<#><? Golden Age

Voltime IV                           Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, July 4, 1923                           Number TO

A Glimpse at the Current News

T) EADERS of The Golden Age are aware that we do not follow the practice, common with many periodicals, of glancing superficially at the news of the day, but prefer to take up a subject at a time and give it more thorough study. However, in this issue we depart from our usual custom and notice briefly the items w^Thich pass through our hands in one day.

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, has an article in the United Mine Workers Journal reporting that Charles Garland of Boston, a young millionaire, has set aside $800,000, which is being used to acquaint the mine workers of America with the policies and principles of Soviet Russia. Mr. Gompers is believed by many to be in the employ of big business or, at any rate, working in their interest. If this be true, his alarm at the spread of Soviet doctrines among the mine workers is easy to understand.

, From Cleveland, Ohio, comes the news that a reward of $5,000 will be paid by the sixteen standard railway labor organizations for information respecting the lynching of a railway shopman at Harrison, Arkansas, last January. The statement shows that there is no government in Harrison. Men are assaulted, flogged, and driven from home for expressing sympathy for organized labor. Two former employes of the same railway system, innocent of any crime, were imprisoned at the command of the mob. The murdered man, E. C. Gregor, was accused of burning a trestle which union labor men believe was burned as the result of a defective engine’s dropping live coals upon it. Gregor was not in the city at the time the bridge burned.

Prosperity and the Negro

HE United States is having a season of great prosperity. Wages are rising; there is a labor shortage. Wisconsin is proposing an unemployment insurance, all employers to be affected by the Bill except the government and those employing fewer than six persons. On. the fourth day of his forced unemployment the worker begins to receive from the insurance fund one dollar a day. The worker must have worked six months in the state, and must show that he is unable to obtain employment. This is a good time to plan what to do for the workers in times of unemployment. The prospects are there will be plenty of unemployment six months hence.

The Negroes are again on the march. The shortage of labor is again pulling them from the South towards the North. It is claimed that 32,000 Negro farm-hands in Georgia moved north during the past twelve months. It is known that 5,000 Negro laborers in North Carolina went north recently in one week, resulting in the shutting down of some fifty highway construction projects.

Thirty-four Negroes have been^fburned alive in the United States since the armistice- The American Committee for the Art School at Fontainebleau, France, refused a scholarship to a talented Negro girl,Augusta Savage, solely ’ because of her color. One of the members of the Committee is a Spanish Jew.

As the wages of the workers rise, the cost of living rises. The average weekly earnings of New York factory workers were in February seven percent above a year ago, while wholesale prices are eleven percent above.

Judge Gary, the head of the Steel Trust that = but a little while ago was inciting riots and producing anarchy in western Pennsylvania because workmen of the Steel Trust wanted better living conditions, continues to clamor loudly that there is a shortage of common labor ' in the United States. Let the Steel Trust provide suitable wages and proper working hours and working conditions to its employes, and it will have all the employes that it will be to the good of the country for the Trust to have.

Mining Items

TEN thousand earloads of powder a year!

(Not face powder, but explosives.) That is what we use in the United States. This would allow 43,177 pounds to each car, which is all the powder that any car ought to carry. It would make a train eighty miles long. Pennsylvania is in the lead, consuming over ten percent of all the explosives used in the United States. The other mining states follow in the order of their importance, West Virginia, Alabama, Illinois, etc.

American users of soft coal were charged from one hundred to two hundred percent more for their coal in April, 1923, than was charged them for the same kind of coal in April, 1922, although in the meantime there was no increase in the wages of the coal miners, no increase in freight rates, and no valid excuse for the increased charges.

The anthracite coal production jogs along at about 250,000 tons for each working day. This is 5,000 cars, with 100,000 pounds on each car, and makes a trainload thirty miles long every day that the mines work. In a hundred days this would make a solid trainload of coal all the way from New York to San Francisco. All this coal comes out of one little section of Pennsylvania, and it is no wonder that the people in that section are greatly interested in seeing that their homes are protected from mine caves.

The United Mine Workers of America claim that it was their five months’ strike in the bituminous region, and longer in the anthracite region, that put a stop to the wage-cutting spasm of a year ago. Their 600,000 men refused to work until they had a new contract at the old wage scale.

In the manufacture of cement the rock is ground until it is so fine that seventy-eight percent of it will pass through a sieve made of bronze wire which contains 40,000 holes to the square inch, and will hold water. It is calculated that the ordinary cement particles are so small that 6,000,000 of them are required to cover one square inch.

Sugar Thieves and Other Thieves

THE sugar thieves have made another haul.

The only remedy which the Harding administration seems able to suggest is the illegal, inconvenient boycotting of sugar by those who need to use it for canning purposes. Does it not seem strange that the government can be all-powerful when it comes to dealing with labor unions, and utterly helpless when it comes to dealing with the piratical New York bankers who engineered this latest stealT

People are chafing under the high cost of> transportation. They would like to have restored to them the sleeping-car fares which were in use before the war and which in all conscience were then, and would be now, high enough. Indeed, the Pullman Company receives no advantage, the surcharge of fifty percent going to the railroads. The railroads, seeking to retain their ill-gotten advantage, are whining about the extra weight of the Pullman cars, which they claim carry only twenty-eight passengers as against sixty in an ordinary day coach. The other night we counted sixteen upper and sixteen lower berths in a car. The Pullman Company advertises that two persons can sleep comfortably in each of these thirty-tw^To berths. Will not some statistician figure out for us how thirty-two berths, with two in a berth, makes a total capacity of twenty-eight?

Also, of late years the railroad companies have hit on a great scheme for increasing their revenue. They not only have raised the passenger fares from two cents a mile to the present high level, but have extra-fare trains between certain points. One road between Chicago and New York has so many “extra-fare” trains that it is difficult to find passage at regular fare. The extra fares are over and above the Pullman charges.

Secretary of Commerce Hoover has just made a speech carrying a cheerful tone regarding the business outlook, although he urges caution and warns against inflation. It was the last previous speech of Mr. Hoover’s that brought on the five hundred million dollar sugar squeeze, and we were in hopes that he would hereafter keep still; but perhaps that is expecting too much.

Sensible Legislation and Procedure

Senator Atwood of Columbus, Ohio, has presented to the Legislature a bill providing a jail term and heavy fines for second > offense violators of the Weights and Measures law. To back up his bill he cited several passages of Scripture, as follows: “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, ... in weight or in measure.’’ (Leviticus 19: 35) “Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.” (Deuteronomy 25:13) “A false balance is abomination to the Lord; but a just weight is his delight.” (Proverbs 11:1) “A just weight and balance are the Lord’s.” (Proverbs 16:11) “Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?” (Micah 6:10) Mr. Atwood’s bill was a sensible piece of legislation and he went at it in a sensible way. Not a vote was registered against his bill.

There are signs of returning sanity in the Legislature of New York State, where some of the vicious laws passed during the period of war mania have been repealed. One law was repealed, however, which ought not to have been repealed. New York State has now no law for enforcing the Constitutional provisions against the sale of intoxicating liquors. To have the highest law-making body of a country pass a law and then to make no provision for carrying out that law is anarchy.

In Houston, Texas, a grand jury has had the courage and the honesty to return twenty-six indictments against men engaged in terrorizing a community for two years by floggings and other acts of cruelty.

For the first time in more than three hundred years the Indians of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia have come together in an inter-tribal conference. Although there are only about two thousand Indians affected by this move, yet the plans contemplate an inter-tribal alliance of all the Indians of the North American continent. Such an alliance would have influence with the powers-that-be, and would be able to make itself heard in matters affecting the interests of the native American.

Anarchistic Government Employes

WOMAN in Oklahoma has presented to the Governor of that state forty-six signed statements showing that in the State Reformatory at Paul’s Valley boys have been whipped by drunken guards until the flesh looked as if it were burned or blistered with a hot iron, that one lad of sixteen committed suicide because of the terrible condition existing in the institution, that one boy suffered a broken ear-drum following a blow over the head, that as many as from a hundred to a hundred and fifty lashes were administered to one boy, yet none were excused from work the next day. One boy‘who had been at the Reformatory eighteen months stated that he had seen eggs but once.

The Nation contains an interesting story of a laundry solicitor of Scotch-Irish descent arrested in Washington, D. C., for attending a meeting of “Radicals” and for being a “Red.” He said:

“Let me tell you about some of the ‘red’ literature which was ‘seized’: Two copies of the Nation (O’Dea ran around with them crying, ‘See the kind of stuff these damned reds are handing out!’), a copy of Soviet Russia, a ticket for ‘Russia Through the Shadows’ (an animated picture passed by the National Board of Motion Picture Review), and a book on the Bahai revelation. I asked O’Dea why he had not brought my Bible along also. On the third morning of my imprisonment I was brought before an audience of men, and placed upon a platform in the District Building. One of them told me to explain how I became radical. I told them: ‘Through studying the life of Jesus, the Harvard classics, and the orations and writings of the founders of this republic.’ I was questioned night and day by policemen whose questions I answered because I thought I had to. These answers were exaggerated, twisted, and distorted day by day in the newspapers.”

We call attention to this matter because it strikes us that Mr. O’Dea is probably a Roman Catholic owning first allegiance to a foreign monarch, the Pope, and obviously, for other reasons, not a good American citizen. We call attention to this also because the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of public assembly and freedom of speech.

From these acts of anarchy on the part of a Government official it is a pleasure to turn to evidence that the Department of Justice is at last actually doing something for the people. The Government has won a suit against the Sanitary Potters’ Association and sent eight of the ringleaders to jail. These men had combined so as to control eighty-two percent of all bathroom fixtures except tubs, and were (it is estimated) two-hundred-percent-profit Americans. Thus they were adding to the difficulties of the housing question. They well deserve what they got, and the Department of Justice should give its attention increasingly to these and similar real enemies of this country. ■

The courts seem bent on breaking the workers of the country. Case after case piles uj

Showing injustices toward the workers. It is a bad thing to have the working people of the country convinced by decision after decision that they cannot expect a square deal from the courts. How it comes that the courts are blind to the fact that they are ruining the country by not giving a square deal to the workers in their decisions is beyond us.

Aviation and the Next War

HE next war will be fought in the air with gas and microbe bombs as the weapons;

and the claim is made that Germany, in spite of all restrictions, has now an air reserve second only to that of France, with America third. Nearly every country in the world is building up air fleets. The next war will aim to kill all classes, men, women, children, and at any distance from the front. When an airplane can fly from New York to San Diego in one continuous flight of twenty-seven hours and bombers can hit a mark one time out of five, it may be settled that the day of the battleship is past. The United States Government is now planning a flight around the world as one of the next achievements of the army air-service.

An American military aviator has flown 243 miles an hour. Today many airplanes can average 200 miles an hour. The French air strength at present consists of 5,000 machines—eight times that of Great Britain. The output of French machines is at a rate of eleven times the output of American airplane industries.

Germany is building up its airplane service, and therefore the number of airplanes available for military purposes, by carrying passengers and freight for less than two cents per mile. The American rate is seventy-cents per mile.

Among the horrors of the new war when it comes will be the cannon now perfected by tho French, that will enable them to bombard London from cannons located on the shores of France.

Senator Borah is pressing for a declaration outlawing war, and has as one of his supporters as great and wise a man as Elihu Foot. If a law like this could be passed it would put the true patriots of the country into the saddle, where they belong, instead of putting the power into the hands of those who are working against the interests of everybody, themselves included.

That Great Britain still believes in warships seems apparent from the fact that she is just about building a $55,000,000 naval base at Singapore. The explanation offered for this is that Great Britain may continue to have command of all the seas. This, it will be remembered, was supposed to be done away with as a result of the Washington Conference.

It is well understood throughout Europe that the Standard Oil Company is back of the grant made by the Turkish Government to Admiral Chester, giving him the right to reconstruct. Turkish ports, build railways, and develop mineral and oil lands. It is well known that it is this oil question which has caused the conference at Lausanne to be prolonged all Winter and Spring. Meantime, the delay in settling the questions at issue between Turkey and Greece caused an infinite amount of suffering to the Greek fugitives from Smyrna, and generally speaking, to the Greek inhabitants of Turkey and to the Turkish inhabitants of Greece.

Peace on Earth and Reparations

THE Los Angeles Examiner tells us (and we believe it tells the truth) that the single great State of Toxas, if it were properly drained, irrigated, plowed, fertilized, and intensively cultivated, could feed the entire population of the earth as it is today. Another paper draws attention to the fact that there is sufficient room on Staten Island (one of the five boroughs of the City of New York) to provide standing room for all the people in the world.

