VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER
SEES THINGS COMING
"GIGANTIC STRUGGLE BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL"
----------
SECRETARY Taft made an address before the Order of Railway Conductors in which he said:--
"Men who control capital, as well as men who work for wages, must combine," said Secretary Taft to the conductors. "Combinations of capital within the bounds of the law are necessary for business expediency and for cost reduction. And because of these combinations among employers, the laboring men must combine also in order to obtain that independence to which they are entitled.
LOOKS FOR GIANTS' STRUGGLE
"Every man who understands welcomes the lawful combination of capital and the combinations of the laboring men. Yet there is no denying the fact that we must look forward to a gigantic controversy between labor and capital, hoping and trusting that it will be settled peaceably. That controversy, when it comes, will decide once for all how capital and labor shall share the joint-profits which they create.
"For the past three years we have been doing some house-cleaning. We needed it. President Roosevelt was the chief of those who called a halt and convinced the people that no one in this country is above the law. I do not say that all rich men are wicked. We take pride in those who by energy, intelligence, and honesty have accumulated wealth. But there are men in this country who by means devious and contrary to law have become multi-millionaires. These must be made to know that their lawless methods cannot be successful in the future."
* * *
How evidently our Lord's teachings and those of his apostles were not to the world, but to "the called according to his purpose." To those he said, "Ye are not of the world, for I have chosen you out of the world."
The purpose of their call is also made clear: That they should be holy, and, as his consecrated "little flock," learn important lessons and be developed to the full in love and loyalty to God and to each other and to all the principles of righteousness to the intent that being thus qualified for the service they may be made members of the Royal Family, the Kingdom class, which shall rule the nations with a rod of iron, wielded by a hand of love, during the Millennium.
Surely no other explanation fits the facts of history and the records of the Bible. Blessed are the eyes of all who see these things and still more blessed are those whose hearts respond fully and who thus by the Lord's assisting grace make their calling and election sure to a place in that Kingdom.
LONDON GONE MAD OVER OCCULTISM
----------
The London correspondent of the Toronto Globe says: "Mayfair's great army of clairvoyants, soothsayers, table-rappers and seventh-day sisters have been greatly encouraged by Sir Oliver Lodge's declarations concerning communications received from beyond the grave by the Psychical Research Society. The police prosecutions of a few years ago caused a genuine stampede from the luxuriously-appointed temples of mystery in the fashionable streets of the West End, but most of those who ran away have returned or are returning--bolder and more mysterious than ever.
"It is declared on good authority that dabblers in the occult among fashionable society are numerically greater than ever before, and this statement is borne out by the rushing business being done by the men and women of mystery. In Oxford Circus and Piccadilly are daily to be seen sandwich men in large numbers bearing advertisement boards telling of the wonderfully accurate predictions made by Mme. X., and how Mme. Z., by timely warning to a lady of high title, prevented a dreadful domestic catastrophe.
"Quite a separate division of the futurity-reading industry is that of the sporting 'prophets,' who are doing so well financially that they are able to spend large sums for advertisements in the newspapers. A special crusade against this form of clairvoyance has been started by the Bishop of Hereford. He has used his influence to have a committee of the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury appointed to deal with the subject, and wholesale prosecutions, both of newspapers printing the advertisements and of those placing them, are threatened."
METHODISTS WANT CREED RESTATED
----------
Presbyterians are having great comfort from their restatement of their Faith for the public. They claim that it is just the same in meaning as their Westminster Confession. The new creed states so little and so vaguely that it mates well with the "new theology," which denies the Atonement, the pre-existence [R4195 : page 196] of Jesus, etc. But now Methodists are feeling their need of a similarly colorless creed, as is shown by the following from the Portland Evening Telegram:
At the meeting of the Methodist Episcopal ministers today at Taylor Street Church, Rev. C. E. Cline read a paper on "Restating the Articles of Our Religion," which was in line with the general movement of that Church to restate the present articles, which were originally taken from the Episcopal creed.
