Si

4j^:

a. Journal of fact hope and courage

Contents of the Golden Age

Social and Educational Taking the Clock Apart

Political—Domestic and Foreign Ml Box's Peace Plan

Our Own Plan

Reports from Foreign Correspondents....... , . . . 299

From England

From Germany

Significant Utterances or Mx. Llotd George

la Anuthee Wax Coming?

Scixncb and Invention An Antediluvian Giant..........»•*»»••

Home and Health Oh, toe Some Fresh Air!..............  •

Religion and Philosophy ▲ Concluding Chapter op Interrogations

Necessity of Understanding the Scriptures..... ....

Error of Less than One-Half Percent.........  .

Notable Events Occurring In 1918

Several Misapprehensions of L B. S. A. Teachings

The End of the Old Order............• . . 300

Palestine and Gentile Rule

Shifting Sands of Human Teachings

Intolerance of the Dark Ages

God's Word before Man's Theories........• • • • 309

'Millennial Conditions Misunderstood

Bible Study a Necessity............• . . . 311

Critic's View Too Narrow

Consecration a Personal Matter

Satanic Powers Mallfic

Editorial Comment

Interesting Scientific Data

Present-Day Scientists Not Infallible

Beloved of God (Poem)

Studies in “The Harp of God”

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Qh_e Golden Age

Mr. Bok’s Peace Plan

"The kings of ths earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Jehovah, and against his anointed,**—Psalm £ * £.

A YEAR ago it was plainly apparent that 1924 would mark another desperate effort of big business to press the United States into the League of Nations. Ruling the earth, as monarchs of all it holds, the leaders of finance have “set themselves" that the United States must as surely enter the League as it did the War. Hence it was no surprise to us when Mr. Bofs peace plan was announced.

The American people love to vote on things. When they cast votes they feel as if they are running things, all unconscious of the fact that the persons for whom they vote and the policies for which they vote are selected for them by others months before the ballots are taken.

Mr. Bok gives $50,000, and possibly $100,000, to the framer of Plan No. 1469, providing for cooperation between the United States and other nations, to achieve and preserve the peace of the world. Mr, Bok truthfully says that "this is the time for the nations of the earth to admit frankly that war is a crime and thus withdraw the legal and moral sanction too long permitted to it as a method of settling international disputes."

He does not say why it is that the Pagan Roman Catholic Church and the almost equally Pagan Protestant churches have for centuries encouraged war, prayed for its success, and are even now licking the blood from their dripping fingers, while they put upon the admittedly godless nations of the earth the responsibility of admitting frankly what the churches have never had the courage to admit at alL

One thing seems sure and that is that if the Government ever puts the hated Espionage Act into operation again, it ought in all honesty to give Mr. Bok a chance to see what it is like to live for a while in the classic shades of the Atlanta Penitentiary.

He says that "war is a crime." He says it before there is any war. For saying just that, and saying it before there was any war, a number of men that we know got a free ride from New York to Atlanta and return, and free board, such as it was, for nine months, with a fair prospect of having it for life.

Mr. Bok and the Associated Press, the same Press that got us into the World War, have contrived to gain great publicity for his peace scheme. The award brought forth 22,165 plans and several hundred thousand letters. The chairman of the jury of award is the Hon. Elihu Boot, prominent in the World Court, and in the League of Nations. It is no hostile remark against Mr. Boot to say that the plan selected simply mirrors Mr. Boot’s personal ideas.

The plan selected proposes in brief:

"That the United States shall immediately enter the Permanent Court of International Justice under the conditions stated by Secretary Hughes and President Harding in February, 1923; That without becoming a member of the League of Nations as at present constituted, the United States shall offer to extend its present cooperation with the League and participate in the work of the League as a body of mutual counsel under conditions which: (a) Substitute moral force and public opinion for the military and economic force originally implied in Articles X and XVI; (b) Safeguard the Monroe Doctrine; (c) Accept the fact that the United States will assume no obligations under the Treaty of Versailles except by Act of Congress; (d) Propose that membership in the League should be opened to all nations; (e) Provide for the continuing development of international law.”

We quote here and there from the argument advanced by the framer of Plan No. 1469, with a few editorial remarks interspersed. He first points out that five-sixths of all the nations of earth are in the League of Nations, that they will not abandon the League and will not .organize a new one, and says:

"The only possible path to cooperation in which the United States can take an increasing share is that which leads toward some form of agreement with the world as now organized, called the League of Nations.”

