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SEMI-MONTHLY
VOL. XXX MAY 15. NO. 10
A.D. 1909—A.M. 6037

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CONTENTS

Brooklyn Bethel Hymns for June………………..146
Views from the Watch Tower……………………147
“Blasting at the Rock of Ages”…………….147
The Orthodox Student vs. the Orthodox Teacher.148
Tabernacle and Bethel Reception……………….149
“Walk Honestly as in the Day”…………………150
“Put Ye on the Lord Jesus Christ”………….151
The Emmanuel Movement………………………..152
“For This He Did Once”……………………….153
“If We Suffer With Him”………………………154
“Come Over and Help Us”………………………155
“There is a Sin Unto Death”…………………..157
Western Convention Tour………………………158
An Interesting Letter………………………..159
Berean Studies on the Atonement……………….159

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PUBLISHED BY
WATCH TOWER BIBLE & TRACT SOCIETY
CHARLES T. RUSSELL, PRESIDENT
“BROOKLYN TABERNACLE,” 13-17 HICKS ST.,
BROOKLYN, N.Y., U.S.A.

Foreign Agencies:—British Branch: 24 Eversholt St., London, N. W. German Branch: Unterdorner Str., 76, Barmen. Australasian Branch: Equitable Building, Collins St., Melbourne.

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ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $1.00 (4s.) IN ADVANCE
MONEY MAY BE SENT BY EXPRESS, BANK DRAFT, POSTAL ORDER, OR
REGISTERED.
FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES BY FOREIGN MONEY ORDERS, ONLY.

Terms to the Lord’s Poor as Follows:—All Bible Students who, by reason of old age, or other infirmity or adversity, are unable to pay for this Journal, will be supplied Free if they send a Postal Card each May stating their case and requesting its continuance. We are not only willing, but anxious, that all such be on our list continually and in touch with the Studies, etc.

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SECOND CLASS MAIL MATTER.
APPLICATION MADE FOR ENTRY AT BROOKLYN, N.Y.

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ALSO FRENCH, GERMAN, SWEDISH, DANISH AND ITALIAN EDITIONS.
SAMPLE COPIES FREE.

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BROOKLYN BETHEL HYMNS FOR JUNE

After the singing of the hymn the Bethel Family listens to the reading of “the Vow” to the Lord, then joins in prayer. At the breakfast table the MANNA text for the date is read and questions and comments considered. Finally, just before leaving the table, the MANNA comment is read. Desiring that all share the blessings, we commend the plan to others. The hymns for June are indicated below to permit all who so desire to join with us:

(1) 267; (2) 29; (3) 19; (4) 313; (5) 257; (6) 119; (7) 4; (8) 208; (9) 17; (10) 152; (11) 301; (12) 230; (13) 193; (14) 105; (15) 66; (16) 121; (17) 130; (18) 263; (19) 273; (20) 85; (21) Vow; (22) 8; (23) 71; (24) 291; (25) 258; (26) 312; (27) 191; (28) 169; (29) 120; (30) 279.

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ITALIAN VOLUNTEER MATTER

The Volunteer matter for use among Italians is now ready, and we trust that those having Italian friends or living near Italian sections will recognize the opportunity and order what they can judiciously use.

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POCKET HYMNALS DELAYED

The cloth and paper editions of the Pocket Hymnals have been unexpectedly delayed in shipment, but we expect to be filling orders by the time this issue reaches you.

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VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER

“BLASTING AT THE ROCK OF AGES”

FOR the past twenty years we have been sounding the Alarm against the infidel tendencies of the colleges and seminaries of Christendom. We have pointed out that Higher Criticism of the Bible and the Evolution Theory are taught in practically every institution of learning of higher grade than a Grammar School and that even in these the seeds of infidelity are being sown in the class books and studies, though not openly lectured upon.

In these twenty years we have counselled parents that it is better to give their children less education than to risk the complete wreck of their religious instincts and faith in God and the Bible. Our views were thought to be extreme and rarely heeded. Now parents are writing us of their sad mistake—that the faith of their children is irreparably lost, because they refuse to read the only thing which would enable them to regain the ground of faith lost, namely The Divine Plan of the Ages.

Finally, when the new manhood and womanhood have been thoroughly inoculated with the poison of infidelity others are awakening to the situation; as, for instance, Mr. Harold Bolce, who writes in the “Cosmopolitan,” and Hon. S. H. Blake, who has started a good warfare in Canada.

We give below John Temple Graves’ note of alarm. He says:—

Out of the curricula of American colleges a dynamic movement is upheaving ancient foundations and making an open way for a revolution in the thought and life of this people. Those who are not in close touch with the great colleges of the country will be astonished, in most cases indignant, to learn the creeds that are being fostered by the strong men in the professors’ chairs.

In hundreds of classrooms there is a scholarly repudiation of all solemn authority, and it is being taught daily that “the Decalogue is no more sacred than a syllabus”; that “the home as an institution is doomed”; that “there are no absolute evils”; that “immorality is simply an act in contravention of society’s accepted standards”; that “democracy is a failure and the Declaration of Independence only spectacular rhetoric”; that “the change from one religion to another is like getting a new hat”; that “moral precepts are passing shibboleths”; that “conceptions of right and wrong are as unstable as styles of dress”; that “wide stairways are open between social levels, but that to the climber children are encumbrances”; that “the sole effect of prolificacy is to fill tiny graves,” and that “there can be and are holier alliances outside the marriage bond than within it!“

Every quoted sentiment is from the spoken or written word of some one of the leading and famous professors of the great colleges.

And the colleges carrying such new and revolutionary creeds are not the minor schools, but those vaster seminaries such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton (shade of Jonathan Edwards behold it!), University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Columbia, Syracuse, California, George Washington, William and Mary, Northwestern, the universities of New York, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Cornell, Brown, Leland Stanford, Union, Nebraska and others.

In each of these great institutions some professor, neither infallible nor inspired, but a free thinker rioting in the mere license of opinion, and some, alas, hungering for the notoriety of the utterance, are flinging down daily doctrines like these, not to strong and mature men capable of discrimination and accustomed to disputation, but speaking from responsible stations to youthful and undeveloped minds which are accustomed to receive what comes from the scholar in the chair of authority as the unchallenged gospel of the time.

“Meat for strong men and milk for babes,” has no restraining influence upon the riot of opinion among these so-called professors of to-day. If these men really believe the monstrous conceptions which are stirring the age to unwholesome revolution against the doctrines of the ages, they should at least voice them first in serious councils of their peers, and submit them solemnly and primarily to an arena in which orthodoxy can fairly defend

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its Gibraltars and stand by its own.

But to strip every shred of reverence from the foot of thought—to march out before unfledged youth of either sex—to dissect God, and Religion and Homage and Home, and Government as if they were mere fossils, or vertebrates or equations—to leave morals afloat upon inclination, and so unsettle standards of virtue that every youth might swing unsmitten of conscience from the classroom to the scarlet woman in the street—this is carrying liberty of thought to the rank license which makes the intellectual commune and presages the revolution which is the beginning of chaos.

The presidents of these great institutions, held in check by boards and councils, are not usually the voices of this amazing propaganda. But college professors, in the enjoyment of apparently too much liberty, and of rarely questioned responsibility, are sowing the seeds of these dangerous doctrines day by day in the minds of a quarter of a million of American young men and women who are going out to make the morals, the manners and the civilization of our country.

I protest the initial exploitation of these “doubtful disputations” upon the great body in whom all of us have such vital concern. I deny the right of teacher or professor

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to take such advantage of youth sent by orthodox parents to university halls.

I am neither preacher nor Puritan. I neither cavil nor cant. I am an ordinary man of the world, who, as unworthy as he is, keeps yet in reverence the old orthodox faith of his fathers, and I do not hesitate to say that if I had a son in one of these colleges, and I heard that such doctrines were being fed to him out of the irreverent lips of uninspired thinkers, I would put my hat on my head and walk up to the chancellor’s office of that university and demand on behalf of my son, and of other sons of American citizens, that these intellectual banditti of the classroom should practise their license of opinion upon the sunrise clubs or the free thought societies to which they belong, or ought to belong, and to leave unstained to these tender minds those old honored and orthodox creeds by which American fathers and mothers for over a hundred years have led their children up to the honor of the American home and to the responsibility of the American citizen.

THE ORTHODOX STUDENT VS. THE ORTHODOX TEACHER

Under date of Toronto, March 29th, 1909, the Hon. H. S. Blake of Canada replies to a college student respecting the responsibility of college teachers for the spread of Infidelity amongst the people, under the specious name of “Higher Criticism,” thus:—

My Dear Brother:—I have received and thought a great deal over your letter of the 19th inst. … I have not time to reply to all the letters that I have received containing complaints of the teaching given by those who “sit in Moses’ seat,” but have made the Word of God of none effect.”

You will, therefore, excuse me if, while I deal with your difficulty, I also take up some other points that have been presented.

You ask my attention to one of the text-books which is prescribed for you in your course of study for the ministry, namely, “The Life of Christ,” by Burton & Matthews (Constructive Studies); and you say as to this, “I have been impressed by the amount of what I consider ‘Higher Criticism’ that I find there.” But this should not surprise you, for this book has the endorsement of “The University of Chicago,” which University gives its imprimatur to a work of Professor G. B. Foster on “The Finality of the Christian Religion,” in which it is declared at page 130 that to the scientific understanding of the world, and to the intellectual attitude super-induced by science, a miracle cannot be admitted; and again, at page 132, where the anti-supernaturalistic principle is not only admitted, but is paraded, and a man is said not to be a “modern” who does not admit it, Prof. Foster affirms, “An intelligent man who now affirms faith in such stories (miraculous narratives like the Bible) as actual facts can hardly know what intellectual honesty means.”

So that you perceive from other books which have the authority of this University that the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus is not to be accepted. You may possibly in due course be led to this book, but in the meantime you refer to page 269 of the text-book, which you are obliged to study, where this comment on verse 33, of chapter XV. of the Gospel of St. Mark, is found:—

“And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.” On which the comment is: “Darkness; if taken literally, it was probably due to a storm of sand. … But probably the phrase in its origin is metaphorical.” There is no more reason to think that this is metaphorical than that the fact of the crucifixion itself was a mere metaphor. Even as children, we learned that God hung the world in mourning when the creature crucified the Creator. It was fitting and proper that this should be done. Continue to believe it as God’s miracle to call the attention of the world, at that time assembled in Jerusalem, to the depth of the crime committed. Second, you call attention to the belittling of the mode in which God called the attention of all to the fact that Jesus Christ was the new and living way into the Holy of Holies. It was intended to strike home to the mind of a Jew the great truth beyond any other means that could be presented. The Jew might well stand awe-struck at the rending of the heavy veil and the throwing open to the gaze of all that which for centuries was regarded as too sacred a place to be entered but once in the year, and that by the High Priest alone, and then not without blood.