Rev. Clarence True Wilson, D.D., said he found the articles needed restating, as he had often been embarrassed by the inadequacy of the present Discipline.
"Why, the other day," he said, "a Unitarian wrote me for information about our belief, and do you think I could send our Discipline? No, indeed not. Had I done so every minister present today would have criticised me. I happened to meet a Presbyterian minister who was in receipt of a letter from this same Unitarian and I asked him what he was going to do about it. 'Why, send him our Articles,' said he. I then said, 'Sign my name to it, too.'
"We don't believe in the idea of Christ's atonement, yet we have it in our Discipline, and several other things, such as Original Sin being inherited. There can be no such thing, and no minister of our Church believes there is."
A CANDID CONFESSION TRULY, FROM A PROMINENT MAN
----------
The Rev. Dr. Day, Chancellor of the Syracuse University, recently, in an address to the Y.M.C.A., is reported by the public press to have voiced sentiments [R4196 : page 196] which we have reason to believe are shared by vast numbers of humanity, though seldom expressed. We quote from the New York Press:
"Wouldn't you rather live in America than in heaven? I would. I'd like to go to heaven when I can't be here. In fact, I think I'd be rather discontented in heaven till I got adjusted. You can get anything you want here. You can live under forty odd governments, meet all the nations of the world, eat all the fruits of the world and get any kind of climate that you choose. So America is the best place to live; but I think when a man can't stay here any longer he ought to steer for heaven.
"For my part, I've never been much fascinated with the idea of corner-lots and mansions in the skies, and songs and harps and such things. I like a place because it's busy, and the more business there is the better I like it. Give me lots of work and lots of people to oppose me and then I'm happy.
"The business of the country isn't going to stagnate, or wither. It is going on. There's too much wealth in the interior, too much property on the surface, too much harvest on its broad acres, too many factories, too much money that's got to be invested to be safe for us to halt long. We've had a little scare, it's true, but nothing more."
* * *
Such a truthful expression will doubtless do good. Hypocrisy is never advantageous nor commendable. If all spoke out their true sentiments, Christianity would be rudely shaken and surprised, but the result would be good; the few really energized by the heavenly promises would be manifested and separated from the nominal mass to their great advantage.
The Apostle Paul spoke of such as "loved the present world" (2 Tim. 4:10), as thus giving evidence that they had departed from the faith and departed from all relationship to Christ as his disciples. We remember also the inspired Word, "Love not the world, neither the things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."-- I John 2:15.
Those who have really "tasted of the heavenly gift and the powers of the world (age) to come, and been made partakers of the holy Spirit," possessing this illumination of the eyes of their understanding, can never be satisfied with present conditions under the rule of the Prince of Darkness, can never be satisfied by the present "reign of sin and death," under which "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain."
Dissatisfied with all that the present evil world can offer, they are content, nevertheless, because of their faith in God's promises of future blessings to the Church and the world; content because of God's assurance that the present evils will ultimately work out blessings under divine guidance--helpful both to the Church and the world. We will be satisfied when our polishing as the Lord's jewels is completed--when we awake in his likeness in the resurrection. And the groaning creation--the poor as well as the rich--will be satisfied when the Millennium shall have blessed and uplifted all from sin and degradation and selfishness and shall have established amongst men equity and love, the fulfilling of the divine law. And all not then satisfied will be utterly destroyed.--Acts 3:23.
GIVING LIFE TO THE IMAGE
----------
Many of our readers know that for years we have been waiting for a fulfilment of the symbolic statement about the two-horned beast of Revelation 13:15. Our expectation has been that the Church of England, represented in the two-horned beast, would give life to the Protestant Image of Papacy, viz., the Protestant Evangelical Alliance. Just what we have been waiting for may yet occur--Episcopal ordination may be granted to the "clergy" of other denominations; but possibly the action of the Episcopal House of Bishops some months ago is all that we should expect. By opening Episcopal pulpits to other Orthodox Protestant ministers it tacitly acknowledged their ordination and thus gave them sanction, acknowledgment, validity--life. This, at least, is the view taken by some of their own "clergy," as the following will show:--
FOUR EPISCOPAL MINISTERS QUIT AND DENOUNCE
THE OPEN PULPIT
Dramatic scenes marked the departure of the Rev. William McGarvey and his three assistants from St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church, Philadelphia.
