pervaded by the salt, only a portion that is indwelt by the light. Either the purpose of God has failed in the fact of this fractionalism, or there has been a misconception of the purpose of God in the age. The purpose of God in this age is, not to change the world, but to call out of it a people for the name of Christ, who shall be united to him in spirit and nature, and that SOCIALISM 307 by faith. God's purpose is not the evohition of the old race, but the creation of a new and spiritual race in Christ. Every true Christian is a Son of God in embryo ; his full birth and deliverance is to be at the Coming of Christ, as it is written : "Beloved, now are we the sons of God ; it doth not yet appear [that is, it is not yet openly revealed] what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him : for we shall see him as he is." — I. John 3: 2. That such a body should be a modifying blessing as it passes across the face of the world ought to go without saying. A body of American tourists may pass through the old, established society of Europe; they may be a blessing in transitu, but the passage, how- ever much it may modify certain forms of things here and there and give new concepts of individuals, does not change the essential condition of the society itself, neither does the church. The work of the minister of Christ is to enter into partnership with this ordained scheme of God, be a co-worker with him in the constitution and building up of the new and spiritual race. That is his highest func- tion, that is the rare dignity into which he is called. To go down to the level of the natural life, seek to ameliorate it, change it, better it, lift it up, inspire it with hope in itself, or at- 308 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES tempt to make it the final factor in the world's work, is to fall short of the divine commis- sion, is to miss it altogether and prove false to the exalted trust of God. This failure on the part of the ministry of Christ to front bravely, fairly and squarely, the fact that God has set the natural man aside, that there is no hope in himself, that his only hope is in the regenerating mercy of God through faith in Jesus Christ ; this holding back of a large part of the professing church from the work of fitting men for eternity rather than time; this endeavor on the part of the church to placate the demands of mod- ernism and be governed by the witchery of evolution ; the willingness to make the Word of God secondary to the word of man concern- ing man; the immense efifort now making on the part of the natural man to find a solution to all the difficulties of life in himself; the in- creased determination to turn the back on any other world than this ; the insistent camp- ing of the race between the cradle and the grave, as though this narrow parenthesis of time were the sum total of the human outlook ; this setting aside of any revelation from God except that of natural intuition — all these things are distinctive signs of the times. They are signs, on the one hand, that the church is coming to the end of its usefulness as a witness for divine and unearthly things ; that it is turning away from the commission SOCIALISM 309 of Christ and accepting the commission of man ; that it is losing its nexus with the Spirit and that it is walking by sight and not by faith; on the other hand, the activities of the flesh, the pride of human learning and human achievement, the putting of science in the place of God, are witnesses that the platform is being built for the exaltation of man as su- preme, for the final repudiation of a "non- resident" God. Socialism, as expressing the latest effort of the natural man to go out like Cain from the presence of God and build a city, a society and a civilization in defiance of divine order, divine law, divine revelation and divine warning, is a witness that the world, like the ship now on the breakers, requires only one more wave to dash it to pieces. It is the sign that the world needs the hand and touch of its true and com- ing king. It is a warning that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh. EMMANUELISM ''And Jesus said, Somebody has touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." — Luke 8 : 46. He said this, because a woman who had spent all her living on physicians and was nothing bettered, only worse, had come behind him in the crowd, touched the hem of his garment, and was immediately healed. She was cured by contact with the Son of God. She got, as he said, virtue and power out of him. This curative process went on wherever he came. People were cured by touching him ; he cured people by touching them. He cured them by a word, and always when they exer- cised the condition of faith. There is a movement in our midst to-day which comes in the name of Christ, and claims, as a system, to perform some, if not all, of the cures he wrought. It takes one of the very titles of Christ. He is called Em- manuel. This system calls itself, or is called, THE EMMANUEL MOVEMENT. It takes its name from the fact that its original manifestation, and its real head- EMMANUELISM 311 quarters, is the Emmanuel Church of Boston. The definition of EmmanueHsm (as it may be styled) is given in its own official text- book, "ReHgion and Medicine," published by Moffat, Yard & Co., Boston, and written by Drs. Worcester, MacComb and Cariat. According to this text-book, Emmanuelism belongs to the category of metaphysical, or mind healing. It is known, scientifically, as Psychotherapy. It is built upon the principle that mind dominates the body ; that the body reacts upon the mind. Body and mind, together, constitute the in- dividual; but the individual has two distinct minds, the ordinary working or surface mind and, underneath that, another and superior mind. The upper mind is always more or less in a state of flotsam and jetsam, accord- ing to circumstances or conditions. The sec- ond mind is known as the "sub-conscious." The sub-conscious mind is the higher nature in man. It has in it all the necessary ele- ments of purity and truth. It has clear moral vision. It has all the endowment which the upper mind lacks. It is, practically, the nexus between man and nature, man and the univer- sal spirit, man and the God of nature. This sub-conscious mind has in it all the resources and powers by which it can save man physically and morally. It can save man physically, that is, curatively, by its relation to the chemic forces of the body. That mind 312 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES operates in relation to these forces is demon- strated every day. Fear causes the cheek to pale; shame brings the flush; sorrow causes a flow of tears ; hope makes the pulses beat ; good and evil desires may set the blood on fire. A man can be under such a strain of emotion that the sweat will roll in great beaded drops from his forehead, and his whole body be as though it were bathed in water. ' Now, these conditions are due to the effect of the mind on the circulatory system, on the com- bining and disarranging of the chemical forces of the body. All these results may be produced, more or less, by the surface mind. But the sub-conscious mind, when allowed to work, can produce all these operations of the' natural forces of the body in largest form. Take an illustration of the superiority of the sub-conscious mind : You are trying to re- call a name. You exercise your mind and all your known ingenuity to recall it. In spite of all you can do you cannot remember that name. Then you give it up in despair and quit thinking about. Suddenly, the name comes back to you. How did it happen? The answer is, the sub-conscious mind has a retentive memory. The moment it was al- lowed to work, it brought forward the name from the recess where it had been stored. In order that the sub-conscious mind may EMMANUELISM 313 freely operate, two methods are possible — auto-suggestion and extra-suggestion. Auto-suggestion signifies self-suggestion. It is self suggesting to self, to the inner and deeper self. A man may be full of worry and melan- cholia. Let him suggest to himself that he is happy; that he has courage. The sub-con- scious mind will respond and fill him with these very qualities. The physician, perhaps, has told him that he has heart disease. Let him suggest to himself that the physician does not know, has made a wrong diagnosis; let him suggest to himself that he has a strong, a normal heart — the sub-conscious mind will so act upon the cardiac muscles that he shall be well. Auto-suggestion may be used to cure oneself of vices, appetites, passions and immoralities. The sub-conscious mind under right self-sug- gestion can save a man morally and spiritually just as readily as it can save him physically. When it is impossible, for one reason or an- other, to cause the sub-conscious mind to oper- ate for good through auto-suggestion, it may be acted upon by suggestion from another. The suggestion may be made while the patient is in a waking state. If he does not respond, he may be thrown into a hypnotic sleep and, while thus hypnotized, the sub-conscious mind will recall to him things totally forgotten when awake. Under this hypnosis he may be led 314 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES to say and do things from which, when awake, he would either shrink, or of which he would be incapable. If the person who operates apon him suggests health, or otherwise than health, the individual will respond, for the moment, as though it were his own original impulse. This is the Emmanuel Movement on general principles. It is Psycho-therapeutic ; it is met- aphysical, or mind-healing. What relation does the Emmanuel Movement hold to Christian Science? The Emmanuel Movement protests that it would have come into existence even if there had never been a Christian Scientist. However true or untrue this may be, the Emmanuel Movement, in spite of its protest, must be placed in the same category with Christian Science. Like Christian Science, it is a metaphysical system of healing. Its heal- ing factor is mind, not drugs or medicine, nor the surgeon's knife. Like Christian Science, its working hypothesis is a wrong and a true mind. Some of its postulates are very similar. Christian Science says the farther we get away from the activity of the false mind (that is, the upper or surface mind of Emmanuelism) the less mind we shall have, and the greater the actual power. Christian Science, to prove its proposition, says that when a lob Iter loses its claw it replaces it with another It does EMMANUELISM ^\5 this because it has no wrong mind to suggest to it even the existence of the claw. If a man had no more mind than a lobster, each time he lost a leg, or an arm, or any member of his body, he would unconsciously replace it wilh another. On page 19 of "Religion and Medicine," we are told something similar: We are told that as we descend in the scale of conscious life we find the recuperative en- ergy intensified. If a worm is cut in two, the amputated part will be reproduced. In rep- tiles the loss of a leg or a tail is made good by the growth of a new member. This statement is made to illustrate the fact that there is a sub-conscious mind; and the more there is of this unconscious mind, and less there is of the surface mind, the mind that is always thrusting itself into conscious- ness, the more apt man will be to cure himself of physical ills, the more apt will he be to repudiate the false suggestions continually coming to him from one environment and an- other. Not only is the Emmanuel Movement, in the last analysis, based on precisely the same principle as Christian Science ; it owns and confesses it. On page 10 of "Religion and Medicine," I find these words : "All over this country solid and enduring temples are reared by grateful hands and con- 316 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES secrated to the ideal and name of Mrs. Eddy. We must be able to pass beneath the exterior of Christian Science and find a truth in it, a gift for men, a spiritual power answering to men's needs which the churches at present do not possess." On page 11 there is this statement: "With all its obscurity we find in the sacred book of Christian Science (that is, Christian Science and Health) great truth, freedom from the fetters of sense and passion, the power of the soul over the body, victory of the mind over its tyrants, fear and anger, the presence of God manifested with power ; above all, the promise of an immense immediate good as the result." On page 103 we are told that: "A new source of power has come into many lives to-day through the medium of Christian Science." If the Emmanuel Movement, by all these tokens, is not a legitimate daughter of Chris- tian Science, it gives all the praise a dutiful daughter might be expected to lavish upon a loved and much respected mother. If Emmanuelism is not an offspring of Christian Science, it belongs to the same genus, to the same species. If it claims to diflfer from Christian Science, it is only the dififerencc that one degree of the same system claims from another, in claiming that it is more advanced and better than the other. EMMANUELISM 317 Their postulates when pushed to the limit result in the same theological outcome. They stand in the same attitude to tl^e Christianity of the New Testament. Christian Science denies every fundamental doctrine of New Testament Christianity. What is the relation which the Emmanuel Movement holds to Christianity? Like Christian Science, it denies the very foundation of Christianity. It denies the re- vealed range of the person of Christ, his work, his office, and his relation to man. It affects the whole extent of man's relation to Christ and God. According to the Emmanuel Movement postulate, man has in himself all the resources to cure both body and soul. Such a being cannot be, upon any natural issue, a lost, helpless, hopeless sinner. Such a being needs no saviour other than himself — none higher than the range or altitude of his own humanity. He needs no ab extra, no divine Saviour. This is an absolute denial of the postulate of Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture says, and says it without any equivocation, and in lan- guage that it is impossible to misapprehend, that in man there is no good thing that is not gangrened with the touch of sin ; that the mind of the natural man is at enmity with God ; that it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be ; that man never can. no matter 318 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES how much or honestly he may try reach the standard of God's holiness, nor the stand- ard of God's health ; and that man is hopeless- ly lost and helplessly undone, needing a Sa- viour outside of, and distinct from, himself — a Saviour wholly extra to humanity. On the issue of the salvability of man physi- cally, or morally, the Emmanuel Movement and the Word of God are as far apart as the East is from the West. The Emmanuel Movement lays down the proposition that man is a psychic being. As a psychic he is able, under the action of right mental suggestion, to come into harmonious relation with the universal spirit — into a state of reconciliation with God. But Holy Scripture, recorded in Saint Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, says : "the natural man receiveth not the things of the "Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." — I. Corinthians 2 : 14. Now, this word translated "natural" in the Greek is psiihikos, and transliterated is "psy- chic," or "soulical." Thus the authorita- tive word of Holy Writ is that the psychic man not only does not receive the things of God, but HE CANNOT KNOW THEM. Hc haS no genius, no capacity in himself for God. He is a deficient. The antithesis is — immense. EMMANUELISM 319 The Emmanuel Movement says that man is an efficient towards God. Holy Scripture says he is a deficient. Between the natural man and God there is an impassable gulf. That gulf exists in the difference of nature. Man is a psychic, that is, literally, a soulic being. God is a spirit, wholly pneumatic. Until man has the Spirit of God he cannot accept or understand the things of God. The Emmanuel Movement is, therefore, an absolute repudiation of the Bible doctrine con- cerning the constitution of man and his rela- tion to the things of God. The Emmanuel Movement contradicts the whole testimony of God concerning death. On page 277 of "Religion and Medicine," there is this assertion: "Death is as much a part of the divine order of the world as life, and, therefore, for all God's creatures it means not evil but good." Death a part of the divine order of the world ! Death meant to be good and not evil ! Death a blessing and a benediction ! Tliis is the definition given by Emmanuel- ism. This definition is against the facts. Death is not in the divine order of the world as life. Life is an endowment. Death is a punishment. Death is not a benediction, but a doom. 320 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES It is not a gift, but a penalty. There was no death when the first man was created. Death was threatened as a penalty, and when man sinned, came in as a punishment. So the Word of God speaks of it. A blessing, a benediction to man, meant to come with the same grace as the divine order of Hfe! Why, then, does the Emmanuel Movement try to keep it« patients from dying? Why not let them die? If death is as much a part of the divine and original order in the world as life; if it be as natural to die as it is to be born (and there are those who say so), why not laugh and be merry over death? We laugh, we smile, and are glad over the birth of a babe. If death is as natural as birth, why not have death and funeral parties, and make them just as joyous occasions as birth parties? Death not meant for evil, but for good ! If this be so, then death is a friend and to be gladly welcomed. Death a friend ! Is that God's view of it, as revealed in his W^ord ? Nay ! Hear what God says about death. Listen to the characterization he makes of it : "The last ENEMY shall be destroyed— death." — I. Corinthians 15: 26. Not a friend, but an enemy, says God. Christian Science says there is no death. EMMANUELISM 321 That is the first lie ever uttered in the world. The devil started that lie. He said : "Ye shall not surely die," — Genesis 3: 4. The Emmanuel Movement teaches that death is meant for good and not evil, and is, there- fore, a friend. That is a lie equally as great as the first lie. It is a lie because God says that death is not a friend, but an enemy. If it is an enemy, it cannot be meant for good — an enemy is neither the bearer nor the symbol of good. It is a lie, this statement, equally as deceiving as the Christian Science lie that there is no death. Death in the divine order! Impossible, God himself repudiates it as such. He says that death is not in the divine, it is in the devil, order of things. If death were in the divine order, then God would be the author of death; just as much the author and creator of death as he is of life. But God is not the author of death. The author of death is the Devil. God says so. Speaking by the inspiration of God, speaking according to his very spirit and mind, Paul says: "Him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil."— Hebrews 2: 14. This is not the mere opinion of Paul. It is not a Hebraism come over from the Baby- lonish captivity and descended in lineal order 322 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES to Paul, obsessing his mind. No ! Paul takes pains to declare that what he writes is in truth the very Word of God. He says : "The Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but, as in truth, the Word of God." — I. Thessalonians 2:13. The Word of God, then, declares that death is not in the divine order as life, is not an original part of the creation, but a devil order of things, and solely because of him. The object of redemption is not to reconcile us to death, but to give us the victory over death. We are told that our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world that he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil. Destroying him that has the power of death, destroys the death which that power evokes. Our Lord Jesus Christ died that he might swallow up death in his co-equal and eternal life with God. He rose that he might be the legal, the just, and the unhindered life- giver to those who were under the sentence and doom of death and who, through fear of it, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. He came to save, not only the soul, but the body of man. He came to save man, not only from moral and spiritual, but from physical death. The Word of God denies and repudi- ates the whole proposition of the Emmanuel Movement in resfard to death. EMMANUELISM 323 On the basis of the Emmanuel doctrine our Lord Jesus Christ was not virgin born, and the incarnation of Christ was not a pre-emi- nent and isolated fact. No one who accepts the premises of Emmanuelism and follows them to their logical conclusion can believe in, or, for a moment, accept the miraculous generation and birth of Jesus Christ. For, if it be true that man, the psychic man, has in him all the powers that can relate him body and soul to God, then there is no need of a new and miraculous type of humanity. As there is no necessity for a new humanity, then Christ is not the type of a new humanity. As the natural humanity comes by ordinary gen- eration, and Christ is not extraordinary, there is no reason why his generation should not be as that of all other men — natural and not supernatural. God dwelt in him; but God dwells in all men, and finds his peculiar en- thronement in the sub-conscious mind. The enthronement of God in Christ was in the sub- conscious mind. While Christ was not super- natural, he was exceptional. His exceptional- ness consisted in the fact that he allowed his sub-conscious mind to dominate. This, then (so Emmanuelism would teach), is what Paul means when he says, "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.' He means, of course, as Jesus allowed his sub-conscious mind to reveal the deity that was in it, so we 324 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES are to let the sub-conscious mind in its mani- fest the God who dwells in us. If Emmanuelism be true, there is no basis on which to build the virgin birth of Christ, no ground for the claim of supernaturalness in him. His separateness from the average man (and Emmanuelism is forced to admit this) is simply because he allows the divine life, which is represented by the sub-conscious mind, to work. He is an exception to men, in that he is the interpreter of God; not the God of exterior nature, but the God of human nature, the God in man. Christian Science says that Jesus was the "way shower." Eimnanuelism would teach that Jesus Christ was the interpreter of God, the interpreter of God to man, by interpreting man to himself, enabling him to see the divinity already within him — seeking to awaken the divine sub-con- sciousness. In its final analysis, therefore, Emmanuel- ism, no matter how much it may deny the charge, sets aside in logic, if not in actual words, the virgin and miraculous origin of the Christ. Emmanuelism does not point the sinner to a crucified Christ. It does not tell him that forgiveness of sin is to be found in the atoning death of the cross. It does not point him to a man risen from the dead, and tell him that in this risen Christ there is virtue and power, EMMANUELISM 325 It does not exhort men to touch him by faith and get the new and spiritual Hfe which he alone can communicate. EmmanueHsm, hke Christian Science says: Look within: all the resources to overcome the sense of sin and the power of sickness ; all the forces of a new and holy life, are in you, resident in your sub- conscious mind. And the whole body of Christian healing, so Emmanuelism would teach us, is based on the principle of intra mural resource. The whole movement of Christ, so it says, was on the line of mental suggestion. Christ confined his healings to the specific diseases which Emmanuelism professes to heal (this is the affirmation of the leaders of Emmanuelism). He never healed tuberculosis, diphtheria, or typhoid fever. He healed neurosis, neurasthenia, hypochondria. He cured nervous disorders. He appealed con- tinually to the sub-conscious mind, and led men, by its operation, to throw off their ail- ments. Every case of