To say that, “This rather than a physical fact is perhaps all that the words should be taken to mean,” is without any warrant whatever. These two instances to which you refer are simply illustrations of the determination of those who are introducing the new Bible to drive away everything that savors of the miraculous.

Pay no attention to the statements of the Higher Critics “that certain words are apparently an addition to the original narrative, etc.” He says it is “apparently” so to him. But in all such cases take my advice and thankfully accept the text that has stood for all these centuries rather than the suggestions of some new light. …

It may be helpful to you to read this quotation from Wesley’s preface to his explanatory notes of the Bible printed for the “Wesleyan Methodist Bookroom”:

“Concerning the Scriptures in general, it may be observed, the word of the living God, which directed the first patriarchs also, was, in the time of Moses, committed to writing. To this were added, in several succeeding generations, the inspired writings of the other prophets. Afterwards, what the Son of God preached, and the Holy Ghost spake by the apostles, the apostles and evangelists wrote. This is what we now style the Holy Scripture. This is that ‘Word of God which remaineth forever,’ of which, though ‘heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle shall not pass away.’ The Scripture, therefore, of the Old and New Testaments is a most solid and precious system of divine truth. Every part thereof is worthy of God; and all together are one entire body, wherein is no defect, no excess. It is the fountain of heavenly wisdom, which they who are able to taste, prefer to all writings of men, however wise, or learned, or holy.” …

But, you will say, Did John Wesley know of the wonderful teachings of “new light,” “modern thought,” “common sense,” “rational views”? Did he know of the infirmities of Genesis, the mistakes of Moses, the childishness of the story of Jonah? And had he recognized that a belief in miracles was a sure mark of superstition to be at once rejected by anyone that pretended to intellectual power?

Why, John Wesley lived in the very centre of this atmosphere when, as one of the “Bible moths” in his Oxford days, he was the perpetual object of attack, ridicule and obloquy by the smart, clever infidel set of the 18th century. He was a contemporary of Thomas Paine, with his “Age of Reason” and “Common Sense,” and of Voltaire and Volney.

After quoting Dr. Eakin’s words in defense—”It is a significant fact that neither Charles Bradlaugh, in England, nor Colonel Ingersoll, in America, has had any successor”—Mr. Blake concludes:—

How amused these two gentlemen would be if they, revisiting the scenes of their labors, attended some of the lectures of the higher critics in the Toronto Y.M. C.A. and elsewhere, and perused their many volumes! How “significant” to them would be the fact that their labors were not thrown away, and that so-called ministers of God were playing him false, and that schools and colleges rendered their presence unnecessary, as the work commenced by them was being so constantly, efficiently and thoroughly carried on by their ecclesiastical successors!

It is a still more “significant fact” what a wonderful

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resemblance the above teaching, sanctioned by Dr. Eakin, bears to the results that we find amongst our students and graduates who have had the disadvantage of his teaching!

One reason urged for preserving such teaching which should trouble every lover of our country is, that the students thus instructed are to be throughout the length and breadth of our land the teachers in our public schools, and are to receive diplomas enabling them to continue to spread abroad the infidelity of this destructive criticism.

Truly, “the plague is begun.” How is this plague to be “stayed?” There is no more live question in our

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Dominion to-day than is this.

It is not denied that this is the teaching we have in some of our colleges, and that the determination is to proceed with such instruction in order to educate those that are to be the teachers in our land to believe in and to present a mangled edition of the Bible. Remember, my dear friend, that these men do not seek to strengthen faith in the Bible, to build up their pupils in a reverence and love for it and an acceptance of it as God’s Word. All the doubts, difficulties, uncertainties, objections, contradictions, imperfections, mistakes, that can be conjured up from minds that have been devoted to this one-sided study are presented. The views of people that do not know how to weigh evidence are given as conclusive.

If a man has his doubts as to the authenticity of the Bible as God’s Word, he is to be deeply pitied, and is worthy of great sympathy. If with such doubts he spreads them abroad, pity should end in reproof; but if with such doubts he accepts the position of instructor of youth and spreads abroad the poison with which he is afflicted, he should be found guilty of treason against the State, which he is wounding in its most vital part. H. S. BLAKE.

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TABERNACLE AND BETHEL RECEPTION

THE month of April proved none too long for the transfer of the Headquarters of the Society from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn. It may astonish some of the friends to know that, between the stock of Tracts and Books, office fixtures, home furniture, etc., seven large cars were required for the removal. It required considerable time to pack and as much or more to unpack and to properly locate here. Meantime we did our best to handle our large mail and the orders it contained. If some of you have been unduly delayed and inconvenienced we trust that you will pardon us, remembering the cause of it. We trust that in our new quarters we shall be able to serve the increasing demands upon us more successfully than has been recently possible in the old quarters, where matters had become considerably congested.

Naturally the friends of New York and vicinity have felt a justifiable curiosity and interest in the arrangements, not only in the Tabernacle Auditorium but also in its office and shipping departments, and an additional curiosity in the home which we style Bethel. However, remembering the general interests of the work everywhere, we requested the dear friends in this vicinity to restrain their loving curiosity, assuring them that when we would be in order a general Reception would be arranged. The opportune time for that reception came the night before we took the steamer for the European tour. We want to give you all a little picture of the Reception on that evening, so that those who can never visit the Tabernacle and Bethel actually may enjoy the pleasure of a mental survey of their appointments.

THE TABERNACLE AND BETHEL FAMILY “AT HOME”

The family took an early luncheon so as to be prepared to give their entire attention to the visiting friends. The reception was set for from seven to nine o’clock, but, as had been anticipated, some came earlier. On they came, a happy company of about three hundred and sixty—according to some estimates four hundred and fifty. They were received at the entrance, No. 13 Hicks street, in the Sales Room by a brother and three sisters. From there another sister showed them the sisters’ cloak room and lavatory. Then a brother showed them the Mailing Department—how the lists are kept; how they are printed upon the wrappers; and how the Towers and People’s Pulpit are prepared for mailing. Next they were shown the Subscription Department and the locations occupied by the different helpers and the safes in which the addresses are kept by the card system. Next they were met by a representative of the Colporteur Department, who gave them some explanation respecting that part of the work. Then they had explained to them the method of keeping track of the Pilgrims and the requests for their services by the card system. After this they were shown the desks of the various workers in the Correspondence Department.

When through with this inspection they were referred to another brother, who showed them the files of old Towers and then directed them onward to the Basement. Arriving in the basement a brother took them in charge and showed them the Packing Department. Another showed them the type-setting arrangements. Then they were shown the bins in which the general supplies of “Dawn-Studies” in the various languages, Booklets, Tracts, Charts, Bibles and Mottoes are kept. Then they looked at the furnace. These inspections being finished they were directed to a front stairway which landed them on the street at entrance No. 17 Hicks street. Here they were directed how to find their way to “Brooklyn Bethel,” some blocks distant. In the center window in the front of the Tabernacle on plate glass in gold and colors the cross and crown pin, which so many of you have, is reproduced on a large scale—about three feet in diameter. Above it are the words, BROOKLYN TABERNACLE, PEOPLE’S PULPIT. Below the cross and crown design are the words “IN THE CROSS OF CHRIST WE GLORY.” Wishing to give to each visitor a memento of trifling value, one of these cross and crown pins was thought most suitable; accordingly one was presented to each before leaving the building.

THE BETHEL RECEPTION

The constant stream of people occasioned no end of comment in the neighborhood. The Bethel doors stood wide open and one of the sisters receiving the friends as they entered ushered them into the parlor, a fine large room. The parlor is furnished in part with the parlor furniture from the Allegheny Bible House but mainly with furniture purchased with the “surplus” money presented by the Allegheny Congregation to Brother Russell, in connection with the rug and the mahogany desk and chair and stands for his study. Some of the sisters received the friends in the parlor and then passed them along through the double doorway to Brother Russell, who received them in his study. These two splendid rooms with lofty ceilings and heavy stucco work constitute the main floor of Bethel. In the center of the study is an old style, massive chandelier, to the bottom of which is suspended a white dove with pinions spread wide, a present to the study by Sister Seibert. Additional to the articles already described as presented to the Study by the Allegheny Church is a large arm chair presented to Brother Russell some years ago by the Los Angeles Church, also a stenographer’s desk, a large photograph cabinet containing pictures of hundreds of Watch Tower friends, including Pilgrims and Colporteurs. There also is a couch where Brother Russell sleeps at night within reach of the telephone and thus within reach of you all, the world over. Finally we must not forget to mention a large walnut book case covering the entire west side of the room—with a capacity

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of two thousand volumes—the identical one used for years by that celebrated preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, who may not improperly be said to have made Brooklyn famous.

From the study the visitors were shown upward to the second floor, which is devoted exclusively to the use of the unmarried sisters. This floor has four rooms. Upward still to the third floor they were shown, whose five rooms are occupied by the married couples of the family. This is as high as some of the friends cared to go. But those who desired were shown to the top floor, whose six rooms are occupied by the unmarried brethren.

While inspecting the upper floors the friends were invited to look out of the windows at the rear of the house. There they saw a most enchanting spectacle. To their left was the Harbor and Staten Island and Jersey City, while directly in front of them were scores of the most massive and lofty buildings in the world—lower New York. The electric lights could be seen in the windows in many of these twenty and thirty stories high. The Singer Building, electrically illuminated from base to roof outside and inside (forty-seven stories), was a sight which could not be duplicated elsewhere in the world.

REFRESHMENTS CAME NEXT

So much walking and sight-seeing served to give the friends some appetite and appropriately they were next invited to the basement of the building, where a dining-room more than fifty feet long was able to accommodate sixty at a time. They were supplied some simple refreshments at the willing hands of members of the family. From the dining-room and its hallway access was had to the street and the dear friends were bidden “Good night!” We hope the visitors enjoyed themselves as much on the occasion as did the household of Brooklyn Tabernacle and Bethel.

