Romans 1

Romans 1:1

—A Romans 1:1 is the one profession of universal interest. The man who enters the law realizes that the interest taken in his profession will be limited, for the most part, to his clientage. The man who practices medicine excites an interest in his profession somewhat commensurate with the number of his patients. The one who takes it upon himself to teach touches the public more closely; but as a rule, excites the special interest of youth only.But to enter the pulpit is to face the whole public, Christian and non-Christian, church-going and non-church-going, educated and ignorant, rich and poor, old and young. By as much as religion is more important than science, by as much as the moral law is more essential than the civil law, by as much as the health of the soul is more to be desired than that of the body, by as much as character outweighs all else, by so much is it true, as the prophet of Brantwood said, “The issues of life and death for society are in the Christian pulpit”.That such seems to be the Divine estimate of this profession is argued not alone by the importance attached to the work of the Old Testament Prophet and New Testament Apostle, but is put forever beyond dispute by Christ’s choice of a profession. When He came into the world to work its greatest good, to overthrow sin and set up righteousness, to end sorrow and introduce happiness, to defeat hell and populate Heaven, He passed over every other honorable calling, and the many noble professions, and made deliberate choice of preaching.

The man, then, who sneers this profession insults the Son of God; and the man or woman who takes no interest in its work can have no interest in the elevation of society or in the redemption of souls. The very fact that Christ was a preacher, the very fact that He ordained preaching as the agency of the world’s regeneration, accounts at once for the power of the pulpit and the interest the whole public takes in it.I am aware, therefore, that though I am speaking to you this morning concerning an office which might be regarded my profession, I am talking also about one in which you are deeply concerned, for it is your profession, in that it deals with the subjects in which you have the deepest and most lasting interest. And when Paul, in our text, introduces himself to the Romans as “a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God”, he has your attention, and he has mine.We are interested in preaching because ofTHE DIVINE It is perfectly evident that the Apostle has not come to this office by his own choice, but instead, has been put there by his Christ. If one would trace the processes by which Paul became a preacher he would find in them a confirmation of the statement of our text. Going back to the ninth chapter of Acts we find him an unbeliever and a persecutor of the Church of God; and that same chapter records how, when he was on his way to Damascus to bind any disciples he might find there and bring them to Jerusalem, he was met by the Lord, overwhelmed by a voice and a light, shown at once what his error had been and what was the truth, and sent to Ananias of Damascus to receive from him instruction touching his present duties and his coming profession.And after “certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus” he began to preach Christ in the synagogues, astonishing those who heard him and increasing “the more in strength”, he “confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is the very Christ” (Acts 9:19; Acts 9:22).The three steps by which the Lord led him into the full ministry of His Word are recorded alike in the Acts and in our text. First, he was saved and made “a servant of Jesus Christ”; then he was “called to be an Apostle”, and a little later he was “separated unto the Gospel of God”.Salvation is the Spirit’s first step in making a minister. The New Testament Church knew nothing of unregeneracy in the pulpit. When Simon, the unregenerate, offered the Apostles money in exchange for the power of the Holy Ghost, “Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee”.

And a little later he added, “Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God”.It was not until after the great Roman apostacy that unregenerate men entered this profession without apology on their part or protest on the part of the Church. But ever since that time certain branches, so-called, of the Christian Church, have admitted men to their ministry with far less concern regarding their personal salvation than they have exhibited in their knowledge of ceremony and catechism; and even today in certain quarters and churches this first feature of a Divine appointment is utterly disregarded in the making of ministers.

George Mueller, when between ten and eleven years of age, was sent to a classical school in Halberstadt to be prepared for the University because, as Warne says, “It was his father’s desire that he should become a minister of the Lutheran church”. “Not indeed”, remarks Mr. Mueller, “that I might serve God, but that I might have a comfortable living”.The night before George Mueller commenced the special studies that were to fit him for his confirmation, he spent at cards until two in the morning, and the days preceding that confirmation were given to the grossest immorality. Speaking of this, he says, “In this state of heart, without prayer, without true repentance, without faith, without knowledge of the plan of salvation, I was confirmed”. That was the first step men took toward making George Mueller a minister of the Word. But when God called him to that office the first step the Holy Spirit took was to save his soul. John defended his ministry of the Word by saying, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).

To be ignorant of the Lord, to be without His fellowship, is to be utterly unfitted to preach. Paul, the preacher, was “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ”, and the very success of this man’s ministry makes of him a worthy sample to the ministry of all centuries.An evident call is the Spirit’s second step in the making of a minister. “Called to be an Apostle”.In Paul’s case almost no time intervened between the hour of his salvation and the one in which the Spirit called him to preach; and yet they were two distinct experiences; and in the instance of many a minister have been separated the one from the other by months, and in some cases by many years.

There are men in this church today who knew young Russell Conwell, the Christian attorney; men here who knew him at a later time, when he was lecturer and reporter; but after years of such service, God’s Spirit said, “Come into the Gospel ministry”, and the faithful Christian was not disobedient to the heavenly voice and those great Philadelphia institutions are his endearing monuments. Philip, the evangelist, was not saved and set to the Gospel ministry in the same day. At first he was a humble layman, differentiated from his brethren by the single fact that he was “of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom”. Afterwards we find him a member of the diaconate in the old First Church at Jerusalem; but as soon as his brother Stephen, having been stoned to death, was carried to his burial, God’s Spirit seems to have called Philip to take up the work, and we read, “Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them” (Acts 8:5). Peter, the fearless preacher, was only a plain fisherman disciple until he came to Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost called him out and made of him the chief spokesman.A clear call to the ministry by that same Spirit has ever been the needed anchor to those who preach Christ. James Stalker says, “Enthusiasm for humanity is a noble passion and sheds a beautiful glow over the first efforts of an unselfish life, but it is hardly stern enough for the uses of the world”. “For the man who would minister to it”, he says, “a sterner motive is needed than love of men.

Our retreating zeal needs to be rallied by the command of God. It is His work.

These souls are His. He has committed them to our care, and at the judgment seat He will demand an account of them. All prophets and apostles who have dealt with man for God have been driven on by this impulse which has recovered them in hours of weakness and enabled them to face the opposition of the world.”Paul is a good illustration of Stalker’s claim. When he was wearied with his work; when he was sickened by the sight of men’s sins; when persecution was rife enough to give Satan opportunity to raise the question whether Paul would not be a happier man if he quit the ministry, the consciousness of the Spirit’s call came over the Apostle, and he answered all such temptations with, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel”! Do you remember how, when Joan of Arc was pleading for the privilege of raising the siege of Rheims, and the Royal Council was hesitating, and the Royal counsellors were showing why it was not wise to attempt it, that they came to Joan and asked her if she still heard the Voices, and she answered “Yes”. She told them how, when she had been at prayer in secret complaining of the unbelief of her people, that she heard a Voice which said, “Daughter of God; go on!

Go on! I will be thy help”.

Happy the minister who hears that same Voice in command and promise.The Spirit’s third step in making a minister is equally specified in our text.He separates unto the Gospel of God.“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1). It is one thing to be a minister; it is another thing to be separated by the Holy Ghost to a special work. Paul came into the ministry first, unto this separation afterwards. In Acts 13:2 we read, “As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them”.God has in mind for every preacher a specific service. The impression prevails with all too many that “a call to the ministry” involves only a general obligation to preach the Word. But what shall we say concerning this act of the Holy Ghost in separating Paul to his specific work? What shall we say to the act of the same Spirit when He takes Philip from Samaria and sends him into the desert of the southway to minister to the Ethiopian treasurer?

Is it not the right of the Holy Ghost to decide where a man shall work? Is it not His right to decide what a man shall do?

When George Mueller was trying to settle the question of where he should work he adopted the queer and questionable way of ascertaining the Lord’s will by lot. He bought a ticket in the Royal Lottery and made up his mind if the ticket proved to be a winning one and brought him considerable money he would take it to be the Lord’s will that he should become a foreign missionary, but if it brought in nothing, he should accept a ministry at home. The result was that the ticket drew a small sum, not enough to take him abroad and yet something, so that he was not sure it was God’s will he should go or stay at home.While Mueller thought over it he was convinced of having committed a great sin in trying to settle so important a question by such an uncertain, if not even sinful way; and at once he surrendered himself to quiet, patient, prayerful waiting for the Divine appointment; and the Holy Ghost pointed out not merely the place of his work, but the peculiar kind of work also, and poured upon him such blessing as few of the sons of men have ever known. The lottery plan of settling one’s ministry is Satan’s plan. The question to be determined by the preacher is not the question of where he can get the most money, nor yet the one of where he can get the most preferment, nor yet the one of where he can get the greatest audience, nor yet the one of where he can get the easiest and most honorable position. The question for the preacher to settle is, “What saith the Spirit?