An impression has been widely spread that the Germans have paid practically nothing in reparations. The facts are that in the years 1918-1922 the Germans paid 42,780,000,000 gold marks. A gold mark is worth $.2375. The total amount in our money is $10,269,000,000. This is a German statement, and includes all payments to December 31,1922, as well as all property seized by the Allies or turned over to them. It is obvious that the more there is seized of Germany’s working capital in the way of property, the less Germany can pay hereafter.

deferring to the French refusal to accept Germany’s offer of $7,500,000,000 cash or any sum above that amount which an international commission might agree that she could and ought to pay, The Nation says:

“What the French are after today is an economic and militaristic despotism in Europe, and they propose to be the despots. They do not care a whit for the sufferings they are indicting by this policy upon Switzerland and Holland and Sweden and Norway and other innocent bystanders. They care not at all that their keeping all Europe in turmoil is endangering the safety and stability and the prosperity of every other nation in Europe. As Sir Philip Gibbs says, they ‘intend to smash Germany, and if we smash Europe in the process so much the worse’ for Europe. They are perfectly willing to continue to starve women, and children and to earn if need be the title of baby-killers, which a few years ago they bestowed with horror on the Germans. They are going right ahead, conscious that with their enormous army and unmatched air fleet they can impose their will upon England or anybody else. Talk about the German threat of world domination I If it ever existed ..utside of Allied propaganda, it was small compared to the menace of domination of Europe by Trance today. For Americans the humiliating thing about it all is not only that innocent American boys gave their lives to the number of 100,000 to produce this state of affairs, but that in the White House and State Department there is no leadership, moral or political, no one to call a conference to put an end to a situation which everybody must admit, whether he supports the French, the English, or the German position, menaces the foundations of civilization in Europe.”

Pope, League, and Jew

T^HE Pope has refused to make a statement of what lie and King George of England talked about when the latter monarch waited upon him on May 9. The Popo is planning to call a church council in 1925, and the Catholic press is claiming that the world-wide kingdom of Christ with the Pope as His earthly representative will be established in that year. This is a retreat from their former position, wherein they claimed for centuries that the Pope already ruled thus.

The League of Nations is still a vital question in England. The president of the Board of Education, speaking recently at Leicester, England, made the statement that “the policy of the League is the policy of the British Empire.” Throughout Britain the word is going forth in leaflets distributed far and wide that “the failure of the League means the uprooting of civilization, and the utter destruction of humanity. The next war will be inconceivably more hideous and terrible that the last. Alan-kind, unable to endure the agony of horror, will turn to anarchy. The world will be devastated from end to end.”

The Jews continue to make progress in Palestine. A local rabbi has referred to the recent visit of Dr. Chaim Weizmann in these words;

“The romance of twenty centuries, the rehabilitation of Palestine as a homeland for the oppressed, seems now to approach realization. Millions of dollars have already been spent and many more millions will be devoted to reanimating the old home of the Jew and making it again a center whence shall go forth inspiration to the Jews of all the world, help and guidance in the solution of the world’s problems.”

Britain, Russia, America

THE British Government seems to have more trouble in bluffing the Russian Government than any other government on which this frequent recourse of British statesmanship has been tried. Just as Britain is about to determine what it will do to Russia for failure to obey its orders, one of the Russian officials dashes two thousand miles by airplane from Moscow to London and sits in the gallery of the House of Commons so that he can hear the debate. On the same day Trotzky, the military leader of the Russians, who has defeated all the armies which Air. Churchill and other British statesmen have wholly or partly financed and sent against him, announces that he is ready for war; and the Russian people, angered by the murder of one of their statesmen at the Lausanne Conference, are eager to enter the fray.

England has other worries. The Labor members in the House of Commons have horrified the old-timers by singing a revolutionary song called “The Red Flag” on the floor of the House.

Despite the unprecedented prosperity of the United States in the past few months and its tremendous accumulation of wealth, London has regained its position as principal clearing house for international financial transactions. Its interest rates are more stable and lower than in New York. It is the great investment center of the world, as New York is the great speculative center.

The Pan-American Conference in Santiago, Chile, is pronounced a complete failure. The conference was unable to bring about any agreement for the reduction of armaments and was unable to convince Uncle Sam of the folly of pursuing an imperialistic policy in the Caribbean Sea and Central America. It seems quite clear that there will be no official Western Hemisphere League of Nations.

Stimulants, Vivisection, Religion

TEA, coffee, and tobacco are used in enormous quantities; and some one of these is used by almost everybody. Tea contains tannin, which dries up the tissues and shrivels the face. It produces wakefulness, irritability, and neuralgia. Coffee retards digestion, causes sclerosis of the liver and degeneracy of the kidneys, having an effect similar to that produced by Small doses of opium.

Inasmuch, however, as people persist in using coffee, many may wish to know how to take out coffee stains, especially from delicate materials. This can be done by brushing the spot with pure glycerine, rinsing in lukewarm water, and pressing on the wrong side.

Tobacco was abandoned as a drug because so many deaths resulted from its use, even when applied externally. Nicotine dulls the nerve centers and injuriously a (Teets every tissue, fluid, and organ of the body. It causes the loss of the delicate, bluish-white translucency of the tissue of the eyes, and sometimes causes blindness. A small part of the stain of tobacco smoke placed on the tongue of a cat causes the death of the cat in a few moments.

The curse of vivisection still goes on. Doctor Doyen of Rheims, still living, after removing from a patient a cancer of the breast, grafted a portion of the cancer upon the other breast, at that time perfectly healthy. In a few months the operation was a success; cancer developed in the second breast. In experimenting upon the infants under his care, Dr. A. H. Wentworth, Senior Assistant Physician to the Infants’ Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, punctured the spinal canals of twenty-nine children, five years and less of age. Some of them were punctured four times. Of these twenty-nine children fourteen died on the day of the puncture, and all but two within a very few days. After forty-five punctures, he admitted that the experiments had no value. At the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Dr. Roberts Bartho-low drove red-hot needles an inch and a half into the brain of a feeble-minded girl, Mary Rafferty. The experiment was not a success, as the poor girl died shortly in the greatest agony.

The Bible is to be rewritten. So it has been decided by the Reverend Stuart L. Tyson, Honorary Vicar of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. With several other "eminent” Episcopalians, the first steps were taken at the home of J. P. Morgan. It strikes us that this was a very appropriate place for such a meeting to be held.

Lawyers Back Big Business

ONCE in a while there is an honest lawyer, but not twice. The business of pleading the cause of the oppressed is one of the noblest in the world, but it requires courage, it requires honesty, it requires self-sacrifice; for the inducements of the profession are all in the opposite direction. Abraham Lincoln would never take a case unless he had first assured himself of the justice of his position; and then no matter how poor the client, he put all his great ability and his great heart into the case.

At a real risk to itself The Golden Age on ' September 13, 1922, published the thrilling story of Isaac Herman Schwartz respecting the virtual homicide of Ned Thompson in the p leased-convict lumber camp of the $800,000 Putnam Lumber Company of Eau Claire, Wis-

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consin, and Jacksonville, Florida. The story -gave the details of the flogging of Schwartz i almost to death, when he was so ill that he was unable to stand. Funds to pay for his release 3 from the terrible penalty imposed for stealing J a ride on a freight train came just in time to -save his life.

A pretty howdy-do was created by the publication of that article. It helped to bring to light the murder by flogging of young Martin Tabert of North Dakota in the same camp, with all the nice details of how the flogging boss, Captain Higginbotham, put his foot on the young man’s neck to keep him from writhing, while the boss finished the job of beating him with an eight- jJ pound strap because Tabert was too sick to a w^Tork at top speed ten hours a day standing in |

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water over his shoe-tops. It was a fine example of modern business efficiency—an $800,000 example.

The officers of the Putnam Lumber Company, and the stockholders, are probably nice people, church members, anxious to uphold our civilization, and to keep it from getting into the terrible condition of things in some of the European countries. The flogging boss is one of the means by which they hope, indirectly, to keep the “kingdom of God” intact. Boys should not steal rides on freight trains; if they do, inasmuch as a perfectly good "hell” awaits them hereafter for not being officers or stockholders in some one of the great corporations which furnish stability to our civilization, it is the duty of such corporation, through its lawyers, to arrange that such boys shall have a taste of hell in advance, and incidentally keep some of the officers and stockholders comfortably seated in their soft seats. So the convict-leasing system was worked out by lawyers in the.long ago and would be going in good shape yet, were it not for such offensive publications as The Got,den Age.

The publication of the Schwartz article got us into hot water. Oh, yes! But when you have had your feet in hot water for a sufficient length of time, you can put in a little more hot water and rather enjoy it. One of our subscribers, a most estimable gentleman, who was so offended that he really wanted to get us into trouble for publishing it, sent a marked copy to the governor of Florida, and only regretted that he did not have other copies which, so he intimated, he would have enjoyed placing where they might have done us the most harm.

But the trouble was that the Schwartz article told the truth; and by the time it got into the governor's hands he was in hot water himself with the governor of North Dakota and a delegation of North Dakota lawyers (honest ones) and judges who visited the state and began an agitation against the $800,000 efficiency system that had hitherto worked so well. Now the flogging boss has been indicted for murder, and the lawyer of the Putnam Lumber Company has the dirty job of trying to save his neck and to make things look as well as possible for the officers and stockholders of the Putnam Lumber .Company.

Already suggestions are beginning to appear in the papers that, after all, the Lumber Camp was a pretty good home, that Captain Higginbotham was only joking when he whipped these boys to death; that he lightly hit them only a few taps anyway (though some of the witnesses said not less than 125); and that the murdered boys, instead of being buried in the water, were given “Christian” burial in a real nice private cemetery which the Putnam Lumber Company keeps on its premises for all patients who die by accident or otherwise while at their sanitarium.

The despatches indicate that some of these wholesome suggestions emanate from the lawyer of the Putnam Lumber Company. Probably he is a college graduate. Very likely he has had a post-graduate course in law. Undoubtedly he is a church member. Without question he is anxious to uphold our Twentieth Century Sniv-elization, and without the least shadow of a doubt he does already have a poor opinion of The Golden Age and will have a worse one when he reads this little skit. Woe unto you lawyers!—Luke 11:46.

On April 20th, with but one dissenting vote, the Florida Legislature put an end to the leasing of convicts to the lumber companies of that state, which means that no more men are to be flogged to death in the prison camps of that commonwealth. The State Senate also took another matter in hand: It ousted J. R. Jones from the office of sheriff of Leon county. Jones was charged with securing “$20 a head” from the Putnam Lumber Company for every convicted prisoner he turned over to their lumber camp.

In the trial of Sheriff Jones the camp physician, Dr. T. C. Jones, testified before the special legislative committee that Tabert, the North Dakota boy, died from other causes and that he was unaware of any condition prevailing in the camp that would justify prisoners: complaining. The Legislative committee recommended in its report that the State Board of Medical Examiners investigate Dr. Jones “to the end that the medical profession be purged of a seemingly unworthy member.” Representative Kennerly of the committee said that the lumber company and its officials made a display of armed force to frighten a Negro ex-convict who offered to show the investigators the spot in the pine swamp where Tabert died and where other eonvicts had buried the body.

A Brief History of Trade-Unionism By George. ^lJ. Dunn (Canada)

ONE of the most characteristic features of modern industrialism has been the growth of various organizations for the promotion and protection of wage earners. No one can gainsay the fact of the rise of trade-unionism; for it is written on the pages of history over a period of 140 years. While in its earliest stages the movement was hardly discernible except to those most nearly interested, yet it was not long before its influence was felt.

The great opponent of labor has always been capital. These two giant forces, which are so dependent on each other, have never in history formed an alliance. Many efforts have been made to find a solution and bring about a peaceful state, but they can no more mingle than oil and water. Both sides are working for one selfish end, and that:

“The good old rule, The simple plan, That they shall get Who have the power And they shall keep Who can.”

Capital naturally has always had the best of it, for “money is the sinew of war”; and as capital is “that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth,” and as it does not matter how wealth is piled up or who suffers in the struggle providing the capitalist gets the profit, it is no wonder that the worker always had the worse end of the fight. But against all obstacles he has made progress. Concessions have been made grudgingly by the powers in control; the worker has had to battle against many influences—ecclesiastical, financial, and political. The ones to whom he has naturally looked for help, the preachers and teachers of the church systems, have always sidestepped the issue, and at the bidding of the financial and political rulers have used their influence against the common people.