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“WALK HONESTLY AS IN THE DAY”

—ROMANS 13:8-13—JUNE 27—

Golden Text:—”Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.”—Rom. 13:14

THIS is the regular quarterly temperance lesson, and an excellent one. It inculcates temperance in respect to every thought, word and act of the consecrated Christian. It opens with a delineation of the Divine Law, showing its comprehensive character—that it relates to all of life’s affairs. “Owe no man anything, but to love one another.” We can never discharge that obligation. It is upon us every day and every hour of life and enters into all of life’s interests. Other debts or obligations we may meet and be through with, but this debt of love, the essence of Divine command, is our obligation toward God, toward the Church, toward our families, toward all men, even our enemies. Why? Because, “He that loveth his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” No wonder no Jew could keep the Law! No wonder no Gentiles would try to keep it!

No wonder the Scriptures suggest the keeping of the Law of love only to Christians—to those begotten of the holy Spirit and thus have the assistance of the grace of God in daily living, as well as the mercy of God in Christ to cover all of their imperfections, all of their unintentional shortcomings. But it is expected of these consecrated ones that they will keep that Law. Whoever comes short of it in spirit, in heart intention, is unfit for the Kingdom, and will not be of the “little flock.” More than this, if he comes short of this standard of heart intention he cannot be in the “great company” either, for God has not provided eternal life for any except such as shall now attain to this condition of love in the heart, the will or intention; and during the Millennial Age only to those who shall attain perfect love actually.

“LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF”

The Apostle next enumerates some of the perspicuous commandments—the one against adultery, the one against murder, the one against theft, the one against false witness, the one against covetousness. All of these commands presuppose a fallen condition of mind, out of harmony with God—a selfish heart. Is it not selfishness that leads any to covet the things which belong to another? Is it not selfishness, the opposite of love, that leads to false witnessing? Is it not selfishness, the opposite of love, that leads to theft? Is it not selfishness that lies back of murder and adultery—self-love, self-gratification? And the essence of all the other commands is Love, the same love to our neighbor that we have for ourselves, the same desire for his welfare, his prosperity, his happiness, his health, etc. Whoever, therefore, attains to this position of full consecration to God, a begetting of the holy Spirit, has before him this great lesson—to learn to love his neighbor as himself.

Well does the Apostle add, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor,” no injury of any sort. Love would prompt us to be as careful of the health of our neighbor as of our own, as careful of his reputation as of our own, as careful of his property as of our own, as careful of his feelings as of our own. What a wonderful world it will be when the Kingdom of God’s dear Son in the Millennial Age shall have brought all mankind back, mentally, morally and physically, to the original perfection of human nature, in the image and likeness of the God of Love—having destroyed all refusing to co-operate!

“IT IS HIGH TIME TO AWAKE”

We must bear in memory that the Apostle was addressing Christians in whom the new life had been begun. His language implies what we know is very frequently the case, namely, that after the early Christian experience of turning from sin to righteousness, from ignorance and superstition to faith and knowledge, and from the feelings of the stranger to a realization of adoption and membership in the family of God, there comes later to some a measure of carelessness, drowsiness. A spirit of the world comes in and threatens to overwhelm the New Creature. The beautiful truths lose some of their freshness, crispness, beauty and flavor. Something new is looked for, and is provided by the Adversary, along the lines of more or less self-gratification in earthly things.

The strenuosity of the new experience reacts and spiritual lethargy comes on. The experience of realizing sins forgiven and ourselves adopted into the family of God and the necessity for learning the lessons of the School of Christ is considerably forgotten. Some such occasionally cry out, “Where is the blessedness I knew when first I knew the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view of Jesus and his Word?” Such a cry implies an awakening of the kind which the Apostle wished to encourage. In other words, in this lesson he says, “Knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation 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 armor of light.” The thought here evidently is a double one:—

(1) We who have accepted Christ should be awake. Each day and week and month and year should find us more awake and more zealous and more appreciative of our wonderful privileges. Our salvation, our resurrection “change,” is surely nearing day by day.

(2) From whatever standpoint we view the matter it must be that the night-time of sin is far spent. It must be that the morning of the new dispensation is near. The Apostle wrote after four thousand years had passed and when the fifth was under way. We live when the

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entire six thousand-year days are in the past and the seventh, the Millennium of promise, is chronologically already begun.

From both standpoints, with both arguments, it is proper for us to cast off the works of darkness and everything pertaining to sin and error and to put on the armor of light to prepare us for the duties of the new day, the morning light of which shines now.

The exhortation of the Apostle is as appropriate today as it was when written, and we urge its forcefulness upon all. In our estimation the Lord has sent to his people in the present time the exhortation of the Vow we have suggested to wake them up. One dear brother recently said to us, “I have already told you of my ungodly life, before the Truth reached me. When I accepted the Truth and made my full consecration to the Lord I experienced a blessing of great joy and peace.

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Afterwards I lost this joyful feeling in considerable measure. At first the loss of it distressed me. I sought it carefully, but found it not. I am more pleased to tell you that since I took that Vow and brought my original Vow of consecration up to date, as it were—since then the joy has returned to me and I have ever precious fellowship and communion with my Lord. I am striving to continue in this relationship and not to ‘grieve the holy Spirit, whereby I am sealed, unto the day of redemption.'” We believe that this is the experience of a great many and the lesson for us is not far to seek. Any endeavor to draw near to the Lord by the renunciation of hindrances and the making of straight paths for our feet must surely bring a blessing.

“HONESTLY AS IN THE DAY”

The word here rendered “honestly” might more properly be translated becomingly, in harmony with our faith, our hope, our appreciation of the Lord, our appreciation of the morning light. By way of contrast the Apostle stipulates certain things as belonging to the night which would be unbecoming to us, not only in their grosser sense, but also in the more refined. Live not in intoxication. Surely it would be unbecoming for any saint to become literally intoxicated at a banquet or a revel, but surely, also, there is a more refined sort of reveling and intoxication. One can become intoxicated with a revel in pleasure of any kind, in automobiling, in golfing, cricketing or social whirl. The true Christian must recognize all of these as things that do not belong to the morning of the new dispensation, things that are incompatible with the light of Present Truth, which show us where we stand at the opening of a new dispensation and what wonderful possibilities arise for the sacrificing of the present life and for the attainment of the glories of the Kingdom.

As Christians we should not walk (live) in chambering (unlawful intercourse), wantonness (self-gratification). These experiences apply to some in a gross sense, but to others surely in their refined sense. There is no fellowship or communion between light and darkness on any plane, because the two are opposites. Any intercourse, therefore, with things of darkness, the things of sin, the things occult, the things that are not in fullest harmony with the Lord are an unwarranted, unlawful intercourse or fellowship. Likewise wantonness (selfishness) may apply to a refined kind of selfishness (self-gratification), pampering of appetites and failure to sacrifice earthly pleasures, in harmony with our consecration Vow to engage in the service of the Lord, the Truth and the brethren; or in doing good to all with whom we come in contact and have opportunity.

The Christian should not live (walk) in strife and envying. Here again a coarse and a refined thought may be apparent. To the world the strife may be understood grossly to mean fisticuffs and physical encounters and such bitter jealousies as would lead to evil deeds and murder, actual or in the heart; or we could apply these injunctions in a more refined way to saints as an exhortation that our lives be not strifeful, but that we follow peace, seek to promote the interests of peace everywhere—in our own home, in our neighborhood, amongst the Lord’s people far and near. “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” Envyings, jealousies, alas, in a refined sense, are to be found with nearly all mankind. Often, unrecognized by the New Creature, jealousy is a fruitful source of much injury in the Church, which is the Body of Christ. No other evil quality can lead to more harm to ourselves and others than envy, jealousy. We are to put off all these things.

“PUT YE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST”

Here we have the thought. Our hearts are already consecrated to the Lord. We are already adopted into his family by the begetting of his holy Spirit. But our flesh is not perfect and it continues to love many of the garments of the old nature, which we are to put off. Gradually we are to substitute the new clothing, the livery of heaven, by which all may know us outwardly as well as know us by profession to be children of God, brethren of Christ, “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Putting on the Lord Jesus is not the work of a moment, nor of an hour, nor of a month, nor of a year; it is the work of a life time. But unless it be begun it will never be completed. And indeed we may be sure that we can never fully put on Christ’s characteristics. However, the Lord will see our endeavor, our strenuous fighting to put off the old nature, to put off the works of the flesh and to be clothed with the garments of righteousness, suitable to our relationship to him—the livery, the clothing, that will make us separate from the world, sanctified to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“MAKE NO PROVISION FOR THE FLESH”

Ah, here we have an important point to be remembered. On it will greatly depend our success or our failure as respects the winning of the prize. When as New Creatures we made full consecration to the Lord and surrendered all the rights of the human nature our flesh did not agree to the contract, but protested. Subsequently it found it good policy to reason with the New Creature quietly, calmly, urging moderation in righteousness and self-sacrifice—urging, too, that we should not be more extreme than are others; that we should not make ourselves foolish in the estimation of others, lest this bring contempt upon the cause we desire to serve.

Ah, how shrewd, how cunning, how deceitful is the flesh! If we would give heed to its plausible reasoning we would go out of the race altogether, failing to sacrifice, and hence failing to become members of the “royal priesthood,” and to share the Kingdom glory of our Redeemer. Occasionally the New Creature wakes up and purposes energetic, thorough-going measures of self-sacrifice in every direction; but the old nature, the flesh, quietly makes its appeal—You must at least reserve thus and so; and, You cannot cut off thus and so entirely; and, it would be monstrous and unjust to yourself to practise self-denial to such an extent. You must make provision for the flesh! is its claim. “Make no provision for the flesh,” urges the Apostle. And the flesh generally has its own way; for that reason the overcoming self-sacrificers will be but a “little flock,” while those who will go into the Second Death or into the “Great Company” will be more numerous.

The question, Shall I make provision for the flesh to fulfil its desires, or, shall I not? should be weighed by every saint. Much depends upon the decision. It is at this very juncture that the “Vow to the Lord” which we have been recently advocating as seasonable to all of the “household” of faith is proving a great blessing to many. It is helping them to the point of making absolutely no provision for the flesh to further its desires along any line. It promises, if possible, more careful inspection than ever of each word and thought and act. It raises barricades at various weak points and thus

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strengthens the New Creature and confirms its highest resolutions, and it proportionately binds the old nature and mortifies (deadens) it.