What does He want me to do? Where does He want me to work?” The Spirit’s separations involve the minister’s specifications.The fact that preaching is of Divine appointment accounts, as we have said, forTHE POWER OF THE PULPIT Preaching is the profession with a promise.Mark’s report of the Great Commission is, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature”; and Matthew records the promise, “And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:21-24).The past has witnessed full proof of that power. Not to speak of the Old Testament ministers— Noah, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, the New Testament and Church History abound in illustrations of the power of the pulpit. When Peter at Pentecost preached, thousands of men were in tears, crying for the light. When Paul, the peerless, had passed away, there were honorable successors to his office.

John was indeed a son of thunder to his generation, and yet he was also sweetness and light. Polycarp so presented the truth as to make his own name immortal and accelerate the cause of Christ.

Think of the power exercised through the preaching of St. Chrysostom, by St. Francis of Assisi, and by Savonarola of Florence! Think of the multitudes moved by Martin Luther, by John Wesley, by George Whitefield! Think of the revolutions wrought by the utterances of Calvin, Cadman, and Bunyan! Think of those men buried but yesterday, Beecher, Brooks, Spurgeon and Moody!

When one remembers what a host of noble names have belonged to this profession, and what mighty powers God has poured out through them for good, he is disposed to agree with Emerson in his opinion that “The pulpits of New England are the springs of American liberty”, and with Webster, who once asked, “Where have the life-giving waters of civilization sprung up, save in the track of the Christian ministry?”But the pressing question is as to the present pulpit! Dr.

Hillis recently raised that question in a Chicago sermon, “Is the pulpit declining?” But his answer to the question was unsatisfactory, for he pointed to the empty church houses to illustrate an evident decline, apparently overlooking the fact that church membership and the ministry are not one and the same thing; and that it is possible that one of these might sustain loss while the other held its own, or even accomplished a gain. To me the fact that a few years ago the Governor of New Hampshire, journeying over his state, found in village after village church houses shut up, their windows boarded over, and their walls crumbling to decay, so that he felt impelled to appoint a day of fasting and prayer, might have other explanation than a proportionate decline in the power of the present pulpit. When, on one occasion, many of Jesus’ disciples went back and walked no more with Him, it was hardly chargeable to a decline in Jesus’ preaching ability; and when, on Mars’ Hill, men listened to Paul’s presentation of the truth, some to mock him and others to say, “We will hear thee again of this matter”, the feeble results of that after-meeting were hardly to be accounted for on the ground of Paul’s poor preaching.One thing is sure and that is that the modern preacher, who is alive to the interests of his profession and endeavors to meet the demands of his parish and the public, bears burdens such as his old time predecessor never dreamed. As Hillis, in the address before referred to, said, “Today no pastor can hope to keep in sympathy with his business men without reading half a dozen great reviews on the important events in the world of commerce, of war, of industry, of education, of finance, of legislation. Pressed by a thousand duties, the pastor must read with more or less accuracy one hundred books a year. Moreover the preacher must needs write as many columns as the editor, he must give as many addresses as the lawyer, he must be acquainted in as many homes as the physician.

To his door also come the children of poverty, the prodigal, the youths who desire higher education, the boy—a stranger in a great city, those who have drunk from the cups of flame, those poisoned by remorse and sin! And, were it not that the ministry carries in itself its own medicines and recuperative agencies, the mere task of physical delivery of sermons would destroy the physical health of all moral teachers.

No other profession drains away so rapidly the precious nerve glands. William Ellery Channing breaks down at forty-five. Henry Drummond dies at forty-six. Horace Bushnell gives way in the midst of his career. Phillips Brooks dies at fifty-seven and Charles Spurgeon at fifty-eight. * * * But ‘the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord’.”But a few words as toSOME OF and I am done.The fact that preaching is still a necessity, that the pulpit remains and finds increasing occasion, raises the question as to why its success has been so small, and why the world has come so slowly to the Christ?To assign all the reasons for this would require volumes. In fact, volumes have already been contributed to this subject, and yet the last word has not been said. But there are two or three of these opponents whose prime importance invites consideration.The sins, and the skepticism of the age in which we live! I do not know that the men of today are more sinful than the men of yesterday. I do not know that Satan, with all of his genius, has recently invented any new iniquities. Sometime since a woman asked me how many mortal sins there were, and I told her the last I heard from it there were seven.

But, unquestionably, the sin of skepticism is now receiving an unwonted emphasis.The author of “The Gospel for an Age of Doubt”, speaking of our time, says, “From the material side we might call it an age of progress, from the intellectual side an age of science, from the medical side an age of hysteria, from the political side an age of democracy, from the commercial side an age of advertisement, from the social side an age of publicomania; but looking at it from the spiritual side, which is the preacher’s point of view, and considering that interior life to which every proclamation of the Gospel must be addressed, beyond a doubt it stands confessed as a doubting age. * * Its coat-of-arms is an interrogation point rampant, above three bishops dormant, and its motto is ‘Query?’”As all the world is aware, a few years ago the great Methodist denomination, with all its splendid appointments, all its magnificent machinery, all its eloquent ministers, and all of its consecrated missionaries, was making no progress, but instead, had been declining. When Bishops Fowler, Ninde and Joyce were appointed a committee to inquire into causes of this decline, in report, they said, touching the part that skepticism has played in impeding the progress of the truth and opposing the pulpit, “In some sections criticism is extended to everything sacred; the preaching and the preacher are handled in the home circle with severity, the Bible itself is attacked, its supernatural character and Divine authority are denied; while higher criticism is limited to a few centers, yet its influence is filtered down into much of our literature, taking the authority out of the teaching and the power out of the preaching.

Sin loses its fatal sting, the law loses its sanction and God’s government is reduced to a few rules concerning esthetics”. Unfortunately, the Bishops of that day were sounder than the present bishopric. Satan has never smitten the ministry of God with any plague so enervating as the skepticism which in recent years has taken the heart out of the bishops themselves.The present compromised church is also in opposition to an effective pulpit. The vacant churches of New Hampshire, to which we have made reference, the country churches of Kentucky, which, in my boyhood, were overcrowded, but now are almost empty, the forsaken houses of God that may be found throughout all southern Ohio, and southern Indiana, and in many of the counties of Illinois, are all too representative, I fear, of a more wide-spread condition in the older states, and now, even of the newer, for I have cob-webbed churches in the far West!Dr. Henry Van Dyke, years ago, wrote, “I have seen in the little English city of Salisbury the great cathedral. It was built when a flood-tide of religious enthusiasm was sweeping over the world.

Thousands might worship, thousands have worshipped within that splendid fane, and its walls were not able to contain the great flood of devotion. But the tide has ebbed; the ecstatic vision has faded.

The mighty cathedral stands; but a handful of worshippers can scarcely keep a sleepy rivulet of praise flowing in a corner of the building.”That church is representative of every one that declines from its first love and makes alliance with the world; and, although as Van Dyke says, “its worshippers can scarcely keep a sleepy rivulet of praise flowing,” the very emptiness and silence of the place is an eloquent admonition to every church which has surrendered to the spirit of worldliness, and it is saying over again what Jesus said to the church at Ephesus, “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place”. We believe with the sainted Gordon that “The law of the kingdom of Heaven is not the law of the kingdom of earth. The world’s motto is, ‘In union there is strength’; the Church’s motto is, “In separation there is strength’.”The last opponent of the pulpit which we mention today is the cowardice of the preacher. Paul’s success in the Gospel of the Son of God was due to the fact that he did not live by the law of least resistance. The Methodist bishops above referred to sounded an important note when they said to their pastors, “The free lance of the itinerant is in danger of being lowered. We need more grace, more prayer, and more courage, and more of the spirit of the martyrs that our fathers had, to walk in their exalted and kingly way among men”.When I remember that the great eras of the past have been created by preachers; that this same Paul of our text was a ‘Voice in the wilderness”, calling effectively for liberty and free institutions; that Martin Luther brought in the Reformation with all that that has meant to church and state; that John Bunyan imprisoned, was yet a power to the end of the world and of the age; that, as Oliver Cromwell admitted, “The Puritan preachers destroyed the doctrine of the Divine right of kings and overturned that citadel of falsehood and cruelty”; that Barnett in Whitechapel Road inaugurated the Social Settlement idea; that Beecher in America linked his voice with the eloquence of Phillips and the courage of Lincoln, in smiting the chains of slavery”; I feel more and more that the Church of God has need to pray that her preachers be saved from that time-service to which our selfishness tempts us, to be servants of Jesus Christ, Apostles, called indeed, and faithful preachers of the Gospel of God.