One would naturally concede the exceptions that prove the rule; for during these years of struggle for better conditions men and women of all classes and vocations have stepped out boldly on the side of the worker. During the time when things looked darkest for the worker, when the common people began to realize their needs, and when the great struggle for freedom was starting, from 1781 onwards, at the time when legislators ■were passing laws in England to imprison those pioneers oi' the inalienable rights of all to live and have their share in the good things which they have helped to produce, Ebenezer Elliott wrote these lines:

“When wilt Thou save the people? 0 God of Mercy, when?

Not kings and lords, but nations;

Not thrones and crowns, but men.

“Flowers of Thy heart, O God, are they: Let them not pass, like weeds, away-— Their heritage a sunless day.

God save the people I”

History does not state whether he was imprisoned on a charge of sedition; but as we find his poem in church hymnals, maybe he had some pull with the ecclesiastical powers of his time. Had the poet been living but a few years later, when the time had come for the light to shine and for men to get an understanding of God’s wonderful plan of salvation, his heart would have been gladdened by such promises as that of Zechariah 8:8, in which through the Prophet Jehovah declares: “They shall be my people, and I -will be their God”; for in the Golden Age no man will need to say to his neighbor: “Know thou the Lord.”

Obstacles Toilers Have Met

CONDITIONS of labor at the beginning of the nineteenth century were indeed bad. In the year 1780 we have record that the bookbinders of London, England, were working fourteen hours daily, and were evidently the first to form themselves into a society or guild with the endeavor to better their working conditions. In 1786 we find that their hours were reduced to thirteen daily, the first concession to a trade-union.

In 1790 the hours of labor in England were practically unlimited, children working as many as fifteen hours a day. By 1794 the London bookbinders, who were evidently the union with the “pep” in those days, had reduced their hours to twelve daily. This success evidently scared the masters; for by 1799 a bill was put through Parliament making every form of trade combinations unlawful.

In 1800 another bill was introduced, and passed in 1801, which made it unlawful for workers to combine for the purpose of discussing an increase in wages, and which also provided punishment for those who refused to work for the amount of wages that the master considered it right to give. When we read that earlier economists such as Adam Smith taught that the price of labor should afford the worker neither more nor less than a mere subsistence, one can imagine what the toiler of that day was up against.

In 1820 the London Society of Compositors, who were then a Friendly society, requested that the masters of the printing trades receive a deputation to consider the wage question. The masters expressed their willingness to meet the delegates, and five compositors were sent as the deputation from the union. These five men were afterward arrested and sentenced to two years imprisonment on the charge of conspiracy; and one year later five bookbinders were imprisoned for the same reason. So the struggle continued until 1824, when a bill was passed through the English Parliament repealing the combination laws and giving tradeunions the right to organize.

By 1830 we find the Labor movement getting into its stride; organizations began to be prominent in the United States, and were becoming powerful in England. Persecution, however, was still in order; for in that year Richard Oastler began an agitation for a ten-hour day for factory workers, and suffered imprisonment. His work bore fruit; for many prominent men began interesting themselves in labor problems — Sir John Ilobhouse and Lord Shaftesbury in England putting through laws for the reducing of hours of labor for girls, children, and young boys under eighteen. In the United States, in 1840, President Martin Van Buren declared a ten-hour day for the [Navy Yard and other public works; and many other industries fell into line. In 1847 the ten-hour day became law in England, and the following year France followed suit.

By this time the trades-unions had become popular among the workers, and their membership was being numbered by tens of thousands. Financially also they were becoming very strong, and the result was that they became dictatorial in their attitude toward the employers. The latter formed masters’ associations for their own protection, and strikes and lockouts became numerous. The nine-hour day now became the bone of contention; but by 1872 the skilled workmen of England had won their point; for the majority were working a nine-hour day. The Trades-Union Act of 1871 had given a legal status to the unions; and both sides, capital and labor, being fully organized, the fight became more intense.

Free education had become a great factor in the lives of the workers, and with greater light and knowledge they saw more clearly the oppression under which they and their forefathers had been suffering. Dissatisfaction with their conditions increased, and many measures were brought before the House of Commons to advance the cause of labor. The lobbies were crowded with representatives of various labor organizations seeking interviews with their local members endeavoring to further their cause.

Employers sitting on both sides of the house fought these issues bitterly, and started a movement of their own to revive the ten-hour day. The result was more strikes; and it is interesting here to note that a strike generally affects more than the workers involved and, in most cases, that at least thirty percent more of other trades are affected and can be numbered among the unemployed.

Throughout the history of the trades-union movement right up to 1919-20 the fight was of a seesaw nature. But the representatives of labor were not to be denied; and factory laws for the betterment of working conditions and for the preserving of life and limbs of employes were passed, also laws for safeguarding the wages of the worker, making it illegal to stop any part of a person’s earnings without the consent of the one involved or through a garnishee order. To tabulate the successes and defeats of labor during this time would require a volume; for the workers in every part of the civilized world were agitating for better working conditions.

One outstanding event was the address of the deposed Kaiser of Germany to the parading troops, warning them that, if necessary, at his command they would have to fire on their own countrymen. The Labor-Socialist movement was getting so powerful in Germany that it had even gotten under the skin of the "all powerful.”

Labor, and in fact the workers as a whole, has always been an unknown quantity to the economist. Labor has a power the extent of which it has never been possible to fathom; and.it has upset many carefully laid plans of capitalistic corporations. Its chief and practically only weapon of offense and defense is the strike and boycott; and the endeavors of the leaders of capital have ever been to find ways and means to break or offset this powerful weapon.

During the years of the World War the worker came into his own. He was called upon to do the fighting, to supply munitions, food, and clothing; and nothing was too good for him. Those who were left to run the factories could have practically any wages they liked to ask for. The common people found that they were a very necessary part of the world of mankind, and began to appreciate themselves at their worth or, one should say, at the value the employer put on their services, owing to abnormal conditions. Then came the slump, and with such suddenness that the people were unprepared for the bad times. Some had used common sense and salted away some of their excess earnings; but the great majority had spent" as it came, expecting the good times to last indefinitely.

It was soon evident that 1920 was to be a bad year; and with the stoppage of factories unemployment became prevalent, wage reductions were put into force and many strikes were caused thereby. The power of trade-unionism had reached its peak by the Fall of 1919. Although represented strongly in Parliament and Congress, and with large surplus of funds, yet the trades-unions were not powerful enough to hold up wages at the time of the decline in 1920; nor have they been able to force increases since then.

The evidence of the decline of trade-unionism is strong. The working people are as strong as ever, if not stronger; and their strength will 'doubtless be shown in the near future; but the organized element is weakening. If these organizations have been so strong and have achieved so many reforms, securing better conditions and wages for the worker, why is it, at this time when politically and financially their position seemed so secure, that a decline has set in?

Henry Ford in an interview aboard his yaeht ' at Clayton, N. Y., on August 9, 1922, gave his view of this question when he asserted that the financial kings are responsible for big strikes. ■ He further stated that they are behind these walkouts, as they are behind every disturbance in the ranks of labor or capital; that all unions were engineered by capitalists, who knew that men could be more easily handled as units than as individuals. Mr. Ford’s statement is practically right, as events during the past three i years have shown.

The Power of Money

HE writer well remembers the visit of an j international official to the local of his

union in 1920. In the course of his speech to -the membership he made the statement that the ^i? Manufacturers’ Association of New York had a -special fund of five million dollars for the pur- t pose of breaking the unions; and he warned us i that this money would be used for bribing those A, officials of unions who were willing to use their influence against their fellow workers. The dis- 1 astrons strikes of the past three years seem to   1

show that this fund and many others like it   ‘

have had the expected effect; for no success > has come to the worker.                        i

From the end of 1919 wages have been cut from twelve to fifty percent with an average of j twenty-five percent. Mr. Clynes, Labor member 1 in the British House of Commons, in a recent 1 speech stated that wages of the worker have been forced down below the prewar purchasing value. Working hours in many cases have been | lengthened; and in smaller factory towns that | are not organized, conditions are very bad, as | bad as fifty years ago and with the strenuous S work of keeping pace with modern machinery ;a to make them harder.

In one Canadian factory town today, men are ’ a working sixty to sixty-six hours per week at a ?g wage of twenty-five cents per hour; and girls ’ the same length of time for one dollar per day.

Yet the same company which employs this labor . has an American factory in which the forty-   ^;

four-hour week is in force and the wages paid   j

are on the generous side. The employes in the .■ 1 latter ease, however, are working in a district ^; where labor has always been able to organize.

The labor-unions still have some prestige; j but with each defeat it lessens, and the unions in most cases can hut bear the blame. One remembers the walkout of the New York printers and pressmen in 1920—a quite legitimate act op their part under the then existing circumstances. But these men were outlawed by their Internationals, and their headquarter executives used their funds and authority to defeat their own members. This can be recognized as the beginning of the decline. It showed capital the weak spot in labor’s ranks, and we know now to what advantage they have used that knowledge.

We have seen the disastrous strikes of the miners, railroad men, machinists, and engineers in England, bringing defeat for the unions and depleting the funds not only of the strikers but also of most other labor organizations which went to their assistance. The result is that the unions, having no funds to fight with, have had to make the best terms possible for themselves when new contracts have been under discussion. So wage cuts have been universal.

Are the workers satisfied with the situationT Whoever knows the average English worker can give the answer to that question. Maybe one would not be able to decide from casual meetings and ordinary conversation. But get inside the shops; and if one gets the chance to listen in at the noon hour or odd times when a few get together, one would say that he had heard sounds like the rumblings of a coming storm.

In the United States and Canada we have seen many strong organizations in the labor world go down in defeat. The ill-advised strike of the printing trades for the forty-four-liour week is a case in point. This conflict which started in both countries in June, 1921, is still being fought out, with the unions on the losing side. The bookbinders and pressmen have practically owned defeat, but the Typos, though still in the fight, have failed in their object to weaken production and so force the employers to come to terms; for of the twenty-four leading cities of the United States we find only four producing over ninety percent on. the forty-four-hour basis, and two producing eighty percent. Of the other eighteen cities there are nine producing over ninety percent on the open-shop fortyeight-hour basis, and the others arc averaging seventy-five percent. Tn Canada the printing centers are overwhelmingly open shop on the

forty-eight-hour basis, and production is found <5 to be equal to the amount of work offered. The • International Typographical Union has a treas- j ury fund of $3,500,000, but it does not seem to get the members anywhere. Their striking adherents get good strike pay; but every week -finds them losing in other ways—in self-respect   .

and prestige, for instance.

There is a great difference in the way strikes are handled today compared with those of the past. We read daily in the press of acts of ’ violence on the part of striking railroad work- -ers, miners, and other organizations that are < fighting for the right to live. They received their lesson and example from the treatment of the steel workers, the brutality of which moved _ even some of the leaders of ecclesiasticism to ' action; and one can foresee this phase of labor . trouble getting worse as time goes on.          $

The worker is being irritated by the constant ' cutting into his rights. Many of the extra conveniences that were installed in large factories ’ during war-time have been removed — rest 7 rooms, hospitals, bath, dining rooms, etc. Th® employer feels that there is now no need to > make special provision to induce workers to stay with him and is looking forward to the time when, as shown in a cartoon of recent date, • * he will have the worker eating out of his hand; -for, as another of these one-time advocates of -the “big brother” system puts it, ’ “a hungry i worker is a willing worker.” The student of ~ economics can see the decline of trade-union- ; ism. A writer in the Sunday Chronicle (Eng- ~ land) used the expression in his article: “When J; Trade-Unions Were in Power,” implying something in the past.                                  ,

What, then, has the worker to look forward to? Some writers are giving the assurance that i the elections will achieve all that organized la- ' bor has failed to do. Doubtless the, worker will " use his last weapon, the ballot, and will fill the t Commons in London and the Congress in Wash- * ington with those who promise to further his 5 demands. But one can also read and realize that capital is well aware of this plan of cam- ' "J paign on the part of labor and is making its . plans to defeat it.

If labor would close up its ranks and present ’2 a solid fighting front to the forces of capitalism, J* a sweeping victory would speedily be assured -to them; but the leaders, especially of the Inter- -3

. -Si national bodies, have always rejected any suggestion of the amalgamation of all sections of labor into one solid organization. The leaders of capital knov»^T that they could not hope to win against the solid mass of labor, and have centered all their forces on individual organizations, using their power to force strikes at the most convenient time to insure an issue successful for the capitalistic side.