The old nature is exceedingly deceitful. It will not admit that it is afraid of the Vow. Rather it will boast that it has no need of it, because it is already dead. The difficulty all the time is that the old nature fears to see the New Creature shut and permanently bar every door to its liberties. It urges that if the New Creature makes no provision for the flesh, it should not at least make such strenuous provision against the flesh and its liberties. Let us hearken to the voice of the Lord through the Apostle and close every avenue whereby the flesh might attack us in a moment of weakness or inattention. Let us throw out the pickets of prayer and watchfulness against every thought and word and act not in fullest harmony with the Spirit of our Lord. Let us thus by the aid of the Vow put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil its desires.

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THE EMMANUEL MOVEMENT

NUMEROUS inquiries come to us respecting the Emmanuel movement—Is it right? Is it of the Lord? etc. We reply that we believe that those identified with it are honest, sincere and well-intentioned as other Christian people, Theosophists, Christian Scientists, etc. In our opinion all of these people are beyond their depths—hoodwinked by our great Adversary. We see the whole civilized world inclining towards Christian Science, Hypnotism, Emmanuel Movement, etc.—seeking physical healing. As already pointed out in these columns we believe that Satan has considerable power under Divine restriction and that it is always a baneful, injurious power. We believe that in various ways the Adversary and the fallen angels (demons) can and do favor diseases and especially those which appertain to the mind and the nerves. We believe that the time has come in which Satan, endeavoring to hold back mankind from giving attention to the Divine Truth now due to be appreciated, has become a miracle-worker, a disease-curer, in order to attract attention away from the Truth.

Furthermore we understand that it is through such mental suggestions, etc., that the evil spirits are now attempting to gain, more than ever, control of humanity. In Christian Science we perceive the method to be a confusing of the human judgment, so as to render those under its influence incapable of rational thought along religious lines, so confused do the advocates become through false definitions. We believe that the mind cures, etc., more commonly called hypnotism, and supposed to be merely exercise of the mind, are really attempts of the fallen angels, the demons, to break down the human will, the barrier which God has granted for protection against them: that thus these evil spirits may ultimately gain a much larger control over our poor race than ever since the flood.

Physicians are paying to be taught how to exercise hypnotic influences upon their patients. One large dry goods store in New York City employs, at $8000 a year, a man who was once a minister of the Gospel of Christ and subsequently a lecturer on hypnotism and mental control. His business now is to instruct the clerks of that large establishment how to exercise hypnotic influences upon their customers so as to increase the sales of the establishment.

Finally, in the Emmanuel movement, we believe that these evil spirits are coming still closer and becoming more dangerous and seductive; because the claim is that this hypnotic power in the hands of ministers of the gospel is a duplication of the work of Christ and the apostles in healing the sick nineteen centuries ago. Books have been written explaining to ministers how to introduce this “Emmanuel Movement” into their Churches. Circulars are sent to all ministers everywhere urging the importance of these books and this method. We can imagine no more seductive method for the introduction of the influences of the evil spirits, the fallen angels, in the breaking down of the human will. Lest we should be misunderstood, we repeat that we have no thought that any of these people practise hypnotism with any suspicion that they are in collusion with the fallen angels or doing evil to the fallen race. Rather they are benevolent and desire to “do good to all men.” But they do not understand the Word of God. “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” They are being ensnared by the very ones who should be their pastors, assistants and protectors, and by reason of their confidence in them.

What the end of the matter will be the Lord only knows. But it is surely the fact that every time a person is hypnotised his will is the weaker. He can the more easily be hypnotised again and thus the brains and nerves of the civilized world are being trained for an onslaught from the evil spirits. Well indeed the Apostle wrote, “We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with wicked spirits in exalted positions.”

As we write a clipping is handed us from the “New York Herald” which shows that some others see something of the danger in this direction. We quote the clipping and follow it with an extract from “The Housekeeper” on the same subject, which will be interesting reading.

MINISTER ATTACKS EMMANUEL MOVEMENT

According to the Rev. Dr. I. M. Haldeman, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Broadway and Seventy-ninth street, if the Emmanuel movement is allowed to continue its work it will ruin the Church.

Mr. Haldeman in his sermon said the only church that would survive would be the Christian Science Church. He added that the Emmanuel Movement is more of a peril than Christian Science because the Christian Scientists had kept apart from the orthodox church, while the Emmanuel movement was born in the Episcopal Church and invaded the Baptist ranks.

Through the practice of hypnotic healing clergymen would be subjected to scandal, Dr. Haldeman said, because of “the tender relationship a minister comes into with his flock.”

“I beg you to turn away from the Emmanuel movement,” said the minister. “It will give you salvation in time and damnation in eternity. The time has come to rise up and protest against ministers turning themselves into hypnotists and their churches into mental healing hospitals.”

Dr. Haldeman declared the Emmanuel movement “one of the most accursed and damnable inventions of the age.”

THE EMMANUEL MOVEMENT

The following is from the “Housekeeper”:—

We have been asked why we have not printed something about the “Emmanuel Movement.” Like some other questions in this world of ours, the question is easier asked than answered.

It would be a simple matter to print an article showing the historical growth of the movement, and one strongly advocating its principles.

It would be a simple matter to print an article strongly condemning the movement.

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There are many people, with ability to write, who have made a careful study of the phases of the movement, but who hold diametrically opposite views. A religious movement is perhaps the most difficult phenomenon of human life to study. If we are neither exponents nor opponents, we are the friends of neither and the enemies of both. As with the earliest Christian faith, “He who is not for Me is against Me.”

The movement is comparatively new, and thus it is very hard to comprehend its principles, especially as so much has been written about it that one is confused by the mass. Any new movement or faith acquires a large number of disciples who have been waiting for something new. Until these followers leave the ranks in pursuit of something newer, it is difficult to observe the fire for the smoke.

The movement takes its name from a church in Boston whose ministers were the pioneers. Undoubtedly there are a large number of converts to the movement who

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 have followed the Christian Science ideas more or less closely but have been restrained for certain reasons or beliefs from joining the Christian Science church.

Many of these people have found in the Emmanuel Movement what they have sought, good counsel for a wearied soul, the suggestion from an outside source that there is hope, the balm of spiritual peace, the evidence of optimism and power of mind over body—and have been given medicines for their sick bodies.

But if we are really to consider the movement, we cannot stop at this point. To a lay mind, the Emmanuel movement seems to be a combination of religious faith, mental faith curing, and modern medicine. At first thought this would seem to be an admirable combination, but is it not rather a compromise to salve the prejudices of all?

James M. Buckley, editor of “The Christian Advocate,” has written of some “Dangers of the Emmanuel Movement.” He has pointed out that hypnotism and suggestion do not always tend to induce a higher, more moral tone, although so stated, in spite of our wish that this might be so. He asks if the time of a servant of a church is not now crowded with the many duties; does he not labor seven days of a week and sigh for more time to administer to the spiritual wants of his flock? This, he suggests, should be considered before ministers enter the ranks of healers.

Consider human nature, American human nature. If ministers become medical advisers and use mental healing, in such cases will we not have experiments in suggestion, hypnosis and untrained diagnosis throughout the land which will be as foreign to the first ideals of the Emmanuel church in Boston as it is possible to imagine. If the mind becomes sick, which is one of the suggestions of the Emmanuel Movement—and a very good one—would it be any less quackery to try experimental cures upon it than upon the body?

“Psychology” is a word which it is becoming necessary to understand. However, we have not really advanced so very far in the study of psychology, only far enough to establish certain premises—and we should be careful not to take wild flights therefrom. Has not the Emmanuel Movement taken a little of psychology and assumed the rest? The very fact that we, that is, our workers, thinkers and experimenters, specialists, have been progressing should lead us to be content to wait until certain conclusions have been more definitely proved. Of course, if we wait, wait, forever wait, and never act, we will be waiting at the millennium. But we have been eating a great deal of mental food of late, and it might be wise to digest a little bit of it.

“The Housekeeper” believes that fresh air, careful diet, good living and good thoughts—the well-rounded life—this is the best physician. But like the servant of old, the physician of medicine is worthy of his hire and a very good hire.

It is well to consider what certain physicians have said of the Emmanuel Movement. In an interview in the “Boston Herald,” Dr. J. J. Putnam, professor of nervous diseases at the medical school at Harvard University, said in part:—

“I consider the whole affair an injury to the progress of scientific medicine. … When the Rev. Mr. Worcester talked to me he gave me to understand that his idea was to take those of his parishioners who needed suggestive help, and if there were no real physical disturbance in the individuals to lead them along the line of self-control by suggestion. I also agreed with him that many of these unfortunates needed assistance in the way of getting some occupation—something congenial that would take their minds away from themselves—to stop their introspection, the self-worry. …

“At the present moment the claims of the Emmanuel people are misleading, if not something else. The public lectures at a dollar admission in other cities, and other well known commercial methods, do not look well in either priest or doctor.

“There are many reasons why this sensational movement—a veritable epidemic—should be limited and controlled. First, the notoriety given it brings out a crowd of morbid individuals who will impulsively jump at any fad which offers new sensations. This state only increases their unstable condition. The marvelous cures reported in the press and from the platform mislead the masses and put hope in the really ill, which is cruel, for many of these will believe until the second shock of disbelief comes, and by this time they have lost faith in the trained physician, in all treatment and suffer on unaided. Many of these unfortunates resort to quack medicines and thus become morphine and alcoholic victims.

“The crowd of untrained and unfitted clergymen who at once jump into the role of medical men and preach and practice what they call psycho-therapeutics is going to do great harm, is an injury to the public welfare. …

“This is the whole trouble with the statements now going out to the world from the Emmanuel healers; the public are led to believe that there is a decided line between functional and organic diseases, and that the untrained—the clergymen throughout the country—can mark this line, when in truth the experienced neurologist is not at all certain.”

Opinions by other physicians of equal standing reiterated Dr. Putnam’s statements.

It is always a sore trial to any sincere person to attempt to criticise or discourage a movement which is noble and generous in its conception, but like mistaken charity, the tree must be known by its fruit.