Romans 1:3-7

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST Romans 1:1-7. IN the opening sentences Paul describes himself “a servant of Jesus Christ”, and straightway declares his apostleship, “called to be an Apostle”, and then reminds us of his separation from the old life, from the old society, from the old duties, and even from the aforetime spirit, “unto the Gospel of God” —a Gospel which the Apostle believes to have been promised before through the “Prophets in the holy Scriptures”.It is interesting to follow the pen of the Apostle while he presents Him who is the Gospel, even Jesus; Him, whom men worship and angels praise; the celebration of whose birth makes the gladdest season of the whole round year.The Apostle speaks of Him under three phases: The Seed of David, the Son of God, the Saviour of the World.THE SEED OF DAVID “Which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh”. He, then, was the child of prophecy. A more strange and absurd statement has never passed the lips of a man who could be imagined sane than when one contended that the Old Testament Prophets knew nothing of Jesus of Nazareth. Bring to me a photograph and let me study it until I am familiar with every line in it, then present to me a man whose every feature conforms exactly, and I am quite certain that the one is the representation of the other. No man has ever yet given himself to a sympathetic and intelligent study of the Old Testament prophecies without finding there a perfect picture of the New Testament Christ. Isaiah was a photographer, and when he developed the negative,“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. “Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9:6-7). he was presenting the goodly character of Him who was to be born of a virgin in Bethlehem of Judea, even as promised by the Prophet; who was to be rejected of Israel, crucified, and raised again on the third day.Dr. Grattan Guinness, in his volume, “History Unveiling Prophecy”, says truly, “God has spoken; He has given an explanation of the central and commanding vision of the prophecy. And God has acted; He has fulfilled its predictions. * * What hath God said? What hath He done? These are the questions of the age!”In answer to these questions you will find that God hath both promised and hath sent His Son, the seed of David, and the first advent of Christ is the fulfilment of prophecy. When Campbell Morgan in “The Crises of the Christ” was discussing the coming of the Son of Man, he said of certain signs that were wholly supernatural and remarkable, “These were of two kinds, direct and indirect; of the first, of the direct, there were three—the star that led the wise men to Christ, the angel ministry renewed at the time of the advent, and the fulfilling and renewal of the voices of prophecy.

All these were definite signs, pointing to Him, directing attention to Him in a world where men were not prepared to accept Him, and did not welcome Him as the One sent from God for the fulfillment of the Divine purpose.”Supernatural as it was, it was yet also natural, that if the child born in Bethlehem of Judea two thousand years ago was the seed of David, there should be much ado in heaven and on earth over His coming. It is no marvel to me that the Wise Men were definitely guided to His presence; that the very shepherds of the field were stirred from their slumbers by the manifestation of glory, nor yet that the angels of God chanted His coming as loyal subjects, as even court attendants might shout at the coming to office of some new king.He was also of royal lineage. “Of the seed of David”. How often had the Old Testament men of God spoken of this relationship. Go back to Second Samuel and hear that ancient Prophet talking to David himself in words like these:“When thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom” (2 Samuel 7:12), “Thy throne shall be established for ever” (2 Samuel 7:16). Hear the Psalmist (Psalms 89:3-4),“I have made a covenant with My Chosen, I have sworn unto David My servant, “Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations?”. And yet again (Psalms 132:11),“The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David; He will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne”. Does one wonder that the New Testament should open up after this manner, “The Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David” (Matthew 1:1), and that His genealogy should be traced from David to both Mary and Joseph? Truly, “prophecy is the mold of history”, and the Man from Nazareth is none other than the seed of David, the expectation of the ages.“Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, Great David’s greater Son, Who, in the time appointed, His reign on earth begun! He comes to break oppression, To set the captive free, To take away transgression, And rule in equity.” He was the Divine-human One. The language here is remarkable in its utter accuracy, “Of the seed of David according to the flesh”. The controversy of the ages has been at this point, and it has never waxed beyond its present-day interest.Unitarianism, or the denial of the Deity of Jesus, is as old as the Christian centuries. They denied that Deity in Christ’s day. John, in his Epistles, is constantly combatting Unitarianism, while Paul and Peter must unite their pens in defense of Deity.It is little wonder that some men should swing to the opposite extreme and deny the humanity of Jesus. The Word of God affirms both the Deity and humanity, and finds no conflict between them.

He is “the Son of God”, and yet “the seed of David according to the flesh”.Campbell Morgan says, “He was the God-man; not God indwelling a man. Of such there have been many. Not a man deified; of such there have been none save in the myths of pagan systems of thought; but God and man, combining in one personality the two natures, a perpetual enigma and mystery, baffling the possibility of explanation. It may be asked how, if indeed He were God, He could be tempted in the realm of humanity, as other men are tempted. It may be objected that had He been God, He could not have spoken of the limitation of His own knowledge concerning things to come. When asked to explain these things, the only possible answer is that they do not admit of explanation, but they remain facts.”“In a lowly manger sleeping, Calm and still, a babe we see, ’Tis the Holy Child of promise, Light of all the world is He. “Holy angels sing His welcome In the realms of glory bright, While the morning stars around Him, Fall in soft and tender light. “Blessed Saviour, dear Redeemer, King of Judah, Prince of Peace, Rock of ages, Star of nations, Thy dominion ne’er shall cease.” The Apostle, therefore, hesitates not to pass from the discussion of the seed of David to the declaration“THE SON OF GOD” For his faith he has “many infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3).Christ’s Deity he sees proven by His power. He is “the Son of God with power”. Paul writes at a time when the illustrations of that power were fresh in memory. The land was filled with living witnesses to a work—the like of which the world has never seen—for His deeds were not done in a corner. The neighbors knew that the Gadarene had been dispossessed of demons, that the blind by the Jericho way had been given their sight, that the lepers had been healed and cleansed, that the deaf had been made to hear, and the dumb to speak, and the paralytic to walk; and at His word the fever had left Simon’s mother, the withered hand had been restored, the dropsical man had been made whole, Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son, and widely-known Lazarus had all been raised from the dead. If those who listened to His Word remarked, “Never man spake like this man”, it is no wonder that when they looked upon Him calling the dead to life again, that fear came upon them all and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet is risen up among us”, and that “God hath visited His people” (Luke 7:16).The claim of the Church is, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), and that the miracle worker of two thousand years ago is the miracle worker at this moment, and is still “the Son of God with power”.

Power to forgive sin; power to heal the sick in answer to prayer of faith; power to raise the dead, and the day is appointed in which He will do it. “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, * * and the dead in Christ shall rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The faith of the Christian is not fixed in a slain man; the faith of the Christian rests in the Son of God, whose Deity is demonstrated by His “power”.That is the thing of which Charles Spurgeon was thinking when he described the soul as in the prison house, a cell which bred pestilence and death.

In vain does he saw at the bars until the time come when Christ appears to him, and instantly the bars are burst asunder, for He is the One of whom Isaiah long since wrote, “He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1).Many of you have read Hall Caine’s “Bondman” and remember how Jason the Red secured the release from prison of Michael Sunlocks. He entered into the prison himself and took Sunlocks’ place, but with the same hand that swung back the door as he entered, it was held back until Sunlocks escaped. This is the way of the sinner’s release; the pierced hand of the Son of God hath accomplished it, for He is “the Son of God with power”.His Deity is also demonstrated by His holiness. He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness”. That was the most marked characteristic of His earth life. He was “in all points tempted like as we are”, because He was a man; but He was “without sin” because He was “the Son of God”.

When He asked those who were without sin to cast a stone at a convicted one, they hung their heads for shame and departed in silence, consciously condemned; but when He challenged the multitude, “Which of you convinceth Me of sin”? He sealed their lips, for there was naught that could be said against Him.Carnegie Simpson’s volume, “The Fact of Christ”, has had a wide reading.

In it the author says of Jesus, “He was the supreme man in the realm of moral character. It were an easy task to compare Him in this respect with any other saint or hero of history, and show He was morally better. To do this would be, however, but to say the least part of the truth about the character of Jesus. Let us state the complete truth at once. He had not simply less sin and more virtue than others. His supremacy is not comparative! It is absolute! Jesus is the stainless man, the one sinless human being.

To prove a negative is always difficult; to prove it absolutely, often an impossibility. It is obviously an impossibility absolutely to demonstrate that the life and character of any man are entirely stainless. But in the case of Jesus the witness is as strong as the very nature of the thing to be proven can possibly admit. His enemies are witnesses to it. With all their ingenuity of hate and malice, never once did they dare to prefer against Him any moral charge, and insinuations such as that ‘He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners’ fell harmlessly upon Him. His friends are witnesses. They described Him as ‘separate from sinners’. They were orthodox Jews, steeped in the doctrine that ‘there is none righteous, no, not one’.

