May 26, 1898
THE cross of Christ is sent to all countries, but against none.
HE who is at peace with God will naturally be at peace with his fellowmen.
THE battle ground of Christian warfare is not Cuba or the Philippines, but the human heart.
THE greatness of a nation depends upon the number of its men who are great as individuals.
BIGOTRY defines the unpardonable sin as being the expression of dissent from its opinions.
POLITICS comes as near to being Christianity as federation comes to being the “unity of the Spirit.”
ALL history shows that it is better that the state should dominate religion, than that religion should dominate the state.
IN the Christian warfare every soldier is sure to get killed; for he cannot be of any use as a soldier of Christ until he has been crucified with him.
THE greatest victory that was ever gained since time began was announced in these words: “I have overcome the world.” And this victory is for every Christian.
THE only thing for which God gives an individual superhuman power, is to resist temptation.
CHRISTIANITY says that Spaniards and Americans should stop fighting, and be brethren. “Patriotism” says that they should fight to the bitter end, because such is the call of country.
MANY people scoff at the idea of creating money by governmental fiat, who seem to think it quite proper that there should be laws to make people good. But it is just as easy to create money by law, as to create character.
TAKE four individuals—Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln; only these four—out of American history, and the reputation of this nation would suffer an incalculable loss. Any one familiar with United States history must admit this.
These four individuals were great men. But the nation did not make them great; they, on the contrary, added much to the greatness of the nation.
They became great as individuals, and it was only the recognition of this greatness which gave them national reputation. They were not great because they were put at the head of the nation; they were put at the head of the nation because they were great.
Having the same opportunities and advantages which hundreds or thousands of others about them had they rose to positions of pre-eminence by virtue of the inherent power that was in them,—the power of character. And by the same power they acquitted themselves well at the head of public affairs.
A small man—small as an individual—would look a good deal smaller at the head of a nation than he looks as a private character.
These are truths, and plain truths; yet in spite of them the notion is getting to be prevalent that individualism is a dead issue, and a doctrine of no value to [322] mankind to-day. The talk is all about “nationalism”—as if there was something in nationalism that could elevate or save mankind.
The nation cannot help the individual. Give him all the wealth of the nation, or give him all the power, and what would he do without a strong, upright character? He would do a great deal worse with them than he would without them.
Without individualism, there can be no nationalism that amounts to anything. And if the day of individualism be passed, then the day of national greatness is passed with it.
THE fourth commandment, it is claimed, does not specify that the rest day is the seventh day of the week. But this claim will not bear investigation. For the Creator, when he rested on the seventh day, completed and marked off the first week of time; and the day on which he rested, and which he blessed and sanctified, was necessarily the seventh day of the week. The week has continued unchanged from that time to this.
ONE of the greatest kings of antiquity, was Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He was one of the few monarchs that have sat upon the throne of universal earthly dominion.
This Nebuchadnezzar at a certain time in his reign made a great image of gold, which he “set up in the plains of Dura,” and commanded all the “people, nations and languages” of the province of Babylon to worship it.
There were three officials of the government—Hebrews—who refused to obey the king’s command, and declared that they would worship the God of heaven and none other. They flatly refused to obey the law of the land.
The government said that they should do a certain thing, and they absolutely refused to do it. That was plain disloyalty to the government.
Was it? So Nebuchadnezzar thought, and he commanded them to be cast into the “burning, fiery furnace.” And they were bound and cast in; but lo! another power greater than the power of Babylon interposed by a wonderful miracle vindicated them in their refusal to do that which had been commanded.
When Nebuchadnezzar, who was looking on, saw that, he changed his mind: not as regards their opposition to the law of the land, for he said that they had “changed the king’s word”; but as regards their loyalty. And the indisputable proof that he changed his mind on this point is the fact that he then promoted these three individuals—“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego”—in the province of Babylon. Daniel 3:30. And every Christian will admit that in this the king did what was proper and wise.
These three men, by their firm adherence to the right in opposition even to the law of the land, gave better proof of their loyalty to the government than was given by the men who obeyed it simply because it was the law. Nebuchadnezzar recognized this fact.
That was loyalty to the government then; and what true loyalty was then, it is to-day.