If this state of things were to continue, it would be a dreary future of hopelessness the toiler would have in view. But God has prom- ‘ ised through His Holy Word that this shall not always be; for by His prophet He says that He will loose the bands of wickedness, and undo the heavy burden, and let the oppressed go free, and that every yoke of bondage shall be broken.—Isaiah 58: 6.

Save the High Schools from Barbarism By Irene Davis

A PASTOR in the southern part of the country writes in a recent Christian -weekly of the dangers that threaten the young people of this and coming generations, through the dance problem in our public schools.

The pastor tells that some time ago he spent an evening in the home of a distinguished professor emeritus of an American University, and in the course of the conversation this experienced educator stated that he was one of a committee selected to pass upon the merits of a number of competitive essays from writers scattered over the United States, the purpose of the essays being to suggest methods of dealing with immoralities existing in the public schools of the country. So shocking had these immoralities become that a prize had been offered for the best essay telling how to deal with them. Since that time conditions do not seem to have improved, but rather grown worse. “So serious and alarming, indeed, have these conditions become, at least in some communities,” said he, “that I am convinced that the high schools of our cities are threatening to paganize America.”

He rightly deplores the dance craze which has struck our city high schools amidship, and which is producing results that might be expected. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The published news growing out of this condition is often unfit to read.

He said that in one city three hundred mothers had opened war on immorality among high school students, “booze parties and dances.” He stated that in another city the police authorities have taken steps to regulate the highschool club dances. Dancing is the order of the day in some high schools, being a part of the regular school program. “Mixers” are had from time to time. A high-school dance party was held one night, and two mothers were talking of it the next morning. “My daughter did not come home until three o’clock in the morning,” said one mother, “but I slept well because I -knew that one of the boys would chaperone her home.” “Ah!” replied the other, “I could not sleep for that very reason, but waited up until my little girl came home; and I think it high time that all mothers were awake on this allimportant theme of their daughter’s salvation for body, mind and soul.”

The principal in one high school charges that some of the girls openly practise things in matters of dress that border on the indecent, if indeed they are not positively so. From one ’ city comes the report that certain high-school boys and girls had indulged in an “outrageous bacchanalian orgy.” “Cheek to cheek” dancing had been openly practised. Doubtless these instances could be multiplied, but these are sufficient to show the drift of things. Another deplores the atheistic; teachings in certain high . schools.

Someone has said that the general craze for the dance in its extreme and indecent forms seems to be a part of the nation’s inheritance from the late war; and that the tendency toward • the wickedness of Sodom and its immorality is the natural outcome; that this was why God permitted so many in decadent Europe to be destroyed. “The nation that forgets God shall perish."

A French Senator recently gave the solemn warning that “France will fall as Rome fell unless there is a regeneration of morals.” He pointed out that the latest revue in the biggest music hall in Paris had ten naked women in one scene. The Senator declared:

“This city is plastered with immoral theatrical port-

ere. The dancing clubs are filled with half-dressed women. Even the street costumes of women are immoral. Women who come from the best families walk in the streets in indecent gowns, flaunting their physical charms. Unless all this is stopped, France will fall just as Some fell and for the same reason.”

The pastor points out that the time to call a halt is when there is a fighting chance to remedy the situation, and not after the texture of our civilization has been corrupted and weakened by rampant worldliness and unblushing shamelessness. If the tendencies in our high schools, pointed out above, continue unchecked, they will increase in strength until they become dominant; and then indeed the stream of our national life will become hopelessly corrupted near its source. There will be no desire for pure reading or spiritual literature. Even now, in order to hold their own, the denominational organs are paying all they can afford to writers of stories that will entertain, amuse, and please the pleasure-loving side of the reader.

Here are some of the remedies that are suggested :

• 1. “Make a clear and. definite and insistent call for tome of our finest young people to choose teaching in the public schools as a life profession. It is high tim# for us to look upon this form of service, not as a Bid# issue, nor as a stepping-stone to something else, bul rather as a high and holy task worthy of the best talent and the best energies of our choice young men and women. We need Christian colleges for the training of Christian teachers for our public schools just as imperatively as we need them for the training of minister# and missionaries.

• 2. “Dare to utter insistent and repeated warning# against the dangers that are threatening the students of our high schools. As we plan, great things in other directions, let us not carelessly allow the stream of our national life to be hopelessly poisoned.

• 3. “Demand of local boards of education that dancing be eliminated from the public schools. If parents wish their children to dance in spite of all the warnings that are given, they can send them to private dancing masters. But there are thousands of parents who do not want their children to learn to dance. -Under the prevailing arrangements their children are virtually forced to dance or suffer social ostracism in school life. Public school authorities are under no obligation to foster a practice in the schools that is, or was until recently, condemned by nearly all of the churches in the land. Therefore let vigorous protest be made. And if this protest is unheeded, carry it into court as has already been done in one case with success.”

  Just Over the Hill By John W. Baker

  
  

LISTEN, my friends 1 Just over the hill is another holocaust of death, destruction, bloodshed and misery, many times worse than was the slaughter from 1914 to 1918 to which your loved ones were driven.

Just over the hill your houses of worship will again be turned into recruiting stations.

Just over the hill will your ministers, professedly of God, again volunteer as recruiting officers.

Just over the hill will murder and hate again be taught.

Just over the hill will your lips of protest again be sealed and your last spark of liberty vanish.

Just over the hill will you again hear the blasts of war trumpets, and the thud, thud of military hosts tramping behind the drums that are leading on to death!

Just over the hill will you again hear the hypocritical cry: “Save Liberty, Democracy, Freedom, Civilization, Christianity”—or something else.

Just over the hill will you again be ridden, tortured, insulted, jabbed, and forced to buy bonds, bonds, and bonds.

Just over the hill will you again hear the epithet, “Slacker,” when you will have done more than you are able.

Just over the hill will you again witness, as never before, rivers of blood.

Just over the hill will you again, dear fathei and mother, kiss, caress, and bid farewell to your fair sons, never again to see, speak to, kiss, ot caress them, but to pine your lives away in horrified memory of the demon who took them from you. War again is at the door. And who is war!

War is the associate of death, destruction, misery, sadness and sorrow; war is the demon who refuses all food save human flesh; war greedily gazes into the faces of infants and impatient to wait for them to mature to battle age; war rips the heart from mothers, fathers, sisters and sweethearts and wrings the last ounce of hope therefrom; war with beak and cldw tears the last and only son from parents, their last support, their last hope; war robs the land of its manhood, and then advises our sisters to speed up *\nd become mothers; war urges lax marital laws and encourages harlotry and whoredom that his ravenous appetite shall never run short of human bodies; war is a product of imperialism and run-down systems 'of government.

: Upon the ruins of this dying civilization, will grow and flourish, to the honor of man and the glory of God, the Lord’s earthly kingdom wherein freedom, love, happiness, the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God will reign supreme.

Over there, in the valley of peace, beyond the next “hill” there will be no more hills to climb, no more graft, no more fraud, bribery, and greed, no more war to maintain wealth and power of the few over the many, no more Slavery and bondage, no more need of a Moses to lead the people from bondage, no more Pharaohs to detain them, no more rending of hearts and withering of souls.

So be of good cheer, my brothers and sisters. Soon we shall have the opportunity of steppingout upon the calm plain of rest, peace and righteousness, where we shall no more gaze upon and ponder over the ruins of the ages; we shall no further travel upon the highway of the ages paved, mortared and cememjd with human blood, flesh and bones! Come, I bid you, let’s be on our way; we have now been too long on this miserable journey with its crimson tinted highway, marked with mileposts of human skeletons.

I see the golden hue on the horizon indicating the sunrise of a new and better day. So make ready, ye toiling masters of the earth. Stand erect and, with clear vision, greet the new day.

The Worship of Precedent By Cyril Williams

MAN in general is naturally given to worship. He must worship somebody or something. The world is in trouble. The earth is full of trouble. Can any give the reasons why this is sol We think so.

Perhaps one of the most fruitful causes for present troubles is found in the fact that mankind’s proclivity for worship is, and always has been, turned in the wrong direction. It is recorded in the Bible that men worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. For over six thousand years mankind have not known the Creator. Not knowing Him they have not been able to serve Him. It is not strange therefore that man’s penchant for worship has found a ready outlet in his adoration of the creature. In serving the creature he has consistently served and worshiped idols. Of these idols Precedent is one of the greatest. As a mighty ruler it has swayed the hearts and minds of men in every age. Its rulership is in no wise abated in our own. Hoary with age, Precedent has throughout the ages played a great part in the subjugation of the people. Binding its tentacles tighter and tighter round the mentality of its subjects it has forced all to worship and pay homage — through habit. Webster, defines Precedent as: “Something previously . said or done; serving as an example to be followed; a parallel case in the past."

Mankind, roughly divided into two great see-tions,have bowed down in adoration before this fetish, this joss, this god. These two great sections we call the Civil and the Ecclesiastical. We take a brief look at the Civil. Governments come and governments go, but Precedent runs on forever. Does one government come into power upon the ruins of another, does a new one rise Phoenix fashion from the ashes of its predecessor, it still must be swayed by the acts and methods of the past! In a striking manner this is to be seen in the courts of law. Under the civil administration these courts carry out the function of justice (T). Someone has broken . the law. The stage is set. Argument follows argument, while the small morsel of flesh and blood (the defendant) tossed like a shuttlecock from side to side tries, most times in vain, to follow the seemingly endless labyrinth of the legal mind.

Imr «, 1&23

Justice Defeated by Precedent

UT halt!

_           Council has struck a knotty point—a rock.

[         There seems to be a doubt as to the guilt of

the- defendant.

iir         But listen: “My Lord, in the case of so-and

O so tried before Judge Wiseacre at such-and-such a place we have a precedent covering this point.”

Gone is that equity which should judge the offender and we have this god “Precedent" enthroned. One can almost see (he can certainly feel) the awe which seizes the ministers of the crown as their favorite joss is elevated and adored. What matters it if on really moral grounds the poor shivering wretch in the dock could be given the benefit of the doubt¹? It matters not. Our god “Precedent" has spoken. To extend mercy would only place on record another precedent, and a merciful precedent is dangerous. Of course, this is not always the case; but many times human flesh and blood has been imprisoned and oftentimes destroyed, that the hungry maw of Precedent might be filled and the dignity of the established order perpetuated.

And what shall we say of the Ecclesiastical section? Is this not the stronghold of Precedent? Verily. The average ecclesiastical mind has truly been likened to the oyster. It opens when it has a mind to do so. That, in the ecclesiastic’s case, is not often. One approaching with a new thought would have to wield the crowbar I Throughout the many-centuricd night ' of sin, men have worshiped mostly as their fathers did before them. Observe the church class of our day! How many nominal churchgoers attend their respective churches from personal conviction ? Not many. Ask the Roman Catholic how he managed to become a Catholic. If he is honest he will invariably reply: “Why, mother was a Catholic.” He does not think it strange that he is a Catholic. Ask a Presbyterian the same question. "Why, father was a j        Presbyterian.” Of course he was; and so they

V       all go on in their blind worship of their favorite

■         joss. Passing strange that these very people

never pause long enough in their worship to /-       enquire whether Jesus was a Catholic, a Pres'        byterian, a Methodist, or a plain Christian.

And yet these self-same people hold up their hands in holy horror at the heathen-ancestor-

A

' -'.'A? worshiping Chinese. Precedent is certainly blind to consistency. This has been a potent ■ instrument in the hand of a debased priesthood ' in all ages.                                           ’

Idol Worshipers Everywhere

ET us get nearer the heart of this kingdom of “parallel cases in the past.” Ministers .

of today are glad to tickle the ears of profiteers. These men are mostly plain robbers. They dress -well and above all they give well, and so in the name of Precedent they are hailed by an apos- ' tate clergy as true Christians. They are "pil- . lars” of the church. They have been called " caterpillars—crawlers. Precedent has made it possible for them to be welcomed into the ~ churches of today. They have always been wel- -come in the nominal church of the past. Jesus said of the Pharisees of His day that they loved ■ the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief ~ seats in the synagogues. Today there are Pharisees in the pulpits, and Pharisees in the pews; ; and both are true to Precedent—their idol. <

Again, in Luke 11:42, Jesus said of this , class: “But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye •= tithe mint and rue, and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God.” And they did and still do this because of their love of Precedent. How deeply is the worship of this fetish implanted in the human heart is seen from even a cursory study of the home life .■ of the people. Take mother! She brings the ■ bairns up mainly on the ideas she has learned from Precedent. These ideas were given to mother by her mother. Her mother got them -from her mother, and her mother’s mother got '. them from her mother. So it is at least plain where they did come from. And father, too. He unconsciously treats Tommy as his father J treated him. And the same was true of fathers father’s father.