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“FOR THIS HE DID ONCE”

“Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s; for this he did once, when he offered up himself.”—Heb. 7:27

IN studying the Book of Hebrews it is well to keep in memory that the Apostle’s thought was not to give a detailed explanation of the types of the Law, but merely to prove to the Jews that they should look beyond the high priests and the under-priests of the Aaronic order for a greater Higher Priest of our profession (order) and a superior under-priesthood, “a royal priesthood.” In the text above quoted St. Paul is drawing attention to the fact that a repetition daily and yearly of the sacrifices of the Law on a higher plane is not to be expected, but rather that the One Priest (Christ, Head and Body,) in the one antitypical Atonement Day accomplishes the entire work which will usher in full forgiveness and reconciliation to all the people. This in type was done in the one

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Atonement Day and the antitype of that Atonement Day is not yet ended. It will close with the end of this Gospel Age. It will close when the last member of the Body of Christ shall have suffered with the Lord, “Filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.”—Col. 1:24.

The first offering of the Day of Atonement was the bullock, which typified the man Jesus. It was because of this offering and by the act of consecration that our Lord became the Anointed One—”the High Priest of our profession.” As the spirit-begotten High Priest our Lord for three and a half years offered up himself, his manhood, in sacrifice. He finished that offering, typified by the bullock, at his death. Then, as shown in the type, he took the blood of the bullock and proceeded into the Most Holy, “there to appear in the presence of God for us”—the “household of faith.”

In the type the typical high priest, after offering the first sacrifice and after applying its blood on behalf of the body (the under-priest) and his house (the tribe of Levi), laid his hands on the Lord’s goat and slew it and did with it as with the bullock, except that its blood when taken into the Most Holy was differently applied—on behalf of the other eleven tribes, who represented all nations, peoples, kindreds and tongues of humanity.

These two offerings and their distinctly separate sprinklings of blood were both parts of the one Atonement Day service—”this he did once.” Two deaths are clearly shown and two blood sprinklings; and on behalf of two different classes; but they were parts of the one sin atonement. Just so our Lord, during his earthly ministry, was dying daily, yet it was one sacrifice; so also when we fill up a share of his sufferings, dying daily, it is part of his sufferings and sacrifice, which he is still accomplishing in us once for all—this he does once and will never repeat. All sacrificing of this sort will end with this age—he will accept no further members of the Body of Christ, no additional members to “the royal priesthood.”

As we have repeatedly shown, the first Atonement Day sacrifice was our Lord’s sacrifice of his own flesh, the man Jesus, and the second sacrifice was that of his adopted members—those justified by his blood and consecrated to his service even unto death. These accepted by the Lord are sacrificed by him as parts or members of himself; and their blood (death) is counted in as a part of the blood of Christ—”dead with him.” This is the “Mystery” hidden from previous ages and generations. The “fellowship of this Mystery” was granted to the Jews and Gentiles of the “little flock” of the called and chosen and faithful.

Our Lord as the High Priest laid his hand upon the “Lord’s goat” at Pentecost. His power (hand) there came upon his followers accepting their consecration and bringing to them the trying experiences as his members which faithfully endured will, according to the Divine plan, grant them a share with him in his divine

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nature and Kingdom. It is not the suffering of the Church that counts, but the sufferings of Christ. It is because we are counted in as members of Christ, “members in particular of the Body of Christ,” that we are permitted to be his members on the spirit plane and to share the glories and honors of our Head. “If we suffer with him, we shall reign with him.” “If we be dead with him we shall live with him.”

Thus the sufferings of Christ, while in the one sense of the word ended at Calvary, in another sense of the word continue in his members; this is a “Mystery” to many. The sufferings of Christ are still in process and his faithful ones are still filling them up. St. Peter tells us that the prophets of old spake of the sufferings of Christ and of the glories that should follow. The sufferings of Christ Jesus were followed by his personal glorification, demonstration of which was given at Pentecost; but the glory mentioned in this text has not yet been accomplished. It awaits the completion of the sufferings of Christ—the sufferings of the members: “For if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26.) “When he shall appear in glory, we shall appear with him.” We shall be glorified together if we suffer with him as his members.

With the Jews there was a Day of Atonement every year, with its sacrifices repeated year by year continually. But with Christ there is but one antitypical Atonement Day and when its “better sacrifices” shall have been accomplished—when the great antitypical High Priest shall have finished the work of offering up himself, including his members, thereafter there will be no more sufferings of Christ for anybody to fill up. The glory of the Millennial Kingdom will then be ushered in. The sins of the whole world will be blotted out so far as God is concerned and the High Priest of our profession will be a Priest upon his throne (Head and members) after the order of Melchisedec.

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“IF WE SUFFER WITH HIM”

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”—Rom. 8:16,17

ST. JUDE speaks of “our common salvation”—a salvation from sin, from death, from human imperfection to human perfection—to all that God intended that our race should be, to all that our race lost through Adam’s disobedience. The Divine provision is, as expressed by our Lord, “to seek and to recover that which was lost.”—Matt. 18:11.

The world is to be sought and to be recovered during the Millennium, its period for judging (disciplining) and trial for life eternal. Then the faithful and obedient of all peoples will obtain full Restitution and life eternal. But now, in advance, this “common salvation” comes by faith to a certain class—to those who have the hearing of faith and the eye of faith, and obedient hearts. These, by virtue of the merit of Christ applied to them when Jesus “ascended up on high there to appear in the presence of God for us”—these are reckoned as having all the advantages of restitution imputed to them on account of their faith. They do not get restitution actually, but reckonedly. Their faith is counted to them for righteousness or perfection.

Why is there this discrimination in Divine providence—that some now hear the voice of the Son of Man and live, through Justification of Faith, while others will not hear the voice of the Son of Man and come to life and perfection until the Millennium and then actually and not reckonedly?—”Verily, verily, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear (obey) shall live.”—John 5:25.

The answer is that this is a part of the “Mystery” of God; that the Lord is now seeking for and electing a special class to be joint-heirs with his Son—joint-sufferers with him in his sacrifice and joint-sharers in his Kingdom glory, “the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife.” The special arrangement permitting these to be justified by faith instead of actually justified (or perfected) is with a view to their being privileged to offer a proper sacrifice—”holy, acceptable to God, their reasonable service.” (Rom. 12:1.) This Justification by faith is necessary because nothing unholy or unclean may come to the Lord’s altar, as the Law clearly taught and the types clearly showed. Every sacrifice for the Lord’s altar must be “without spot or blemish.” Every member of our race was spotted and blemished by inherited sin and imperfection, and hence the necessity for the Divine

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provision of Justification by faith—not faith in Covenants, but faith in the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” This faith grasps the fact that while the sin of the world has not yet been taken away by the Lamb of God, and the world still lies under condemnation, nevertheless the merit of the blood has been applied on behalf of the “household” of faith—and in due time will be made efficacious, under the New Covenant, for the bringing of forgiveness to every creature, with the opportunity of eternal life.

But under which Covenant does God purpose to receive the faith-justified ones as sacrificers? The answer is that the Divine proposal to the Redeemer that he sacrifice and as a reward of his sacrifice be highly exalted to the Divine nature and glory—this blessing (which belongs only to Jesus and was applied only to his sacrifice) has by the gracious plan of God been extended to include all those of this Gospel Age who have the character likeness of the Redeemer. They are invited to share in his sacrifice, and are promised that if faithful they shall share in his glory.

But what sacrifice is this? Could Justice call for more than a life for a life—the death of Jesus as the ransom-price for the death penalty of father Adam? Surely not. Justice has no voice in the present proceeding of Grace. Justice, however, cannot interfere, if it is agreeable to the Great Judge and the Redeemer to accept a “little flock” of justified believers as members under the Redeemer as Head. This very matter pleased the Father and pleased the Son, and is, therefore, a part of the Divine program. These members are “elect according to God’s foreknowledge through sanctification of the spirit and the belief of the Truth.” (1 Pet. 1:2.) Their selection is not a change in the Divine program, for they were “chosen in him before the foundation of the world.” (Eph. 1:4.) Their selection was unexpected of the angels and of men and hence was a “mystery” and still is a “mystery” to mankind. “The world knoweth us not, even as it knew him not.” (1 John 3:1.) But the selection of this class was always the Divine purpose. “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus foreknew us also by Jesus.”

Whatever, therefore, was the Divine program for the Master, the Forerunner, the Chief-priest, is the Divine program for his members—they must “walk in his steps”; they must “suffer with him”; they must “fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” If any decline so to do, he loses his place as a member of the Body. We know, nevertheless, that the full number of the “elect” will ultimately be found and every one of them will be sacrificers, for none others are members of his Body. It is the spirit of the Head coming upon these that produces the sacrifice of the flesh (the justified flesh) “holy, acceptable to God.”—Rom. 12:1.

There is only one object in the sacrifice which God has provided for, the sacrifice which Jesus accomplished, and is accomplishing in all those who will become his members—that is a sacrifice for sin. It is presented to God, holy and acceptable. In this respect it differs from other sacrifices which men make; as, for instance, a father or mother may sacrifice comfort or even sacrifice life, on behalf of their offspring, but such sacrifices, however appropriate, are not the sacrifice of Christ—are not of the “better sacrifices” typified in the sacrifices of the bulls and the goats.

St. Paul calls our attention to the fact that only those sacrifices which were burned outside the camp were a Sin Offering. Next he shows how our Lord was the sin offering. Then he points out how, if faithful members of his Body, we also must suffer outside the camp—as members of the sin-offering—represented in “the Lord’s goat.” This sacrifice is not yet completed. It is in process. Hence the Apostle’s expression, “Let us go to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach“—just as the slain goat was carried outside the camp and there consumed as the bullock had been. (Heb. 13:11-13.) These matters, dear readers, are amongst the “deep things of God which no man knoweth except by the spirit of God.” (1 Cor. 2:10.) The world knows nothing about them. “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to outsiders all these things are spoken in parables.” (Matt. 13:11.) Outsiders are in what the Scriptures term “outer darkness”—the darkness which belongs to this present time of ignorance and superstition. (Matt. 25:30.) The few have been permitted to enter into the banqueting halls and to see the glorious beauties of the riches of Divine grace. Blessed are your eyes that see and your ears that hear. As for those who never saw they properly have our sympathy, nor should we expect so much of them as of ourselves who have been blessed with this knowledge of this important sacrifice and of its glorious reward. Furthermore, as we are now in the sifting and testing time, it must not surprise us if some who once saw eye to eye with us in these matters become blind to them and drift into the “outer darkness” as respects these matters and others—we know not how far. Truths so interweave that one lost or perverted injures presently

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the beauty of the entire fabric.