healing (so Emmanuel- ism assures us) was an illustration of mind operating on matter. This is the way in which the celebrated healing of the paralytic is to be accounted for. You will remember, on that occasion the paralyzed man was let down through the opened roof, on his bed, to the feet of Jesus. When Jesus saw him he said to the man that his sins were forgiven. This annoyed the 326 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES crowd, and they murmured, saying, the forgiveness of sins belonged only to God. In response to this disapproval he said to them that there was no reason to marvel at his expression, for it was just as easy to tell the man his sins were forgiven, as it was to bid him rise, take up his bed and walk ; and in order to prove that one was within the compass of the other, he did tell the man to rise up and walk. You remember, the man did as he was commanded and rose a well man before their wondering eyes. The point to be made is, that the man was a sin- ner. He had, no doubt, brooded over his sins. This occupation of his mind interfered with the proper functioning of his body. Jesus relieves his mind by telling him that his sins are forgiven, God has nothing against him; there is to be no judgment here, or hereafter, concerning these sins. It is an immense relief to the man's mind. The depression is removed from his system ; the blood flows normally to all parts of his body; the circulation is com- pletely restored; every organ functions as it should ; the man feels himself well ; under this impulse or restored equilibrium, he flings aside the old mattress that had been as a shackle upon him and goes forth a free man. It is on this principle laid down by Em- manuelism that Jesus cast out demons. The Emmanuel Movement is in perfect ac- EMMANUELISM 327 cord with Christian Science on the subject of demons. Christian Science does not believe in de- mons. Demons are only evil thoughts. The leader and founder of Emmanuelism denies the existence of demons. Demonism, so called, is simply the obsession of false thoughts — false ideas. Jesus cast out these false ideas, these obsessing thoughts, by giving mental suggestion to the maniacal, the crazy, people who thronged upon his path. This, of course, explains the incident of the man of Gadara. According to the gospel record, this man had six thousand evil spirits dwelling in his body. In "Religion and Medicine," we are told that Jesus met the man, spoke soothing- ly and consolingly to him, filled him with quiet suggestions, until the man, calmed and paci- fied, sat down at Jesus' feet. When the crowd who had heard of the "miracle" came to see, they found the man, indeed, at Jesus' feet, clothed and, as it is said, "in his right mind." By suggesting the proper thoughts, Jesus en- abled the man's "right" mind, his sub-con- scious mind, to act freely, until he became master of himself, another man. This is how, according to Emmanuelism, that demons were cast out. It is true, Jesus acted as though he believed in the existence of demons. Is there a contradiction between Jesus and 328 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Emmanuelism on this point? Let us hear what the leaders of the Emmanuel Movement have to say ; let us hear their own testimony ; then we shall be able to judge them "out of their own mouth." On page 361 of "Religion and Medicine," is this unmistakable declaration: "As education progresses, belief in demoni- acal possessions dies out. The greatest strong- holds of the belief to-day are in non-Christian countries. It is hard to resist the impression that Christ himself shared the common idea. Yet we must remember that the narratives of the disorder were written by men prepos- sessed by the theory of demoniacal action, and even the words of Jesus himself come to us through the minds of such men. If the evi- dence warrants us in believing that Jesus did not share the contemporary belief, we must maintain that in no way does this fact invali- date his spiritual authority as the founder of the kingdom of God." Let us analyze this amazing statement and see its actual contents. 1. It is ignorance, and not education, which believes in demoniacal possessions. 2. It is evident that Jesus shared the impres- sions of the ignorant, superstitious, and credu- lous, people of his times. It seems plain that he fully believed in demons. 3. There is only one way to "resist" the impression that Jesus believed in demons, a/id tMMANUELISM 329 that is, to recognize that his words have not been correctly reported, or they have been misinterpreted by the ignorance and supersti- tion of the apostles who profess to give his words to us. This means, of course, that the New Testament is not an inspired record — that is to say, not divinely inspired ; but, on the contrary, a writmg onginarmg m numan ignorance and superstition. 4. If the evidence, however, is to be believed that Jesus really did accept the doctrine of demonism, and really professed to cast out evil spirits, then this must be accounted for on the ground that Jesus himself was not as learned as the men who wrote "Religion and Medicine." He did not know as much about psjchology as they; or, 5. If Jesus did not really believe in demons, nor in Satanic powers, then he simply con- ceded to the ignorance of his hearers — winked his eye (so to speak) at the ignorance and superstition of the times. And now mark the ethics of Emmanuelism, which this analysis reveals: *Tn no way [say the leaders and the found- ers of Emmanuelism] does this fact [the pos- sibility that Jesus believed in demons, was ignorant, therefore, and superstitious ; or, that he pretended to believe as the crowd did in order to placate them] — in no way does this fact invalidate his spiritual authority as the founder of the kingdom of God." 330 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES It is hard to find sufficient vocabulary to deal with this conclusion. Emmanuelism de- nies the unhindered wisdom and knowledge of Jesus. It puts him on the level of ignorance and superstition with the most ignorant and superstitious; or, it makes him a dishonest deceiver, knowing what the people believed, and willing to confirm them in what he knew to be untrue. Emmanuelism makes Jesus either an ignorant and superstitious man, or a wilful and dishonest teacher, stooping to the lowest level of deception to win the popular applause. And yet, in face of all this, Em- manuelism says it makes no difit'erence in the authority of Jesus as a spiritual teacher, as the foundation on which is built, or to be built, the kingdom of God. What must be thought of such a concept of ethics? What shall be thought of the honesty of Emmanuelism itself? Does it not justify the question how far Em- manuelism is concealing its own unbelief that it may deceive the people ? While Emmanuelism recognizes that Jesus used mental suggestion in his so-called mira- cles of healing, it calls a halt in the acceptance of the miracles which, seemingly, transcribe the laws of nature. Such miracles as turning water into wine, giving sight to the blind, rais- ing the dead, stilling the storm, it passes over in silence. It says it will not accept these mira- cles till science and modern scholarship have given permission to do so. In other words, EMMANUELISM 331 Emmanuelism limits the miracles of Christ to the realm of the metaphysical — to the realm of mere mental suggestion. And it is here Emmanuelism finds explanation for the mira- cles of the Apostolic age. On page 94 of "Religion and Medicine," we are told that the phenomenon of the speaking with tongues was due to auto-suggestion. It is an astounding thing to learn that such marvellous, epoch-making events as those which took place on the day of Pentecost (the descent of the Holy Ghost, the manifestation of the fiery tongues, and the speaking with tongues, so that every man heard in his own language the wonderful things of God) were all due to auto-suggestion ; practically, to the exercised will power of each disciple. It is on the basis of auto-suggestion, we are told, that prayer is made effective. Prayer is, when effective, subjective and not objective. The individual gets the moral and spiritual answers to his prayers, not because God steps in, but because by auto-suggestion he creates the condition desired in his own mind. On this basis prayer may be answered, to a greater or less degree, for the sick. The answer may be communicated by mental suggestion. When you are praying for the sick, you are sending mental suggestions of health into their mind. The answers will be all the more certain if the sick can know that you are praying for 332 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES them. The moment your friend knows that you are praying for him he will, if he has faith in you, join in partnership with your suggestion, and, sooner or later, auto-sugges- tion will begin to work in him. He will sug- gest health to himself. He will repudiate the suggestion of sickness or indisposition. He will continually suggest to himself that he is well ; that he is full of vigor and tone. His whole energies will be at work along the line of recuperation and reinforcement of the nerves ; working together in partnership with the attitude of prayer and as one prayed for, you, and the one-time sick man, create new psychic and physiologic conditions. The one supreme thing required in the scheme of metaphysical healing on the part of the patient is faith. No matter what the object of that faith may be; it may be faith in Christian Science, Theosophy, !Mahommedanism — faith is the condition. Faith is the condition in which neither Christian Science nor Theosophy, Ma- hommedanism nor Confucianism, Emmanuel- ism, nor God himself, does the work. It is a faith condition in which mental suggestion, either from the operator or the individual, may work. Emmanuelism is, therefore, a sys- tem which will work just as well in Christian Science, in Theosophy, Buddhism, Confucian- ism, New Thought, Agnosticism, or any other "ism." A system which will work as well in EMMANUELISM 333 the name of Mahommedanism and Agnos- ticism, in the name of Buddhism as well as Christianity, can hardly be that Christianity which honors and glorifies the "faith once for all delivered to the saints" ; hardly that faith which testifies that Jesus Christ is the only name given under heaven whereby men must be saved. Nay ! Emmanuelism is too supple, too agree- able, too close in fellowship with all that de- nies Christ and the truth for which he stands, to be of Christ or to be Christian. It cannot be Christian, no matter how much it may make the claim. Is that Christian which invalidates the doctrine of the fall and makes the whole argument of the epistle to the Romans as worthless as an old wives' fable? Is that Christian which so exalts the meta- physical resources of the natural man that he shall expect to find in himself all that makes for salvation bd^h here and hereafter? Is that Christian which, in face of God's own denial of it, teaches that death (which he in- flicted as a penalty) is a boon and a benedic- tion, intended for good and not evil, for peace and not punishment? Is that Christian which renders a virgin-born Son of God useless, makes the cross of Christ no more than mar- tyrdom, and, by every fundamental proposi- tion of its system, turns regeneration into a reasonless theory? Can you call that Chris- 334 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES tian which invades the deity of Christ, brings his miracles down to the dead level of mental suggestion, circumscribes and limits his heal- ings to a class of cures which requires no miraculous energy at all? Is that Christian which excuses the unscientific belief of Jesus on the ground of an ignorance that makes him no match for the education, the culture, and the science of this age? Is that Christian which not only sets aside the nature miracles of Christ, but takes this book, the New Testa- ment, and tells us that the words of Christ reported therein may be, after all, only the words of ignorant, partisan, and superstitious disciples? Is that Christian which tells us that only so much of the New Testament may be accepted as modern science and scholarship shall verify (and Emmanuelism tells us with- out any equivocation that this is where it stands, fair and square) ? Can It be said of any of these things, and of this attitude of Emmanuelism, that it is Christian? It Is as the bond slave of modern science and scholar- ship that Emmanuelism comes ; nevertheless, claiming to be Christian. It dares to take upon itself the solemn, holy, and yet prophetic name — Emmanuel. Hear how it confesses itself under the tutelage of human science and scholarship. In "Religion and Medicine," page 13, there is the official declaration: "We (the authors, founders, teachers, lead- ers, and apostles of Emmanuelism) have taken EMMANUELISM 335 our stand fairly and squarely on the religion of Christ as that religion is revealed in the New Testament and as it is interpreted by modern scholarship." Mark that phrase, "interpreted by modern scholarship." And God knows we understand well enough, some of us, how modern scholar- ship interprets the New Testament and Christ. It repudiates the fall of man, the virgin birth, atonement, resurrection of the body, regen- eration, the Coming of Christ, and the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Bible. We know what modern scholarship means. It means to hand the New Testament over to the naturalist and the modernist in religion, to the men who are the supreme, rank unbelievers of the hour in the "faith once for all delivered to the saints." How would you like a man to settle your father's estate who, during all the lifetime of your father, had been engaged in robbing him, dishonoring his paper, his writing, his con- tracts? Well, that is modern scholarship. Its whole history is one of robbery — robbing us of the God and Christ the Bible reveals ; dis- honoring the writings of the law-givers, the prophets and the apostles; testifying to the worthlessness of the covenant contracts re- corded therein. Emmanuelism boasts that it comes in the name of modern scholarship. It puts Christ and Christianity under the dixit of that schol- 336 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES arship. This, of Itself, is a witness that it is not the Christianity of Christ. It is not Chris- tianity at all. No matter how much it may use the name of Christ and take shelter in his church, it is, simply, a natural religion in dis- guise. It is Christian Science in disguise. It is Theosophy in disguise. It is the religion of the psychic, and not the pneumatic, man. Its Christ is not the Christ who created the world, created human nature for himself, made an actual sacrifice in that nature by death, rose, ascended in the body in which he died, Hveth in divine, human form on the throne of the tmiverse, the Second Adam, the new head of the race, having all healing pow- ers in himself, both moral and physical. Nay ! it is a false Christ, the Christ of naturalism, the Christ of merely human resource. Its God is not the God of revelation, but the God of nature and fallible human science. Its Gospel is not the Gospel of the blood and the empty grave. Its Gospel of hope is the Gos- pel of auto-suggestion (it should be called auto-deception). Its enthusiasm is the en- thusiasm of humanity. Its promise, the evolu- tion of the natural man into the realm of deity. It is the old devil lie whispered in Eden to mortal man, "Ye shall be as gods." That is the relation which Emmanuelism sustains to New Testament Christianity. It is, in final terms, the repudiation of the Chris- tianity and the Christ of the New Testament EMMANUELISM 337 What, let it now be asked, is the relation which Emmanuelism sustains to society? I answer it is one of menace, of actual peril. Who can measure, really, the extent of the peril that lies in mental suggestion ? Who can say what crimes may not be coinmitted if this science of mental suggestion and lawless hyp- notism is permitted to work ? What home will be safe when the mental suggestionist enters where wife and daughter, as well as husband and son, dwell? Who can estimate the re- sults of a system which on this side claims the right of one personality to invade another, and on the other side cultivates an attitude of subjectivity to this invasion? What does it mean but the opening of doots for the pos- sible entrance of that which may be as ter- ible, if not worse than demonism? What a spectacle when men and women shall be found living in a community possessed by, and under the power and personality of, another! It is a menace, a peril of perils to society. Coming in the name of science, it is a men- ace to one of the noblest departments of sci- ence — the science of medicine itself. Let this system spread throughout a com- munity; let it become universal in the name of Christ and the church, and in a few years all the science of the devoted men who have given themselves to medicine will be rendered null and void ; and who can measure the state of society when every freak who thinks he 338 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES has a call to arouse the sub-conscious mind in others is let ioose upon the community with the banner cry, "No more drugs, no medicine, no more doctors — only mental healing" ? If it is a peril to society on merely natural grounds, what^ shall be said of it as a religious peril to society? If, for the next few years, every church in the country could be persuaded to have a clerical clinic in it, there would be only one religious profession that would not be undermined by it, and that would be Chris- tian Science. If Christian Science wishes to ruin and destroy the orthodoxy of the Nev/ Testament Church, let it encourage Emman- uelism. It is time for Christians to arouse and re- pudiate this attempt to turn the Christian min- istry into a body of hypnotists. It is time to repudiate this subtle attempt to turn the church into a hospital of clerical mind healers and auto-suggestionists. It is time to repudiate the too open bid of the Devil to bring the church down from the heavenly places in Christ Jesus and side track it amid Theoso- phists, New Thoughtists, Christian Scientists, and Psycho-therapists. It is time Christians awoke and heard the rebuke and warning of the Lord, "Ye can dis- cern the signs of the skies ; can ye not discern the signs of the times?" All this condition I have been describing means that we are entering the last days of EMMANUELISM 339 which our Lord gives solemn and precise warning; those days in which many should come in his name and deceive many. Emmanuelism, like Christian Science, is one of the foretold deceivers. Its growth and ac- ceptance mean the setting aside of the cross of Christ and the empty tomb. It means turning the gaze away from the only Saviour who can save forever. It means turning the lost soul to gaze upon the false hope of its own self-deceived mind and heart. It means the subordination of the soul to the body. It means an unreal salvation in time, and a sure damnation in eternity. I would exhort all who read these lines to repudiate Emmanuelism and any false physical or spiritual hope it may hold out in the name of Christ. Turn away from it and look to him who in himself has the power to heal both body and soul. Turn to him who, because he died as an acceptable sacrifice for sin, rose from the dead, and now lives as the risen head and source of eternal life to men. Come to him as the poor woman did, touch him by faith, and receive from him, not mental sug- gestion, not the impulse of the sub-conscious mind, but that new, that wondrous, that glo- rious thing, the "divine nature," which he alone can give, and be made at once spiritually whole with the virtue that goeth out of him ; that spiritual virtue which is the assurance of 340 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES healing to the soul now, and the guaranty of a perfect body, in the day when he shall ap- pear and all his ransomed church with him. To every Christian I would give the word of warning which Emmanuelism and its kin- dred deceptions (as signs of the times) signify — the warning that the Lord is at hand — that in an unlooked-for moment he may secretly come to take to himself those alone who are reallv his. THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE and The Restoration of Babylon "Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. And I said. What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said more- over, This is their resemblance through all the earth. And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead ; and this is a woman that sit- teth in the midst of the ephah. And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah ; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings ; for they had wings like the wings of a stork ; and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven. Then I said to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? And he said to me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base." — Zechariah 5:5-11. S42 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES The ephah was an instrument of measure. It was in the form of a box. Its "resemblance through all the earth," to which the angel draws special attention, is the announcement that it is henceforth to be regarded throughout the earth as the standard of measure. The talent is a sealing weight stamped with the image of a woman and forming the lid of the box. The two women with the wings of a stork who bear it away, do so, that they may set it up on a base where it may be seen and recognized throughout the whole earth as the official standard of measure. Two women supporting between them a shield, or anchor, or holding scales, or some instrument of weight or measure, have, from time immemorial, been accepted among all na- tions as symbols of commerce. These women, therefore, draw attention to a system of com- merce, of barter, of exchange and trade. The fact that the ephah is uplifted and then established by them as a universal standard of measure sets forth the idea of a system of uni- versal and authoritatively established com- merce. If we turn our eyes abroad upon the world we shall find that the one great object before the nations of the earth to-day is this image of commerce, drawing them with all the se- ductive influence a siren woman might exercise upon the heart of man. The one great aim THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 343 on the part of each is to win the favor of this mighty mistress. The world powers are en- gaged in a Titanic struggle for commercial supremacy. To this end mills are built, fac- tories founded, forests felled, lands sown, har- vests reaped and ships launched. Because of this struggle for the mastery of the world's market the nations reach out and extend the'.r borders. For this reason Europe has parcelLv,! out Africa. It is for this that France is at Casablanca and Spain has sent fifty thousand of her best troops to Melilla. Under this im- pulse the treaty of Algeciras was made and still keeps the eyes of statesman and diplomat turned now to Morocco, now to Tunis and anon to Algiers. This is why Japan lays her greedy, necessitous, lawless, and still bar- baric, grip on Corea, and looks with covetous eyes on Manchuria and the Philippines. For this, all the nations of the earth, in one fashion or another, are knocking at the doors of China, cutting canals between the oceans, and survey- ing the islands of the sea. It is this demand for commercial headship which feeds the fires of internecine strife among the Latin republics of South America. And it is for this reason, and this reason alone, that Dreadnaughts and super-Dreadnaughts are being built, armies multiplied and arsenals filled. It was a sug- gestive but logical spectacle the other d^y of her giant war vessels in the Thames River. \\ hen England assembled one hundred and fifty 344 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES anchoring them at the London docks, display- ing her sea power and giving forth her com- mercial challenge in the greatest seaport of the world. The struggle of commerce brings the na- tions face to face, making it more and more necessary to equalize tariffs and balance trade. As the world becomes geographically smaller ; as it is girdled by flashes of wireless telegraphy and linked by ocean cables ; as time