We notice in passing, the morals of the rising , generation. They are not high. Can Precedent have anything to do with this question? Alas! -Precedent lies at the root of the matter. The j lack of knowledge along sex lines can and must J be laid at the parents’ door. In their blind _ worship of their ancestors’ ideas they have 1 failed to enlighten their offspring on this vital j-point. Has not Precedent manifested itself in * the “hush-hush” policy? Hear the excuse! “IPs J? were not told; therefore we obey the dictate!

bf our tin-pot joss, and we dare not tell you.” This is the plea of ignorance.

Is this subservience to an idea, to an idol, to reign forever in the hearts and minds of the people? No! Thank God that the better day, the day of enlightenment, is here—the day in which the blind minds will be flooded with light. The day of the emancipation of the people has come. Even now this idol is tottering to its fall. In the clash of ideas preceding the "Just” age, Precedent is counting for less and less. Why? The answer is not far to seek. The invisible King is here and Satan is being dethroned! The kingdom of the Lord is here! “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

The Three Claeeee that are Fooled

E THAT sits upon the throne will not say to the politicians: “Of course in My new kingdom there will be ample scope for political graft; for precedent demands it. It would be a pity to disrupt the ideals of ages.” He that sits upon the throne will not say to the financier: “I will be perfectly willing to allow you to finance My new schemes, and in return guarantee that you will reap more than your fair share of the profits. It would certainly be unjust to defraud you of the gains of your usury

Biwmnt, N. 1,   '

that precedent immemorial has given you.” He ■ that sits upon the throne will not say to the ecclesiastical element: “I shall be glad to re- . ceive your worship and your support (it will —~ be so useful in keeping the people in subjection); and I agree to let you do it in your way.

It certainly would be a shame to stop your '' using those pretty candles, that beautiful altar, _ those handsome vestments (My! Don’t those jewels shine); and you are certainly entitled ; to all the incense, all the mummery, and the     j

flummery; and the fire, and the flames, and the

asbestos garments for the damned (they did seem to fit the other fellow well) that Precedent has plainly told you is your stock in trade.”

Ah, no! Already from the viewpoint of the New

King this poor old joss is dead. Thank God that > its votaries will not be destroyed with it; but that cleared and cleansed in vision they will not

even bring to mind the former things; and

freed from the baneful results of evil piece-

dence, they wiU rejoice in the glories of the

restored earth. The only vestige of the reign ; of this god "Precedent” will be the remembrance of the lessons learned through its foolishness. The function of the new kingdom is ; to bless all with peace and truth. And all will yet rejoice in its glory and greatness; and that i will be without Precedent.

Land-Values Money Again

THE Golden Age’s item on the foregoing subject elicited the following comment from the author of the pamphlet which was under consideration:

“The foregoing is a fair sample of the reasoning that flows from the brain of the newspaper editor of the present day when he discusses topics relating to the subject of money! It illustrates the fact that even a highly educated scholar cannot intelligently discuss a subject that he doesn’t understand.

“Incompetency to discuss finance is so apparent in this criticism that we shall not disprove all the silly assertions with which it abounds. There is but one allegation in the effusion to which it will be necessary to reply in order to show the critic’s utter lack of monetary knowledge!

“We refer to the statement that:

“'The pamphleteer imagines that this would be a money secured by wealth behind it?

“The author of the measure does not ‘imagine’ what he is accused of imagining! What he imagines and demonstrates to be true is, that absolute money does not need to be ‘secured by wealth behind if ! He shows that legalized currency, endowed by sovereignty with legal power to discharge contract obligations becomes, like metallic coins, the most available and desirable form of riches known!

"In predicting the dire consequences that would follow if Uncle Sam should conclude to monetize enough durable wealth to obviate the use of bank credit in commercial dealings, our critic says:

“‘The effect would be to run up all land values by forty percent. Land would be bought by speculators at a figure to net them a profit on the forty percent of currency, to be then issued to them at their request?

"In his eagerness to demolish, summarily, so radical a proposal, the editor of The Golden Age has reached a hasty conclusion and indulges in unwarranted speculation. He does not say, for example, of whom speculators would be able to buy land at a figure that would afford them the advantage he says they would deviva,

On the contrary he assumes that the 'speculators’ he has in mind would be crazy enough—if given the opportunity—to pay $1,000 for a piece of land because, under the proposed financial system, they could get $400 on it for an unlimited period at a nominal rate of interest. This prediction is oh a par -with the academic reasoning in relation to money that characterizes the editorials ■ of the entire New York press. This assertion cannot be successfully refuted!

“Our critic admits that one of his objections could be obviated by making the money issue a first lien on the land, but to this provision he says: 'The citizen would object.¹ We are not informed why the citizen would object to so rational an arrangement; why he would be unwilling to give in exchange for money a first lien on his land, as The Holden Bill provides, when the lien does not bear interest and does not mature so long as a nominal charge for making the system self-sustaining is kept up.

“The lien is proposed—not for the purpose of giving value to the certificates, but merely to limit the issue and to insure prompt payment of the nominal tax that is levied for the purpose of making the constructive measure self-supporting. Productive land is utilized in the interest of society: to regulate the volume and to prevent fraudulent and unjustifiable issues!”

It is proper for The Golden-uek Age first to square itself with the truth by acknowledging that it was in error in assuming to discern the mind of the writer; and to acknowledge that, as he says, he did not imagine that currency of the kind he advocates would be money secured by wealth behind it.

It continues, however, to be our belief that such a plan would open the door to the influx of certain very serious conditions.

If the government should issue money to the extent of forty percent of the valuation of land, on request of and to the owner, the money not being a lien on the land, like a mortgage, it is plain that land on which the forty-percent arrangement had not been made would be worth just that much more than land on which the arrangement had been executed. It is the same as though each plot of land had buried in the earth a pot of money or a vein of metal. The land with the gold taken out would be worth less than that with it not taken out.

If the forty percent is a lien on the land, it leaves the owner only a sixty-percent equity, depreciating the selling price by that much. If the land is already mortgaged, what equity would a further forty-percent lien leave the owner 1

It has been a quite general experience that currency devoid of wealth or substantial value behind it, possesses certain inherent weaknesses, attributable partly to human nature, which have made it advisable rigidly to restrict the volume of such currency.

When there are two kinds of money, one with real value and the other without it, the people naturally prefer the money with real value. : This is not so apparent when the volume of the non-value currency is kept to a very low figure, as when the restrictions are loosed and the volume increases. When this takes place, the people begin to hoard the valuable currency, more and more rapidly, and the non-value currency depreciates in purchasing power.

It may be said that the volume will be permanently restricted to forty percent; but the r experience of other countries is that when the valuable money begins to disappear, the government becomes hard up for funds and begins to issue non-value money to pay its bills. The necessities of the politicians—not statesmen— running affairs compel them, in the face of _s political ruin, to postpone some of their troubles by the simple expedient of starting the printing presses on more money. This is the cause, in part, of the monetary troubles of Germany, Austria, and other countries, and is what comes from the issuance of any considerable volume of such currency. Any country that desires to court such troubles has only to increase the quantity of non-value or “fiat” money to the point where it begins to displace valuable § money. We believe it is plain to even the very uneducated, that when there are two kinds of ? money, valuable and non-valuable, anyone will prefer to possess the valuable money, and the j. more so as the non-valuable money shrinks in purchasing power.                              ~ j

It might be asked: How can it be certain that non-valuable money issued to the proportion of ’ just forty percent of land valuation will always, j in good times and bad, be in just the proper limited quantity to be kept from depreciating " in purchasing value! If it exceeds at any time by even a trifle the limit where its purchasing power shows shrinkage, hoarding of the vain-able currency begins—and the trouble is on.

Also, where will the high-minded brand of ■ & politician be found who will perpetually exer-cise the self-control to keep the volume of fiat .*4 money down below the non-shrinking point? Governments are run, as a regular thing, by politicians. In moments of crises statesmen arise, for a time, but the business of governing inevitably draws in the politician type for the year-in-year-out government work. To the politician’s mind it is difficult to levy taxes enough to keep voters satisfied with the office-holder, and so easy to print more money, even if it should be worth a little less. To open the door to fiat money in large volume is to start on the toboggan slide that has so swiftly swept Central Europe to its ever lowering level.

There is doubtless a condition where the vol-ume of money or credit—the same thing.—is insufficient; but the main trouble requiring ■ remedy is the unequal and inequitable distribution of it. The Golden Rule is the only solution. ■

We may not like all that is done by the -bankers, but the common people can be thankful that applied selfishness in their instance gives and maintains a money with real value behind it.

Items on Birth Control

(From an address by Mrs. Myrtle H. Roper before a Convention of the United Farm Women of Alberta. Printed by request.)

THE nations with the highest birth-rate began the World War: Germany with 31.7 per

1,000 of her population; Austria with 33.7; Russia with 50; and Serbia with 38.6. Later Italy with her 38.7 came in, as the world is informed today, upon the promise of territory held by Austria. Among the persistently neutral countries, we have Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, all with lower birth-rates, the average being slightly over 26.

Germany, the leader in the struggle, increased her population from 41,000,000 in 1871 to 67,-000,000 in 1918, while her food supply increased B very small percent.

In 1913 the Berliner Post had this statement:

"Can a great and rapidly growing nation like Germany always renounce all claims to further development or to the expansion of its political power? The final settlement with France and England, the expansion of out colonial possessions in order to create new German homes for the overflow of our population— these are problems which must be faced in the future.”

H. G. Wells in a recent article tells us that the next war will be brought about by the problem of population. He says:

"Japan is teeming and she must expand; and unless modern social and political organization supplies a new and more humane process of adjustment before it is too late Japan will go to war. It is assumed that Japan will go to war within the next generation in order to provide breathing apace for her overcrowded population.”

It is a well-known fact among social workers that sub-normal parents are more prolific than normal ones. Miss Brooking, superintendent of the Alexandra Industrial School, Toronto, in speaking of the delinquent girl who she says is generally unbalanced, sometimes feebleminded and almost always undernourished, makes this statement:

“The importance of the problem is seen in a moment’s consideration of the special influence wielded by the ‘mother sex.’ It may be said that the effect on the race will be negligible, that this type is of small importance, that the very- effects of sin lessen the danger of reproducing their kind, that the delinquent girl if unreclaimed frequently dies early. So she does. But I have known her to become the mother of nineteen children-first, and then die comparatively early. I have seen four children before the mother was twenty. Many of these poor, unfortunate children may, probably will, die early, but enough will live to contaminate the race.”

Sixty percent of all prostitutes are feebleminded; seventy-five percent of the cases of venereal diseases are traceable to prostitutes. The New York Department of Health in 1914 stated that twenty-five percent of New York’s population of 6,000,000 have venereal disease of some kind. Do you know what happens to babies born of parents affected with this disease ? They arc born blind or diseased. If they live at all, very few are normal. I could quote innumerable statistics, but shall give only the observation of Kaufman, this taken from the pamphlet, “Prevalence of Venereal Diseases in Canada”:

“Among nine syphilitic couples there were sixty-six pregnancies; these included thirty-three abortions or still-births and thirty-three living children. Of the thirty-three living, twenty died, four during the first year of life, three suicided, two were epileptics and died at the age of forty. Thirteen are still living of whom only two are normal. In the face of these facts should, people suffering from these diseases continue raising

children to further contaminate the race? Should, they be denied contraceptive information? Should tubercular parents be refused the information, especially when sixty-five percent of the women afflicted with tuberculosis die as a result of pregnancy? Or perhaps their children live; are they healthy or tubercular? More often the latter.”

These statistics do not tell of the overworked fathers, of the unceasing and increasing pain of overburdened mothers, of the agony of children fighting their way against the handicaps of ill-health, insufficient food, lack of education, and toil that breaks the spirit.

But even if there is no disease in the family, can any woman stand the annual baby? Physicians say that there should be two or three years between the children; that this is absolutely necessary for a mother to regain her strength and replenish her system. We hear much of woman’s place being in the home. Granted that it is, but that does not necessarily mean that any woman shall have so large a family as to make a drudge of her for the rest of her life. Neither does it mean that children should come when there is no money with which to provide for them. The first right of the child is to be wanted.

Perhaps those who object most strongly to birth-control are the people who argue that it is against religion. Many Bible students tell us that there is nothing in the Bible which condemns the use of preventives. The simplest way is for all who believe it wrong to refrain from using those means, but not to try to force their morals on people who are guided by different standards of morality. “Religion is a matter of faith, not reason.”