Our expectation must be that the differences will increase and that the loss of spiritual sight will ultimately extend to other features of the Divine Plan. We have nothing but sympathy to express for such. Indeed to us their case is most pitiable. It is practically a hopeless case, too, whereas some of those who have never seen and never tasted we may hope will yet see and taste of this grace. But of those who see and who then become blind our Lord says, “If the light that is in thee become darkness, how great is the darkness.” (Matt. 6:23.) It would be better not to have known the way of Truth than to have departed from the holy command. It is not for us to judge one another, but to leave all in the Lord’s hands, assured that he makes no mistake. We may have thought their hearts all right, when the Lord may have seen them to be all wrong. But the results will show. And what we could not read, and should not have attempted to read of unfaithfulness to the Truth, will be manifest of themselves in the Lord’s time and way. Let us not forget that he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified (his members) are all one. He is in us all. In our consecration we lose our humanity and all of its rights, exchanging these for our spiritual membership in the Body of Christ.

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“COME OVER AND HELP US”

—ACTS 15:36; 16:15—JULY 4—

Golden Text:—”Come over into Macedonia and help us.”—Acts 16:9

TO-DAY’S lesson is connected with the introduction of the Gospel into Europe. After the conference at Jerusalem, noted in a previous lesson, Paul and Barnabas remained for a time at Antioch. But seeing that there were many laborers there and that a larger field was little worked, a second missionary journey was planned. Barnabas and his nephew John Mark went in one direction, while with St. Paul went Silas (Sylvanus), with whom he had become acquainted at the Jerusalem conference and who is reported to have been a Roman citizen, as was St. Paul. It is with this latter couple that we have to do in this lesson. Their course lay through Syria and Cilicia, Derbe and Lystra. In these places they confirmed the

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faith of such as had already been accepted of the Lord through the Apostle’s first missionary tour, and the working of the Truth during the interim. It was at Lystra that Timothy was found, a young man of Jewish mother and well trained in the Scriptures by her and his grandmother—his father being a Greek. We note that amongst the things presented to the Churches was the decision of the Jerusalem conference that the Jewish Law should not be considered binding to the Gentiles, except in certain features noted in a former lesson.

After good success in the mission up to this point the Apostle had in mind a journey through Asia Minor, but apparently things went unfavorable until the Apostle concluded that the Lord was hindering their efforts and in perplexity began to think of other fields of labor. His moment of uncertainty was the Lord’s opportunity for directing him. He dreamed that he saw a man dressed in the costume of the Macedonians beckoning to him and saying, “Come over and help us.” The Apostle accepted this as of Divine leading and promptly began the journey which took him into Europe. We have here an evidence of God’s supervision of all the interests of his Church. He was not averse to permitting the message to go into Asia Minor, for it did go there later, possibly at a more opportune time. But this was the time for sending the message to Europe.

Evidently the Lord could have directed his message southward through Africa and away from Europe, but there is a “due time” connected with every feature of the Divine Plan—and now, by Divine arrangement, the message of God’s grace in Christ was to go to the Greeks, who at this time were recognized as the foremost people of the world in literature and the arts.

It is supposed that it was about this time that Luke, the physician, became attached to Paul’s company. A man of education, a scribe, as well as a physician, the Lord evidently provided him as St. Paul’s amanuensis, that thereby the Apostle’s letters should reach many of the Churches of that time, as well as the Lord’s people from then until now. Thus it came that Luke wrote not only a version of the Gospel, but also the Book of Acts and nearly all of St. Paul’s epistles. Here we have another illustration of the privileges of the various members of the Body of Christ. Luke could not be the Apostle Paul nor could he do St. Paul’s work; but he could be used of the Lord honorably and efficiently in a greater spread of the Truth.

So it is with us. We cannot be apostles. We cannot do anything very great; but, if filled with the Spirit of the Lord, it is our privilege to be used to some extent in some service of the Truth. And any service for the Lord and for the brethren, even to the washing of feet and any menial service, is, as our Lord shows, honorable and a privilege.

LYDIA OF THYATIRA

Philippi, one of the chief cities of Macedonia, in Greece, appears to have been the first place for the preaching of the good tidings in Europe. As usual, on the Sabbath day the Apostle and companions sought for some who worshiped God, who hoped for the Kingdom that God had promised, knowing that such would be the better prepared to receive the message he had to deliver; that Jesus had appeared as the Redeemer and had laid the foundation for the Millennial Kingdom in the sacrifice of himself; that the blessings of his sacrifice would ultimately be made available to every creature, but that now, in advance of the dealing with the world in general, the Lord is calling out a Spiritual Israel, a “little flock,” to be his kings and priests with Jesus in the administration of the Millennial blessings.

Apparently there was no synagogue in Philippi, and matters may have looked very unfavorable to Paul and his companions. However, they heard of a little religious meeting held every Sabbath by the river side, outside the city gate. It was a prayer meeting principally and place of Divine fellowship. Not having the facilities of a synagogue they probably had no Scripture parchments, and hence no reading of the Law, but merely prayer and worship. All this was favorable to the Gospel message the Apostle had to present. He spoke to those who resorted thither, commending the importance of their worshipful condition of heart and the importance of praise to the Giver of all good. Then he proceeded to declare the good tidings of the sacrifice of Jesus, of his death and resurrection, and his Second Coming in power and great glory. He showed surely that the invitation now being given was for joint-sacrifices with Jesus whose reward would be joint-heirship with him in the Millennial Kingdom, as members of his Body, the Church.

However many or few were at the meeting there was one present whose heart was in the right condition to receive the message—a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple. Dyes were much more expensive in olden times than now and the secret knowledge of how to make them was turned to financial profit. Thus it is supposed that Lydia was in quite comfortable circumstances financially. Not only did the Truth open her heart, enlightening the eyes of her understanding, but she was prompt to obey it in full consecration; and prompt to symbolize that consecration in water baptism—”She and her household.”

It is not always that religious parents have religiously inclined children. Several instances of the kind are mentioned in the Scriptures. Personal experience teaches us also that the parent who is earnestly consecrated to the Lord and guided by his Word has generally a good influence upon those nearest to him and directly under his care. Such an influence should be hoped for, prayed for, sought for by every parent. But it cannot be obtained except by carefulness, circumspection of word and deed. These in subjection imply that the very thoughts of the heart are brought into captivity to the will of God in Christ. Nevertheless parents who have failed to discern the Truth and recognize its responsibilities until their children have outgrown parental instruction must not chide themselves unmercifully if their children do not respect them and their religious convictions. Rather they should remember that the Lord is thoroughly acquainted with the situation and will hold them accountable only for what they do or do not after they have come to know him and to an opportunity for understanding the instructions of his Word respecting their own lives and the training of their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

“AND SHE CONSTRAINED US”

The fact that Lydia’s household believed implies that she was the mother of adult children. And these were so thoroughly under her influence that they worshiped with her the true God, neglecting the idolatries prevalent in Philippi. We may infer that she was a widow, since her husband is not mentioned. Hence it was her right, without conference with anybody, to invite the Apostle and his companions to share the hospitality of her home. She seems properly to have realized that, instead of honoring them, she was honoring herself and her home by having such guests—the ministers of God, the brethren of Christ—under her roof. Note her language when inviting, “She besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us.” The latter statement implies that the Apostle was not too ready to force himself upon anybody, that he did not urge, saying, Surely myself and companions who have preached to you should be served by you in temporalities—though

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that was the Truth. Rather the Apostle made no reference to temporalities. Indeed, after the suggestion of Lydia had been made it was apparently not too quickly accepted, but with the indication that the disciples of Jesus had no desire to intrude upon others. This is implied in the statement that they were “constrained,” gradually drawn or led to accept invitation. How beautiful it is to see God’s children wisely exercised in such matters! How much more is their influence upon one another for good!

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This lesson may be considered as specially teaching Divine supervision of the true Gospel and its ministers. Yet how diversified God’s dealings and how necessary that his children in ministering the Truth should have fullest confidence in his wisdom, love and power! Note the sharp contrast that, after specially guiding the apostles to this place and then to a very small meeting and apparently one family of converts, the Lord next allows what seems to be a great catastrophe to befall his faithful servants. This trial came through the evil spirits. A young woman, possessed (obsessed) by an evil spirit (one of the fallen angels), was used for fortune-telling, etc., the spirit working through her, divining or giving intelligence of things that were lost, telling fortunes, etc. She was a slave girl and very profitable to her owners—a syndicate apparently of influential men.

For several days, as the Apostle and companions went to and from the home of Lydia attending to the Lord’s work, this obsessed girl followed them, shouting in a loud voice, “These be the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation.” Of course, the girl did not know them, but the evil spirits knew them. To what extent they forecasted the results we may not definitely know, but quite possibly what occurred was what they had premeditated, namely, that the Apostle would cast out the evil spirit and that this would bring upon them and any converts a violent attack from the owners of the girl and their friends and all whom they could arouse to a frenzy of excitement, of wrath and rioting. Or the evil spirit may simply have told the truth without considering the possibility of the Apostle commanding it to come out of the woman—possibly supposing that they would be rather pleased with a testimony from any quarter. But we read that St. Paul was grieved as day after day this testimony was made. He was not grieved that a testimony was borne to the Truth, but grieved that it should come from such an evil source, for he knew that it would have no respect for the Truth; for any of the fallen angels who would have respect for God and the principles of righteousness would not seek to obsess humanity when it knew that it would be to their injury and contrary to the Divine will.

The S.S. teachers’ instruction books will probably suggest to them that this woman had hysteria or was somewhat demented. But this is out of accord with the facts of the case, as Scripturally set forth, and quite contrary to the words of the Apostle. He said not a word to the young woman, assuming that she was not at all accountable. He addressed the evil spirit as such, and commanded it in the name of Jesus to come out of the woman—just as Jesus and the apostles under his instruction had frequently cast out these spirits.