is nullified and distance destroyed ; as nations talk to, and almost touch, each other across the once divid- ing seas and barrier lands ; as the whisper breathed in the markets of the East is heard in the exchanges of the West; in proportion as the world consciousness becomes one and universally and coincidentally sensitive, it be- comes also more and more a necessity that there shall be a standard of measure common to all. Just as State banks in this country gave way to National banks ; as narrow gauge roads yielded to broad gauge, so the nations find themselves obliged to break over their own localisms and seek for this unit of measure. And it is coming. It is already here. The French metric system is rapidly assuming the proportion of a universal and accepted measure. The need of commerce, of general business, lor a universal standard of measure, demands also a common and universal language, a lan- e^uage that will make it possible for the na- THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 34!) tions to transact their affairs in a speech un- derstood by all. Such a language has been created. It is known as "Esperanto." It has its grammar and dictionary. Enthusiastic con- ventions, with delegates from all parts of the world, discuss and proclaim it as the unit of international intercourse, the vocal and oral bond of a world fraternity, the perfect tongue for the interchange and the fashioning of com- mon thought. Every hour the signs indicate that this new- made language is outrunning, outstripping, and far anticipating the announcement of the prophet, that the time should come when the Lord would turn to the people a pure (that is, universal) language; anticipating the divine tongue and fashioning itself apart from the hand and inspiration of the Almighty ; and thus witnessing that we are steadily drawing near to that unity of speech and idea which prevailed in the hour when the world with its pride, its self-sufficiency, its arrogance and forgetfulness of God, sought to build a tower whose topmost height should reach to heaven and render man immune from coming judg- ment. Steadily the world is moving forward along the plane of this unity — unity of measure, unity of speech and unity of commerce. When Zechariah sees the women with the stork wings bearing away the ephah, he asks the angel with whom he had been talking 346 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES whither they are bearing it. The angel tells him they are taking it to the land of Shinar, to Babylonia, to that spot where old Babylon lies in ruins. The women are carrying the ephah there that they may build it a home, set it up, and establish it on a recognized base. As the women set forth commerce in its activity, and the ephah the standard of uni- versal measure, it is the definite, angelic dec- laration that Babylon is to become the site, the base, the center and, therefore, the estab- lished and recognized capital of a wide, far- reaching and universal system of commerce, a veritable world kingdom of common inter- ests. As Babylon was then, and is now, over- thrown and in ruins, it is the logical and un- qualified testimony that Babylon must be re- built — that Babylon has yet a future. To this the objection is made that Babylon, in the divine prophecies, was to be totally de- stroyed and never again rebuilded or inhabited. The prophecy of Jeremiah is quoted as giving the details of its final destruction, and the words of Isaiah as proclaiming its perpetual desolation. The words of Isaiah, it is said, have been made good to the very letter ; for two thousand years, it is said, Babylon has been a complete and woful ruin ; every pass- ing traveler shuns it; the Arab will not pitch his tent there; no shepherd will keep his flocks there ; it is the home of wild beasts ; the ruins are the abode of doleful creatures ; owls THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 347 disturb the night silence, and desolation reigns supreme. But the truth is, Babylon has never been made an entire desolation. The word of the prophet has not been completely fulfilled. It was not fulfilled in the Apostle Peter's day. In his first general epistle, written in the year 66 of the Christian era, nearly eight hundred years after Isaiah's prophecy, he testifies that there was a church at Babylon, and, conse- quently, a Babylon that was inhabited. In- deed, there has never been a time since the foundation of the city when it was not, in some degree, inhabited. At the present mo- ment the town of Hillah, a town of some fif- teen or twenty thousand inhabitants, is built upon its site, and out of the very material, the very brick and stone, of the ancient city. But, further, the prophecy of Zechariah concerning Babylon as the established base of the world's commerce was made some twenty or thirty years after Babylon was supposed to be de- stroyed forever, and must, in the nature of the case, refer to a period yet future. When we turn to the New Testament we find a de- scription of that future Babylon. It is given in the eighteenth chapter of the Book of the Revelation. The Book of the Revelation pre- sents us with the picture of two distinct, future Babylons — the Mystic and Commercial Baby- lon. ■ The Mystic Babylon is described in the seventeenth chapter. The symbol is that of 348 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES a drunken, fallen woman robed in scarlet, holding in her hand a cup of abominations and filthiness with which she has seduced the na- tions and led them into iniquity She sits upon a ten-horned beast, itself the divinely ap- pointed symbol of the revived Roman empire under its final and coming head, and the angel who interprets the symbol to John, the Beloved disciple, says unto him, "and the woman thou sawest in that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." — Revelation 17: 18. The word Babylon in this chapter is used for, and signifies, Rome. Nor in this transfer of one name for another is there anything un- usual or forced. In the eleventh chapter of this same Revelation the names Sodom and Egypt are used as equivalents for Jerusalem, as it is written : "And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually [that is, symbolically] is called Sodom and Egypt where our Lord was crucified" (Jerusalem.) — Revelation 11:9. As Jerusalem (where our Lord was cruci- fied) is spiritually or symbolically called So- dom and Egypt, equally so is Rome called Babylon. That the Babylon of the seventeenth chapter of Revelation is Rome is corrobora- tively evident from the characteristic color of scarlet (the color both of Imperial and Papal Rome), the topographical situation of the city on her seven hills or mount* th«» hlnnH vfain THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 349 of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus (whether at the hands of Emperors or Popes), and, above all, in the Spirit-inspired declara- tion that it is the city reigning, when this was written, "over the kings of the earth." The city that reigned at the time when John in the isle of Patmos beheld the vision, was Rome, and otily Rome, the then proud mistress of the world. Babylon, therefore, in this par- ticular chapter of the Revelation sets forth Rome. But it sets it forth in a mystic or sym- bolic sense. Mystically and symbolically, it represents that false and corrupt system which makes its capital to-day in the actual city of Rome, and which, after the true Church (sym- bolized by the New Jerusalem) shall have been translated from earth to heaven to meet the Lord as the descending Bridegroom, will become the depositary of all the odds and ends, all the philosophy and infidelity of a re- jected Protestantism, and will, for a time, be- come the world's accepted religion of state till, at an ordained moment. Antichrist shall turn upon it, trample it beneath the feet of his kings and destroy it forever. This is mystic Babylon, casting its shadow religiously over the earth to-day in the in- creased power of Romanism and the steady down-grade of Protestantism ; the shadowy forecast of the hybrid combination that is yet to dominate the earth for a space. Mn the eighteenth chapter we have neither 350 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES symbolic Babylon nor actual Rome, but the real and actual city of Babylon. The proof that this is not the Babylon of the preceding chapter is to be found in the fact that in that chapter the ten kings hate the mystic Babylon and "make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire" (Revelation 17 : 16) ; while the "kings of the earth" (and these are the same kings, the ten kings of the seventeenth chap- ter) bewail and lament when they see the burning and destruction of the Babylon of the eighteenth chapter, and say, "Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city" (Reve- lation ^18: 8-10). • Surely, the Babylon that is "hated" and "burned" in the one chapter cannot be the Babylon whose burning and destruction are lamented and bewailed in the next chapter — and that lamentation and bewailing by the very kings who hated, burned and destroyed the Babylon of the preceding chapter. These Babylons are distinct. The Babylon of the seventeenth chapter is the ecclesiastical system now centered at Rome, and to be the state religion of Anti- christ for a time. The Babylon of the eight- eenth chapter is the actual Babylon of the fu- ture. That there is a similarity of statement concerning them, as, for example, the "purple and scarlet, the gold and precious stones," common to both, is true simply because both THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 351 cities, actual Rome and actual Babylon, a. to be identified with Antichrist, the one ecclesi- astically, the other commercially and polit- ically, each forming- part of the immense world system that is to precede the coming and king- dom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The eighteenth chapter gives us the Baby- lon which Zechariah sees as the base or center of the world's final commerce, the city whose destruction and perpetual desolation both Jere- miah and Isaiah foretold. According to the Word of God, this resur- rected Babylon will be an immense city. It is called Babylon the Great to distinguish it from the former Babylon, the Babylon cf Nebuchadnezzar, known as Great Babylon, which he builded. This will be Babylon the Great, the supreme, the final. It will be a city of buying and selling for the whole earth. In it will be the merchandise of gold and sil- ver, of precious stones and pearls, of purple silk and costly wools. There will be displayed vessels of use and vessels of art; vessels of wood and brass and iron and marble. There will be bazaars filled with cinnamon and fra- grant odours, ointment and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat. Markets will be crowded with cattle, sheep and horses. There will be vast manufactories for the pro- duction of every conceivable form of fast fly- ing vehicles. There will be merchandise of bodies and souls. Women will sell their bodies 352 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES as of yore and men will sell their souls. It will be a city of exchange, of trade, of manu- facture, of construction and art. All that the desire of man can suggest, all that his lust may covet, all that genius can invent, and all that the power of money can produce, will be there. It will be a city of untold riches, of astound- ing extent of capital. It will be made a port of entry (the old canals will be deepened) ; ships of the heaviest tonnage will anchor at its wharves. Its docks will be piled with the world's output. Whatever has been grown, or cultivated, or made, traded, or discovered, will be found unloaded and loading from the great leviathans of the outer deeps. It will be a city given over to pleasure as well as to business. There will be riotous joy and ceaseless feasting. The blood will be hot in the veins, wealth will flow as from foun- tains, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, will find unexampled em- phasis within its borders. The round of busi- ness will be rhythmed by the round of pleasure, self-gratification and ever-enlarging desire. Money will be the god, pleasure the high- priest, and unchecked passion, the ritual of worship. It will be a city of music. Amid the thun- der, crash, and din of business, will 'be heard the harmonies of vocal and instrumental music. There will be heard the voice of "harpers, and THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 353 musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters." The world's best singers and players will be there. The congested wealth of the earth will draw the genius both of voice and hand. It will be not only the capital of busi- ness, the theatre of trade, the arena of exchange, the supreme conservatory of music, the center of art, the whirlpool of mad and maddening excess, it will be, also, the headquarters of the world's most advanced and most imposing occultism. The curiosity of the West and the fatalistic mysticism of the East will center there and bring about the most tremendous manifestation from the un- seen world ever recorded in human history. It will be the rendezvous of all the expert me- diums of the earth. Those who desire to con- sult the dead will go there. Just as men and women now go to Paris for fashion and sen- suous pleasures, so multitudes will flock to Babylon to seek connection with the dead, with spirits from the beyond. Demons, dis- embodied souls, unclean spirits, will find at Babylon the supreme opportunity to material- ize themselves through chosen agents, to de- ceive, intoxicate, and lead captive the children of men. Babylon, it is said, shall become "the habi- tation of devils [demons] and the hold [head- quarters] of every foul spirit." The gates of Hades will be opened and shoals of lost spirits 354 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES will float upward from the lower regions to the city, while from the dark abysses of tlic atmospheric heavens the rebel spirits of old time will once more descend to revel amid earth's affairs, and rejoice for a space in the world's surrender to sensualism and limitless sin. It will be, at once, the most beautiful and the most wanton of cities. The wealth that wall flood into it will enable men to build like princes. The skill of modern construction will seek to outvie the ancient splendors. Great as were the tower of Belus and the hanging gardens ; marvellous as were the marble quays and colonnaded streets ; astounding as were the palaces and colossal the walls of former times, the new Babylon will easily surpass them all in i.ts wonders, its wickedness and beauty. If ever there can be a time when sin may be suc- cessfully plated with gold, and vice may be made to appear as noble as virtue, it will be then. Its topographical situation, like that of Chi- cago, will make it the railway center of the old continents of Europe and Asia. Commerce will no longer necessitously plod the slow route of the Suez Canal, but move on lines of direct communication. ]\IeDchandise will be shipped from London and Paris to Baby- lon. There will be through rates from New York, Tokio and Canton. North and South, East and West, will pour the wealth of the THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 355 world's traffic here ; from hence it will be dis- tributed to the earth's circumference. Babylon will have become the commercial capital of the world. And this Babylon will be ruled and con- trolled by a supreme master mind, a man who shall combine in himself all the varied genius of the human race. He will be soldier and statesman, orator and financier, scientist and demagogue, tyrant and liberalist, leading armies and addressing conventions, making treaties and breaking them. Honored and feared, worshipped and hated, he it is who shall be the founder of new Babylon, its civic ruler, king by title, undisputed head of com- merce, and king of the actual kingdom of com- merce. Master of the East, both by reason of commercial relations and military success, he will receive from western Europe a call to arbi- trate its turbulent afifairs, and, in the end, will be exalted by unanimous consent to be a sort of king of kings, the recognized head over the powers now dwelling in the territory once oc- cupied by imperial Rome. To the titles king of Babylon, king of Assyria, will be added that of Prince of Rome. It will be a political miracle — the sudden resurrection of the Rome of the Caesars, outreaching the dream of a Napoleon or the effort of a Charlemagne, and once more making the fourth empire of prophecy the dominant power in the earth. Rome on her seven hills in the West will 356 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES be the acknowledged capital, where for a time this startling person will sustain and advocate Romanism with all its adjuncts of Judaism, Paganism, corrupt Protestantism, Socialism, demonism and material philosophy ; but Baby- lon will remain the unquestioned commercial capital from whence he shall dictate the climac- teric politics of the age. From the beginning of the divine record to the last, this man's shadow falls athwart the sacred page. We find that shadow in Nimrod, the mighty hunter, whose kingdom began at Babel. We see it in Pharaoh, who persecuted the people of God in Egypt ; in Saul, the false and demon possessed king of Israel; in Nebuchadnezzar, the golden head of the Gen- tile image ; in the first Herod, who would have killed the infant Christ ; in the last Herod, who exalted himself as a god and was smitten with sudden death; in the conqueror on the white horse going forth conquering and to conquer ; and, finally, in that wild beast after whom all the world wonders, and who opens his mouth that he may blaspheme God. He is presented to us in the Word of God under many and varied names ; not only is he known as "king of Babylon," as the "Assyrian," as "the king," as the "man who maketh the earth to tremble," as the "shaker of the nations," "the dragon in the sea," "the man who heapeth the nations to himself," "the king of fierce countenance" possessing a THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 357 strange god, he whom the Son of God saith should "come in his own name," and scores ef other titles for which there is no space here, but he whom we also know as "the man of sin" of Paul, "the son of perdition," "the wicked one," and whom John, the Beloved disciple, names as "the Antichrist." Babylon and Antichrist! The two are indissolubly linked together. They are as linked together as Jerusalem and Christ. So surely as Christ will yet come to Jerusa- lem, so surely will Antichrist precede him s^i^-i come to Babylon, It is as certain as the sun in heaven, as set- tled as the thrwie of God above the sun, that Jerusalem will be "builded upon her own heap," that "the city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel and to the gate of the corner," and that "it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down, any more forever." — Jeremiah 31: 38-40. It is just as sure, just as certain, that Baby- lon will be rebuilded, established upon her own base, as the city of the false Christ, the world's "coming man," the world's long-ex- pected god. And certain events now taking place in the East bear witness that the day of Babylon is at hand, yes, that it is at the very doors. A notable sign that calls for reading with wide-open eyes is the endeavor that Germany 358 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES has been making to build a railway to the East through Bagdad to Babylon, and the dream of the German Emperor concerning Germany's commercial supremacy in the East. William of Germany has dreamed of the possibility of a German railway from Ham- burg to the Persian gulf; a railway running through the fertile plains of Shinar, enabling him to outstep England, checkmate Russia, and anticipate the on-sweep of Japan to con- trol the affairs of China and the East. It was this desire which made him and Abdul Hamid of Turkey the closest of politi- cal friends. The German Emperor's desire to get into the prophetic land of Shinar has been the making of strange policies in the Yildiz palace on the Bosphorus and the white palace on the Spree. The Drag ncxh Osten, the on-sweep to the East, led Germany into a compact with Turkey. William would stand by Abdul in Crete if Abdul would grant him the right to build a railway across his domin- ions to the Persian gulf. Abdul Hamid con- sented. He gave the Emperor a royal conces- sion. He gave him permission to build a rail- way from Hadir Pasha on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, through Anatolia, over the Taurus mountains to Adana and Aleppo; thence through southern Kurdistan to Nineveh on the Tigris River ; thence along the historic river to Bagdad. The line was then to con- tinue south via Babylon (mark that! via Baby- THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 359 Ion), Kerbela and Bosra to Koweit on the Persian gulf. The German and Austrian railways are practically one. Travelers can go now from Hamburg to Constantinople and breathe Ger- man air, hear German speech, and be conducted by German officials all the way. On the Asi- atic side work has been progressing rapidly, bridges have been built, grades made, stations erected and tracks laid. Steadily the road, itself German territory, with conceded German territory for a wide distance on either side, has been pushing the flashing steel towards Baby- lon and all the productive wealth of the Tigris and Euphratean valleys. Steadily the Ger- man on-sweep has been echoing on its w^ay to the East, and the ring of every German car wheel on the fresh-laid tracks has been echoing the name of Babylon, and singing in the ears of the German Emperor the song of commercial dominion, the kaisereich of the world. That railroad meant Berlin transferred to Babylon ; it meant a Berlin-Babylon. But England was following the trail ; every blow that drove a spike in the crossties struck a blow against the back door of India, gave warning that the Mediterranean would no longer be a British lake, and seemed to prophesy of rusted locks and crumbling walls on the Suez Canal. One day, therefore, Eng- land stepped right across the projected road, 360 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES made a treaty with an insignificant kaliph ol an insignificant province, and flung her flag and her threat across the prophetic and cov- eted route to the East. Germany's Dread- naughts had not then grown high enough to loom in English vision, and Germany, as such, for a while came to a halt. But the road is ordained by God and nature. Babylon is the magnet, and Babylon calls. At this present moment a company of American capitalists, among them the most representative financiers of America, are about to invest one hundred millions of dollars in railway construction through Asiatic Turkey for the express pur- pose of exploiting the rich mineral and oil fields of Kurdistan and the Tigris and Eu- phrates valleys. A section of the road will run from Sivas, in the province of Sivas, south and west to the Mediterranean at the Gulf of Iskanaeroon, tapping the rich export city of Aleppo on the way. A sea terminal will be built at Suediah, about ninety miles from Aleppo. At Sivas connection will be made with a branch going to the Black Sea. Con- cessions from the Turkish government cover some twelve hundred miles. The concession calls for rapid construction, and the line will be swiftly pushed towards Babylon. In addi- tion, there is this startling fact that the great English engineer who built the Assouam dam in Egypt, now changing the face and the cli- mate of that country, has been called to make THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 361 surveys in the Euphratean valley and about Babylon, and has been authorized to sketch out the plans and begin the initial work of a colossal scheme of irrigation which shall re- peat on a gigantic scale the canal system of ancient days. English capital is flowing Baby- lonward. All the nations of the earth are be- ginning to find themselves under the spell. The nations are converging towards Baby- lon. The Western nations in their on-rush to the East, the Eastern nations in their on-rush to the West. Babylon is the predestined and fatalistic center. The cphah is being carried to the land of Shinar. The stork-winged women are drawing near to the ordained base that they may set it up and establish it thereon. Commerce is becoming a universal kingdom. The nations are taking their place in the kingdom. The sceptre is going to Babylon. The sceptre is capital, and capital is on the move to Babylon. Babylon ! if we had ears to hear it — that is the supreme word now on the lips of prophecy. Not Jerusalem, but Babylon. And all this is a sign plain enough to be read by him who runs. 362 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES It is a sign that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Look at it ! Before the Appearing of Christ in glory the kingdom of Antichrist will be set up. Before Antichrist's kingdom reaches the full, com- merce must form itself into a world power — a kingdom — the nations partners therein. Be- fore Jerusalem is revealed as the city of the Great King, the false Christ must be enthroned at Babylon. Now look closer! Before Christ appears in glory he must secretly, and without warning, snatch away his church from the earth to meet himself in heaven. If, then, the signs of the times indicate that the day of Babylon is at hand, and, conse- quently, the day of Antichrist; if the day of Antichrist precedes the Appearing of Christ, and the secret rapture of the church precedes the revelation of Antichrist, then how tremen- dously do these startling signs, now on the horizon, which speak of the building up of Babylon, the throne of Antichrist, bear witness that, as Christians, we stand on the quivering threshold of the imminent Coming of the Lord. How authoritatively do these signs bid us to see to it that our lamps are trimmed and burning, and that we have oil in the vessels as well as in the lamps. How warningly does the Master's r^buk? to the professedly relig- THE KINGDOM OF COMMERCE 363 ious people of his day, "ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times ?" come to us ; and how im- pressively, as never before, sound the words of his exhortation: "Watcli ye therefore ; for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning ; Lest coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you [to the disciples of that hour], I say unto all [the church of this hour], watch/' — Mark 13: 34-37. THE SCARLET WOMAN OR The Revival of Romanism "So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blas- phemy, having seven heads and ten horns. "And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and pre- cious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication : "And upon her forehead was a name writ- ten, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. "And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus : and when I saw her I wondered with great admiration. * * * And the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth."— Revelation 17: 1-6, 18. A woman in scripture is a symbol of the church. The church, under the figure of a woman, is first espoused, and then presented, as a THE SCARLET WOMAN 365 chaste virgin to Christ. "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" — II. Corinthians, 11:12. What is written to the Corinthian church is written to "all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." — I. Corinthians 1 :2. The announcement of the virginal character of the Corinthian church in its standing be- fore God, is an affirmation as to the standing of the church in "every place," necessarily in all time, and, therefore, of the church every- where, and in our time. It is a symbol of the church universal. The woman is the church. The church is also symbolized by a city. "And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God." — Revelation 21 :9, 10. The Lamb is our Lord Jesus Christ. The bride, the Lamb's wife, when espoused and presented to him, must have been a chaste virgin. The chaste virgin espoused and pre- sented by Paul to Christ, is the church. As the holy city is the bride of Christ, his wife 366 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES and, in the nature of the case, must have been espoused and presented to him as a chaste vir- gin, and the chaste virgin when so espoused and presented becomes a bride, a wife, then the holy city, the bride, the Lamb's wife, the wife of Christ, is a symbol of the church, A chaste virgin, a bride, a wife, is a woman ; and as the city is the symbol of a wife, then the city is the symbol of a woman. As the woman is the symbol of the church, and the church is symbolized by a city, then the woman is, also, a symbol of the city. The woman is a symbol of the city, the city is a symbol of the woman, and both the woman and the city, symbols of the church; and thus, whether it be a woman or a city, the one identifies the other. But it is evident that while the woman is exclusively a symbol, and not a real woman, the city is both a symbol and an actual city. The city is a symbol. The city is the symbol of a woman, and as a woman is an organized body, and is the sym- bol of the church, then the city is the sym- bol of the church as an organized body, a polity, a system. The city is actual. A city consists of people and the place in which people dwell. The church as an organized body, a polity, a system, consists of people and, as such, must have a place to dwell. When, therefore, the Apostle John in vision sees the holy city as THE SCARLET WOMAN 367 the bride, the Lamb's wife, he sees that city both as the people and the place in which they dwell ; and the name of the city includes them both. Just as New York signifies the people and the city in which they dwell, so the holy city, the New Jerusalem, signifies the church as a polity, a system, a body of people, and the real and actual place, the real and actual city in which, as real and actual people, they shall dwell, and from whence they shall shine forth as the glorified bride of Christ, the triumphant wife of the Lamb. In the scripture quoted at the head of this article we have the picture of a woman, and this woman declared to be a city. What is true of the woman who is the Lamb's bride, who is also a city, is equally true of this woman who is called a city. The woman is exclusively a symbol, she is not a real woman ; the city is both symbolic and actual. By the preceding evidence of symbolry this scarlet-clad woman and the city, where of ne- cessity she must be centralized, where she must dwell, and from which she must be manifested in her power, both represent a church. But this woman and this city stand in ter- rific contrast to the woman and city which set forth the church of Christ. They contrast and contradict each other. The church is represented by a chaste virgin. 368 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES This woman is a bedizened harlot, and is called in plain speech, "the whore." The church is espoused to one husband. This woman holds promiscuous commerce with the kings of the earth. The church is the mystery of godliness. This woman is "MYSTERY, BABYLON." The church is called "the pillar and ground of the truth." This woman is called "Babylon," signifies "confusion," and recalls an unfinished tower. The church offers the cup of salvation and stands for holiness. This woman holds in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and filthiness. The church is the mother of the saints. This woman is "THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS." The church is the bride of Christ. This woman, by the law of symbolry, is a professed church of Christ, and therefore a would-be bride of Christ ; but, as she is a har- lot, she cannot be the true bride of Christ, she cannot be the true church of Christ. If she is not the true church of Christ but a corrupt and corrupting harlot, then she is a false and cor- rupt church professing the name of Christ. The identity of this false and corrupt church is not far to seek. She is called a city, a city that "reigneth over the kings of the earth." A city that reigns over the kings of the THE SCARLET WOMAN 369 earth is a universal city. A universal city is a catholic city. As this universal-cathoHc city is, also, symboHcally, a woman, and this woman a professed church, then this woman is a uni- versal, a catholic church. This universal, this catholic church, is repre- sented as exceedingly rich in gold, in precious stones and pearls. The distinctive color of the woman is scar- let. She has not only committed fornication her- self, but has made the inhabitants drunk with the wine of her fornication. Fornication in the book of the Revelation signifies idolatry, and idolatry is — image worship. This woman, therefore, is a church whose official and distinguishing color is scarlet. Just as our schools, colleges and universities, have their colors, so this church has hers — and her color is scarlet. This woman is a church which practises, and has taught the people of the earth to prac- tise, idolatry, to engage in the worship of im- ages. This scarlet-clad woman is drunken with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. It is the picture of a universal, a catholic, church, in the name of Christ, causing the mar- tyrdom of the followers of Christ, and revelling in their blood till she has become frenzied and drunken by it. This woman not only reprq- 370 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES sents a church, but the city in which it dwells and is capitalized, the center and manifestation of its glory. Just as much as the New Jerusa- lem represents not only the church, but the central place where she is to reveal her glory, so this woman represents the actual city of her own abode. The reality and identity of the city are set before us with indelible marks. The Apostle John says it is "that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." 'There was but one city in John's day which reigned over the kings of the earth, and that city was ROME. That the city was Rome is corroborated topographically. We are told that the woman is seated on seven mountains. "The seven heads (that is, of the beast) are seven mountains. And there are (they are) seven kings." Revelation. 17:9,10. The heads are symbolic, but they set forth two real things, mountains and kings. If the kings are real, equally so are the mountains ; the mountains indicate the place where the kings rule. The location of the kings, the lo- cation of the woman and, therefore, the lo- cation of the city, was on seven mountains. The Rome of Saint John's day, the Rome of our day, is seated on seven hills, and these hills are definitely called mountains ; but the city is known in the pages of every history as "the seven-hilled city." THE SCARLET WOMAN 371 The city, then, which the woman symbolizes is Rome ; and as the woman is also the symbol of a church, then you have a church in the city of Rome, a church which, like the city, is uni- versal and catholic in its rule. A church in the city of Rome is a Roman church ; a catholic church in Rome is, therefore, a Roman Catho- lic Church. And here you have the riddle read, the symbol told, the identity disclosed. The woman foreseen and described by the Spirit of God in John is, THE ROMAN CATHO- LIC CHURCH. As the name of the woman is Babylon, and the woman is, symbolically, the city, the name of the city must, also, be Babylon; but, as the city is actual Rome and not the real city of Babylon, then the name Babylon is given to it, as to the woman, simply to set forth the moral character of both. In Revelation, 11:18., Jerusalem is called Sodom and Egypt, so called to mark its moral and spiritual degeneration. This woman and city likewise go by the name of Babylon to set forth the turpitude, the uncleanness and the abomination, both of the city and the system. The Roman Catholic Church is called Baby- Ion from God's point of view ; from God's point of view it is the mystery of abomination. Go to that city of the seven hills, where every hill is called a "mount," and you will find that from thence the Roman Catholic Church rules over nations, peoples, kindreds and tongues, a 372 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES universal rule, counting its subjects by the hundreds of millions, and is thus in deed and in very fact a universal church, an actual kingdom over which one man as Pope is head supreme. Take up history, and you will find that it has reigned over the kings of the earth and made them its willing slaves, holding over them the terrors of excommunication, paralyzing the hands that held the sceptre, and forcing the onetime proudest emperor of the world to stand shivering on a winter's day in his penitential shirt at a papal palace door, while the exalted pontiff within turned indifferently away. Ex- amine, and you will find that this church to- day is rich in gold, in silver, and in precious stones, its buildings storehouses of the world's most coveted wealth. Visit the "treasuries," fittingly so called, in her great cathedrals, Notre Dame at Paris, the statue-pointed cathedral at Milan, Saint Peter's at Ivome, and you will find gold, sil- ver, pearls, and all precious things. You will find them in mitres and croziers, in chasubles and patens, in cups, in crystals and vestments, as gifts from kings, from emperors and queens ; offerings from the richest of earth, wealth enough to make even kings envy. Look at this church filled with gold, with silver and precious stones, and you will find that its official color is scarlet, scarlet in the hat of its cardinals, scarlet in the robes of its THE SCARLET WOMAN 31?S pontiff and priests, scarlet everywhere— a scarlet colored church. Go into its wonderful buildings, some of them monuments of the mightiest architectu- ral genius of the world; visit them, and you will find them full of images, images of the virgin mother, images of the saints. Stand inside Saint Peter's on a festal day. The vast building sweeps upward through mighty p'lllar and colossal arch to the su- blime, impending dome. On every side are chapels, in themselves monster buildings, vast churches. There is the exalted altar, the countless lights, the smoking incense, the chanting choirs, the scarlet robed priests, the voice of intonation, prayer and confession, the echoing ora pro nobis, and everywhere kneeling devotees, bowing down to mar- ble images, doing penance and lifting up petitions before their lifeless faces. There are churches specially devoted to the wor- ship of the virgin, her images are covered with gold and silver tributes. In one church the image is piled about with crutches and almost hidden under the offerings of those who believe themselves to have been healed or blessed by her interposition and interces- sion. Before that stony figure, men and women and little children kneel in rapt adora- tion. It is idolatry — pure and simple. Cast your eyes over the past centuries and 374 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES you will come upon an era when the rule of this church was so supreme; when she so clutched the throat of the nations with her al- most omnipotent hand; so stifled all learning and spiritual knowledge, that by common con- sent that age has been called the dark age, the midnight of the world's moral, intellec- tual and spiritual life. So dark and cruel was this time, so full of idolatry, that the Arab, as he swept a victor into Europe, paused at the doors of Catholic churches, then turned and fled as though he were in that very tem- ple of heathen idolatry from which his reli- gion bade him to flee. And it is of this time and this Arab that Mrs. Browning sings when she says that knowledge was at last "thrust into the eye of Europe on the point of a Paynim's spear." Read history, not the history written by one author, but by all, and in their pages you will learn how men and women were led into torture chambers or buried in dismal dun- geons. You will read how beautiful women were stripped before black masked judges gloating over unprotected shame, and were led away to racks and stretched till their deli- cate limbs were snapped and their tender flesh torn into shreds. You will read how men and women were broken on the wheel, or flayed alive, their eyes put out, their tongues plucked forth by the roots, their feet olaced in boots filled with boiling oil, bags THE SCARLET WOMAN 375 thrust down their throats and then filled with water till they agonized with slow and calcu- lated strangulation, legs placed between boards and the boards driven together by wedges till the bones were crushed little by little to a pulp, nails wrenched from the fingers, bodies sawn asunder as you might saw a log in two, members of the body cut off one at a time, now a hand, then an arm, first one leg, then another, till the victim was a mere quivering, though still living, trunk; men and women taken to the stake and burned alive, the wood dampened, or green wood used, that the fire might burn slowly and the agony and torture of the victim be lengthened. Try and count, if you can, the men and women driven from their homes, their houses burned, their property confiscated, and themselves hunted on the mountains and pursued through the valleys like beasts of prey. Look at the blood flowing like water from the martyred bodies of men and women, whose only crime was that they loved the Lord Jesus Christ, believed in His finished re- demption on the cross, refused to buy their salvation by penance or good works, rejected the intercession of a human priest, or a woman, no matter how good, claimed the Lord Jesus Christ as their sin-bearer and Saviour at the right hand of the Father, owned Him as their only high-priest and in- tercessor and would ript, even at the price 376 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES of their own life, deny Him who died for them and rose again. And remember, while you read, that these martyrs were led to agony and to death by the authority and express command of the Roman Catholic Church ; a church that did all this in the name of that most fiendish of all inventions, the "Holy In- quisition"; a church whose Pope at so late a date as the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's caused a special celebration to be sung in all the churches as a thanksgiving to God that the enemies of Romanism had been thus cruelly and cowardly slain, stabbed in their beds, thrown from the windows of upper stories into stone courts below, or stricken from behind as they walked in the streets ; a massacre so horri- ble, so revolting in all its details, that, even at this hour, when you pass by the gilded gates in front of the Louvre at Paris, it is impossible not to recall the picture of the piled up bodies of the murdered Huguenots flung in the gut- ter there and weltering in th^ir own blood ; it is impossible not to lift the eyes, involuntarily, and look at that Catholic church of Auxerrois just across the way, from whose tower the tocsin, which was to give the signal for the awful night of blood, sounded forth its brazen knell of doom. Bring all this to mind as you read, and you will recognize the perfect ac- curacy of the Spirit's description when he says *^H.»t this scarlet-clad, this universal, this c^tho- THE SCARLET WOMAN 37) lie church of Rome was drunken with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. In the vision the woman is seen to be seat- ed upon a seven headed, ten horned, scarlet colored beast. This scarlet colored beast is identical with the fourth beast of Daniel's vision. Daniel says: "After this I saw in the night visions, and, behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly ; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it; and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns." An angel explains the vision to Daniel: "Thus he said, the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise " Daniel, 7:23,24. The first three beasts are identical with the three kinds of metal formii.g part of the image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream and which Daniel by the wisdom of God inter- preted, as recorded in the second chapter of the prophecy that bears his name. In that dream the image had a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, and belly and thighs of brass. The p-olden head, Daniel tells us, represents 378 THE SICINS OF THE TIMES the Babylonian kingdom, "Thou art," says Daniel, "this head of gold." As the first beast in the vision which Daniel records in the sev- enth chapter is, also, the first kingdom, and is a lion, then the golden head and the lion are the equivalent symbols of the first king- dom. The second beast is a bear, and is equivalent to the second kingdom represented by the sil- ver breast and arms of the image. This sec- ond kingdom comes in after Babylon and, nec- essarily, overcomes it, takes it. This kingdom is identified for us in the fifth chapter of Daniel's prophecy, as it is written : "And Darius the Median took the kingdom," (that is, the kingdom of Babylon). — Daniel 5:31. The second beast as thus identified is the Medo-Persian kingdom. The third beast is a winged leopard and is equivalent to the third kingdom represented in the image by the belly and thighs of brass. This brazen-leopard kingdom, in the order of succession, is the kingdom which overcomes the second, or Medo-Persian kingdom. Daniel gives us the name of that third king- dom. He has a vision in which he sees a ram standing by a river and then pushing its way westward till a rough he-goat from the west rushes upon him with great fury, overcomes him, and tramples him with his feet. Daniel is perplexed as to the meaning of the vision till THE SCARLET WOMAN 379 an angel appears and gives the interpretation: "And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the in- dignation: for at the appointed time the end shall be. "The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. "And the rough goat is the king of Grecia." —Daniel 8:19-21. The first three beasts then are identified by the Word of God. They are, Babylon. Medo-Persia. Greece. The fourth beast is the fourth kingdom and is represented in the image by the legs of iron. The iron in the image is matched by the iron in the teeth of the beast: it had great iron teeth. Iron then is the symbol and character of the fourth beast kingdom. What great world kingdom is symbolized by iron, is known as the iron kingdom? All history answers, every student of history knows, the veriest tyro at school knows, every lip is ready to speak the name — it is ROME. It is of Rome and Rome alone that iron is used as the symbol — we speak of the iron le- gions of Rome. But it is not necessary to go to history to identify the fourth ^east, to find the name of 380 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the fourth kingdom. The New Testament answers the question and gives the affirmation. The New Testament tells us that Rome was the wide ruling world power in the day when Christ was born. It was, under God, by the edict of a Roman Caesar that the mother of Christ came to Bethlehem, where he was to be born in fulfillment of Holy Scripture. The fourth kingdom then is Rome; and this Rome included all the territory that once com- prised Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece. Rome was the legatee and heir of the three first kingdoms, and thus by right of succession is, as foretold, the fourth kingdom as it is the symbolic fourth beast. This fourth beast is identical with the beast of John's vision, the scarlet-colored beast that carries the Babylonian woman. This scarlet-colored beast is a composite symbol. In it are the elements of a leopard, a bear and a lion. "And the beast which I saw (the beast de- scribed in the 17th chapter) was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion." — Revelation 13:2, The leopard has been seen to be the third beast, and, therefore, the third kingdom, and has been shown by Daniel in the eighth chapter of his prophecy to be one with the he-goat which overcame the ram; in other words the kingdom of Greece. THE SCARLET WOMAN 381 The bear has been identified and named, both by symbol and by Daniel's actual state- ment, as the Medo-Persian kingdom. The Hon is the first symbolic beast in Dan- iel's vision, is equivalent to the golden head of the image, and is Babylon. The fact that the three beasts, the lion, the bear, and the leopard, are seen comprised in one beast, is the symbolic, but clear statement that the beast of John's vision is a fourth beast, including the three that preceded it. As Daniel's fourth beast is the symbol of Rome and includes the three preceding king- doms, Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece, then John's beast and the beast of Daniel are identical, and both agree in the one testimony that this is Rome. As the woman who sits upon the beast has been not only symbolically, but topographic- ally identified as Rome, the fact that the very beast upon which she sits is civil and govern- mental Rome, becomes the repeated and doubly corroborative demonstration that the city and system of which the woman is a sym- bol — is Rome. There is further identification of the two beasts in the fact that each, the beast of Dan- iel and the beast of John, has ten horns. The ten horns in Daniel's vision are ten kings, so declared by the angel. The ten horns in John's vision are, l''"ewise by an angel, de- clared to be ten kings. 