In Holland, where for forty years they have had birth control, they have less illegitimacy, less abortion and less prostitution. The same is true of New Zealand. Holland has a higher percentage of physically fit men in its army than any other European country; and the average stature of the Dutch has increased over four inches in fifty years.

When we consider natural resources, Holland is the poorest country in the. world. The very land exists only through the perseverance of the inhabitants who keep it and themselves from sinking into the sea by an intricate network of dikes. But in spite of this it is the most prosperous of small countries. In Holland practically every child born is wanted, planned

for ahead of its coming, and tenderly cared for afterwards. The stork brings no surprises. ' Fewer children are born, but a greater number of them live.                                           ^r \

The sanity of Holland’s birth policies is . emphasized if you visit Holland. In Holland the children might wear patched clothes and wooden shoes, but their little legs are sturdy and their cheeks rounded. To show that this was not always true of Holland, we need only ¹ quote Dr. Rutgen:

“I remember in my youth the houses of our poor ■ were deplorably overcrowded and the slums of our cities were a disgrace. Most of the families are now held down . to one, two, or three children; and to see how decently -people in the most modest circumstances now rear and J educate their young is to realize at once the wonderful -i results of the movement.”                                  -

Methods of regulating the birth-rate are known and practised in New Zealand today by the entire community. The information has been available for more than a genera- _; tion. Preventives are on sale by chemists and specialists; and doctors, nurses and private individuals are free to give the information. ’

The birth-rate of New Zealand, 263 per 1,000,   ‘

is low compared with other countries, but its death-rate, nine per 1,000, is so much lower than theirs that it has the highest natural increase; 17.3 per thousand. Australia comes next with an increase of 11.76. These figures > are in happy contrast with those of the United States, where in 1916 there is a birth-rate of 24.8, but an infant death-rate of 14.7, an in- ’ crease of 10.1. In a period of thirty years the . T Dutch baby death-rate dropped from 180 to 90   '

a thousand, which is the record rate for Europe, -a New Zealand has the lowest general death-rate ⁴ and the lowest baby death-rate in the world. Does birth regulation, then, tend to wipe out _: the race? No one need fear that people will cease to want babies.                              ’ -

Moonshining and Lawlessness By J. W. 8.

TIMES are very elose out in the state of Washington. We have had a drought for six years, and the farmers are in bad shape. This is a terrible place for bootlegging. There are stills for the making of moonshine all around me, and the county officers are in on it. There is no respect for law, and it looks as if the end of the present order of things is near.

The Triumph of Life By Hanna B. Yeakel

EVEN while there lingers yet the memory of snow-clad hills and barren trees, of icebound brooks and frozen ponds, we gaze in astonishment to see the miracle of Spring wrought under our very eyes.—Psalm 104: 30.

What magic power has brought forth those tender sprouts of green where but a month ago was seen only the bare, brown twig, giving us no sign of such promise? How could this mellow, fertile soil, which the plowman so eagerly turns, ever have been the solid frozen mass which gave the echo to our tread? And it is not only that the Frost King has been completely dethroned, but that the wand of some great magician, as it w’ere [the power of God in the sunshine], smote the earth, in response to which a multitude of tiny, verdant blades have sprung from the ground, making our very footsteps rebound with their living instinct.

Down in the meadow, where the brook is flowing with a murmur of subdued gladness, as if it feared the return of thongs and fetters, there gleams a strip of brighter green along its course, painted by the same skillful Hand that has laid such beautiful tints of mingled azure and gleaming white upon the celestial vaults, which were gloomy and foreboding with Winter's leaden gray.

Every morning, at the break of day, there comes from the top of the cherry-tree such a message of hope and joy that it makes our pulses throb responsive to the song, whose trustful, light-hearted beauty is but vaguely understood by sinful, burdened humanity. It is a song of praise and wonder too, no doubt, for the Hidden Power that has brought back the warm rays of sunlight and the soft, gentle breezes that are so loved by robin and bluebird.

0 thou wonderful, powerful Hidden Impulse, where art thou not evident! We hear thee at early dawn and at dusk of night. At noon thy forms are growing and gleaming about our path. We feel thine instinct within us, that lends fresh vigor to our sluggish veins, and wakens new thoughts and passions in our breast.

Copy of a Letter of Withdrawal from a Masonic Lodge

Norfolk Lodge No. 1, A. F. & A. M., Norfolk, Virginia.

Worshipful Master, Wardens and Brethren:

• 1. 1 am enclosing herewith my check for $7.00, with request for demit, or withdrawal from Norfolk Lodge No. 1, and the Masonic Fraternity.

• 2. I give below my reasons for this action, which I trust will be carefully considered.

• 3. When I became a Christian and compared the tenets of the Masonic Fraternity with the Bible, which Masonry teaches should be the “Huie and Guide of our Faith,” I note that they are at variance one with the other, that they are as far apart as the east is from the west.

• 4. I wish here to emphasize, however, that I have no quarrel with the Masonic Fraternity, or any member. I have nothing but brotherly love for you all. In fact, of all the Fraternal Organizations in the world, I consider the Masonic Fraternity without a peer. But as a Christian, I cannot hold to doctrines which place the Word of God at naught; doctrines based upon the first lie, which was told in Eden, and which lie also has been, and is at present, perpetuated in the religious systems both Catholic and Protestant, as well as the so-called heathen religions of the world.

• 5. As I desire to be correctly and thoroughly understood, I shall go somewhat into detail:

• 6. Upon entering the Lodge Room, even the Entered Apprentice approaching the Altar beholds the Holy Bible thereon, upon which are displayed the Square and Compasses. He is told that the “Holy Bible is to be the Rule and Guide of his Faitli; his actions to be squared by virtue, and his passions circumscribed.”

• 7. To this admonition every man and every Christian can heartily agree and subscribe.

• 8. In another degree, we are pointed to the sprig of Acacia and told that it is an emblem of Immortality, and symbolizes “the better part of man [referring to the soul] which survives [lives after] the grave/and can never, never, never die.” Notwithstanding the fact that ths Holy Bible upon the Altar, which is to be ths •'Rule and Guide of our Faith” declares (Genesis 2:7) that man is a soul (a living, breathing creature), and Ezekiel 18:4 that “the soul that sinneth, it [the soul] shall die.”

  MO

  
  

• 9. The Wise Man Solomon (to whom Masonic Lodges were originally dedicated) says (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20) that both men and beasts die alike; that both have one breath; that both arc of the dust and return to dust at death; so that man has no preeminence above a beast. Man, as well as the beast, would remain in the death state, had it not been for the ransom sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Eccl. 12:7, speaking of dissolution the Wise Man says: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” The word spirit is not synonymous with soul (Hebrew for soul being nephesh, and for spirit ruach, which means primarily, wind, air). Solomon is here saying that the body (composed of the seventeen elements of the earth) shall return to the earth as it was, and that the wind, breath of life, shall return to the great storehouse of God—the atmosphere. God gives us the air we breathe.

• 10. The “Rule of our Faith” further states in Luke 12:4,5, Jesus speaking, that we should not fear him who is able to kill the body but who cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him (Jehovah) who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell fire (Gehenna fire—symbolizing utter destruction). In Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2: 27, speaking of Jesus, it says: "Thou [Jehovah] wilt not leave my soul in hell"—the tomb, the death-state, oblivion.

• 11. As you see from the above, the teachings of Masonry are absolutely and diametrically in opposition to the Holy Bible, the “Rule and Guide of our Faith.”

• 12. You can see that if the soul is immortal (immortality meaning a condition of life in which death is an impossibility) and cannot die, manifestly there could be no resurrection from the dead; for none would be dead, Tbis doctrine, you see, denies the resurrection, which is so clearly taught throughout the Bible, and which is the only hope of a dead world.

• 13. Then you say: “That our bodies will arise and become as incorruptible as our souls.” Now let us go to the Holy Bible, the “Rule and Guide of our Faith.” The apostle Paul, in his great treatise on the resurrection in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, proves that : there are to be two kinds of resurrection; one (the first resurrection) a change of nature from human to life on the spirit plane, and the other resurrection to an earthly (human) nature. He also said that there are bodies celestial (heav- -enly, spiritual) and bodies terrestrial (earthly).

“So also is the resurrection of the dead.” But . concerning the earthly body he says plainly that it will not be this body that goes into the ground which will be raised, but that “God giv-eth it [the being, the personality, the soul] a . body as it pleaseth him.” Then he goes on to     ..

show that a grain of wheat, which is planted     -

and dies, but which is quickened with new life, brings forth wheat—not oats or some other . .. grain, but the kind of grain planted. In other words, if in death we plant a human seed, in . the resurrection a human body (not the one sowed, however) will be reaped; and if we have been begotten by the holy spirit of God to a new nature (spirit nature) through belief in _k the merits of the ransom sacrifice of Christ < Jesus, then a spiritual seed has been sowed, which, in the resurrection, will bring forth a celestial (heavenly, spiritual) body.

• 14. These fundamental doctrines are mis- • taught not only by Masonry, but by the clergy -and religious systems of our day, which are not according to the Word of God; and as a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus, I rhust and _; do desire to maintain my faith in the Word of * God, even though it makes “every man a liar,” * as the Scriptures declare,                            i

• 15. I trust that you will appreciate my posi-' _f tion, and realize that in order to be true to myself and my God, I must choose between . truth and error; and I choose rather to be guided by the Holy Bible, letting it, in fact and reality, be the “Rule and Guide of my Faith.” .

• 16. I wish to thank you very much for past     _;;

courtesies, and trust that those who are seek-     "4

ing truth and righteousness may be guided into the truth; and that they may “seek righteous- ' ness, seek meekness. It may be that [they] shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zephaniah 2:3); and that they may be among the “millions now living who will never die,” as 3 is so clearly stated in the Holy Bible.               -g

With Christian love, I am,               f

L. W. Cabiwright. ;

'              dl

. a

The Great Consummation

*Now therefore he ye not mockers, lest your hands be made strong: for 1 have heard from ths Lord God of hosts a consumption '[consummation], even determined upon

. -                        the whole earth"—Isaiah 28:22.

ACCORDING to our understanding of the teachings of the Scriptures we are now living in the harvest time of the Gospel age, in the great consummation mentioned in our text. The statement is not an absurd scarecrow to alarm the ignorant and the wicked, for we are fully persuaded of the truthfulness of the Scriptural declaration: "None of the wicked shall understand.” (Daniel 12:10) The announcement that we are now living in the end or harvest time of the Gospel age is, however, a message full of importance to the Lord’s people, to all who profess to be members of spiritual Zion. To these it means that a crucial test is upon the church which will fully separate the merely nominal Christians, the tare class, from the genuine Christians, the wheat class of our Lord’s parable.—Matthew 13: 24-30.

Our Lord’s first advent was in the harvest time of the Jewish age, more than 1,800 years ago. Then His message and that of His apostles served as a sickle of truth and as threshing instruments to separate in that professedly holy nation the “Israelites indeed” from others. In that harvest time our Lord represented Himself as the chief reaper, and the winnowing of the threshed wheat to separate it from the chaff of that nation was a part of the ministry of the truth at that time. The result was the gathering of the Jewish wheat to a higher plane, from the house of servants into the house of sons. (John 1:12,13) Subsequently the chaff of that nation was burned; that is, fiery trouble came upon them, which the Apostle declares was "wrath to the uttermost.” (1 Thessalonians 2:16) The fire of trouble destroyed the national existence of the Jews, though it did not destroy them as a people.

The last of the prophets, John the Baptist, referring to Christ’s work as a reaper of that age said: “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will gather his wheat into the garner [gospel favor], but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” [the time of trouble which consumed the Jews nationally]. (Matthew 3:12) He referred to the same thing when he said at another time respecting the work and results of our Lord’s ministry: “He shall baptize you with the holy spirit, and with fire.” (Matthew 3:11) The holy spirit baptism came upon the “Israelites indeed”; the baptism of fire, of trouble, came upon the others, “wrath to the uttermost.” Of that trouble the apostle Paul speaks saying, “What if God, willing to show his wrath, ... endured . . . the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.” (Romans 9:22) Our Lord speaks of the same, saying of the coming trouble, “These be the days of vengeance that all things which are written may be fulfilled . . . for there shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.”—Luke 21:22,23.