WITH A SPIRIT OF DIVINATION

Just as the owners of the swine were angry with our Lord because of the loss of their swine, when the “legion” of demons cast out of the man entered the swine and the owner suffered loss, so here; while the Apostle and all who had proper hearts would rejoice that the woman was free from the evil spirit’s power, her masters, who profited by her sad condition, were made angry. Their pocket-books were touched. They could not legally attack the Apostle because he had done the woman no harm. But they could have revenge and hence raised a riot, claiming that these men with the new religion were interfering with the rights of the people of Philippi, which was a Roman province in Greece.

And the Lord permitted all this; yea, permitted the rioting to reach considerable proportions. Paul and Silas were carried before the rulers at the market-place for the imposition of sentence. The rulers, who held office specially for the preventing of rioting and for preserving order, were greatly excited and rent their garments as an indication of their distress and dissatisfaction that such a disturbance should be brought to their city. The thought was that the men against whom the populace would thus rise up must be guilty of something and deserving of punishment. They knew not that the evil spirits had to do with the arousing of the riot. As St. Paul elsewhere expressed it, “We contend not with flesh and blood merely, but with wicked spirits in influential positions.”

To satisfy the mob, to restore peace quickly, the missionaries were publicly beaten, presumably with rods, and then were committed to the prison. Alas, we say, what a reward for missionary effort! What a recompense for sacrificing their lives for the Lord and the Truth—that these men should be evil-spoken of, evil thought of and evilly treated!

Let us remember that the God who changes not is our God, and has supervision of the interests of the Church to-day as then. Let us remember that he requires of us to-day, as of those missionaries, that we be willing to represent him, willing to endure hardness and thus to make full proof of our ministry—of our service for Christ and his message. Would it require faith on the part of the missionaries to accept such experiences as providential and not to think of them as evidences of the Lord’s disfavor or neglect? So must we learn similar lessons of faith, in the School of Christ, and be glad to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and the apostles, and learn to rejoice in tribulations, as well as in prosperity.

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“THERE IS A SIN UNTO DEATH”

—1 JOHN 5:16—

ONCE we were inclined to believe that the final results of God’s great Plan of Salvation would show the vast majority of his creatures saved and granted eternal life through faith in Christ and obedience of heart. However, as the years roll by and as our view of the Divine requirement becomes more clear, our expectations are considerably modified. From our present viewpoint it will not surprise us if the number going into the Second Death will be a considerable one.

This does not mean that our clearer sight shows the love of God to be less than we had at first supposed, nor that the provision made will come short and fail to grant a full opportunity of eternal life to every creature. It does mean that daily we are coming to see in a clearer light the high standard which God will require of all who will be granted life eternal at any time and on any plane.

The fact is that God leaves the human will entirely free; that he seeks not the worship of those whom he will be obliged to coerce and restrain, but merely “seeketh such to worship him as worship him in spirit and in Truth.” God’s provision is that with the close of the Millennial Age “there shall be no more crying, no more sighing, no more dying;” because there shall be no more sin; because all the former things of sin shall have passed away. Putting these items together we perceive that the tests to prove who are worthy and who are unworthy of life eternal must be very crucial. None must go beyond the Millennial Age whose heart is not perfect; for if any others should be admitted there it would mean a perpetual danger of recurrence of sin in some form—a menace to the perfect bliss of that blessed state.

The world will have its purgatorial experiences during the Millennial Age—its blessings under the reign of the glorified Messiah, the Mediator of the New Covenant, Head and Body. By lessons, encouragements and chastisements it will learn the lesson of obedience to the Divine will, that thus it may attain to the full perfection of God’s likeness and to life eternal. But failing to attain

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this blessed state during that time appointed, the only alternative will be Second Death, for no provision is made for sin or sinners beyond the Millennium.

The Church’s trial, as we have seen, is now taking place during this Gospel Age. Every justified believer who knowingly and intelligently consecrated himself and whose consecration the Lord has accepted by begetting him of the holy Spirit—every such one is on trial now, for either life or death, and he can have no future opportunity. In other words, the trial of the spirit-begotten ones of this age will eventuate in eternal life on the spirit plane or eternal death, just as the trial of the world in the time of Restitution will eventuate in eternal life on the human plane or in eternal death.

Consider what this means: It means that all who will be saved during the Millennium must attain to a condition of actual perfection and absolute heart loyalty to God, absolute love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity, if they would have eternal life. It means to you and me and all other spirit-begotten ones of this age that, if we do not reach a perfection of heart-development during the period of our trial, we shall die the Second Death. Thank God, it does not mean a perfection of the flesh, which would be impossible to us; but a perfection of the spirit, a perfection of the New Mind, a perfection of the will. But, oh, how much a perfect heart signifies! No wonder our dear Redeemer said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”! Any impurity of heart, of intention; any degree of evil contention, anger, hatred, strife, bitterness of heart, would mean just so much shortage of the Divine standard—perfect love.

We are not competent to judge, however. Some may have perfect love in their hearts who, because of imperfections

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in their flesh, make a poor showing of it. In our experience, however, comparatively few even make the claim of perfect love, either for God or for the brethren or for neighbors, not to mention their enemies. We may be sure that of all spirit-begotten ones in such a condition at the time of death there will be no place found amongst those counted worthy of life eternal. The only alternative for them will be Second Death.

They could not be of the “little flock” because God has foreordained that every member of it must be “a copy of his dear Son.” “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Rom. 8:29.) Can they not, then, be of the “great company”? We answer, No. All who would be of the “great company” must, through tribulation, attain to heart perfection, in order to be accounted worthy of life eternal. The difference between the “great company” of overcomers and the “little flock” of “more than conquerors” is that the former prove faithful under stress, when forced to the decision, while the latter class, the “little flock,” possess more zeal, press forward joyfully to do, to be, to suffer, to serve; but both classes, to be overcomers at all, and to get eternal life at all, must reach the mark of perfect love.

Ah, yes, God’s ways are wise and just and loving. It would not be to his glory nor in the interests of his faithful ones or others for him to admit to eternal life conditions any deficient in love. Does this alarm us and cause us to fear for our own acceptance and our own attaining of eternal life? The Apostle says, “Let us fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” (Heb. 4:1.) Let the thought stimulate us to a renewed zeal and energy in conquering self and the old nature and in pressing on from glory to glory and from one degree to another higher degree of likeness to our Lord.

We feel sure that, in the Lord’s providence, the Vow, published again in the last issue, is proving a great blessing and great help to many. Let no one take it except after mature consideration, but let all who see it to be thoroughly Scriptural in its every provision take it as a partial expression of their original consecration Vow of baptism into Christ’s death. It is proving a blessing to many to daily read it every morning in connection with the Manna text and comment and morning devotion. It helps to impress upon the mind and upon the heart the very things which are most necessary to be remembered and yet most likely to be forgotten in the necessary hurry and push of the present life. Let us with deliberation and determination take all the vows that will assist us to a closer walk with God and to the binding of our sacrifice to the altar. We shall surely need in the trial time which is now upon the Church every assistance which the Lord provides, that we may be able to stand; that we may develop the proper character; that we may make our calling and election sure.

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WESTERN CONVENTION TOUR

IT is proposed that the Western Convention Tour shall start a little earlier so as to include Piedmont, Ala. Hence Brother Russell will leave Brooklyn, N.Y., midnight July 7th, via P.R.R.; arriving at Washington City 7:12 a.m., July 8th; arriving at Atlanta, Ga., 5:00 a.m.; Piedmont at 9:21 a.m., July 9th; leaving Piedmont 7:16 p.m., July 9th, ar. at Memphis, Tenn., 7:30

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a.m., July 10th. Leaving at 11:00 p.m. (Ill. Central), we are due to reach New Orleans Sunday, July 11, at 10:45 a.m. Leaving at 9 p.m. we hope to reach Houston, Texas, at 10:15 a.m., and, leaving at 12:25 a.m., to reach San Antonio, Texas, at 7:35 a.m., July 13. Leaving at 9 a.m., July 14, via El Paso at 8:30 a.m. of the 15th, we hope to reach Los Angeles at 1:30 p.m., Friday, July 16th. We leave at 5 p.m., July 17, arriving at Oakland, Cal., 8:45 a.m., July 18. Leaving at 8:57 p.m., July 19, we are due at Portland, Ore., 7:15 a.m., July 21, Wednesday. Leaving at 11:45 p.m. we are due at Seattle Thursday at 8:15 a.m. Leaving at 9:30 p.m. (N.P.Ry.), Sunday, July 25, arrive at Spokane at 9:00 a.m., Monday, July 26. Leaving at 3:20 p.m. (N.P.Ry.) arrive at Butte, Mont., 7:40 a.m., July 27. Leave at 11:40 p.m., ar. at Billings, 8:50 a.m., July 28. Leave 9:30 a.m., arrive at Denver 11:30 a.m., July 29 (C.B.Q.Ry). Leave July 30, 1:15 p.m. (C.B.Q.Ry.), ar. at St. Joseph, Mo., July 31, at 9:30 a.m. Leave August 2 at 1:45 p.m., arrive Huron, S.D., at 7 a.m., Aug. 3. Leaving at 8:10 a.m., arrive at Aberdeen, S.D., at 11:55 a.m. Leave (C.N.&St.P.Ry.) 8:35 p.m., arrive at St. Paul, Minn., at 8:10 a.m., August 4, and Chicago at 9:45 p.m. Leaving Chicago at 11:45 p.m. (P.R.R.) arrive at Pittsburg at 6:05 p.m., August 5. General Meeting at Allegheny Bible House, 7:30 p.m. Leave 9:40 p.m., arriving at Brooklyn 9 a.m., August 6. Of course, changes of railroad schedules may make necessary some slight modifications of the foregoing.

Four-Day Convention, Piedmont, Ala. July 8-11
One ” ” Memphis, Tenn. ” 10
” ” ” New Orleans, La. ” 11
” ” ” Houston, Tex. ” 12
” ” ” San Antonio, Tex. ” 13
Three ” ” Los Angeles, Cal. ” 16-18
” ” ” Oakland, Cal. ” 17-19
One ” ” Portland, Ore. ” 21
Four ” ” Seattle, Wash. ” 22-25
One ” ” Spokane, Wash. ” 26
” ” ” Butte, Mont. ” 27
Two ” ” Denver, Colo. ” 29,30
Five ” ” St. Joseph, Mo. July 29-Aug. 2
Three ” ” Aberdeen, S.D. Aug. 1-3

The Convention Committees of the Churches at the places named will please confer with us respecting further details desired.