382 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour (at the same time) with the beast." — Revelation 17:12. It is to be specially noted that John says these kings had not come into power when he wrote this vision. "Ten kings, which have received no king- dom as yet." These kings did not exist at any time prior to John's day. At no previous time in the history of Rome did ten kings simultaneously occupy and rule in her territory. At no period since John's day does history record the simultaneous rule of ten kings within the limits of Rome. The ten kings are yet future; they are yet to come. Daniel speaks of an eleventh king who is to be the federal head of, and rule over, these kings. "And another shall rise after them (the ten kings) ; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings." — Daniel 7 :24. He is the final king, the federated head of the ten kings, a king of kings and lord of lords. Daniel speaks of him in the ninth chapter as "the prince * * * that shall come" the Coming Prince of Rome- In John's vision the ten kings agree and give their power to the beast. THE SCARLET WOMAN 58^ "These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast." — Revela- tion 17:13. This is saying, on the basis of the identity of the two visions, that the eleventh king is distinctively called "the beast." It is the fur- ther statement that the seven-headed, ten- horned beast bears the same relation to that eleventh king that Nebuchadnezzar does to the first kingdom; that is, one is put for the other. Just as Nebuchadnezzar, the head of gold, is put for the kingdom of Babylon, so the beast is put for the eleventh king of the fourth empire, ruling over the ten kings, or the equivalent ten horns, both of John's and Daniel's visions, as Prince of Rome and final Caesar. All this is prophecy clear and distinct of the revival of the Roman empire in a new form and under a new head. >The two legs of the image foretold the first division of Rome into two great parts which history knows as the empire of the West and the empire of the East. The ten kings portray the final division of the ancient Roman territory and the reorgani- zation of the empire itself as a federated union under an eleventh king. And the scarlet-clad, Babylonian woman is seen seated on the back of this revived Roman empire. It is the prophecy that the Roman Catholic 384 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Church will again be carried and supported by nations of the Roman earth, and will once more rule and reign with temporal power. It is the divine forecast of the revival of Romanism. THIS REVIVAL HAS ALREADY BEGUN. It began in the hour when the Protestant Reformation was at its zenith. Protestantism rose up, smote Catholicism and drove it from Germany headlong to the Mediterranean. It seemed as though it were about to be flung as with a millstone about its neck into the depths of the sea, when, suddenly it halted, stood still, recovered its strength, shook itself free from the hands of its assailants and be- gan steadily to return to the lands from whence it had been so fiercely expelled. Nothing is more impressive than the recov- ery of Romanism from what seemed to be its death-blow. It reads on the page of history like a veritable resurrection of the dead. And this resurrection has been followed by an immense and ever increasing vitality, by a propaganda that extends to every kingdom, nation and tongue. Austria is Catholic to the core. Germany is filled with devotees of the church, and her supporters may be counted by the millions. The progress in Protestant England is astounding. A year ago all Lon- don poured into the streets to see for the first time since the Reformation the trium- THE SCARLET WOMAN 385 phant march of a Roman Catholic procession extending for miles, while thousands on either side of the immense column bowed the knee in adoration as the sacred symbols of the church were held aloft. Recently, in this same London, there has been dedicated with imposing ceremonies a stupendous and costly cathedral. Everywhere throughout England the Romish priest is a power, the chapels and churches are filled to overflowing; daily, con- verts from the Church of England go over to the Church of Rome, and that by easy steps, as though the English church itself had become a half-way house. The non- conformist oath once administered to English kings on the day of coronation has been re- pealed. The official head of English Protest- antism has ceased to protest. Enthusiastic Romanists consider the day not far distant when England will return officially to the faith and be received by Rome as a long wandering, but sincerely repentant and be- loved daughter of the church. In this country Romanism is advancing with giant strides. A little over one hundred years ago there were only 33 priests and less than 50,000 Catholics, scarcely a decent church building, one college and no schools. To-day there are nearly twenty millions of communicants, one cardinal, 14 archbishops, 77 bishops, 14 church provinces, nearly 20,- 000 priests, to say nothing of the thousands 386 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES on thousands of oath-bound nuns, between 15,000 and 20,000 church buildings, some of them models of architecture and of im- mense cost of construction. There are 7 great universities, 80 seminaries, or theologi- cal institutions, 213 colleges for boys, over 700 academies for girls (to which Protest- ant mothers send their daughters, and where the daughters become converted to Roman- ism and furnish the church in turn with Cath- olic mothers), and nearly 5,000 private schools, each school a protest against the public school system of the Nation. While the population of the United States has increased twenty-five times, the Roman Cath- olic population, in a little over a century, has increased 320 times, nearly twelve times as fast. The solidarity of the church is amazing; it seems miraculous. Out of the fifteen or twenty millions in this country, there is not a Catholic, in the final analysis, who would be disloyal to the church. Whatever his private opinion, in the end, he submits to her as the supreme authority over his conscience and soul. This solidarity extends around the globe. A Cath- olic church in one place is a duplicate of a Catholic church in every other. What you see in New York you will find in China and in the isles of the sea. Wherever a Catho- lic sees a Romish church and the cross THE SCARLET WOMAN 387 upon its spire, he knows, whatever may be his nationality or tongue, in that church he will find the same faith, the same worship, which was taught him in his native land, at his mother's knee, and in the hour of his first communion. This solidarity finds its significance in con- trast to the division, the confusion, and the uncertainty of Protestantism. In this country Romanism has conquered social distinction and an accepted standing. Not many years ago and the Catholic church was a sort of social pariah, looked down upon with disdain, its services rejected, and its priests regarded with aversion. There was a time when for an American to be a Catholic, was sufficient to ostracize him from family and friends as though he were a re- ligious and social leper. To-day, the Catholic finds all doors open, from the hovel to the palace. The most exclusive sets welcome the priest, invite him to marry their sons and daughters and dedicate private chapels in city homes or summer villas. Where Romanism once stood as the symbol of that which was foreign and alien, it is, to-day, represented by American families, their names recorded on its marriage books, its birth and baptismal regis- ters. In no land has the Roman Catholic Church more loyal, more devoted, or more liberal supporters than those who claim to be Ameri- cans and to the manor born. And morp 388 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Startling still is the fact that the Roman Cath- olic Church is steadily taking the place of the most eloquent defender of the Bible. Startling, indeed! The church which has al- ways been afraid of the Bible; the church which has martyred men and women in cold blood for even daring to read it; the church which is careful in this day to give only an ex- purgated edition for the common laity to read, and legislates the most severe penalties against the indiscriminate use of the book ; the church which has been the actual enemy of the Bible, bitter, deadly, inveterate, exercising all its hatred against it as the source of Protestant- ism, the arsenal of its weapons, and its mighti- est stronghold, this ancient antagonist is now taking the place of Holy Scripture's most un- compromising apologist, rallying to its defence its keenest logicians, its most intellectual writ- ers, its most brilliant orators. And the Roman Catholic Church is coming into this place, not only by its own seeking, but by reason of the undisguised and wide spread infidelity of the Protestant Church. Go into so-called, up-to-date Protestant churches, listen to some of their most advanced thinkers and preachers. You will hear them strikingat the very foundation of Protestanism, repudiating the only authority on which it can rest — the Word of God — the written Word. You will hear them with oracular utterance and much-claimed scholarship rejecting the THE SCARLET WOMAN 389 Old Testament, ridiculing its statements and demonstrating in modern formula that its per- sonages are fictitious, its history worthless, its prophecies unfulfilled, its cosmogony, astron- omy and geology unscientific, and the laugh- ing-stock of the learned. You will hear them deny the infallibility of the New Testament, prove its human and not divine inspiration, and set before you a Christ who was limited in knowledge, who was not always sure of his mission, was sometimes filled with vacillation, who was, nevertheless, a good man, and whose death on the cross was simply the tragedy of one too gentle for the times, a good man torn to pieces at last by "the whirling wheel of the world's evil." You will hear them preach the all-Fatherhood of God, the sonship of all men, both good and bad, scout the idea that man is a lost sinner, laugh at the fable of hell and the danger of future punishment, and conclude with the self-satisfied postulate that the great saving force in the earth is the law of evolu- tion ; that each man is working out in his own way his own problem ; that each man is an avatar of God; that salvation is the reforma- tion of society and the final deliverance of the race from the impedimenta of religiousness, superstition and ignorance. Science, they de- clare, is the true God and civilization is its handmaid. In short, in a Protestant pulpit and, specially, if that pulpit is occupied by a recent graduate of an advanced theological 390 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES institution, you are liable to hear utterances as treasonable to the Word of God and the re- vealed mission of Jesus Christ, as ever fell from the lips of the most pronounced, most blatant, but unconcealed, infidel and enemy of the church of God. You will listen in vain to hear such utter- ances in a Catholic church, be the preacher never so learned, never so bright or brilliant. On the contrary, and with rare sagacity, con- sidering the state of Protestantism, you will hear the Catholic pulpits now echoing with ad- dresses which exalt the Bible as the Word of God, handed over, it is true, to the custody and authoritative interpretation of the church still, but proclaimed, nevertheless, with in- creasing emphasis as the inspired thought of the living God. Rome is wise enough to seize the strategic moment and, at the same time, take advantage of the differing opinions, the confusion, and the infidelity among Protestants, to draw at- tention to the favorite thesis of the church, that the Bible can be read and understood only when under the strict surveillance and inspired interpretation of the church ; and that Protest- antism with its undivine hands has wrested the scriptures to its own damnation and the dam- nation of all who have been led into Protest- antism. By this subtle seizure of the oppor- tune moment Romanism places itself in the forefront, not only as the defender of the THE SCARLET WOMAN 391 Bible, but as iN only true, sane, and authorita- tive interpreter. Not only is the Catholic church taking the place of defender of Holy Scripture and seek- ing to rescue it from profane hands, it is rapidly rising as the bulwark of the family, the champion of the home. The Roman Catholic Church stands four-square against the growing iniquity and excuseless wickedness of divorce. The Protestant Church takes no such stand. There is no unity in the Protestant Church concerning this shame. There are to be found Protestant ministers who will, without hesita- tion, marry a divorced man, or a divorced wo- man, or both. In some Protestant churches the representative men and women — men and women who are the most liberal supporters of the church and foremost in its work — are di- vorced people. Condemned as they are by the Word of God and the legislative utterances of our Lord Jesus Christ, they find in the church which professes his name, the church which has been "espoused to him as one husband," instead of judgment, the place of honor and, often, of exalted fellowship. Not so in the Catholic church. The priest will not marry, baptize or receive into com- munion those who are living in open defiance of the law and testimony of God. To the Roman Catholic Church marriage is a sacra- ment, is inviolable, and cannot be annulled by the laws or acts of man. The divorced man or 392 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES woman may enter a Protestant church and find shelter there. The Roman church shuts its doors and stands Hke an insurmountable bar- rier against the inflood of the tide that would shipwreck the home and destroy the sacred- ness of such holy titles as husband and wife, father and mother. Unified in faith, defending the Bible, stand- ing against divorce, loyally supported by lib- eral contributions, the poor being taught to give in the same proportion as the rich, count- ing among its membership some of the most representative families of America, with stately buildings, schools, colleges and univer- sities, numbering its followers by millions, those millions increased by every steamship that lands its load of emigrants on our shores, and guided by a wisdom, a genius that makes her ready to meet each new demand that will strengthen her cause, absolutely cosmopolitan — Italian in Italy, Spanish in Spain, English in England, Irish in Ireland and, pre-eminently, American in America, she is steadily and mar- vellously moving on. Nor is this advance confined alone to re- ligious lines. Nay, the march is far away beyond that! The Roman Catholic Church in this country is an immense political organization, holds the balance of voting power, on the eve of a presi- dential election defeated the candidate whom -1.11 the world expected to be successful, and THE SCARLET WOMAN 393 can, if she will, name the next man who shall sit in the presidential chair. In the year 1902, the mission of the present incumbent of the White House to the Vatican was a political one. He was to all intents and purposes accredited from these United States as Ambassador to the Pope of Rome. He had instructions from the Secretary of State which said, "any negotiations which you may desire on the part of the officers of the civil court or of military officers to enable you to perform your negotiation with the Vatican will be af- forded ;" and this high Commissioner from the United States acted and spoke in Rome as the special envoy of the great American Republic to the Catholic Church. He was received anc accepted by the ambassadors to the Pope as one of themselves; and in a remarkable cere- mony at Saint Peter's, he was invited as an ambassador to the Roman Catholic Church, and took his place in the diplomatic tribune. Besid'es all that, an agreement was entered into between the Pope and himself concerning the Catholic Church in the Philippines and, al- though the contract failed, yet, as a recent writer, himself a Catholic, has said, "This does not destroy the fact that Washington was ready to enter into a regular treaty with the Pope, similar to those existing between the Vatican and the leading Catholic governments of the world." Today, Romanism is politically, as well as 394 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES religiously, entrenched in the great cities of our land and, from its university center at Washington, exercises its mysterious and far- reaching power. Romanists confidently expect the time to arrive when the whole land will be under its political control ; when the machinery of office and legislation will be in the power of the church and when, with her astounding increase of numbers, she will be the religious and political dictator of the new world. The grasp of Rome is on the sceptre of tem- poral power. It is true, France has separated her from the State and, for a time, refuses to carry her ; it is true, the Vatican and the Quiri- nal are at odds in Italy, and the Pope still styles himself "prisoner" in Rome; it is true that Spain is in the throes of an issue whether the civil or the religious power shall dominate. But, while the separation has taken place in France, that "eldest daughter of the church," a sentiment has been aroused and a partizan- ship for Rome emphasized such as has not been seen since the days when Versailles and the Vatican were in intimate touch. Italy is loyal to the king, proud of the day when Garibaldi broke through the walls of the "holy" city and gave her the right of civic liberty; but Italy is Catholic even to frenzy, and no matter how many millions may be spent on the new capi- tol, or how far Paganism may be glorified in the re-opening of the Appian Way, to the Ital- ian, the dome of Saint Peter's still overtops THE SCARLET WOMAN 395 the Pantheon and the palace of the king. Spain may advance sufficiently out of the gloom of candle-light into the glare of the electric light ; she may allow the breath of Twentieth Cen- tury toleration to breathe through her streets, permitting Protestants to write the name of their church on the walls of their buildings ; she may, in an issue, exalt the civil authority into its due place, but the born Catholic in Spain looks upon Spain as the kingdom of Jesus Christ and blindly and fanatically, even unto death, believes that in the Roman Church Jesus Christ is alone to be found ; and that, in final terms, Spain and the kingdom of the Ro man Church are one. Should the issue for one moment depart from the civil and become religious, the government would be overthrown in a night and Alphonse and his English queen repudiated as foes to the faith. It is true that Germany has protested againsl the last encyclical, but this very protest is a witness that the Germany of to-day is not the Germany of Luther, nor the days of the Great Elector ; that she does no more than protest is a witness that the political power of Rome has been felt upon the banks of the Spree, and that the Protestant Emperor of the birth land of Protestantism is satisfied to go no further than the limits of diplomacy permit. And it is because of this that Rome with her soft tread and more than mortal wisdom has accepted tie protest, explained the encyclical, and given 396 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES orders that it shall not be read in German churches. It is the answer, not of a trembling suppliant, but of a church that feels itself suf- ficiently strong in the headquarters of the Reformation to meet diplomacy with diplo- macy. Rome may be turned back for a moment, for a season be deflected from her course, but her course is onward. Those who hail the present separation of church and state in Europe as a witness of the waning power of the church as a political factor, have only to reflect that sep- aration in this country is more radical, more absolute, than it is, or ever can be, in Europe ; and that in this country, in spite of the separ- ation, the church increases in population, adds to her wealth, and is to-day the mightiest force at the polls ; it is only necessary to contemplate the results of separation here, to see that sep- aration in Europe is no evidence of the dimin- ution of her strength, but is, really, in the sympathy and partizanship which it is sure to arouse, one of the guarantees of her final ascen- sion to sovereignty and powec. While Protestantism is at war with itself — is full of treason to Holy Scripture, and is breaking up into new and more absurd de- nominational factions every day — Rome, sys- tematically, unrelentingly, and yet smoothly, secretly, and without noise, is marching to her ordained place. Protestantism lifts up the banner of guess. THE SCARLET WOMAN 397 of doubt, of dethroned authority, and stands insistently for organized uncertainty. Rome speaks with certainty, with authority and relentless fixity. Protestantism seeks favor of the unbeliev- ing world, apologizes for her creeds, and would establish herself by denying them. Romanism hurls anathema at the unbeliever, magnifies her office, and claims to be wholly divine. Protestantism builds schools, and endows universities, that she may teach the rising gen- eration to reckon doubt as tne beginning of wisdom, and unbelief as the sign-patent 01 knowledge. Romanism spends her wealth in establishing schools and institutions of learning that she may lay hold of the rising youth and teach them that the church is the symbol of God, and tliat the highest wisdom is to obey her commands. Protestantism, in its reaction from ritualism, has turned the church into a lecture room and destroyed the feeling of reverence, Romanism sanctifies her buildings and cre- ates a feeling of awe within the shadow of her churches. The Protestant enters his church as one might enter a concert room or a hall of de- bate. The Romanist bows on the threshold of his church as the sanctuary of GocV 398 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Protestantism has stepped down on to the high road of the natural and the common- place. Romanism more and more exalts itself into the realm of the supernatural. Protestantism prides itself on the denial of miracles. Romanism claims to work them. Protestantism carries with it the impression of newness and divisibility. Romanism is covered with the dust of cen- turies, has in it the echo of the distant ages, and is superior to schism. As the present age goes on, multitudes will turn away from the interrogation points of Protestantism, to the unqualified assertion and assurance of Romanism, to her gorgeous rit- ual, her spectacular worship, the glamour of her two thousand years of unbroken history, and the fact that, on the edge of eternity, she offers to take the whole responsibility of a human being, prepare him for the hour and the article of death, go with him into the shadows, keep with him by her power and in- fluence in the unseen world, nor quit him till she has delivered him from danger, and se- cured him, as she claims, in the mercy of God. Some years ago, while on an ocean trip I became acquainted with a versatile Irishman, a graduate of Dublin university, and a world- wide traveler. He had eaten rice with the Chinese, tasted salt with the Arabs of the THE SCARLET WOMAN 399 desert, clinked his glass in the offices of the Qai d'Orsay, was able to express his sugges- tive thoughts in the fluency of some half dozen languages beside his own, and was as much at home in one as in another. He was, when I met him, in the employ of the British govern- ment, and had been