Christendom the Parallel to Judea

THE Jewish age was a prototype of the Gospel age. Hence the harvest of the Jewish age gives us clear conceptions of what may be expected in the harvest time of the Gospel age. Here as there we must expect the gathering of the wheat into the garner; we must expect the burning of the tares, as in the end of the Jewish age there was a burning of the chaff, for thus the Lord’s parable relating to the present age explains the matter. But we are tqday on a higher plane, on the plane of the spirit instead of on the plane of the flesh, on the plane of sons instead of on the plane of servants, on the plane of spiritual Israelites instead of on the plane of natural Israelites; hence we must expect the gathering into the barn due at the end of this age to signify the gathering of the elect church to the Lord at his second advent in power and great glory, the consummation of the long-promised first resurrection to glory, honor and immortality, the divine nature.

As the wheat and the tares represent only those who profess to be God's people, God’s church, this parable does not relate to the world in general, and consequently the burning of the tares pictures rather the troubles and fiery trials coming upon professed but not real Christians rather than troubles coming upon the heathen world. For instance, it is not the field (the “world”) that is to be burned, but the tares. Nevertheless, nominal Christendom of today occupies so prominent a place in the fore-

J .

'■                4, 1923

front of the world that the great disturbances coining upon it must of necessity have world-<    wide influence. There is to be at the present

®    time not merely a reckoning with spiritual

K    Israel,'as there was a reckoning with natural

B    Israel eighteen hundred years ago, but at the

• F.   same time that the reckoning shall come with

L    spiritual Israel the consummation or reckoning

e     time will come with the whole world of mang     kind. Here evil in every form is to be over

thrown; the great adversary, Satan, is to be f    bound that he shall deceive the nations no more,

. that the light of the truth may in due time shine

L into the whole world and scatter its darkness I . and give a correct knowledge of the divine char. act er and plan.

t Final Defeat of Satan

HE Scriptures intimate that the “prince of ...          this world” will not suffer his house or

f     institutions to be broken up without a contest.

• ■     One of our Lord’s parables thus illustrates the

t     matter: that if the master of the present dist    pensation knew at what hour the Lord would

^s     come as a thief, unknown to the world, to over-

L    throw present institutions built upon selfish-

■      ness, financial, ecclesiastical and social, the

_B     prince of this world would resist and seek to

maintain control and possession. (Luke 11:21, 22; Matthew 24:43) This is not to be understood to signify that Satan could really resist . the Almighty’s power when the due time shall have come for his overthrow and binding, when Immanuel shall “take unto Himself His great power and reign” as the representative of Jehovah. (Revelation 11:17) Rather, it gives ■ us the suggestion, elsewhere set forth, that God’s plan in dealing with Satan and present evil institutions is not so much to overpower them and crush them as to permit their selfishness and immorality to wreck themselves.

On every hand we see these disintegrating forces at work. We see labor controlled by the spirit of selfishness, bent upon obtaining a larger share of this world’s goods and growing daily more impatient of delay. We see capital selfishly entrenching itself in huge combinations behind laws which were doubtless equiSr    table enough in their day, but which do not meet

1     all the new conditions of the wonderful period

; in which we are living, which in the Scriptures ■ is called "the time of the end” and the “day of God’s preparation,” making ready for the Millennium. (Daniel 12:4,9; Nahum 2:3) We see selfishness in business, bloody wars in various directions. We see the real and nominal Christians, wheat and tares, are more or less involved on both sides of this question of selfishness and strife; we see that all these things are rapidly tending toward the close of the night of weeping preparatory to the Millennial morning of joy. We note through all the prophecies ominous words respecting the great time ofl trouble this will be, when the Lord shall call for judgment, for justice to be meted out, when the hour of His judgment shall come, and when the various forces, already well prepared, shall clash in selfish fury.

A Time of Strife

THE prophet Daniel describes this time and marks its date at the standing up of the great Prince. He declares that it shall be "a time of trouble such as was not since there was a nation.” The trouble with which the Jewish age closed was an awful trouble, a foreshadowing of the coming trouble, but not so great, neither so widely extended. The trouble of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution was an awful one, but not so great as this time of trouble that is coming, respecting which one of the prophets declares there shall be no peace to him that goeth out nor to him that cometh in; to him that buyeth nor to him that selleth; because every man’s hand is against his neighbor. (Zechariah 8:10) The strife of nations and of parties, of unions and of combinations, will extend to the individuals of the world and produce an individual conflict and strife. Our Lord Jesus the great Prophet quoted approvingly Daniel’s prophecy about this great time of trouble such as was not since there was a nation, and our Lord adds the consoling words: “Nor ever shall be.” (Matthew 24:31) We are glad that this time of trouble will practically end the trouble of this world; that there never will be such again; that on the ashes of present institutions the Lord Himself will rear a kingdom of righteousness which shall establish justice throughout the world on a basis not ofl selfishness but of love and justice.

We are aware that these words seem like idle tales to many, especially to the worldly wise, the higher critics and evolutionists. The apo»-

tie Peter more than eighteen centuries ago declared the scoffing unbelief that might be expected at this present time. Speaking of those ,who should be interested in the second coming of the Lord and the consummation of this age, he declares that, instead of following the Scriptures and the Scriptural hopes, they will be following the ungodly, higher critical desires of their own worldly minds, and he represents them as saying, "Where is the promise of his presence?” and declares that from their standpoint all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world—that they see no reason for expecting a harvest and a change, of dispensation. (2 Peter 3:4) It is not our province to give ears or eyes to any; we merely call to the attention of those who have the hearing ear and the understanding heart the things which the Word of God clearly sets forth as being now due of accomplishment.

Be not Mockers

’     '

Bbooklyk, N. Y. *.*

dealt with during this Gosepl age and it will be

harvested in the end of this age, and still a

different crop will be dealt with during the J Millennial age and harvested at its close. He who has plain lessons from nature and forgets -to apply them under the Lord’s direction in studying the operations of the divine arrangements will remain in measurable ignorance of the divine plan,                                       ’

Who can intelligently study the Scriptural record of God’s dealing's with the nation of Israel and not perceive the deep plowing of that people in their Egyptian bondage, the i harrowing of that people in their wilderness . experiences, the sowing among them of the law, ■ the weeding and culture given them as a people throughout their age, and the harvesting that came in the end of that age? And what “Israel-   =

ite indeed” does not know something of the   ‘

plowshare of sorrow and of trouble in his own ; heart experiences which first prepared him to become a true disciple of the Lord?              -

OUR text implies that many who hear the present message will be inclined to disregard it, and the Prophet warns such, saying, “Be ye not mockers”; do not scoff at this matter, lest your bands be made strong; lest the blindness and ignorance and misunderstanding of the divine plan, so general in the world today, shall bind you hand and foot and hinder you from entering into the joys of the Lord, from the understanding of His plan, and hinder you also from making the preparation of heart necessary to secure to you a place in the kingdom.

In the context the Prophet points out the lessons of husbandry; that there is one preparation of the soil for one kind of grain, another preparation for another kind of grain, and that there is one way of reaping and threshing one kind of grain and another way of handling another kind; and furthermore he points out that the husbandman does not spend all of his time in one part of the great work, but step by step the matter proceeds to the completion, the gathering of the crop. Thus the Lord gives a lesson to His people. We are to expect in the operations of grace, plowing, harrowing, seedsowing, watering and weeding, ripening and harvesting. And we are to expect different crops, as, for instance, there was one crop dealt with during the Jewish age and a harvest in the end of that age, and another crop has been

Evidences of Divine Order

WHICH. of God’s people cannot recognize the harrowing experiences which tended to make their hearts ready for the truth; which cannot see when and where the Word of truth was planted in their minds, their hearts; which cannot see how it was first the shoot, then the stalk, then the ripened grain; which cannot realize that trying experiences were necessary to take away the weeds which would have choked them as the Lord’s true wheat and made them unfaithful? Which of the true Israelites does not long for the harvesting time, when all the true wheat shall be gathered to the plane of spiritual perfection and glory, when they shall be forever with the Lord and co-laborers with Him in the glory time that shall follow ?

The great time of trouble with which this present evil dispensation closes is the plowshare of trouble which God will use in breaking up the fallow ground of the whole world to prepare it for the great planting of the restitution times, when the whole world of mankind shall have the care of the great Superintendent, who, we are assured, will yet see of the fruits of the travail of His soul and be abundantly satisfied. This thought that the coming trouble will bring righteousness to the world is abundantly borne out by the statement of the Scripture that "when

Fwt 4, 1923 £

? - the judgments of the Lord are abroad in the j. earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”—Isaiah 26:9.

If such a harvesting as we have noted is pros' grossing,’how does it find you and me? Does | it find us thoroughly loyal to the Lord and to E the principles of righteousness which represent * His government, or does it find us living in a cold or lukewarm condition, striving to walk . with the Lord and to walk with the world at the same time, striving to serve God and to | serve mammon at the same time? We are not y to expect that the gathering in the parable of y ' the wheat will mean that at the present time ; the Lord will take hold forcibly upon those who t are His and compel them to enter the garner; rather we are to expect here a procedure somewhat similar to that which took place at the . first advent. We are to expect, then, that the gospel of the kingdom will be announced, and ; that all “Israelites indeed" will be glad to hear the joyful news. We are to expect that it will ■ be an attraction to such, that it will attract ; them away from the errors and falsehoods ~ which to a greater or lesser degree have been blinding all, not only during the dark ages, but . since. We expect that it ■will attract all of this class from every denomination not to a new denomination, but to a closer heart-fcllow-. ship with the Lord Himself, that their union should not be a sectarian one, but a heart-union with the Lord and -with all of like precious faith in Him and in His Word.

The Gate of God

THE Scriptures represent that in the end of J- the age the tares will be so abundant as to practically overwhelm the wheat and obscure it; and this whole class, wheat and tares, throughout the whole spiritual world called Christendom, and divided into hundreds of sects and parties, teaching more or less of ' divine truth and more or less of human tradition, is now to be dealt with. The Lord applies to the whole mass the name Babylon. The name has a double signification: primarily it means the gate of God, the gateway by which the world of mankind might pass from the world and sin to God and righteousness, and eventually have a share in the Lord’s resurrection; but through the operation of Satan and inherent selfishness much of the good of Babylon became beclouded and much of it became replaced with error, so that today the name Babylon as applied to Christian people means not a gateway to God but confusion, mixture.

Looking back to the Jewish age and its harvest we can know the particular moment when the Lord said to nominal Israel: “Your house is left unto you desolate"; and so we can trace to the year 1878 the parallel of this—the Lord’s rejection of Babylon and the declaration that Christendom as a whole is rejected from any, longer being recognized as His.

Do you ask, then, what the Lord would expect His true people to do today? We answer that for our day there is a particular message of the Lord, and that in the same breath that it declares that Babylon is fallen, is fallen, from divine favor, rejected as fleshly Israel was rejected and for similar reasons, there comes additionally the message: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, . and that ye receive not of her plagues.”—Eeve-lation 18:4.

The Test of Truth

ET it be distinctly noticed that these words recognize that the Lord’s people have been in Babylon, and that they were not considered blameworthy for being there until the appointed time, until her rejection, until their eye§ being opened they perceived wherein she had erred and misled them away from the Lord and the beauty of His Word and plan into doctrines of devils, which wholly misrepresent the divine character and plan. These words apply not to those who see nothing of what we see, who have no ears to hear the present message. They apply not to those who consider the doctrines of the nominal churches thoroughly satisfactory and Scriptural. They apply merely to those who have the hearing ear and the discerning heart to know the difference between the voice of the true Shepherd and the voice of strangers, to know the difference between the true gospel of God’s dear Son, redemption through His blood, from the gospel of higher criticism and evolution; they are for those who can discern to some extent at least between the doctrines of devils, which misrepresent the divine plan, and the doctrine of redemption, ransom and restitution, which the Word of God sets forth. He that hath an ear let him hear. He that hath not an ear for the truth, and no eye to discern the beauty of the divine plan in contrast with the horrible confusion of sectarianism, is not addressed by these words, but should stay in Babylon and be bound more and more tightly into her various bundles for the great day of trouble which is rapidly approaching.

As the Lord left a period of time in the end of the Jewish age between the utter rejection of that people and the culmination of the time of trouble and wrath upon them, so here He has left a space of time in which His people are to come out of her before she shall be utterly swallowed up as a great millstone cast into the sea. Those who are truly the Lord’s people, yet refuse to abandon the false systems and their false teachings, make themselves proper subjects for a share in the plagues that are coming upon Babylon, because knowing her errors and blasphemies against the divine character they become participants in those blasphemies to a larger extent even than do many of the tares who constitute Babylon, and who might be said to know no better because they do not truly know the Lord.