But they were compelled to contradict themselves. ‘Yes, one,’ they said against their Scriptures: ‘He did no sin.’ And we too are witnesses of the stainless perfection of the character of Jesus. For His friends have given us about Him far more than a vague eulogy. They have given us accounts, short indeed, but particularized, of His life. They do not merely affirm His stainlessness, which were easy. They exhibit it, which it were simply impossible to do except from the life. We have there what Jesus said and did in all kinds of circumstances and on all manner of occasions, in public and private, in the sunshine of success and the gloom of failure, in the houses of His friends and in face of His foes, in life and in the last great trial of death. It is the detailed picture of a man who never made a false step, never said the word that ought not to have been said, never, in short, fell below perfection.”“How beauteous were the marks divine, That in Thy meekness used to shine; That lit Thy lonely pathway, trod In wondrous love, O Son of God! “O who like Thee, so calm so bright, So pure, so made to live in light; O who like Thee did ever go So patient through a world of woe? “O who like Thee so humbly bore The scorn, the scoffs of men, before? So meek, forgiving, godlike, high, So glorious in humility? “O in Thy light be mine to go, Illuming all my way of woe; And give me ever on the road To trace Thy footsteps, Son of God.” Yet again:His Deity is declared by “the resurrection from the dead.” He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians makes the resurrection of Jesus the very foundation of the Christian’s hope. He marshalls his proofs of it in the form of some five hundred living witnesses. Among those he calls to testify are the twelve men who knew Him best; the great crowd that saw Him ascend; and ever to put past dispute, he adds his own testimony, that of an enemy, who had been determined not only that Jesus was not risen but to exterminate the very company of those who were declaring the same. And Paul, when converted, saw the truth, as Strauss long since expressed it when he said, “The resurrection of Jesus is the center. To disprove that is to draw down the whole fabric of historic Christianity, for, as the Apostle argued, unless Jesus of Nazareth conquered over death and the grave, all Christians have but fallen upon ‘cunningly devised fables’, they are themselves deceived, and have become deceivers of others, hence are of all men ‘most miserable’.” How the men who deny the resurrection of Jesus can ever again call Him “Lord” or even admit that there is aught to hope from Him, I am unable to understand.

As Dr. O.

P. Gifford once said, “Such a Jesus would never have been heard of outside a city of Palestine. He never could have won Saul of Tarsus, nor have overthrown Judaism, nor have conquered Rome, nor mastered the barbarism of his hour and given us a Christian civilization.”Some of us prefer the Jesus of the Bible, who rose from the grave on the third day, to this “New Theology” man, of beautiful moral character, but who when he was buried came not forth again. A helpless Saviour would such an one be, and to lean on him would be to lean on a staff broken already; and to worship him were like building a shrine in the presence of the dead, and would only be another form of debasing idolatry.The Christ of my worship is not only the Christ risen from the grave, but the Christ ascended to the right hand of God, and living in glorious estate. One reason why the Book of Revelation has always had such a fascination for me is the vision of the risen Christ it presents in its opening chapter:“In the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. “His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; “And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters” (Revelation 1:13-15). At the feet of such an One, like John of old, I can fall, and unto Him, who is the First and the Last, and the living One, the One who was dead, but behold, is alive for evermore, and who has the keys of death and hell in His hands, I pay the tribute of my heart’s affection. I am inclined to believe with Horace Stanton that Christ Himself will be the most beautiful object we shall ever behold, and that in Him we shall behold the Chiefest of ten thousand, and the One “altogether lovely” and enraptured by that vision, we shall say with Zechariah, (Zechariah 9:17). “How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty”!It is not difficult, then, for Paul to pass from “The seed of David” to the “Son of God” who isTHE SAVIOUR AND LORD There is a marked progress in what the Apostle is here penning. It is good to begin with the seed of David, for men cannot meet God in His infinite character; it is only when the Holy One limits Himself to the flesh that we can get into communion with Him and be not afraid; and if our surprise to discover in that One the Son of God and Saviour and Lord is great, I have never had any doubt that as it dawned increasingly upon the minds of Peter and John, it filled them with an enlarging joy of which the world without never dreamed, and could not understand.And now Paul, who once had looked upon Him as a mere man, and even a moral deceiver, but who, by a vision of Him in His risen state, was convinced once and forever, calls Him not only “seed of David” and “Son of God”, but speaks of Him as “Jesus Christ our Lord”, “By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His Name”.It is a fine expression—“Through whom we have received grace”. Paul never went away from the doctrine of grace. He knew that we were “saved by grace”. As Martin Luther rang the changes on “the just shall live by faith”, so Paul grew increasingly eloquent while affirming “for by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). And oh, what a grace it is for the soul to be lifted out of the pit and placed upon a rock, for sighings to give place to the new song, for the stained to become stainless, for the sinner to become the saint.There is a song we often sing in our special meetings,“It is glory all the way.”That is only true because it is grace all the way, and it is grace all the time.

Charles Spurgeon was known the world over for his emphasis upon the doctrine of grace. Speaking one day of the phrase, “Grace for grace”, he said, “This obviously means grace in abundance.

Like the waves of the sea, when one comes there is another close behind it.”Before you can say that one is gone there is another coming to fill its place. There they come. Who shall count them? In long succession, wave follows wave. So is God’s grace. ‘Grace for grace’. One grace has hardly come into your soul but there is another one. You have heard the story of Rowland Hill having a hundred pounds entrusted to him for the benefit of a poor minister. He thought that if he sent him the hundred pounds it would be too large a sum to give him all at once; he would scarcely know how to husband it, and perhaps he would not be so thankful for it as if he had it doled out in smaller amounts.

So he sent him five pounds, and wrote in the letter, ‘More to follow.’ Letters did not come often in those days of ninepenny or eight penny postage, but in about another week he forwarded another five pounds, and a note with it, ‘More to follow.’ After a short interval he did the like again, still saying, ‘More to follow.’ So it went on for ever so long, always with ‘More to follow’, till the dear good man I should think must have been at his wit’s end to know what could follow when so many good presents came to one who needed them so much.“Now, that is just how God has done with me, and I believe He is just doing the same with all of you who are His people. He has sent you a mercy, and when He sent it, you might have seen, if you had looked at the envelope, that it was an earnest of further benefits and benefactions, ‘More to follow.’ The mercy you have received today has written upon it legibly, ‘More to follow;’ and that which will come tomorrow will have upon it, ‘More to follow.’ ‘Grace for grace.’ Oh, sing unto Him a new song! Let Him have fresh songs for fresh mercies, and as He multiplies the mercy, so do you multiply the praises you ascribe to His Name.”Paul had another claim. He had received more than grace! He had received apostleship. In other words, he had been sent by the Spirit of God, for the word “Apostle” means “one sent.” I sometimes think we have missed the meaning of that term; we imagine the apostle of a certain faith is the proclaimer of it, and that apostolic days are done.

It is time, then, that we recover the original sense of the word. When in your Thursday night prayer meeting a young woman stands up and says, “This joy that I have in my heart comes solely in consequence of the fact that I know the Lord; and I have decided to give my life to the people that are now in darkness, that they also may know Him, and share with me this same joy”, why has she so settled the question of life?

Because she believes that she has an apostleship, or a commission from the Spirit “for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His Name.”An apostle, then, is not one who believes merely; an apostle is not one who proclaims a certain doctrine merely; an apostle is a moving man, a man sent on a mission. When the persecution of Jerusalem took place we are told that they “went every where preaching the Word” (Acts 8:4). True apostles were they of Christ, carrying to unbelieving neighbors and into cities where sin was rampant the religion of Jesus Christ.The religion of Christ demands talk; but it also demands a walk. It calls for a testimony; but it also involves a commission. Some people seem to think it is sufficient to speak for Jesus; but it is not. We must go where they know Him not, and seeking out the ignorant, bear our testimony if we be true apostles.

Do you remember the old Chinese legend of the three greatest religious teachers to the Celestial empire, and how they held a sorrowful conference in their celestial abode as they looked with regret upon the degeneracy of their people, and mourning that their own life work seemed to be so entirely a failure. They decided at once to take themselves to the earth again to see if they could not find a suitable minister whom they could send forth as a reformer.

They came and searched far and wide. At last they found an old man sitting as guard to a fountain. His words were so full of wisdom and his interest apparently so deep, his tongue so eloquent, and his enthusiasm so great, that they were unanimous in determining that he should be their messenger. But when they proposed their mission to him, he answered, “Ah, sirs, impossible! Only the upper portion of my body is flesh. From the waist down is stone.

I can talk about virtue and good works, but I cannot rise from my seat to go on any mission.” Then he could never be an “apostle.” The man who can go forth to the cities and call the halt and the lame and the blind, is an apostle as surely as the man who makes his way to China or Africa. But that man who does not propose to go out of his way to reach and instruct his fellows is not an apostle; that church which feels no obligation whatever to inaugurate and maintain a ministry beyond its own little local territory is not apostolic.For a long time there has raged a fierce debate as to which is the apostolic church.