The four clergymen of the Church decided they could no longer remain in the Episcopal Church when the "open pulpit" canon was adopted.
THEY EXPLAIN ACTION
They distributed a circular letter in part as follows:--
"It is due to you that we should tell you plainly why we are leaving you and going forth to begin our lives anew. When we were ordained we were persuaded that the Catholic religion in its fulness was the faith of the Episcopal Church. Animated by this persuasion, we gave ourselves freely to her ministry and would gladly have laid down our lives in her service. Misgivings with regard to the legitimacy of our position were first aroused when certain of the bishops a year or two ago began to invite non-Episcopal ministers into the pulpits.
"Such action was not, of course, the action of the Episcopal Church, although its proceeding from bishops gives it a serious import. But when the whole house of bishops, without a dissenting vote, indorsed this practice by incorporating [R4196 : page 197] into the discipline of the Episcopal Church explicit provision for an open pulpit, it was manifest that either the non-Episcopal ministers had already the same ministerial status as ministers of the word with those ordained by bishops of the Episcopal Church, or that the Episcopal Church had by her enactment of the open pulpit canon seriously compromised the doctrine of holy order which we had supposed that she held in its integrity.
"Had such a canon been enacted prior to our ordination our consciences would never for a moment have allowed us to receive ordination in the Episcopal Church. And now that the canon was enacted it was plain that we must, as honest men, reconsider our whole position. We set a time for prayer and thought that we might know God's will and might do nothing hastily.
"That time has now expired, and it has been made abundantly clear to us that the Episcopal Church, in making possible the admission of all sorts of Protestant ministers as teachers of her people, has rightly interpreted her own essential spirit. She now stands forth before the world in the character which belongs to her, and by which she desires to be known. She is as she calls herself, as in the last general convention she has demonstrated herself to be, and as most of her members regard her--a Protestant Church."
"SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES" TELLS THE TRUTH
----------
"Sheol and Hades are respectively the Old and the New Testament words for the place of the dead--all dead, whether saved or lost. Gehenna is the name of the place of the dead who are lost."--Issue May 2, 1908, p. 214.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM
----------
"A streak of fire passing rapidly through the air would precipitate nitric acid. So would a bolt of lightning. A bolt of lightning moving for a distance of 200 feet without the zigzag breaks in its course would throw down nitric acid out of the air, for a territory a mile in diameter.
"Now, suppose a bolt of lightning did dart through the air in the immediate vicinity of what is now the Dead Sea. Suppose that bolt to have traversed a long distance, with its course unbroken by a common zigzag movement of lightning. Enough nitric acid would be thrown down to change all the surface of the earth for miles around to nitrates. And, in my opinion, that is exactly what did happen, causing not only the transformation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, but also causing the Dead Sea to become 'dead.'"--Lyell M. Rider, professor of chemistry.
SOCIALISM VS. ANARCHISM
----------
BERLIN--The police today discovered guns, ammunition and other material supposed to belong to Russian Terrorists in the house of the Socialist Municipal Councilor (member of the city council), Kerfien.
There were many pistols with so called dumdum bullets, and an electric apparatus for the igniting of explosives at a distance, double shirt bosoms for the smuggling of forbidden literature into Russia, etc. A whole dray load of such articles was being removed.--Translated from the German.
GATHERING NATURAL ISRAEL
----------
The correspondent of the Jewish Daily News reports that the Hungarian Minister of the Interior ordered a thorough investigation of the status of Russian Jews who live in Budapest. Those who are unable to show that they have certain means of livelihood should be expelled from the capital. This order affects the fate of nearly 10,000 Jews, for the Galician Jews living in Budapest will be included in that edict, and most of these belong to the poorest classes. A cable dispatch received by the above journal announces that 1500 Jews have already been expelled from Budapest.
====================