a commissioner to this country. He was witty, at times full of pathos, mercurial and, frequently, overflowing with wordy heat. He was a scholar. He v;as abreast of the times. He claimed to be an agnostic. His speech was spiced with satire against the Christian religion. He said noth- ing coarse, but his assaults were keen, far- reaching and, often, cut me to the heart. One night as we drew near to the Irish coast, we sat together in the aft of the ship where we could see the phosphorescent glow in the waves. He was in a reflective mood. He spoke of the breyity and the uncertainty of life and, then, of the eternity beyond. Sud- denly he turned to me and said, calling me by name, "When I die, I am going to die a good Catholic. I am going to have mass said for my soul. I have made provision foi that." Seeing my amazement and that I was, evi- dently, puzzled to know whether he was seek- ing to outdo himself in travesty, he said, earn- estly, "Do not misunderstand me ; I am an un- believer, but I am superstitious. I have been brour;ht up a Catholic. As I look about me in the world, the Church is the only thing which 400 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES has seemed to stand in the midst of changing mentality and the reversal of human knowl- edge. To stand unmoved in the swirl of such conditions counts for something. The Church comes with an audacious claim of authority and the power of completeness. She leaves nothing for me to do. She takes all the re- sponsibility for my soul — for the past and the future. You may call it what you please, but I tell you, her position counts in the end, and I am going to give my soul, if I have one, over into her hands. She is the only thing that offers certainty when you are about to leave this world." It was pitiful, but it was, and is, an illustra- tion of how thousands feel, and how that feel- ing is likely to grow in the increasing infi- delity and guess of Protestantism, in its total surrender of all final authority, and in its suicidal determination to wash its hands of the soul's future. It is this appeal to the latent superstition in man, this splendid and uncompromising asser- tion, this unfaltering claim of authority, this unity of faith, together with the most perfect organization on earth, and the unalterable pur- pose to be supreme in the world, that will give the Catholic Church her underhold in the final religious and political struggle of the age. Everything is making for that hour when Rome, once more seated on the back of human government, will rule the earth. THE SCARLET WOMAN 401 This revival of Rome in our day is a sign of the times. The Word of God has made it plain that be- fore the Roman CathoHc Church reaches its cHmax, the Lord will come secretly into the air and call up to himself the true church, made up of individuals out of every professed church of Christ, even out of Romanism (for, undoubtedly, there are thousands in Romar'^m who, while in the darkness and error of that corrupt and corrupting system, have )'et been quickened by the Spirit of God and, in spite of the dead weight laid upon them by priest- craft, still see the Son of God as their final Saviour and Lord). This translation of the true church will allow all the constituent ele- n:cnts of an unrcgenerate Protestantism to coalesce with, and find shelter in, that Ro- manism that will now be minus its regenerate membership, and v/holly without God. It is this Romanism that will expand into the full outlines of the scarlet clad, Babylonian wo- man. Then will she ally herself entirely with the unseen world of the dead, with unclean spirits, and all the occult force which Satan will uncover, as he leads her to become, for a time, the wanton bride of that false Christ who shall be hailed by an applauding world as the "Coming Man." Then will the inhering demcnism and paganism of Rome come forth in all its iniquity and sin, in all its uncleanness ^nd shame. It will be as when the vail is 402 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES withdrawn from an ulcer, from a concealed and festering corruption ; it will be as the open- ing of a hidden pit full of the dank foulness of decayed matter ; it will be the turning into oxydized blackness of that which once passed for silver and gold ; it will be the full and final revelation of a counterfeit that circulated often as current coin of the infinite realm — and be- came the medium of exchange whereby souls were deceived and multitudes merchandized to perdition. Then in the height of her wholly Satanized iniquity she will be supreme, mani- festing that power which, when John saw it in vision, extorted from him the startling phrase — "When I saw her I wondered with great admiration ;" or, literally, "I wondered with great wonder." But for a space only shall she continue thus — her doom is written. Antichrist himself will turn upon her and trample her beneath the feet of his ten kings. Throughout his do- minion they will turn upon her, rend her, burn her with fire, abolish her cult and, in her place, set up the one object to which all the world will turn in that devil-mad hour — to Antichrist himself, as it is written: "And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast [the ten kings of v:12] 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 THE SCARLET WOMAN 403 beast, until the words of God shall be ful- filled."— Revelation 17:16, 17. And again, as it is written : "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him [the beast, Antichrist], whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." — Revelation 13 :8. The revival of Romanism is, then, a sign of the times. It is a sign that the world is has- tening on to its Roman and Antichristian cli- max; and, by just so much, it is an increased and solemn warning that at any moment the Lord may descend in his unheralded secrecy, and snatch away from earth to himself all who are truly his. It is the solemn warning that, at any moment, those who have made a mere profession of his name ; who have no real knowledge of him in the heart; who, in spite of the profession they make, still walk accord- ing to "the course of this world," will be left behind to the judgments of the Great Tribula- tion, and the righteous wrath of a long suf- fering God. Well, indeed, may we heed the admonition of the Apostle Peter: "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure." — 2 Peter 1 :10. It is fitting that we should hear the search- ing words of Paul : "It is high time to awake out of sleep : for now is our salvation [that is, the redemption and glorifying of our bodies at 404 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the Coming of the Lord] nearer than when we believed. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand : let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of Hght. "Let us walk honestly, as in the day [the day of Christ] ; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. "But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." — Romans 13:11-14. THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. "And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a Hon ; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat [the world] and great authority. "And I saw one of his heads, as it were wounded to death ; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. "And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, saying, 'Who is like unto the beast ? who is able to make war with him ?' And there was given unto him a mouth speak- ing great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. "And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and (even) them that dwell in heaven. 406 THE SIGNS OF !:;£ TIMES "And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." — Revelation, 13 : 1-8. The beast set forth in these verses is identical with the one seen in the seventh chapter of Daniel's prophecy. In that chapter he records the vision of four beasts which he sees rising up out of the sea. The first was hke a Hon, the second like a bear, the third a leopard, and the fourth, dreadful, terrible, unlike any of the others. It had great iron teeth, it devoured, broke in pieces, stamped with its feet, and had ten horns, Daniel tells us that this fourth beast is the fourth kingdom upon earth, and diverse from all kingdoms. The three preceding beasts are, therefore, king- doms. The vision in its totality gives us the picture of four great world empires. Previous to this vision, Daniel records the forgotten dream of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and interprets it. The King saw, in his dream, a great image. The head was of gold, the arms and breasts of silver, the belly and thighs of brass, the legs of iron, and the toes, part of iron and part of clay. A stone cut out of the mountain without hands fell upon the feet of the image, broke it in pieces, THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 407 and the fragments were swept away as the chaff of the summer's threshing floor, the stone becoming a great mountain, filHng all the earth. This image, Daniel tells us, represents the course of four great kingdoms, each metal symbolizing a kingdom. As such it is evident that the four metal parts stand over against, and are equivalent to, the four beasts — each representing the other. The gold is a symbol identical in purport with the lion, the silver with the bear, the brass with the leopard, and the iron with the fourth beast, the beast that has the iron teeth and the ten horns. The golden head of the image is announced to be Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar is put for Babylon, the king standing for the kingdom — just as in Scripture the kingdom stands for a kincr. The gold of the image is thus the symbol of Babylon. As the gold is equivalent to the lion, the lion is, also, the symbol of Babylon ; it is the first kingdom. To find the identity of the second kingdom we turn to the eighth chapter and read Daniel's vision of the conflict between a ram and a he-goat. The ram is specifically de- clared to be the kingdom of Medo-Persia. In the fifth chapter we are introduced to a feast in the city of Babylon. The king and a thou- sand of his lords hold high revel in the bril- liantly lighted banquet hall, gleaming with gold and silver, and echoing with the song and laugh- ter of bacchanal mirth. Suddenly, an armless 408 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMH3 hand reached out of the night and wrote rapid- ly on the paneled wall strange, quivering char- acters that no one could read. None of the king's astrologers, sooth-sayers or wise men could interpret the meaning, and there was great consternation in the midst. Finally, Daniel the prophet is called in. He scans the writing. He interprets the message. He makes the startling announcement that God has weighed the king in his balances and found him wanting, and that the God, who raiseth up one and pulleth down another, has given his kingdom to the Medes and Persians. It is added in striking, sententious phrase : '"That night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans [Babylonians] slain, and Darius the Median [representative of Cyrus, king of Per- sia] took the kingdom." — Daniel, 5:30-31. Medo-Persia is the second kingdom. The symbols are : silver, a bear, and a ram. The he-goat of the eighth chapter overcomes the ram as it rushes westward from the east. The he-goat runs upon it, meets it at a river, throws it down and tramples it under foot. This he-goat is declared by the angel, who interprets the vision to Daniel, to be the king- dom of Greece. As the ram is the symbol of Medo-Persia, and is the second prophetic kingdom, then, clearly, Greece is the third kingdom. Its symbols are : brass, a leopard, and a he- goat, THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 409 To find the fourth kingdom we turn to the New Testament. The kingdom existing at that time was Rome. It existed as a world, o? universal kingdom. There has been no uni- versal kingdom since that time. In the New Testament era it occupied the territory of the three preceding kingdoms. It held sway over all the countries once ruled by Babylon, Medo- Persia, and Greece. Rome, therefore, was the fourth kingdom. Thus we have, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome. The beast represented in Revelation is com- posite. It is like a leopard, it has the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. Leopard, bear, and lion are the constituent elements of this compos- ite beast. As each of these elements represent successively, Greece, Medo-Persia, and Baby- lon, and this composite beast is a kingdom, then, plainly enough, you have a kingdom which is the successor of these three, and in- cludes them within its territory. It is a fourth kingdom including in its rule the terri- tory and the peoples of Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece. As Rome is that fourth kingdom, then this beast of Revelation is the fourth, or kingdom of Rome. John says that the ten horns of this compos- 410 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ite beast are kings, which, indeed, is evident from the crowns they wear. "The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings." — Revelation, 17:12. With that statement in mind we go back to the prophecy in Daniel. Daniel writes that the ten horns on the fourth beast are ten kings. "The ten horns out of this kingdom [beasts] are ten kings." — Daniel, 7 :24. The identification with the beast of Revela- tion is emphasized. The image, which is a symbol of the four kingdoms, has ten toes. As the image is the equivalent of the four beast kingdoms, and the legs on which the ten toes are found are a symbol of the fourth kingdom ; as the ten horns out of the fourth beast are ten kings, then the ten toes, as an equivalent symbol are, likewise, ten kings. That the ten toes are ten kings, is the inclusive statement of Daniel : "In the days of those kings." — Daniel, 2 :44, Daniel is referring to the division of the fourth kingdom. It will be broken up into elements that will make it partly strong and partly weak. These elements are the ten toes. It is on the ten toes that the stone is to fall and finally break the image, bringing in the fifth, the final, and everlasting kingdom of God. It is when these toes are smashed that the king- dom of the stone is set up; and, pointing to that moment of the fifth kingdom's inaugura- THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 411 tion, he says, "In the days of those kings," and, therefore, in the days of those toes. The ten toes, then, are the ten kings. As the two legs represent the fourth king- dom, and the two legs are a division ; as, further, each leg has five toes, and the toes are a division of each foot, we have a symbolic declaration that the fourth kingdom should be twice divided : first into two equal parts and, second, into ten. If we turn to history (which we might have done in the case of each of these kingdoms, and found amazing, detailed, and dramatic corroboration in the sequences of the kingdoms) if we turn to history here, we shall find that in A. D. 364., that is, nearly a thousand years after Daniel's prophecy, the fourth, or Roman empire, was divided between the brothers Valentinian and Valens into two great parts, known as the Western and East- ern Empire, the capitals, respectively, being at Rome and Constantinople. The second division, the division of the Western and tlie Eastern Empire into five kingdoms each, has never taken place. No such condition obtains today. The conclusion is evident — the division of the territory once occupied by Rome into ten kingdoms is yet future. In that time to come there will be five kingdoms in what was once known as the Western Empire, and five in what was known as the Eastern Empire. The beast in Revelation thirteenth is repre- 412 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES sented as having seven heads. In the seven- teenth chapter these heads are called, first, mountains and then kings: "The seven heads are seven mountains * * * and there [these] are seven kings." — Revela- tion, 17:9, 10. Five of these kings have fallen, a sixth was living when John wrote. The seventh was to come. He should continue but a short space. He would disappear and then come forth as the eighth. To this eighth king the ten kings will give their suffrage. This eighth king be- comes the head over the ten kings. He is in the end an eleventh king, and thus the eighth head represents the whole beast with its seven heads and ten horns. Daniel declares that out of the ten horns of the fourth beast will arise an eleventh horn, and that this horn will exalt itself above the other horns — taking the place of lordship over them. The eleventh horn of Daniel and the eighth head of Revelation are identical. The prophetic meaning, then, of all these identified symbols is, that when the territory of ancient Rome is finally divided among ten kingdoms — the ten kings will elect over them one supreme king — a king of kings and lord of lords; that this supreme king will be the final Caesar of Rome. (Daniel indicates that this coming Caesar will arise in one of the four kingdoms into THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 413 which the third or Grecian kingdom was divided. "In the latter time of their kingdom * * ♦ a king of fierce countenance * * * shall stand up * * * he shall stand up against the prince of princes." — Daniel, 8:23-25. The precise location out of which he arises is set before us in the title which is given him by the prophet Isaiah, "The Assyrian," "The King of Babylon."— Isaiah, 14:25, 4. He will arise out of Babylon. Daniel gives him the title of the prince of Rome. He does it in this wise. He says: "The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city [Jerusalem]." — Daniel, 9:26. Daniel here says two things: 1. After the death of Messiah (Christ) a people should come and destroy Jerusalem. The people who destroyed Jerusalem were Romans. 2. Out of this people, the Romans, there should arise a prince — the Coming Prince and, therefore, a prince of the Romans. The prince of the Romans is a prince of Rome. The prince of Rome is a Caesar. John says that one of the seven heads of the beast was wounded to death by a sword; his deadly wound was healed and all the world wondered after the beast. "I saw one of the heads, as it were wounded 414 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast." — Revelation, 13:3. The seventh head, according to Revelation seventeenth, continues but a short space. This seventh head is the one that is wounded to death. It comes to life again and reappears as the eighth head. This is resurrection — and eight is the Scripture number for resurrec- tion. It is because he is revealed as the man who has triumphed over death and the grave that all the world will wonder after him. Scripture paints a full portrait of him. He is an orator, holding the multitude by the witchery of his eloquence. He is a scien- tist, acquainted with nature's forces. He is an occultist, an adept in psychological myster- ies. He is a soldier, conquering nations. He is a builder of cities, rebuilding Babylon, mak- ing it the commercial and distributing center of the East. He becomes king of Babylon. He subdues the remaining three of the four kingdoms into which Greece was divided. His conquest brings him to the Bosphorus, All Europe trembles before him. The kings of Western Europe meet in conclave with the kings of the East. Together they form a congress of kings — a parliament of nations. They agree to elect this man as their federal head. They give him the title of Prince of Rome — the king of Rome. It is at this moment THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 415 when he is, apparently, slain to death, and rises again. His resurrection will be the theme of the world. It will be hailed as the glory of science, the perfection of human attainment, the demon- stration of evolution. His picture is complete. He will be a risen man — a king of kings — a lord of lords. He will throw off all disguise. He will deny the existence of God. He is "the fool who in his heart hath said there is no God." He will claim that man is the highest expression of nature's forces; that nature finds its per- sonality in man ; that man is the supreme being in the universe; and as he (the beast) is easily supreme among men, that he is the supreme personality of the universe. Men will worship him. They will give him hero-worship. They will see in him the ulti- mate of their own humanity ; reading in him the deity that belongs, in greater or less meas- ure (so they will say) to every man. In owning and glorifying him, they will glorify themselves. It will be the self-deification of humanity. It will be accepting the Devil's old lie : "Ye shall be as Gods." It will be the ringing out of the old, the ringing out of the true, the ringing in of the new, the ringing in of the false — "the Christ 416 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES that is to be." The Christ of evolution, and not the Christ of revelation. This man is foretold by Paul. "That man of sin * * * the son of perdition : who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is wor- shiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." — II. Thessalonians, 2 :3-4. He is the man of whom our Lord said that he should come "in his own name." — John, 5:43. He is the man of whom John speaks — ^the Antichrist. "He is the Antichrist, that denies the Father and the Son." — I. John, 2:22. This is the prophecy of the future: Within the limits of the old Roman empire there will be a parliament of the nations, an assembly of ten kings. Out of this parliament of the nations will come the man of sin — the Antichrist. Certain movements indicate that the world is getting ready for this parliament of nations. It has been proposed recently, and seriously, by leaders in the Turkish revolution, that a parliament of the great world powers be con- vened. Each nation is to send its representa- tive king or governor. Constantinople, as being central to the West and the East, is suggested as the historic meeting place. These nations in representative assembly of kings THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 417 and governors, are to discuss the political biidation of the world, settle issues that may arise, and dictate a governmental policy that shall be universal. In the nature of the case such a congress of nations must be presided over. It has been suggested that one of the leading monarchs of Europe be invited to fill that role and take the headship of the parliament. Side by side with this is the suggestion, float- ing for some time as a rumor through Euro- pean journals, that ten of the strong nations of the world should form themselves into an alliance to regulate the commerce of the earth, and keep the peace. Emperor William has been named as the fitting head of this com- bination. The proposition from Turkey has been laughed at, and the rumor concerning the Kaiser and his ten allied nations has been of- ficially denied ; but both of these suggestions are shadows of the coming event. As straws show the way of the wind, so these ideas blown out by the breath of men, proclaim the increas- ing consciousness that the world's peace and security demand a world-wide federation and unity. Along with these suggestions there is the hurried armament of the nations and their feverish preparation for war. This prep- aration must come to a climax — either uni- versal disarmament or universal clash. Uni- versal disarmament is impossible in the nature 418 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES of things. It is impossible, because the Son of God has said that war will continue among men till he returns. He says there will be wars and rumors of wars, kingdom will rise against kingdom and nation against nation. Not till he comes to put down all rule and authority and reign as the Prince of Peace, will the nations cease from war. Out of this final conflict and crash of contending armies there must come a complete change in the present order of political distri- bution. The map of Europe and Asia will be entirely altered. There will be re-organization. This act of re-organization will fall into the hands of some supreme personal force. An effort is being made to counteract this tendency. An arbitration alliance has been formed. Eight nations have elected their rep- resentatives. A palace