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AN INTERESTING LETTER

DEAR BROTHER:—

I do not know if you have any more time now than you ever had to read poor letters, for I know you are always kept busy in the Master’s service. But I must tell you about that Vow.

I had always prayed for you and all those who labored with you in the WATCH TOWER office, from the time I first took the TOWER, which was in 1882. And then, when you sent out the Pilgrims to preach God’s Grand Plan of the Ages, also the Colporteurs, prayer was added daily. But when the Vow was first brought to my notice, I did not think much about it; but after studying it a while the Lord showed me that it was a binding of the sacrifice closer to the altar that I made when I consecrated, so I took the Vow and sent you word. And oh, what a blessing has been mine since then, for though I am weak and frail and old, the Lord my God has drawn me closer to himself. And I can appreciate more and more the 91st Psalm and John 14:21-23, and though I can do so little in his service, he has promised never to leave nor forsake me, because I trust that he who began the good work in me, is able to finish it. My desire is not to be a stumbling block in my own way; I desire to follow my Lord even unto death.

I enjoy the WATCH TOWER and those sermons in the Cincinnati Enquirer very much. May the Lord keep you faithful even unto death as that servant, is my daily prayer.

Your sister in his service,

MRS. J. A. MARWOOD,—Neb.

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BEREAN STUDIES ON THE ATONEMENT

THE TEXT-BOOK USED FOR THIS COURSE IS SCRIPTURE STUDIES, SERIES V (E)*

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*Five years ago DAWN-STUDIES, VOL. V., was reset, and unfortunately the type was not exactly same size as before; and hence page for page they differ. The references given in these Berean Studies apply to the present edition, a copy of which postpaid will cost you but 30c. But keep your old edition, for unfortunately the new Bible Helps refer to its pages.

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Questions on Scripture Study V.—The Spirit of a Sound Mind

JUNE 6

(1) In the text, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7), what is the contrast? What is the antithesis to the spirit of a sound mind? Page 249, par. 1.

(2) In this Scripture are we to understand that the four spirits mentioned are persons? or are any of them persons? or are they merely qualities of mind which might appertain to persons—on the human or on the spirit plane? P. 249, par. 1.

(3) If a Christian has a spirit of fear, to what should it be attributed? What is lacking in him when his mind is under the control of such a spirit or influence? And what is the remedy for such an undesirable condition of spirit or mind? P. 249, par. 2.

(4) Does the spirit of Christ take hold upon the strong-minded or the strong-bodied merely, or upon the weak-minded and weak-bodied merely? What is the result in either case? Give Scripture proofs. P. 250, par. 1,2.

(5) In the text quoted (2 Tim. 1:7) what is meant by the “spirit of power”? Does it refer to physical strength or spiritual strength or what? P. 250, par. 3.

(6) Similarly explain “the spirit of love” in the same text. Is it natural love, or what kind? How does it operate? And does it abide or will it pass away? Cite Scripture. P. 250, par. 3.

JUNE 13

(7) Are the Lord’s people naturally more sound of mind—better balanced mentally—than the remainder of the world? Or how do they compare on the average? P. 251, par. 1.

(8) What is the effect of the Truth upon the fully consecrated believer begotten of the holy Spirit and taught of God? How does he compare with the average man? P. 251, par. 2.

(9) Explain how it is that there is such diversity of mind and say whether there are many of strictly sound mind. Quote Scriptures. P. 251, par. 3.

(10) What are some of the causes of mental unbalance and in what manner does the holy Spirit rectify natural weaknesses and mental defects? P. 252, par. 1,2.

(11) Give an illustration of the manner in which the spirit of a sound mind rectifies an imperfect judgment. P. 252, par. 2.

(12) Give some illustrations of evidences of mental unsoundness common to the world and often to the Church. P. 252, par. 3.

(13) What is the most general mental ailment as evidenced by asylum statistics, and is the same mental weakness a besetment to Christians? P. 254.

(14) Which is the greater need amongst men, restitution of bodies or of morals or of sound minds? And what would the latter have to do with correcting the two former? P. 254, par. 2.

JUNE 20

(15) What quality of mind is the source of the greatest trouble to the world and the greatest to the Christian? What is the antidote or remedy which the Scriptures set forth? P. 254, par. 2.

(16) What is the antidote for that poisoned condition of mind styled “the spirit of fear”? Cite the Scriptural antidote. P. 255, par. 1,2.

(17) Does the spirit of the Truth correct over-confidence and under-confidence?—How? Cite the Scriptures. P. 255, par. 3.

(18) Why is it that the heavenly hopes and promises appeal to some and not to others equally educated and intelligent otherwise? Explain the philosophy. P. 256, 257.

(19) What is the answer of the “spirit of a sound mind” to our Lord’s inquiry, “What will a man exchange for his soul”—his being, his existence? P. 258, par. 1.

(20) How were we redeemed from vain conversation and how does the spirit of a sound mind give a new viewpoint to every affair of life? P. 258, par. 2; P. 259, par. 1.

(21) Which ambitions are restrained by the heavenly promises and which are encouraged and developed thereby? Cite Scriptures on the subject and show their application. P. 259, par. 2,3.

JUNE 27

(22) Show the philosophy of how the spirit of a sound mind deepens and broadens character. What if anything opposes this? Cite the Scriptures. P. 260, par. 1.

(23) If patience, sympathy, generosity, love, godlikeness are elements of a sound mind, show how these qualities become more developed and appreciated. P. 260, par. 2.

(24) What is the effect of the spirit of a sound mind in the home? How does it operate? What is the motive or mainspring? P. 260, par. 3.

(25) Will the spirit of a sound mind make its possessor the best husband or wife, the best sister or brother, the best parent or the best child? Why so or why not? Give the philosophy of the matter. P. 261.

(26) What is sure to be the effect of this spirit of a sound mind? P. 262, par. 1.

(27) Cite one of the evidences of the unsoundness of human judgment. Cite the Scriptural admonition touching the defect. P. 262, par. 2.

(28) Who may have this spirit now and is there hope that others may have it in the future? Cite the Scriptures. P. 262, par. 3.

(29) Is there anything to suggest or to prove that the spirit of a sound mind, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of common sense, is a spirit being which comes into us, or is it simply an instruction, a basis of proper, sound reason?

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PUBLIC MINISTRIES OF THE TRUTH

UNDER THE AUSPICES OF PEOPLES PULPIT ASSOCIATION OF BROOKLYN, N.Y.

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PIEDMONT, ALA., CONVENTION, JULY 8-11

The friends of this locality request a General Convention for that section, so it is arranged at the beginning of Brother Russell’s Western Tour. He will be there one day; but able speakers are provided for the other sessions. Railroad rates are expected. Further announcement later.

ONE-DAY LOCAL CONVENTIONS ADDRESSED BY THE EDITOR OF THIS JOURNAL AS FOLLOWS:

BROOKLYN, N.Y., JUNE 13

Morning Rally and Testimony Meeting at 10:30 o’clock.

Discourse by Brother Russell at 3:00 p.m. Evening meeting for the interested at 7:30 o’clock; this will be a Question Meeting. Visiting friends cordially invited.

All meetings will be held in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, Nos. 13-17 Hicks street. Convenient to all cars and ferries—close to the old bridge terminus.

NEW BRITAIN, CONN., JUNE 20

GLENS FALLS, N.Y., JUNE 27

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STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES “MILLENNIAL DAWN”

THESE STUDIES ARE RECOMMENDED TO STUDENTS AS VERITABLE “BIBLE KEYS.”
PRICES ARE NET AND BARELY COVER COST OF PRODUCTION, WHEN DELIVERED BY COLPORTEURS THE COST AND PRICE ARE INCREASED

SERIES I., “The Plan of the Ages.” gives an outline of the divine plan revealed in the Bible, relating to man’s redemption and restitution: 386 pages, in embossed cloth, 25c. (1s. 1/2d.) India paper edition, 75c. (3s. 1-1/2d.).

This volume has been published as a special issue of our journal—at the extremely low price of 5c. a copy, in any quantity, postage included. (To foreign countries, 9c.) This enables people of slender purse to herald far and wide the good tidings in a most helpful form.

SERIES II., “The Time is at Hand,” treats of the manner and time of the Lord’s second coming, considering the Bible Testimony on this subject: 370 pages, in embossed cloth, 25c. (1s. 1/2d.) India paper edition, 75c. (3s. 1-1/2d.)

SERIES III., “Thy Kingdom Come,” considers prophecies which mark events connected with the “Time of the End,” the glorification of the Church and the establishment of the Millennial Kingdom; it also contains a chapter of the Great Pyramid, showing its corroboration of the dates and other teachings of the Bible: 384 pages, in embossed cloth, 25c. (1s. 1/2d.) India paper edition, 75c. (3s. 1-1/2d.)

SERIES IV., “The Day of Vengeance,” shows that the dissolution of the present order of things is in progress, and that all the panaceas offered are valueless to avert the predicted end. It marks in these events the fulfilment of prophecy, noting specially our Lord’s great prophecy of Matt. 24 and Zech. 14:1-9: 660 pages, in embossed cloth, 30c. (1s. 3d.). India paper edition, 85c. (3s. 6-1/2d.)

SERIES V., “The At-one-ment Between God and Man,” treats an all-important subject—the hub, the center around which all the features of divine grace revolve. Its topic deserves the most careful and prayerful consideration on the part of all true Christians: 507 pages, in embossed cloth, 30c. (1s. 3d.) India paper edition, 85c. (3s. 6-1/2d.)

SERIES VI., “The New Creation,” deals with the Creative Week (Genesis 1 and 2), and with the Church, God’s “New Creation.” It examines the personnel, organization, rites, ceremonies, obligations and hopes appertaining to those called and accepted as members of the Body under the Head: 740 pages, in embossed cloth, 30c. (1s. 3d.) India paper edition, 85c. (3s. 6-1/2d.)

The above prices include postage.

IN FULL LEATHER BINDING, gilt edges, the set (6 vols.) $3.00, (12s. 6d.), plus postage, 60c. (1s.).

Is also published in foreign languages as follows: German, six vols., in Swedish Vols. 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6; in Dano-Norwegian, three vols.; in Greek, three vols.; in French, two vols.; Hollandish, Spanish, and Italian, one vol. each; bound in cloth, uniform with English edition, prices the same; in Polish, condensed edition, one vol., 10 cents.

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