Heard in the Office—No. 7 By C. E. Guiver (London)

SMITH rushed into the office one day, and in an excited whisper said: “Wynn is showing a parson over the place.” “A parson?” said Tyler. “Yes, a real, live ecclesiastic.” And, sure enough, Wynn entered shortly afterward accompanied by a short, stout, red-faced clergyman. Wynn introduced him to each member of the office in turn, and he shook hands with them very cordially. He came to Palmer last of all; and while they were greeting one another, Wynn said: “Mr. Palmer belongs to the Bible Students."

‘'Bible Students!” ejaculated the minister. "You do not mean Russellism, do you?”

“Yes; Pastor Bussell’s organization,” replied Wynn.

“I am opposed to them,” the visitor replied quickly.

“What is it that you do not agree with?” asked Palmer.                           ■

“All of it,” he retorted.

“Have you read any of the late Pastor Russell’s works?” Palmer inquired.

“I know all about you; I know all about you!” he exclaimed excitedly. He then went off at such a rate that Palmer could get a word in only occasionally. He said more in three minutes than most people would in ten.

“Pastor Russell was a bad man; he had no training; no authority. What right had he to preach? I had a collegiate education, have preached in twenty-five different churches. Why, I know more Greek than he ever knew. What right had he to make out everyone else was wrong? Hades and gelienna—what do they mean? Why everyone knows that they refer to the place of departed spirits. The dead unconscious? Ridiculous! ‘Absent from the body, present with the Lord,' ‘Happy are the dead who die in the Lord.’ How can they be happy if they are unconscious ? Why, you are opposed to the Roman church, the Anglican church. You are opposed to all the churches.”

“We are not opposed to the true church,” quietly put in Palmer.

“Why, if I believed what you do I would be an atheist!” continued the parson.

“If you believed what Pastor Russell taught, you would be a Christian,” replied Palmer.

“What! What do you mean?”

“I mean that either you have never looked into the teachings of the Pastor, or if you have, you are now wilfully misrepresenting them; and in either case your course is unchristian; whereas I challenge you to prove that anyone of his teachings lead away from faith in the Bible.”

Ignoring this the parson vehemently continued: “The soul immortal? Of course it is immortal. If the Bible did not teach it, the Bible would be a lie.”

“Give me a scripture,” said Palmer. ’

“A scripture—” and the minister paused. This gave Palmer an opportunity to speak.

“You cannot give me one text in support of the immortality of the soul, but I can give you a hundred to refute it.”

“A hundred?” queried the minister.

‘Wes, a hundred; and I will give you one to get on with: 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ ”

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p?

“Everyone knows what that means,” retorted . the minister; “it means separation from God.

' When Adam sinned he did not die, he was sep-ft arated from God.”

g “How would you explain this then; the f     Prophet says of Jesus that ‘He poured out His

r      soul unto death'; and Jesus said that we are to

X     ‘fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and

body in gehenna.’ How can the soul be immortal if it can be destroyed?”

t “I know all about you, I have it all here,” the “      parson said, pointing to a small pamphlet in

4 his hand. “You deny the divinity of Christ.” “We do not,” replied Palmer.

„ “You teach that Christ was a created being. 1 I know all about you. Read the Athanasian t. creed.” With this he hurried out of the office, ; closely followed by Wynn.

"Well, well,” said Tyler, who had evidently s      enjoyed the. spectacle. "What a hot-headed

1     hypocrite! He proved nothing, but merely

f made unfounded charges. What did he mean “ when he said ‘hades and gehenna’ ?”

'         “Oh,” said Palmer, with a smile; “these are

two Greek words which in the New Testament ? are translated ‘hell,’ and our learned ecclesias-_; tical friend evidently does not agree with Pas-? tor Russell’s explanation of them.”

s        "What do they mean, then?” the other asked.

“They have been taken to mean that the t infinitely wise God has provided a place where ‘ human beings are to be tormented to all eter-mty.”

I         “I don’t believe that,” interposed Tyler.

j        "Neither do I; but they must have a meaning,

?      and I think the Pastor has made it clear. In

-      the Old Testament there is but one word trans-

f lated hell. The word is sheol, and occurs sixty-1 five times in the original. Thirty-one times it is translated grave, thirty-one times hell, and >     three times pit. In not one of these does it

1       suggest torment. It is described as a place of

darkness, of silence, where there is no trouble, and all are at rest. Solomon says: ‘There is kf no work, device, knowledge nor wisdom in sheol whither thou goest.’ It has the thought of un-consciousness—oblivion.

r* "Hades of the New Testament is the Greek _s       equivalent to the Hebrew word, as is clearly

*      shown by the apostle Peter’s statement in Acts

r.      2; 27, which is a quotation from Psalm 16:10. The only other word we have to consider is gehenna. This is the name of a valley ~n the southwest side of Jerusalem called in the Hebrew the Valley of Hinnom. At first it was very beautiful, but on account of idolatry being prae-tised there by the Israelites it was turned into a destructor, and the refuse of the city together with offal and carcasses of animals were burned there. Sometimes the dead bodies of criminals were cast into its fires signifying that they were not worthy of a resurrection. Brimstone was used to aid in the work of destruction.

"No one thinks that the wicked are going to be east into this literal valley whose fires have since gone out. It must, therefore, be understood in a figurative sense. What is the figure intended to teach? Torment! No one was ever tormented in the flames of the literal gehenna, so we are precluded from such a conclusion. The chief characteristic of fire is its destructiveness, and with this interpretation the plain statements of the Bible agree. It says that all the wicked will God destroy; and again it says that the wicked shall go into everlasting de- . struction.”

"Why are two words in the New Testament used for hell?” inquired Tyler, who manifested deep interest in the subject.

“Because they refer to different things. Hades applies to the death state of unconsciousness of all who have gone into the grave because of Adam’s transgression. But this state of unconsciousness is not to be everlasting; it is termed sleep in the Bible because Jesus has. died and has arranged for their awakening. Jesus said that 'all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man and shall come forth.’ Notice they are not in a heaven of bliss nor in a hell of torment, but in the grave. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and spoke of his condition as sleep. All are to be awakened to have an opportunity of obtaining life through obedience and faith, but any refusing to render obedience after a fair trial will be cast into the Take of fire’ which is explained in the Bible to mean the ‘second death’; that is, destruction from which there will bo no resurrection. Hades - . refers to the first or Adamic death, and gehenna to the second or everlasting death.”—Revelation 20:14.                                           *

“Thanks,” said Tyler. “I wish the peppery parson had waited to hear your explanation.” ? -

rOHE Golden Age is not used as an advertising medium. Occasionally we have taken an advertisement of something because we thought it would afford some of our readers a profitable business. Some criticisms have been lodged against The Golden Age because of a notice that appeared in our columns about Firezone Oil. For this reason we publish the following communication from the Firezone Lubrication Company, College Point, N. Y.:

From G. S. Miller, the Manager

INCE the first of February we have received, and filled orders to the extent of 5,200 gallons, ranging from one quart to 3,000 gallons. The 3,000-gallon order was shipped to supply the Pacific coast trade on March 25th.

Mr. G. C. Van Amburgh, 3709 Simpson Ave., Aberdeen, Wash., says that his business has increased wonderfully as a result of demonstrating the heat-resisting properties of the oil, running a Ford without water, radiator or fan. He says: “In my first demonstration I ran my car six days without a drop of water, and four days without a radiator. Have signs all over it, and stop in front of every dealer’s place, and call them out to look at it. They are simply speechless. Mechanics come out and say: ‘Well, that’s some demonstration 1’

“I ran her first twenty-five miles over gravelly and hilly roads at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour, the best mechanic in Hoquiam driving; and on our return

we climbed the steepest hill (and it’s some hill) in Hoquiam, and then idled this 1917 Ford on the level pavement, down to four miles an hour.”         '

Mr. Van Amburgh is selling to the gasoline filling stations in barrels and five-gallon cans to treat their stock gasoline for the trade. One of them, the Roblin’s Service Station, writes us: “I have been using the Fibezone Oil since April 1st, and my business has just about doubled in that time in both gas and oil. Accessories and tires are also going better. I’m sure pleased with the way Fibezone is taking here, and am glad I started with it.”

Mr. G. H. Wall, 30 N. American St., Stockton, Calif., says that he has a good testimonial from the stage lines and one from the city of Stockton, as well as several from prominent men who are using the oil. He has several gas stations using the oil in their trade with splendid satisfaction and many splendid prospects through the northern part of California.

We are shipping H. L.< Brian, 422 Market St., Shreveport, La., 500 gallons, his first order for the state of Louisiana.

Thus far we have not received even one complaint about this oil. On the contrary, we could give many testimonials as to its valuable qualities. It is remarkable that in so short a time we have been able to get a large amount into general use. The low price at which we can market this oil, places it within the reach of all, and makes it a great benefit to the automobile industries of the world.

The Negro Exodus

THE wave of prosperity in the North has brought 100,000 Negroes from the South during the past six months. The exodus has been principally from South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. The South is already short, of farm labor, large areas of cotton standing unpicked throughout the harvesting season because of labor shortage. What happens in these migrations is that the Negro workers in Southern mills and factories go north, while farm labor moves into town to take up industrial work. For the first time in history white women in the South are now sometimes seen working in the fields along with the men, rather than lose their crops; and many a Southern woman is now doing her own housework because the colored girls and women have gone north with their husbands and brothers.

The problems of the Negro in the North center largely in the housing situation, which is hard for the whites to solve and harder for the Negroes. The whole world is in a housing shortage. In England there are three million people who have no homes and who are living in with other families. There is overcrowding to suffocation in New York and other large American cities. Immense areas of New York city and of Chicago are solidly Negro, so that one may walk for blocks and seldom see a white person. The new arrivals from the South must necessarily locate in these sections, which expand their borders but slowly. Chicago’s Negro population is estimated to have grown from 100,000 at the time of the race riots in 1919 to 110,000 at this time.

STUDIES IN THE “IIARP OF GOD’

KWifli issue Number 60 we began running Judge Rutherford’s new book,    |TO

“The Harp of God”, with accompanying questions, taking the place of both     gwg

Advanced and Juvenile Bible Studies which have been hitherto published.

¹⁹⁸It is very important, then, that we understand the meaning of ransom; hence we here define it. Ransom means something to loosen with; that is, a redemptive price. It is the means or price or value which can be used in loosening or releasing something that is in bondage or in restraint or imprisoned. Necessarily the ransom-price must be exactly equivalent to, or corresponding with, that which justice requires of the thing or being that is in bondage or imprisonment. Hence we say that ransom means an exact corresponding price. A perfect man sinned and was sentenced to death; hence an exact corresponding price would be the death of another perfect man and the value of that life presented in place of the one who first sinned and was held in bondage.

¹⁰⁹Sin-offwring means the presentation and use of the ransom-price. On the atonement day performed by the Jews in type, the blood of the bullock represented the poured-out life; and therefore it stood for the ransom-price or value of the life. The carrying of the blood into the Most Holy and sprinkling it there pictured the sin-offering, that is, a presentation in the Most Holy (which represented heaven itself) of the value or merit of the perfect life. We will see, therefore, as we examine this question that the ransom-price was provided on earth by the death of Jesus; that preparation for the sin-offering was begun on earth, but must be finished in heaven, where the value of the ransomprice is presented.

"’Other Scriptures show that it w^Tas intended by Jehovah that the great Redeemer should pour out His life in death and that this should constitute the ransom-price, which should be made an offering for sin. God foretold this— which is equivalent to a promise—through His prophet when he wrote concerning the great coming Redeemer the following:

""‘Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”—Isaiah 53.

QUESTIONS ON "THE HARP OF GOD”

Define ransom. 198.

Define sin-offering, (f 199.

Where and how was the ransom-price provided? fl 199.

Where was the sin-offering begun ? and where is it finished? fl 199.

By what prophecy did God show that it was His purpose to redeem man by having His beloved Son suffer death? fl201.                                              .

O3»

SOMETHING} NEW

VORLD DISTRESS

WHY?

THE REMEDY

Why Evil is Permitted Wo Made the Devil ? Prophecy & its Fulfilment End of the -World Immortality

Where are the Dead? A Ransom for All Why does not God Kill the Devil ?

INTERNATIONAL BIBLE STUDENTS ASSOCIATION

A 64 page booklet containing succinct, logical and scriptural explanations of the above subjects.                                                    '

Beautifully bound in Imitation leather

I 8 Concord Street,