for the session of the delegates has been built. The propaganda of peace is making itself heard and felt. It has apostles and a literature. Everywhere men are crying peace. In proportion as the war preparation goes on, the cry for peace be- comes louder [as though it would drown the roll of drums, the shoutings of the captains, the word of command, and the tramp of armed men]. It is a tremendously startling thing that the apostle Paul should have warned the church that just before the cataclysmic close of this age, there would 'be this very propa- THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 419 ganda of peace ; and that it was to be an indi- cation that the church should at that very moment be on the threshold of the tumult and the tribulation which eventuate in the coming of the Lord, himself. He says : "When they shall say peace and safety : then sudden destruction cometh upon them." — I. Thessalonians, 5 :3. With this preparation for war and the antici- pative cry for peace is the significant fact, that the Jews in large numbers are returning to Palestine, Zionism is no longer a mere sentiment, it is becoming each day a mightier factor in the world's politics ; and when it is remembered that one of the first acts of the revived Roman empire will be to throw the land of Palestine open to the Jews and recon- stitute the kingdom of Judah, it is evident that the outlines of coming events are casting their deepening shadows before. To those who think and reflect, it is a won- derful re-setting of the ancient scene. Look at it! Rome — Caesar — ^Judea a protectorate of Rome. Judea once more paying tribute to Caesar. The stage set just as it was when the Son of God came into the world the first time. The special significance of these things to the Christian may be seen by reading the fol- lowing passage: 420 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES "And he [the beast — the Roman Emperor — the Antichrist] opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and (even) them that dwell in heaven." — Revelation, 13 :6. The tabernacle of God is here said, accord- ing to the true reading, to be those who at this time are dwelling in heaven. The tabernacle of God is the church. It is the declaration, therefore, that at the time when this man, the Antichrist, is running his blasphemous course on earth, THE CHURCH WILL BE DWELLING IN HEAVEN. This is an illuminating and comforting as- surance. It is a clear demonstration that the church does not go through the Tribulation, and is a confirmative testimony to the faithfulness of the Lord's promise to the church at Phila- delphia : "I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation [the Tribulation] which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." — Revelation, 3:10. But it is the announcement of a great and imminent fact — the fact that before the church can dwell in heaven, it must be removed as a body from earth to heaven. The church is to be removed from earth to heaven as the bride of Christ. The bride can go only when the bridegroom comes for her. Christ is coming as the Bridegroom for his church. He will THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 421 come in an hour when "ye think not," and as a "thief in the night." The thief, as a rule, comes after midnight, in the hour of deepest darkness, and the time of heaviest sleep, comes softly, unexpectedly, suddenly, secretly. As a church we have passed the midnight hour, the cry has been sounded, "Go ye out to meet him." There is gross darkness upon the people, and it is the time of heavy sleep. Any moment the Bridegroom may come for those who are really his. This imminency is emphasized by the prep- aration for the parliament of nations. Every hammering sound of events which tells that the stage is being put together for the final and climacteric display of the world's sin and wickedness, is a terrific and faithful witness that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh, that it is even now "at the doors," and should inspire us to be awake, alert, and ready, lest, coming suddenly, he find us asleep. AN ANALYSIS OF REVELATION THIRTEENTH. 1. The beast is the symbol of the revived fourth, or Roman, empire, divided among ten kings, and heading itself up in the rulership and power of a final Caesar — the Antichrist. v:l. 2. This final Caesar is called by the general kingdom name, "The Beast." Just as Nebu- chadnezzar stands for Babylon the kingdom, so 422 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES the beast kingdom here, conversely, stands for the beast king — the Antichrist. The descrip- tion of the kingdom beast is intended to set forth in final analysis the king himself. 3. This man is slain to death and rises again, thus imitating Christ as the risen man — as king of kings and lord of lords, v :3. 4. The world is filled with wonder con- cerning him. They give him hero worship. In doing this they are worshiping — without knowing it — the dragon (the Devil himself.) 5. He is the incarnation of the Devil. "Whose coming is after the working [the energy-power] of Satan." — II. Thessalonians, 2:9. 6. He wages war and becomes a universal conqueror. — v :4. 7. He is a great orator, a blasphemer, an infidel. — v :5. 8. He runs his blasphemous course for forty-two months. These are prophetic months. Prophetic months are lunar months — months of thirty days. There are three hundred and sixty days in a prophetic year. These forty-two months are twelve hundred and sixty days — three years and a half. 9. He speaks in blasphemy against God. v:6. 10. He blasphemes the tabernacle of God. v:6. THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 423 11. The tabernacle of God consists of those who dwell in the heavens. The heaven dwel- lers are seen in Revelation, 4:4: "And round about the throne were four and twenty seats (thrones) and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment: and they had on their heads crowns of gold." These are kings and priests. Who these kings and priests are is described in Revelation, 5 :8-10. "The four and twenty elders fell down be- fore the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints" (which prayers they present in the exercise of their priestly office. Notice here, and notice it well, the church presents the prayers of the saints — not the saints the prayers of the church.) "And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on (over) the earth." These redeemed people are the church. The church then is the tabernacle of God in heaven. 12. While the beast, the Antichrist, is run- ning his blasphemous course, the church, the 424 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES tabernacle of God, will be in heaven, far above the tumult and the terror of the Tribulation. The church is translated to heaven at the secret coming of Christ — when he comes as the Bridegroom. 13. The beast will persecute the saints (the believing ones on earth) after the transla- tion of the church ; those among Jew and Gentile who believe the "Gospel of the King- dom," which will then be preached instead of as now, the Gospel of Grace. — v:7. 14. He will rule over nations. — v:7. 15. All who are not of the elect of God on earth will worship him — give him their allegi- ance. — ^v :8. 16. The second beast is not Antichrist, He is the prime minister of Antichrist. The proof that he is not the Antichrist is in the fact that he leads the whole world to worship the first beast. He fills the same function that the Holy Spirit does in relation to Christ. The Holy Spirit is here not to speak of himself, ibut to lead men to faith and service in Christ. Just so, this second beast does not speak of himself; he does not seek to lead men to believe in himself, but the first beast, the head of the Roman em.pire. Antichrist, we are told on the absolute authority of the Son of God, will "come in his own name." That ought to settle it beyond all dispute. The sec- ond beast does noi come in his own name, he comes in the name of the first beast. THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 425 He is an apostle of Antichrist. He is the Vicar of Antichrist. — v:12. 17. He works miracles on behalf of the beast, the Antichrist. The apostle Paul tells us that the coming of Antichrist is with "all power and signs and lying wonders." — H. Thessalonians, 2:9. This power is exercised by his apostle and primate in his name. Just as the apostles of Christ did miracles in his name and by his spirit. 18. He causes an image to be made to the beast. As of old men were called on to do homage to the image of the Roman Emperor. 19. He has power to give life (breath) to the image so that it shall speak. — v:14. Already we have automata that can play games of chess (deceiving inventions), the phonograph registers the voice of the living and the dead, and the kinetoscope already gives the movement of life, and promises, in connection with the phonograph and dactylo- graph, to make the moving figures speak and act to the very life. (Coming events, let it be repeated, cast their shadows before). 20. We learn that the beast, the Antichrist, was slain by a sword. It was a sword stroke, an assassin's blow, from which he recovered to the world's amazement. — v:14. 21. This apostle of Antichrist causes all to be killed who will not bow down to the image of the first beast. — v:15. 426 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES 22. All must receive the mark of Antichrist in the right hand and on the forehead. That is, they must bring their work and their will in submission to the will of Antichrist. — v:16. 23. No business can be carried on without the trade mark of Antichrist. He is the great "boss." The name of the beast is the "number of a man." The true reading is, not, a man, but, "the number of man," man considered as a whole. That number is, 6,6,6. — v:18. 7 is the number of Christ. He always spoke in sevens and of sevens. 7 is the number of fulness and, therefore, is the name of Christ; for, he is the fulness of the godhead bodily. — Colossians, 2 : 9. 7 is the number of the Christian ; it is the number of completeness, and the Christian is said to be "complete" in Christ. — Colossians, 2:10. 6 is the number this side of 7. As 7 is fulness, completeness, perfection, 6 is this side, or short of fulness, completeness, perfection. Man, as man, is not complete, he is not perfect, he falls short, as it is written: "For all have sinned and COME SHORT of the glory of God." — Romans, 3 : 23. 3 is, as well as 8, the number of resurrection. Although this man, the Antichrist, professes a resurrection, he cannot attain unto the PER- THE PARLIAMENT OF NATIONS 427 FECT MAN— he falls short; it is the doom of natural humanity, no matter how high and boastingly it may lift itself. 3 is, also, the number of repetition. We make an effort once, we try again, and make a final effort. In spite of every effort this man fails at the last. The end of Christ, and man in Christ, is the throne of the universe. The end of Anti- christ, and man in union with Antichrist, is the Lake of fire. Man out of Christ is a present failure and a final ruin. Man in Christ is a present Son of God .nd — a future king and priest — m associater glory with Christ. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT "And the ransomed of the Lord shall re- turn, and come to Zion with songs, and ever- lasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." — Isaiah 35 : 10. "They shall ask their way to Zion with their faces thitherward." — Jeremiah 50: 5. After the flood, the people gathered them- selves together at Babel, and would build a tower. In judgment, the Lord confused their tongues and scattered them abroad, breaking them into ethnical fragments, or nations. He did so, because it was his purpose to form one supreme nation in the earth, a nation which should be the memorial of his unity and the witness of his righteousness. It was his pur- pose to send his Son to be their incarnate king and constitute them, throug^n him, as channels of governmental and spiritual bless- ing to the world. To this end he scattered the people abroad and fixed their bounds in relation to the land of Palestine, ordaining that land to be the geographical and political center of the earth. He at once began the unfolding of his plan. He called Abraham out of Mesopotamia into Palestine — into the land of Canaan. He THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 429 covenanted to give the land to him and to his posterity for an everlasting possession. He promised him a son and, in due time, fulfilled the promise, giving him Isaac. When Isaac was arrived at manhood, he bade Abraham take him and sacrifice him upon Mount Mo- riah. Abraham obeyed, led his son to the mount, erected the altar, and the son stretched himself thereon. Abraham was about to slay him, in the faith that God would raise him from the dead, when the voice of God stayed his hand and the uplifted knife. A ram caught by its horns in a thicket was offered as a substitute. When Abraham raised his knife to give the blow, the boy was, in his mind, as good as dead. When his stroke was arrested and the young man raised from the altar alive, it was, indeed, as though he had been raised from the dead. It was a typical resurrection scene, and the suggestive outline of that ac- tual substitutionary death, and the very resur- rection from the dead, which took place cen- turies afterward on that very spot, when the eternal Son of God both died and rose again. In that typical resurrection hour God reaf- firmed his covenant with Abraham, assuring to him and to his posterity the land, and cove- nanting that in his seed (which seed was Christ — and of whom Isaac was the type) all the nations of thg earth should be blessed. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob through subtlety (and yet in the providential 430 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES plan of God) obtained the birthright and the blessing, setting forth the divine principle that it is always the second born, and never the first born, that gets the inheritance ("that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: and afterward that which is spir- itual"). Jacob became the father of twelve sons. By reason of famine he and his sons were led to go down into Egypt. The twelve sons be- came the heads of the twelve tribes: these twelve tribes were called the Children of Is- rael — Israel being the name given of the Lord to Jacob in that earlier period of his life when, on the mountain height between the midnight and the morn, he wrestled with him, putting his thigh out of joint, but giving him the name because in the moment of physical de- feat Jacob became the spiritual victor, claim- ing, through faith, a blessing from the Lord ; as a prince he had prevailed spiritually with the Lord, and was, henceforth, entitled to power with God and with man. In Egypt the Children of Israel multiplied into a nation and were held under bondage by Pharaoh. God sent Moses to deliver them and call them out in fulfilment of the covenant made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. As a judgment upon Egypt the Lord pronounced sentence of death against all the first born in the land. Under inspiration from God, Moses instructed the people to take a THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 431 lamb, a firstling of the flock, without blemish, set it apart on the tenth day of the month, kill it in the evening of the fourteenth, sprinkle the blood on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, then go in, shut the door, and remain till morning, shoes on the feet, loins girded, and staff in hand, but eating with haste of the slain lamb roast with fire, that they might be ready for the coming of the Lord at midnight, and be ready to go forth with him in the morning to the promised land. At midnight the angel of the Lord went through the land and smote the first born with death. Wherever he saw blood upon the house, he passed over (it was the Lord's Pass- over), knowing that the judgment of death had been met in the death of the substitute. In the morning there was one dead in every house. In the houses of the Egyptians there was wailing and anguish, because it was the death of their own first born. In the houses of the Israelites it was the first born, unblem- ished lamb, the ordained substitute, that was dead. Under Moses, and by the outstretched arm of the Lord, the people were led forth from the land of bondage, through the divided waters of the Red Sea, into the wilderness way, and then, as on eagles' wings, to the foot of Mount Sinai. There the people took themselves voluntarily from under the uncon- 432 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ditional Abrahamic covenant and placed them- selves under the conditional covenant of the Law, God would have taken them without any condition whatever, in fulfilment of his covenant promise to Abraham, directly into the promised land. The moment they an- nounced themselves capable in their own strength of doing all that the Lord required, he changed his manner of dealing with them, drew a line between himself and them, gave them the Law written on tables of stone, and added the ceremonial law. He gave them the ceremonial law that in the offerings and sac- rifices they might have a continual witness of the original sentence of death against them- selves, realize that their redemption was by blood, and that on the ground of blood shed- ding alone could they draw nigh unto God ; and that they might behold each day the outline of that coming spotless Person who should be the Lamb of God, bearing away the sin of the world — might behold him as their sacrificial redeemer and eternal king. Under the conditional covenant of the law they entered the land. They were to stay in that land so long as they fulfilled the condi- tions. They had gone in under the choral curses invoked on Ebal, curses invoked for failure in righteousness, or obedience to God. The antiphonal chorus of blessing from Geri- zim was never sung. They went in saying: THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 433 "Cursed be we if we fail to fulfill all we have promised unto God." And they failed! They became weary of an unseen king, even though that king were the living Lord. They desired a king of flesh and blood like unto their neighbours. The Lord granted them their request. He gave them Saul in his an- ger and took him away in his wrath. He gave them David and built them up an exceedingly great nation, climaxing their glory and great- ness in his son Solomon. Under Solomon's son, Jeroboam, ten tribes revolted against Solo- mon's successor, Rehoboam, and went into Samaria, there establishing themselves Ss the Northern kingdom, setting up Images and be- coming an idolatrous people. God sent the Assyrians against them. They carried away the people as captives. For twenty-five hun- dred years their identity has been lost and they have been known and spoken of in his- tory as "the ten lost tribes." The remaining two tribes, Judah and Ben- jamin, because of their iniquity, were carried away by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Baby- lon. At the end of seventy years, as had been foretold by Jeremiah, the prophet, they were permitted to return anud rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. By the hand of one conqueror and another they were ruled, till Rome set her imperial eagles above the royal standard of Judah, 434 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES In the fulness of time, and before a law- giver had departed from between the knees of Judah, the eternal Son of God took of the substance of a woman and was born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law (even Israel). Wise men from the East came seeking him as one born king of the Jews, and fell at his feet, giving him of their gifts — worshipping him as Lord as well as king. At the exact moment foretold by the angel Gabriel to Daniel, the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, son of Abraham and son of David — heir of the land and covenant heir ^f the throne — rode into Jerusalem amid the plaudits of the people, proclaiming him king of Israel and son of David, and presented himself to the nation, officially, as their king. Judas, one of the twelve disciples, betrayed him to the Jewish Sanhedrim. He was ar- rested, tried and condemned as a blasphemer. Because they had no jurisdiction in the case of death, the Sanhedrim handed him over to Pilate, the Roman governor, on the charge of sedition and conspiracy against Rome. Pilate would have let him go free, had he consulted his own feelings, but political consideration swung the balance against personal sentiment. Jesus was given into the hands of the execu- tioner and crucified to death, while over him was nailed the superscription of his accusa- tion, that he was the King of the Tews. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 435 Nothing saved the apostate nation from im- mediate and total destruction but the interces- sary prayer of the divine victim, "Father, for- give them; for they know not what they do," The Apostle Paul corroborates the fact of their blindness and ignorance. He says : "Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." — I, Corinthians 2: 8. In crucifying the Son of God they were guilty of manslaughter. When, of old, an Israelite was cutting wood and the axe, slipping from the helve, killed a neighbour, he was forced to flee along the prepared highway to the nearest city, called a city of refuge. He was obliged to do this because the nearest kin to the slain man must act at once as the avenger of blood, leap upon the track of the fleeing man, overtake him if he could, and slay him, thus obtaining satis- faction for the deed according to the law (never yet repealed — a law existing before that of Sinai), "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." By his unintentional act the manslayer lost his home, and if he reached the city in safety, must stay there till one high priest died and another came. Like the manslayer, the Jew ignorantly slew the Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the doom of the manslayer overtook him. He lost his home. He expelled the Lord Jesus Christ 436 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES from the home that was his. The Lord caused him, Hkewise, to be expelled from the land. Forty years later, the Romans under Titus came, took the city of Jerusalem after a siege in which hundreds of thousands are said to have perished, destroyed the houses, took the remaining inhabitants away, and drew a ploughshare over the hill of Zion as a witness that it had ceased to be a city, and, unknown to the haughty Roman himself, as a witness that the word of the prophet foretelling that Zion should be as a ploughed field, had been fulfilled to the letter. The Jews exiled their king and would not have him to rule over them as a nation; they became, themselves, exiles among the nations. For two thousand years they have lived in borrowed homes. No mat- ter where they may be born or how much they attempt to identify themselves with the land of their birth, they bear upon them the mark and stamp of the alien. For three years and a half their king walked through the earth as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. For two thousand years they have been a nation of sorrows and experts in grief. As a nation they crucified their king and the nations have crucified them. For two thou- sand years their history has been written in blood and tears. They have been rejected and despised of men. In the hall of the Sanhedrim, in the barracks of Herod, before Pontius Pi- late, on the way to Calvary and, at last, on THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 437 the cross, Jesus was mocked, jibed at, and spurned. For two thousand years the Jews have been the butt, the jibe, the mockery, the scorn and contempt of the Gentile world. They have been more than laughed at, more than mocked. They have been the objects of a persecution unparalleled. They have been whipped, beaten with rods, stoned, imprisoned, robbed, and burned alive. The men have been enslaved, the women ruthlessly ravished, and the children destroyed. They have been thrown into wells, sent to sea in rotten ships, flayed alive, tortured, hunted as wild beasts are hunted, and their lives prolonged in agony till death has become a benediction. For cen- turies whoever robbed or killed a Jew felt that he did God service. They were not al- lowed to own a rood of land, nor testify in court, and, in some places, were charged the toll weight over a bridge as though they had been a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep. Be- cause they had no recourse; because all men were their enemies, and every hand against them, their character responded to the times and its usage. Unable to defend themselves with arms, they seemed to fawn, to yield, took advantage of their foes, cheated when they could, and lied themselves out of threatened danger. These were their only weapons of de- fence, and when caught in the attempt to so defend themselves against the assaults of their Gentile aggressors, were smitten and perse- 438 THE SIGNS dF THE TIMES cuted a thousandfold — each characteristic of apparent dupHcity justifying the Gentile in his murderous attack. God used the Gentile nations as his rods wherewith to correct his disobedient people; at the same time, he warned these nations that while he would not make a full end of the Jews, he would make a full end of them. He has kept, and is keeping, his twofold promise. He has laid his hand on the nations that persecuted them. No nation has touched them and not paid the penalty in sorrow, in suffer- ing, or national shame. Rome, which cruci- fied the Lord, destroyed Jerusalem, and en- slaved the people, has passed away, and only the mournful ruins of the Palatine remain to suggest the splendors of the once proud Caesars. The arch of Titus still crowns the Velian hill, and the sculptured procession of the captive Jews may yet be seen thereon, but the forum through which these captive Jews once passed with downcast eyes and laggard steps of pain is a wilderness of fallen columns, of ruined temples and forgotten triumphs. France, where the hand of persecution was once cruel enough to bury helpless Jews alive, has lost Alsace and Lorraine. Spain, whose Catholic Philip sent thousands of trembling Jews to sea in sinking ships, has lost the last pearl amid the jewels of her American posses- sions, and was forced, at the cannon's mouth, THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 439 to sell the very islands named after that Philip who loaded his soul with the weight of in- famy by reason of Jewish deaths. Russia, where the Jews were shot down in the streets of cities, hung and quartered and exposed in stalls of butcher shops as so many beeves, went down in humiliation, shame, and unspeakable horror of defeat, before the armies of pagan Japan. The Lord has said that Israel is as the apple of his eye, and that whosoever, therefore, touches a Jew touches him. The sorrow of every nation that has ever persecuted the Jew is the solemn witness to the truth thereof. But a full end has not been made of the Jew ! Far from it! In spite of the sorrow, the suffering, the unreportable persecution, the Jew has lived, has thrived, until to-day there are at least twelve millions of them in the world — four times as many as those who crossed the Red Sea under Moses ; and these, but a sixth part of the whole nation, consisting only of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Their suffering upon the one side, and their amazing preservation upon the other, are wit- nesses that God is behind it all. To admit that they have been miraculously preserved (and who can evidentially deny it?) is to admit that the same hand which has restrained, must be the same hand that has permitted, the suf- 440 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES faring. Nor need we have any doubt or guess about the matter. Page after page of Holy Writ is filled with the threatenings of the Lord. Again and again he forewarns of the very experience through which they since have passed. It is only necessary to change the future tense in which the prophecies have been written to the present tense to read their actual history in the light of to-day. It is the Lord who has permitted them to sufifer ; it is the Lord who has preserved them. They have been persecuted and have suffered in final cause because they have been absent from their native land. They have been a nation out of place. Let a man stand in a crowd and be neither going nor coming, he will soon be jostled and pushed, whirled and turned about, and more or less maltreated, because he is out of place, he is in everybody's way. Just so, the Jew anywhere else than in Palestine, and in national relationship, is out of place. He is in everybody's way, and has been elbowed and jostled, whirled about, hurtj and maltreated by the thronging nations. Suppose, however, the Jews were, to-day, in their own land ; suppose they had an up-to- date army of five hundred thousand perfectly equipped men, and a navy of Dreadnaughts to match, an exchequer full of convertible values ; let it be supposed that Jerusalem was THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 44 1 (as it well may be) a great railway and com- mercial center, and that in it was the concen- trated wealth of modern Jewry, and all the Gentile wealth that is dependent upon it, does any one imagine for a moment that the na- tions of the Gentiles would turn upon, despise or maltreat them ? Would not a Jew, a single Jew, win, nationally speaking, the same re- spect and attention as an Englishman, a Ger- man, or an American? Would not the con- sciousness that behind the individual Jew there was a vital and fully equipped nationality give emphasis to the individual expression of it? This is the Jew's need of the hour. He needs to go back to his own land, go there in national capacity, and take his place amid the political and commercial powers of the earth. Not till the Jewish nation is such, not till there is a Jewish national resurrection, and the Jewish nation once more possesses the land sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, will the Jew be able to lift up his head and walk in the ordained power that is his. God has declared that this need shall be met. He has declared that the Jews shall go back to their own land — that Israel shall be restored to Palestine. The promises of this restoration form almost the staple of the prophetic utter- ances. The Word of God is crowded with them. In every form of statement, typical, figurative, poetic, symbolic, open and didactic, 442 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES does the living God proclaim, by sworn oath, by solemn pledge, upon the stake of his own integrity, that his people shall yet dwell in the land of their inheritance. To transcribe these promises would be almost to fill a book. They are there. So great is God's determina- tion to restore them that he says he will do it with "his whole heart." He declares that they are written upon the palms of his hands, and that he cannot forget them. He assures them that he will bring them back, plant them in their own land, and never allow them any more to be plucked out of it forever. So in- terested is he in this stupendous event that he gives the prophet Ezekiel a vision of a valley full of dry bones. He assures the prophet that these bones shall live ; dry and seemingly withered as they are, he assures him that they shall live. He bids him to prophecy upon these bones and assure them that the Lord God will cause breath to enter into them and that they shall live. God says he will lay sinews upon these bones and bring flesh upon them ; he will cover them with skin and put breath in them, and they shall live. The prophet does as he is commanded of the Lord, and, as he prophesies, hears a great noise, there is a great shaking, bones come together, bone to his bone. The Lord then commands the prophet to speak to the wind, bidding ^reath to come from the four winds and breathe upon the slain. The prophet again THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 443 obeys, breath comes into them, they live and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army. The Lord explains this vision to Ezekiel. He says: "These bones are the whole house of Israel : behold they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy, and say unto them. Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my peo- ple, I will open your graves [the nations and countries where they are nationally buried] and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, And shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live ; and I shall place you in your own land ; then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord. The word of the Lord again came unto me, saying, Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, for Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions : then take another stick, and write upon it, for Jo- seph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel and his companions : And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand. And when the children of thy people shall 444 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these? Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand. And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen [the Gentile nations] whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel ; and one king shall be king to them all ; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms, any more at all." — Ezekiel Z7 : 1-22. He has given signs of the coming restora- tion. He uses the symbol of a fig tree. He says, (and it is our Lord Jesus Christ who speaks) : "Now learn a parable from the fig tree; when his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." — Matthew 24 : 32. The fig tree is, of course, the Jewish Nation. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 445 There is a time to come, according to this parable, when the Jewish nation shall begin, like the tender branch of the fig tree, to show signs of life and vitality. . It will begin to put forth leaves. There will be a marked indication that the winter of death and desola- tion is passed forever; that the summer time of life, of fruit and harvest, is at hand. This renewal of life, and this universal man- ifestation of national vigor, are in evidence every day. In our great commercial cities the Jews are the leading business factors. If you will pass down New York's great street of Broadway you shall find that two-thirds of the names upon the signs are Jewish names. One out of every four persons on Manhattan Island is a Jew — and is there because, in one way or another, related to business. If you call over the list of bankers in the world at large, you will find that the large majority of them are Jews. The leading musicians of the world have been, and to-day are, Jews. They are leaders in science and philosophy. They are historians, romancers, poets and tragedians. The two greatest women tragedians the world has ever known were Jewesses. They have been generals and statesmen. Napoleon's great marshal, Massena, the "child of vic- tory," was a Jew. England's prime minister, the man who at Berlin gave her "peace with honor." was a Jew. His very name is a token: 446 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES Benjamin D'Israeli — Benjamin of Israel. If to-day you were to call over the representative names in all departments of human genius and industry, you would find that a vast number of them are the names of Jews. The Jew is coming to the front along all the masterful lines of life. He has a polyglot tongue. If you seek the man who speaks in many lan- guages besides his own, you will find him in a Jew. He is entering into the political as well as the business arena. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, a soldier in the French army, was un- justly condemned by the French government. The Jews of the world got together, put their hands upon the assets of France, entered into the legislative halls and said: "Bring that man back from Devil's Island, give him a new trial, declare him innocent, reinstate and honor him." France heard the demand and did as she was bidden, even at the peril of a revolu- tion and a divided country. The Jew did that, the Jew of the twentieth century. He has an almost insane thirst for knowl- edge. The night schools in the great cities are filled with Jews. Some of our great universi- ties are crowded with them. The first Rhodes' scholarship was captured by a Jew. They seek knowledge because it is the high road to power. Obeying a mighty impulse they do not understand, they are seeking for power, THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 447 and seeking it in every direction. There is a mysterious, unseen impetus that drives them on. The vitality of the Jew is phenomenal. Any other people, enduring what they have endured, would have been wiped off the face of the earth. Persecution only seems to in- tensify their stamina. They are, as already stated, numbered by millions. Their health is a marvel. They are able to exist under all conditions. They are the best insurance risk among the nations. The men are extraordinarily vigorous, the women are wondrously fruitful, the children abundant. The Jewish nation, like the fig tree, is put- ting forth its leaves ; it is getting ready to bud, to blossom and fill the face of the world with fruit. The summer, surely, is nigh. There is another sign of restoration, and that is: The physical condition of Palestine. The people would not honor the Lord's Sab- baths, nor walk in his statutes. For this, he said he would cast them forth to the uttermost parts of the earth; and while they wandered amid all nations, the people of the trembling heart and the restless foot, the land should keep her Sabbaths. For centuries the soil has been uncultivated. The vine and the olive have cast their fruit. 448 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES flung down their foliage, and fertilized the soil. Wild flowers and grasses have clothed the barren rocks; the desert has blossomed as the rose. The very dust has been quickened by the mould of ages. Armies have fought upon its plains and the blood of man and beast bursts forth in the beauty of its scarlet poppies. For twenty centuries it has been lying a virgin earth under the fierce caress of an ardent sun and the breath of Orient winds. The grapes hang purple in the western light, the olives grow dusky green in the slant of the sun ; apricot, pome- granate and orange give forth their blossoms to the wooing air, harvests lie golden under the noontide haze. In every fold of its mys- terious mountains, the snow-hooded heights of Hermon and the darkling blue of Tabor; in every crease of its lonely valleys, pool-filled Baca and smoke-laden Tophet; in every bed of its deepening streams, by the shores of blue Galilee and Jordan's banks, in rock and river, where the dead lie buried and the living toil and die, the land, full of wonder and the witchery of buried ages, where the ghosts of old days and the footsteps of prophet, priest and king go by together; the land where the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley still bloom, where Bethlehem's roofs still shine white as in the days of the Incarnation, where THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 449 Calvary still remains the place of the skull, where the shadow of the cross seems to grow crimson in the dying of the day, there, where the feet of the infinite Son of God walked in their weariness, and his voice was heard as never man spake before, or since, in that land of lands, everything is waiting, palpitating, and ready to respond, with beating breast of fruitfulness, to the husbandman's touch and toil, to the worshipper's bended knee and as- cending prayer. There is another sign, and this, too, in rela- tion to the land. That sign is the latter rain. The Lord promised that when his people should turn their faces thitherward the latter rain so long withheld should be given them again. The latter rain has commenced to fall. Heaven is pouring sunshine, dew, and this precious rain, upon the awakening land. God is preparing it for the harvest home of those who shall return. In that land are great stone cities. These cities are in a state of wondrous preservation — a touch here and there, and the houses would be habitable. For two thousand years they have been empty, save for the wild beast and the night bird that would make her nest there. Silence and desolation have been the senti- nels. 450 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES The cities have been waiting for their in- habitants. The houses are ready to resound to the voices of men and women, to the songs of bride and bridegroom, and the laughter of children. The streets, with here and there a gleam of paving stone, look up through moss and lichen, ready to welcome the rhythmic tread of the hurrying multitude. The Word of God declares that before the final and distinctive restoration, great num- bers of the Jews will return, go back as colo- nists, as speculators, and that land shall be bought and sold at the gates of Jerusalem. That prophecy is being fulfilled to-day. There are more Jews in Palestine than at any time since our Lord was crucified. Land is being bought and sold on speculation at the very doors of the city. Colonists have taken up land in the old, historic places, and are farming, by means of modern machinery, with satisfying success. The climacteric sign of the restoration is with us to-day. That sign is the organized movement known as — Zionism. Zionism is a movement on the part of the Jews throughout the world to go back to Pal- estine and reconstitute themselves as a nation, rebuilding Jerusalem, erecting the temple, and restoring: the faith of thQ fathers. The move- THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 45) ment is no longer detached, or merely senti- mental. It is organized, corporate and univer- sal. Branches, committees and headquarters are established all over the earth. It has its literature and an oral advocacy. Men are vi^riting and speaking in its behalf. Children are taught to repeat the word Zion as never before, and to set their faces thitherward. Moneys are raised, colonies are sent out, es- tablished and sustained. Multitudes of Jews among all nations, peoples, kindreds and tongues, are mentally asking their way to Zion and are setting their faces "thitherward." It is a movement that can neither be denied nor ignored. It is making itself known with increasing volume of assertion and assurance. Blind, utterly blind, even to the word of the prophets, blind to the full meaning of the movement itself, impulsed by natural and selfish motives, whether national or individual, . there are thousands of Jews to-day who, in attitude if not in actual fact, are homeward bound, and are repeating softly to themselves the magic word, "Zion." The recent revolution in Turkey has accel- erated the movement. The ban upon the Jew has been removed. He is now invited to be- come a citizen. The doors of the Turkish Parliament stand open, the day of Jewish citi- zenship in their own land is made possible. Already, representative and wealthy Jews may 452 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES be found standing in the shadow of the Sub- lime Porte. Jewish synagogues are planned for the hill of Zion. By day and by night there are here and there devout Jews who are study- ing the plans of the temple laid down by the prophet Ezekiel, plans so wonderful that Sir Inigo Jones, the great English architect, has said that if the temple were really built along its lines it would, indeed, fill the whole earth with its glory — putting to shame the half- remembered splendors of ancient times. Zion and Zionism are in the air. All these things are verifications of the Word of God. Every accent is a witness that God speaketh the truth and that his Word is settled in heaven forever. But this Zionist movement is a witness that the Coming of the Lord to rule and reign as king is not far away. Holy Scripture teaches in plain and unmistakable language that the Jews are to return to their own land, as many are doing now, in a state of unbelief and athe- istic godlessness. The scriptures testify that the nations of Europe, and some in Asia, will be unified under a great and final head, known in Holy Writ as the Antichrist, the Man of sin and the Beast, but hailed in the political world as the Coming Man, the arbiter of na- tions, the maker and keeper of peace, the world's accepted king of kings and prince of peace. The scriptures teach that this man will 6e the prime factor in bringing the Jews back. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 453 as a body, into their own land; that he will be the power that shall make Zionism a suc- cess; that through him the nationalism of the Jews shall be accomplished. He will make treaties with them, sustain them, be to them as though he were the very Messiah, the Christ, receiving from them support and ac- clamation. At the last he shall trample all his treaties with them under foot, rob them, spoil them, and put them into a furnace blast of persecution unparalleled by anything that has gone before ; a time of tribulation, a tribu- lation which our Lord defines as "the tribula- tion, the great one," and concerning which he says, the like of it has never been before, nor ever can be again ; a stress and durance spoken of by Jeremiah specifically as the time of "Jacob's Trouble"; a sorrow and horror, and down sweep of pain and tragedy so great that, unless the Lord, we are told, should shorten the trial, no flesh could live, actually could exist. This man, the world's great Coming Man, the pre-eminent persecutor of the Jews, will fill Jerusalem with anguish, enthrone himself on the necks of the Jews, direct his hatred and wickedness with unlimited vengeance, particu- larly against the remnant of Jews who shall, under the faithful preaching of divinely sent messengers, turn their faces towards the true Messiah of Israel, and beseech him to appear unto them. It is in the midst of this woe, and 454 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES in answer to the despairing cry of the rem- nant, that the Lord will descend from heaven in the panoply of his power and glory; then it is that repentant and sore-smitten Judah shall turn to him and own their crucified Lord at last. This Zionistic movement, its antecedents and accessories, are clear evidence that the time of Jacob's sorrow and the hour of the Lord's appearing are drawing nigh. But the Zionist movement is, in itself, the quickening and warning sign of a more im- mediate event. It is a sign that the secret rapture of the ■church is, indeed, imminent. Scripture teaches, and teaches it in figure, in type, in symbol, parable, and open statement, that be- fore the Lord appears in glory to end Gentile rule, and bring in the rule of Israel according to the Abrahamic covenant, he will come se- cretly, without warning, into the air (He will come into the air and halt there, before he comes down to the Mount of Olives), and with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, snatch his church (the dead raised, the living changed) out of the world, and from the way of the coming woe, and gather her to himself as the bridegroom receives his long awaited bride. By so much, then, as the Zionist movement is a climacteric sign and witness in these times that the day of the Lord is at hand, by mst THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT 455 SO much it is a witness that "at any moment" the "door in heaven" may be opened, the Lord may speak, and all those who own his name be bidden to rise and meet him, see him face to face, and share his glory. This is the deeper meaning of Zionism. Every footstep Zionward, every face set "thitherward." every accent and song that re- peats the name of Zion, should be a warning and an exhortation to the church, to the indi- vidual Christian, to watch, to wait and, with uplifted foot on the threshold of any circum- stance, be ready, as though the Master had already said, "Come up hither." "For ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." — Matthew 25:13. Four Timely Messages By I. M. HALDEMAN, D. D. THE PRINCE OF PEACE "This Hour not the Hour of the Prince of Peace; and this age, not the age in which the Church is to establish earth-wide, national peace but soul peace, individual peace, peace of the soul with God." A sermon on Isaiah 9:6, 7, preached before the New York State Committee, October 27, 1915. 56 pages. Price 25 cents per copy. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD "The Church is not here to mal