The answer is easy: It is not a question of proving a succession from Peter on; it is certainly not a question as to performing some such ceremony as to link one up with some Old Testament order; and in the very nature of the case it cannot be the question of self-assertion. Show me a church or a denomination that entertains the most ardent spirit of missions, and preaches the most unadulterated Gospel of the Son of God, and I will show you the church and the denomination that is truly apostolic.Paul reminds us that we are called to be more than apostles:We are “called to be saints”. What is the meaning of it? Some people seem to think that “saints” are to be found in Heaven only, and others contend that we must be canonized. But the secondary explanation is a better one still: “To exhibit to the world a life of piety.” That is the need. Sam Jones said a good many excellent things, his eccentric style to the contrary notwithstanding, and Sam said this, “I have been hunting diligently thirty years for a man who had found something that would beat doing right. I found only one, and I met him only a short while afterwards and he said the thing had busted; it wouldn’t work.” Saintship is the spirit of right living actively engaged.Phillips Brooks, the Law-Church man, on one All-Saints’ Day, reminded his auditors that the saints were not all in Heaven.“Angels, and living saints, and dead, But one communion make: All join in Christ, their vital Head, And of His love partake.” That is the meaning of “the communion of saints”, “The true church”, he added, “the only church worth living in or fighting for, is this communion of saints. It is the answer to the Saviour’s prayer, ‘I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one’.” “And if somebody asks, ‘How can we enter into this fellowship?’ ” said Brooks, “the answer is at hand. You must yield yourself to that power of God which from your birth up until now has been waiting at your heart door to enter in and fill your nature with itself. You have kept your heart full of selfishness. You must turn it all out, and take God in, and straightway, living by Him and for Him, you are one with the living saints and dead. Oh, wondrous moment of conversion!

Out of the farthest limits of the perfect body there runs the tidings of a new member added to the unity. Is it strange that ‘there is joy in Heaven’?“This doctrine of the communion of the saints alone lets us realize that text. The saints of old know that the body of their Lord, the universal Church, is nearer its completion. The saints who stand around feel their own spiritual life move quicker at the access of this new vitality. The whole body knows of it and rejoices with intenser life. The man himself, knowing Christ for his, knows all Christ’s brethren and follows His fellows in the holy unity of faith.

Oh, wondrous moment of regeneration! Our church rites, our baptisms and confirmations, what we call, ‘joining the church,’ feebly tries to typify the great event. If the rites seem to you cold and hollow, and do not attract you, is there nothing in this great spiritual event to stir your heart, and make you say, ‘I, too, will be a Christian’?”

Romans 1:8-19

THE ORIGIN AND OBJECT OF Rom_1:8-19. THE Epistle to the Church at Rome presents the Apostle Paul in a new vocation. All through the Book of Acts, from the day of his conversion until his arrival at Rome, Paul gave his ministry wholly to “Preaching the Kingdom of God; and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ.” After he commenced preaching the other Apostles were eclipsed, including even the eloquent and Spirit-filled Peter.This address to the Christians at Rome was not delivered by word of mouth, but was penned as an Epistle; and, as Joseph Parker says, “Now that Paul begins to write, all other writers will stand behind him.” For he will prove himself as capable with the pen as he has with the tongue. This Epistle is a masterpiece in literature. It is also the peerless “systematic theology”; and it evidences Paul’s ability quite as well, if not better, than any address he ever delivered.We have already studied the Apostle’s claim of Divine appointment; his salutation to the Roman Christians; his evident anxiety for their spiritual growth; his yearning to be with them in bodily presence that he might establish them in the faith; and we come to the study of the text with its many and magnanimous suggestions.There are few passages of Scripture that lie nearer my heart than this. To me at least, it contains great fundamentals, such as I am pleased to preach and to impress upon this my loved people. Hear its first suggestion,“I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. “So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also” (Romans 1:14-15). CHRIST’S LAID A LIEN ON LIFE The debt is in consequence of His death. When Paul says here, as he does, “I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise, and to the unwise”, he does not mean that he has received from these people some favors for which he has given no sufficient compensation. It is true that Paul had received Greek learning; and equally true that Paul enjoyed Roman citizenship, but to the Barbarians he owed no personal obligation; and to “the unwise” he could hardly be in “debt”, employing that term in its ordinary use. Another idea was in his mind, namely, that Christ’s sacrifice for him had laid on him an obligation to serve whoever he could, and whenever. He saw the great truth Jesus meant to impart, when at the close of His last Passover Supper, He rose from the table, girded Himself with a towel and washed the disciples’ feet, adding,“If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. “For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you” (John 15:14-15). Therein is the origin of Christian obligation. Christ’s act toward you and toward me measures my responsibility and your responsibility toward our fellow mortals. One must discern this truth in order to know the real motive for all Christian philanthropy.John Tauler, at a time when the Pope’s ban lay on all his land, hanging, as S. E. Herrick says, “Like a thunder cloud over Alsatia”, continued his customary labors with the stricken people, and addressed a letter to his brother priests urging them to comfort the people and keep on preaching and administering the sacraments, in spite of the Pope’s words. “For”, said he, “ye are bound to visit and console the sick, remembering the bitter pain and death of Christ, who hath made satisfaction, not for your sins only but also for those of the whole world”.That is the true motive of Christian obligation— to meet in some little measure the mind of that Master who has done so much for us.There are few motives so pure; none so powerful! It is only a while ago that young Doctor Terry, a girl physician in China—missionary for the Methodist church—was murdered at Tsun-Hua.

When she was in this country and was about ready to return to her work, she said, “It requires courage to go back. If it were money for which missionaries go, there is not enough of it in the world to induce us to return to live amidst the depressing influences of heathendom; but for Christ’s sake we willingly, yea, gladly, undertake this service.”The Chinese had never done anything for Dr.

Terry to put her into their debt; but when, with Paul, she remembered what Christ had done for her, she was obliged to say, “I am a debtor to the Chinese also”. And in her effort to discharge her conscious obligation to Christ, she laid down her beautiful young life, counting even the price thereof a poor payment of all she owed. Paul here sounded the motive of all missions, ancient and modern. Because of what God’s Son has done for me I am my brother’s keeper, though that brother lives beneath another sun and I have never seen his face.In the name of the needy, Christ calls for the discharge of this debt. There are people who earnestly wish they could have lived in the time of the wise men and with them brought on offering to the infant Jesus; there are those who covet Mary’s privilege in the precious spikenard; there are those who envy Joseph in providing for Jesus a splendid tomb; and who forget that Jesus is as much in need of gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh, as much in need of Mary’s sacrifice and Joseph’s expression of love, as He ever was in the time of His earth life; and that it is just as easy to make an offering to Him now as it was then. The hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, the stranger, present Christ’s call and your opportunity, for He has said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me”.Every time Dives went out his front gate Christ appealed to him for assistance through the pitiful plight of Lazarus; and today, it is impossible for you and me to live in a city like this without seeing the Son of God in its suffering citizens, and remembering that they present opportunities for the payment of our obligations Christward.In the discharge of this debt there is no respect of persons.

Paul says, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise”. Paul was speaking of the four classes of people who filled up the cities in which he wrought; the countries over which he traveled.

If his words were properly interpreted, in our day they mean that we are in debt to the native born and to the foreigner; to the white man and to the black man; to the rich and to the poor; to the high and to the humble; to the ignorant and to the learned, “For there is no respect of persons with God”. Peter had to learn that, taught by the Holy Ghost; and Cornelius gave occasion to his instruction. And we have to learn it over and over again, for there are all too many of us who are prone to select the subjects of our interest, the objects of our mission. You recall the history that Dr. and Mrs. Clough made in India. They began their school work there with the high caste Brahmins.

Sixty-two sons of this upper society came into his school for instruction, and paid a good tuition. Shortly three men of low caste, converts to Christ, presented themselves and asked for the same opportunities of education.

The aristocratic Brahmins threatened to leave the school in case these in question were accepted. While Dr. Clough was debating what he should do, two more converts requested admission. Like a man of God Dr. Clough gave himself to prayer, and said, “Oh, guide us in this extremity of the mission,” while his wife in another room was uttering almost the same words. Simultaneously, in their separate rooms, the husband and wife were visited by the Holy Ghost who brought to their remembrance this Scripture,“Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; “And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: “That no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). Both husband and wife realized that their system must be changed; that their obligation to the ignorant of India was quite as great as to its better bred; that they were in “debt” alike to the foolish and to the wise. That decision resulted in an entire change in the method of education. But, as Dr. Pierson, in his “Miracle of Missions” has remarked, “They were now to build the church like a pyramid, from the broad base of the lowest classes upward.” It is God’s way; and God’s way only. Hence the words, “God is no respector of persons: But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him” (Acts 10:34-35). The stricken man by the Jericho road is the Good Samaritan’s opportunity to discharge Divine due bills.But our next sentence suggests a further thought —“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).CHRIST’S GOSPEL IS THE OF LOYALTY Paul’s words, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel”, are full of suggestion as to existing conditions. All about him were men and women who were ashamed of it; who, if you had asked them if they were Christians, would have been more embarrassed by the question than Peter was by the interrogation of the porch maid. Paul affirms himself to be apart from that company.He was not ashamed to practice the Gospel. That is where its real adoption begins; the man who merely preaches it does not necessarily make the Gospel his own; to prove his passion for it he must practice it. I have met not a few under conviction of sin who have earnestly inquired if they couldn’t be saved without meeting this and that Bible requirement, requirements that were contrary to the lusts of the flesh. To every such an one I have felt compelled to answer, “You can’t be saved except you surrender all and start in to practice what Christ has prescribed.” Do you remember what Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in “A Singular Life” made Captain Hap say of Bayard when, on one occasion, the scholarly, ease-taking Fenton was telling that soul-winner that others than himself were following the Master in their way?

To this Captain Hap replied, “It is just about here, Mr. Fenton, you folks set out to foller Him; but our minister he lives like Him; there is an almighty difference”.

Jesus Himself said, “Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you”. And when the practice of Christianity meant to Paul perils of waters, perils of robbers, perils by his own countrymen, perils by the heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among false brethren, weariness and painfulness, hunger and thirst, repeated fastings, cold and nakedness, he pushed on in the practice of that Gospel, saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.”Preaching it tested his loyalty still further. To the Greeks it was foolishness; to the Jews it was a stumbling block; to the Roman and Barbarian, an affront alike to their faith and the desires of their flesh—an unpopular theme to speak upon in Paul’s time and to Paul’s generation.The offense of the Cross is not removed. How many of us can say, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”, when our very speech excites a hiss and our seriousness is met with scorn. A young lady student in a State University, converted in one of my meetings, had to brave the derision of her roommates and stand for her newly-found faith before a flood of fun-making. But, like Paul, she said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”.

Her loyalty to the Lord has been proven in that she dared to speak to these same scoffers in the name of the Nazarene.Henry Van Dyke thinks that a preacher who speaks has to face this constant exhausting demand of a minister’s life, to declare the Divine message without fear or favor; to search the Scriptures and tell men plainly what they teach, without regard to human tradition; and, he adds, “Surely the man who has to do this needs courage”. Aye, verily, and Paul exhibited it.

If every Greek had been an agnostic, every Roman a demon, and every Barbarian barbarous, and every Jew a murderer, Paul would have stood in the midst saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”.Herrick says of John Huss, “He was always combatting sin rather than heresy; and men who persistently do that will always run the risk of being accused of heresy; and if the age will allow, of being burned for it by those who set orthodoxy of thought above correctness of life.” And yet, if the fagot pile had been before his face, Paul would have said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”. The test of religion for you and for me is not different. To preach the Gospel to those who gladly receive it may be encouraging; but to preach it where men reject it, and resist you, calls for more courage. But, after all, it is just there our loyalty is put to the test; just there, in fact, our acceptance with God is settled, for the Son of Man Himself, said, ‘Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).Opposition is the best test of loyalty to the Lord. Paul had been put to this test also. When he preached to the Greeks a multitude rose up together against him.

He was sent to the inner prison of Philippi; his feet were made fast in the stocks. In Rome the opponent’s chains clanked in his cell.

When he preached to the Jews they stoned him and left him as dead. Mr. Moody, in his active imagination, visited Paul, and held a conversation with him, and put to him some questions: “Paul, you have been beaten by these Jews four times and they are going to give you thirty-nine stripes more; what are you going to do after you get out of the difficulty?” “Preach!” is this Apostle’s reply. “You are going to continue preaching! Let me give you a little advice. Don’t be quite so radical; just use a little finer language and some flowery sentences; and pacify the Jews; and get in with them.” But the Apostle answers, “This one thing I do * * I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). After his experience in the Philippian jail he asked him, “Paul, don’t you think that you have been too zealous for Christ?

They will behead you shortly. Hadn’t you better retract?” “Behead me?” he says, “Let them do it; ‘Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day” (2 Timothy 4:8).There is an old frontispiece in Wycliffe’s first Bible representing the cause of truth in the Holy Scriptures by a bright flame in the foreground, while all around it the enemies of the truth, with the devil at their head, are trying to blow it out.

There are the bishops, priests and cardinals with the Pope himself and the devil leading them on, blowing and blowing, until it seems as if they would burst. But instead of blowing out the fire they only blow it in, and it blazes and blazes until they are scattered before its consuming breath, and even the devil himself is fain to fly to a cooler atmosphere. Dr. A. B. Simpson says, “This is ever true of the cause of Christ.

Opposition, persecution and misrepresentation only strengthens it, as we have all had such good reason often to prove. Nobody can hurt us but ourselves and when an enemy ‘cometh in like a flood’, let us quietly ask the Spirit of the Lord to ‘lift up a standard against him’, and we shall hear a voice proclaiming, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).”Paul was one of the few preachers who learned the practice of the most difficult of the Beatitudes, and in his second Epistle was able to say, “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

And when he was writing to Timothy he said, “Thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me”; and then he adds, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:10-12). It is the great Apostle’s appeal to the followers of the Lord in all centuries: Be not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation; and even when they must suffer for it, to endure hardness as good soldiers.The last sentence of this text is not so easily interpreted, and yet, its proper understanding is profitable, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith”.This seems to me to be the suggestion:CHRIST’S GOSPEL REVEALS GOD’S IN For therein is revealed the righteousness of God, by faith unto faith, by the faith of the preacher unto the faith of the profitable auditor. The righteous shall live by faith, and “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17).Herein is revealed the righteous plan of salvation. They tell us the Apocalypse is the plan of the Age. I believe it. But the plan of redemption runs through the entire Word of God. It reveals the righteousness of God, in making many righteous by the life of One—Jesus Christ. “For if by one man’s offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. * * That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:17; Romans 5:21).It was a plan born of the mind of God, bred in His great heart—a plan by which all that believe are justified from all things by which they could not be justified by the law of Moses.

Years since I read a sermon by Principal Edwards of England, in which that destructive critic, after having admitted his failure to reach “many souls” concludes, “I am ready to confess, dear friends, if the Christian conscience cannot save the world, I give it up! I abandon the hope of ever seeing the day, from the heavenly Jerusalem, when the whole world will have come to the Crucified One; I abandon all hope of making Christianity as universal as the race, unless we can do it by the power of an individual conviction, of an enlightened conscience.”Paul was never in any such a strait.

Believing as he did in the power of the Gospel unto salvation, he had not seen his ministry to souls fail, and so never felt the necessity of looking to so feeble a source as an individual conscience for a substitute of the Gospel.The Redeemer’s plan of salvation approved itself to Paul’s peerless mind and he preached it to his auditors, claiming the promise that it should not return unto God void; that it should accomplish that which God pleased and prosper in the thing whereto He had sent it.Again, God’s righteousness was revealed in that His plan of salvation included righteous promises.Universalism is a Scriptureless larger-hope. Every promise of God is righteous in that it demands of men a voluntary response that shall influence character for good. He does promise to have mercy upon us and to abundantly pardon us; but the condition is, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord” (Isaiah 55:7). He does promise to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness; and declares that He will be faithful and just in both. But the condition is, “If we confess our sins”.The Psalmist understood that so well that he gave it expression when his penitential words were, “I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest” (Psalms 51:3-4).Finally, The revelation of God’s righteousness in redemption presents a mighty appeal to sinners.

It is the appeal of mercy and justice in perfect accord. God would not have the law which was good broken without executing its penalty; but such was God’s love that He laid Himself upon the altar of sacrifice to save men the consequences of their own sin.

We love Him therefore “because He first loved us”.Frank Smith was a character in American history. Great interest attaches to a piece of personal history which he made in Andersonville prison. After inconceivable suffering, it came about one day that a half a dozen men were to be released from that hell by exchange. Smith’s name was among them. He went to an infidel comrade to say good-by, and in parting pled with the man to give his heart to God. The man bitterly answered, “There is no God for He would not permit such agony as we endure.” Hearing this, Smith put his pass into the infidel’s hand and said, “You can take my place and I will stay”.

When the comrade found that he meant it, he asked, “Why do you do this?” “Because”, replied Frank, “Jesus stood in my stead”. The man broke down and said, “Pray for me”.

That day a soul was saved, but Frank stayed behind in the dungeon while the infidel, converted now to Christ, went free. Some months afterward a second exchange was ordered. Again Frank’s name was on the roll. He was filled with joy at the thought of going to mother and wife and home. But when he went to say good-by to a young comrade wasting with consumption, the poor fellow threw his arms about his neck and cried, “Oh Frank, how can I die without you? You led me to Christ and I have counted on you to close my eyes and carry my last message to mother”.

And Frank answered, “I will not leave you”. He found a man that took his pass and back he went a second time to endure for another’s sake the horrors of Andersonville, and there he stayed until one day the flag of peace was lifted and all the living went forth to liberty.That is the Gospel incarnate; that is the Word of faith which we preach—Christianity in practice; and that is the Gospel that has ever been “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”; and whatever man may say or do against it, that saving power will never pass away!

Romans 1:20-32

ATHEISM THE ENEMY OF Romans 1:20-32THE subject, “Atheism the Enemy of Civilization”, is an affront, but it states a fact. Infidelity is uniformly egotistical and readily imagines it is the friend of all that is good. It shall be our purpose to show that historically the exact opposite is true. It is as perfectly the enemy of man and the foe of civilization as it is the opponent of God. The sacred Scriptures are in this matter, as in all others, the last word (Psalms 14:1); “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good”. History has provided thousands of illustrations of this divinely inspired assertion. It shall be our purpose, both to soundly interpret this text from Romans, and at the same time to adequately treat the theme announced for discussion. The Scriptures themselves suggest our outline: Atheism is the Enemy of Science, Atheism is the Enemy of Society, and Atheism is the Enemy of the State.ATHEISM IS THE ENEMY OF SCIENCE This statement runs counter to the boasted claims of infidelity. Unbelievers have ever been enamored of the notion that they are scholarly and even scientific. Their boasts in this matter are to be found upon every page emanating from their pens, and heard in every hall where one of their representatives secures an audience; but in spite of all that, we propose to state clearly and prove abundantly the exact opposite.The discoveries of science clearly indicate the existence of God. If it be true as Professor Leuba of Bryn Mawr contends, that the majority of teachers of Science in America are infidels, that is only proof of their superficiality and incompetence. It is not science that has made them so, but rather “a pseudo science”—evolution; and a false science always makes for unbelief, while a true one eventuates in faith. The outstanding experts in the established sciences of mathematics and astronomy have been outstanding believers, while the representatives of the Darwin speculation have just as unanimously been atheists, agnostics and skeptics of all sorts.In the very nature of the case, a study of the works of God impresses one with His personality, power, wisdom, infinity, and from the least speck of material existence to the infinity of the universe, all unite in declaring both His greatness and His glory.Man used to talk of monads and imagined that they were the smallest particle of matter; such language is now out of date.

The monad, so it is claimed, is a world of molecules. The ancient philosopher Giordano Bruno conversed of these as eternal and declared each of them a microcosm or mirror of the Deity.

Leibnitz regarded the monads as nonspatial units, each one representing the same universe, but presenting that universe from a different point of view, and each attaining its activities through the will of God. There was a time when biology thought of a monad as a simple single-celled organism; that time is past. A molecule was discovered; it was so small that men declared it the smallest part of a substance that could exist separately and still retain its composition and proportion; the smallest combination of atoms that would form a given chemical compound. But alas for the recent deliverances and the instability of so-called science! We are now told that each molecule contains 740 electrons and no man knows what will be the next deliverance upon this subject. It is evident, however, that the complexity of the simplest things is past the imagination of man.

When you rise in the scale of existences and consequently advance in the study of science, you come across the most mysterious secrets in the natural world-secrets so illusive that as yet the mind of the modern man has utterly failed to uncover them. But a few days since the Associated Press carried “For Science Service” an article proving the discovery of heatless light.

This suggestion is based on the fact that low forms of life have been found to generate heatless light. The bacteria and fungi that cause rotten wood to glow in the dark, and the mysterious firefly that can, with a wilful or automatic motion in his body, emit a heatless light out of all proportion to the best that man’s devices have ever approached; these bugs and bacteria becoming, as the article stated, at once the admiration and despair of scientists, but clearly indicating the acceptance of a mind infinitely above that of man. Man’s invention of light involves a slow combustion and always generates heat; not so with the light of the bacteria and the bug; and to date that secret is with God.We used to speak of the simple and the complex. Such language is rapidly going out of date; nature has no simplicities. When a molecule involves such complexity of constitution, and bacteria and bugs involve such complexity of mechanism, there is no such thing as the simple. God’s work, in its simplest form, exceeds the understanding of man, and our amazement grows as we acquire additional knowledge.The Psalmist said of his body,“I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works * *. “My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalms 139:14-16). In order to impress this truth one needs only to study physiology a bit.I don’t know that I shall even attempt to talk to you about the intricacies and efficiencies of the human eye. I will leave to others the detailed description of its lenses, the intricacies of its muscles, the delicacy and efficiency of its nerves. The eye constantly baffles the imagination and justifies Darwin’s statement, “to suppose that the eye with all its illusive contrivances for adjusting the focuses to different distances and admitting different amounts of light, could be formed by natural means, fails in the highest degree. But when it is all analyzed and the mind comes as near comprehending it as the human mind can, one simply stands amazed at the minutest evidences of the Divine, in the eye, and the proposition of an infinity fixes greater credit to the same.”But the eye is not alone. Let some physicist tell you of the 600 muscles in the human body, the one thousand miles of blood vessels in the human body, the 550 main arteries of the human body, or let him place before you the fact that 1,500,000 sweat glands spread out on the surface of the same, or that the lungs are composed of 7,700,000 cells, or that in the seventy years of human life the heart has struck 2, 500,000 beats and has lifted by its throbs a load of 500,000 tons of blood; and if this does not bewilder you, then let him add that the “nervous system controlled by the brain has three trillion nerve cells, while the blood itself is made up of thirty million white corpuscles and one hundred trillion native red ones”, and you will be ready to throw up your hands in despair in comprehension of your physical self. And yet, with such an intricate machine, completed perfectly, set in operation, apart from accidents and incidents of danger, known to function from 70 years, the natural limit of a person’s life, to 969 years, the longest on record, and who will say that there was no intelligent designer for this competent machine.But if the study of physiology does not suffice to impress one with all the wisdom and power of an infinite God, then let him lift his face to the heavens above and the stars will speak; and when he has been told that the moon Isaiah 240,000 miles removed from the earth and that the sun is more than 90,000,000 miles distant, he will begin to think in terms of space, and then he learns that the sun is, in science, more than a million times as large as our earth.

When his astonishment subsides a bit, strike his imagination another blow and tell him that the heat that radiates from that sun represents the surface of two trillion, 284 billion square miles, and that the heat from one single one of those square miles would drive three million ships across the Atlantic, and he will be limp. But, as a rest, suggest to him that there are 400 million suns, very few of which are as small as ours now known to the universe, and that a single one, Betelguese, has recently been computed to be two hundred fifteen million miles in diameter, over ten million times larger than our sun.

Also that Antares is three hundred ninety millions of miles in diameter equal to ninety-one million one hundred twenty-five thousand suns like ours, or 136,687,500,000,000 worlds such as ours! After he survives that, then add, “Some stars are so remote from ours that it takes sixty thousand years for the light from them to reach us traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second.” Then if he is not convinced and can hear more, remind him that the latest deliverance from the astronomers of the University of Chicago is to the effect that our discoveries thus far may prove to be only a little section of an infinite universe, and when he comes to himself, if he has a single grain of gray matter left, he will burst into the praises of the Psalmist: “The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament sheweth His handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge”. And when he has calmed himself he will conclude, “the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”!It is only unused light that leads to spiritual darkness. The naturalist who does not find God in the universe has utterly failed to correctly interpret anything in it, from its greatest central sun to its most insignificant bacteria. To go back to the text, Paul tells us exactly how the process is accomplished. “The invisible things of Him (namely, His wisdom, power, beauty and grace) from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead”. And then he tells us how it comes about that they failed to so connect the two as to create in their own hearts faith; and he indicts them with moral deficiency, saying:“When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, “And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four footed beasts, and creeping things” (Romans 1:21-23). It would be difficult, indeed, to see in all literature any more accurate description of the degenerating effects of Darwinism than the Apostle here pens. For inanity, could anything surpass the combination of infidelity and the acquisition of learning?The study of the smallest particle of nature until its constituent parts are understood; the investigation of the intricacies of the lower forms of life and their absolute adaptation to the ends for which they were intended; a look into the curiously and wonderfully wrought human body with its unimaginable multiplication of parts and its unthinkable arrangements for efficiency, a lifting of one’s face to the heavens and staggeringly attempting to imagine its extent, and then deny God? Only men whose imaginations are wild and whose foolish hearts are darkened and whose egotism hath puffed them up, could ever come to the conclusion of atheism. The portrait shown is impressed in the following words:‘There is no God, the fool in secret said; There is no God that rules o’er earth or sky. Tear off the band that binds the wretch’s head, That God may burst upon his faithless eye! “Is there no God?—The stars in myriads spread, If he looks up, the blasphemy deny; While his own features, in the mirror read, Reflect the image of Divinity. “Is there no God?—The stream that silver flows, The air he breathes, the ground he treads, the trees, The flowers, the grass, the sands, each wind that blows, All speak of God; throughout, one voice agrees, And, eloquent, his dread existence shows; Blind to thyself, ah! see him, fool, in these!” It is only false science that leads to the bestial philosophy of infidelity! Darwinism has never done anything else. Its history of 3,000 years since the days of the Greek philosophers and down to its most modern revival, first by Erasmus Darwin, and later by his grandson, Charles, has accomplished no better ends. Never, in the history of man, has it made one colossal character or eventuated in a single outstanding discoverer of nature’s secrets. The established sciences were found out and proven to the satisfaction of the public by believing men. Histories of these individuals is an open page.

They were not only men of God, but many of them ministers; men in touch with God, and consequently capable of interpreting the work of God. In the universities the professed scientists of this present day are not scientists.

What have they discovered? What contribution have they given to men by their knowledge? Certainly you do not count “The Hall of the Age of Man”, by Henry Fairfield Osborne, a contribution, since it is evidently a hypocritical pretense.Certainly you do not call Charles Darwin a contributor to modern science. His speculation has only succeeded in exciting an endless controversy. Why should you name Conklin or Davenport scientists? All that they have ever done was to mouth over what other men have said; neither has made any discovery!

Neither can you add Millikan since his published discoveries are not yet proven, nor have they received anything like assured acceptance. These men are either open unbelievers or largely advocates of the mechanical theory.Galileo was an ardent Christian believer; Copernicius, while a papist, had an unshaken confidence in God and his Word, and was brought up in the house of a priest.

Kepler was a ministerial student of such scientific tendencies as to triumph over the priest, and the works of Sir Isaac Newton show that he combined in one man a search for nature’s secrets and the discovery of the secrets of revelation; and lastly Mendel, the devoted monk, who, while about his pastoral duties, checked up many facts and discovered more of the laws of nature than all his boasted scientific brethren combined. Now let it be forever understood that Atheism is the enemy of science, and faith its father and friend.ATHEISM IS THE ENEMY OF SOCIETY God-deniers are not delightful souls! Go where you will throughout the world, when you find them you will not want to abide with them, and it would be difficult for God Himself to brook them.The first murder that stained the earth with human blood was wrought by a man who refused to recognize the sacrificial atonement as a type of the saving Christ. And when the flood came and wiped the earth with the besom of destruction, it was that it might rid it also of skeptics and atheists—men who had forgotten and denied God.There has been a stir recently in the circles of education and religion over the wave of suicide sweeping our colleges, and outstanding men have been discussing methods of abating this blot upon civilization. The solution of the problem is not far to seek. When the schools stop teaching an atheistic philosophy the fruits thereof will not be so openly found, and those fruits are despair, degradation and death.God-deniers are usually men of reprobate morals. You will seldom find a man who combines in one and the same person the philosophy of atheism and a course of upright moral conduct.

In fact, those of you who are informed as to the organization of “The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism,” and have read the object that they themselves set before their faces, will find therein a perfect illustration of our present contention. They personally declare “The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism” “will undertake to abrogate all laws for enforcing Christian morals.” Later they add they wish to contribute to better civilization by “operating as a wrecking company.”That is what atheism has ever been;—an enemy of Christian morals—“a wrecking company” indeed!

Had others charged them with this, they would, undoubtedly, have repudiated the charge; but now that they have asserted their purpose they can hardly complain. Intelligent and thoughtful men will remind them that they are running true to form. The history they make will of necessity be of a sort which atheism has known through all the centuries.The love of sin is the individual’s lowest estate. There are many unfortunate men and weak women who fall into sin, but who positively loathe the same. The adversary’s trap takes them; his pitfalls catch them, but they uniformly grieve their weakness, regret their folly and plead with God for recovering favor. But Paul says in this text that they come to the point where they not only give themselves up to uncleanness through lust, where they not only change the truth of God into a lie, worshipping the creature rather than the Creator, where they not only offend against God but even against nature itself, being filled with all unrighteousness, but where they actually have pleasure in them that do evil.That is the character of infidels! “The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism” deliberately publish their pleasure in them that do evil, and express the hope that “one representative from their camp may undo the work of a score of missionaries,” and that “a few thousand dollars spent in the circulation” of their infamous literature may “offset millions spent by the churches.”The drunkard is not the lowest man, but the man who takes pleasure in making other drunkards is lower still.

The harlot is not the lowest of women, but the woman who takes pleasure in teaching her sister harlotry is taking the last plunge toward the pit. The grieved doubter is not necessarily damned, but the man who destroys the faith of his friends and the professor whose teaching wrecks the confidence of students—such are allies of Satan himself!ATHEISM IS THE ENEMY OF THE STATE Civilization has not been the product of atheism. We challenge “The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism”, or any other advocate of this God-denying, soul-destroying doctrine, to show one instance in which their philosophy has built a state, or a single instance in which they have made anything but an evil contribution to the same. In view of this fact is it not amazing to find many school men—men set in positions of opportunity and responsibility, stealthily poisoning the minds of the young? “The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism” is quoted in the following: “Dr. Irwin Erdman, of Columbia University, teaches his students that ‘man is a mere accident’, that ‘immortality is a sheer illusion’, and that ‘there is practically no evidence for the existence of God’.“Everett Dean Martin, director of Cooper Union in New York City, has the largest class in philosophy in the world. He teaches his students that ‘religion is primarily a defense mechanism’, subjective in its organism.“Prof. John B. Watson, of Johns Hopkins, teaches that ‘freedom of the will has been knocked into a cocked hat’, and that the ‘soul-consciousness, God and immortality, are merely mistakes of the older psychology’.”The names of the gentlemen whom they quote should repudiate the charge and fling back to the men who have framed and published the same, if they be not true. If true they should resign as unfit teachers.All across this continent text-books are filled with their vicious work, going under the name of Science, which is being compelled to carry the straining burden of such statements, and society already feeling the consequences of the same, is but reaping the first-fruits of a bitterer harvest that is sure to come.Witness France and her plunge into atheism and the reign of terror that followed; or, take Russia and her present debauch of infidelity, and the natural disgrace coming in consequence.Civilization has ever been the product of religion, and false religion will produce poor civilization.

Heathen countries have illustrated this; yet, even their religion is helpful, and the wildest superstition has proven more beneficial than the most balanced atheism that ever voiced itself. If you want to know what the condition of any state or nation is, find out what its religion is and you can readily determine; it is as unerring as the electric needle!The world has suffered much from religion; Paul charged the people of Athens with being “too religious”.

Yet perhaps it can be said with absolute candor that none of these are so detrimental to society, so harmful to the state and so destructive to national life, as atheism or “no religion”. Christianity has produced the highest known civilization.There is not an ennobling influence known to humanity that is not the emphasized product of Christianity. There is not a desirable institution existing with any peoples that has not been fostered and favored by the Christian faith. There is not a philosophy that tends to the social, political and spiritual uplift of mankind that may not be found better phrased in the Bible than unbelieving men have ever expressed the same. The Christian faith, with its one and true God and its wondrous and true Book, has brought to the world more light and has given to living men more happiness than all the philosophies of unbelieving men combined; and the crime of the ages is not the murder of individuals, now characterizing and cursing modern society, but it is the sinister, devilish, damnable doctrine, now lurking in the halls of every university in the land and of all civilized lands, and seeking by smooth speech and in the name of “Science”, falsely so-called, to destroy the faith of men in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in His revealed Will, the Scriptures!The moral outrage of the century is the mouthing over of the name of Karl Marx, quoting from Bebel, Belfort Bax, Blatchford, H. G.

Wells and Van Loon and their like—men whose teachings are in perfect accord with Engels charge against religion that it was “a lie”, and Marx’ emphatic declaration, “The idea of God must be destroyed”, and Bax’ declaration, “The Christian doctrine is more revolting to the high moral sense of today than the Saturnalia of Proserpina could have been to the conscience of the early Christians”.Many universities are eaten up with such teachings. Such text books are intended to destroy the faith of the young men and women who study them in a personal God, in the Bible as the revealed Will of God, and in Christ as the incarnate Son of God, and in Christianity as His supernatural revelation, and so sovietize our schools as to make them hotbeds of Bolshevism.Let these text-books remain; let these professors, cloaked in the name of Science, continue their attacks upon the citadel of revealed religion, and the time will speedily be on when your schools will be maelstroms of immorality and political iniquity, and your state will be no more secure than is Russia, where this social gospel has triumphed against God and His Word!