He then takes up the argument that, although President Harding was elected by an overwhelming vote because he promised to keep us out of the League, yet the Armament Conference at Washington, and the President’s oft-reiterated recommendation that the United States should become a member of the World Court, show that the United States has already, in principle, gone far toward entering the League. Besides this, the author declares:

"The United States Government has. accredited its representatives to sit as members ^rin an unofficial and consulting capacity* upon four of the most important social welfare commissions of the League, tnr.; Health, Opium, Traffic in Women and Children, and Anthrax (Industrial Hygiene). Our Government is a full member of the International Hydrographic Bureau, an organ of the League. Out Government was represented by an ‘unofficial observer’ in the Brussels Conference (Finance and Economic Commission) in 1920. It sent Hon. Stephen G. Porter and Bishop Brent to represent it at the meeting of the Opium Commission last May. Our Public Health Service has taken part in the Serological Congresses of the Epidemics Commission and has helped in the experimental work for the standardization of serums. Our Government collaborates with the League Health Organization through the International Office of Public Health at Paris, and with the Agriculture Committee of the League Labor Organization through the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome. In February, 1923, Secretary Hughes and President Harding formally recommended that the Senate approve our adhesion to the Permanent Court under four conditions or reservations, one of which was that the United States should officially participate in the election of judges by the Assembly and Council of the League, sitting as electoral colleges for that purpose. Unofficial cooperation from the United States with the work of the League includes membership in five of the social welfare commissions or committees of the League, in one on economic reconstruction, and in one (Aaland Islands) which averted a war. American women serve as expert Assessors upon the Opium and Traffic in Women Commissions.”

He thus points out what we have claimed in The Golden Age; namely, that the United States has already, in effect, been put into the

League, in spite of the known wishes of the American people that it be kept out. He merely wishes that the United States should take the remaining steps necessary to full cooperation with the League. Then he approaches the border-land of the ridiculous when he says of these steps:

"They do not involve a question of membership in the League of Nations as now constituted, but it cannot be denied that they lead to the threshold of that question. Any further step toward cooperation must confront the problem of direct relations between the United States and the Assembly and Council of fifty-four nations in the League.”

Next he aims to show that the League, not having Uncle Sam’s pocketbook with which to foot the bill, has no power to enforce any of its decisions, and is, in effect, nothing more than a congregation of politicians, of which the world has had many, without beneficent result to itself. As really to enforcing peace he says:

"How far the present League is actually removed from functioning as such a State is sufficiently exhibited in its dealings with Lithuania and Poland over Vilna and their common boundary, and with Greece and Italy over Corfu. Experience in the last three years has demonstrated probably insuperable difficulties in the way of fulfilling in all parts of the world the large promise of Article X, in respect to either its letter or its spirit. No one now expects the League Council to try to summon armies and fleets, since it utterly failed to obtain even an international police force for the Vilna district.”

As to the threatened economic blockade against recalcitrant nations, which was worked so mercilessly by the Allies, first against the Germanic confederation and later against the Russian Republic, he says that this also is a false alarm, inasmuch as

"the Council of the League created a Blockade Commission which worked for two years to determine how the ‘economic weapon’ of the League could be efficiently used and uniformly applied. The Commission failed to discover any obligatory procedure that weaker Powers would dare to accept. It was finally agreed that each State must decide for itself whether a breach of the Covenant has been committed.”

Next he shows that the League has studiously refrained from interfering with the Monroe Doctrine, and that it may always keep its hands off, or even "define” for America what America has already defined for itself. In his argument on this point he lets slip one sentence which shows that he knows that big business is on the job of governing the world. The sentence in question is the second one of the following paragraph :

^<rIt is conceivable that the family of nations may eventually clearly define certain powers and duties of relatively local significance which may be devolved upon local associations of unions. But the world of business and finance is already unified."

Then he argues that the League, after all, is merely another and better expression of the principle of confederation which began with the Protestant churches in the Evangelical Alliance in 1846 and subsequently extended to the nations in various conferences held at The Hague and elsewhere:

"In other words, the force of circumstances is gradually moving the League into position upon the foundations so well laid by the world's leaders between 1899 and 1907 in the great international councils of that period. The Assemblies of the League and the Congresses of the International Labor Organizations are successors to The Hague Conferences. The Permanent Court has at least begun to realize the highest hope and purpose of the Second Hague Conference. The Secretariat and the Labor Office have become Continuation Committees for the administrative work of the organized world, such as The Hague Conference lacked resources to create but would have rejoiced to see.”

The concluding argument that although the United States smothered the League scheme under the greatest avalanche of votes ever known, yet, after all, it was only joking when it did so, is stated in language which suggests to our mind that the author of Plan No. 1469 is one of those gentlemen who have no regular occupation during the week, such as engage the attention of the rest of us, but who button their collars backwards and present religion wrong end to on Sunday.

"It is common knowledge that public opinion and official policy in the United States hare for a lang time, without distinction of party, been favorable to international conferences for the common welfare, and to the establishment of conciliative, arbitral and judicial means for settling international disputes. In no other way can the organized world, from which the United States cannot be economically and spiritedly separated, belt the power of public opinion to the new machinery, devised for the pacific settlement of controversies between nations and standing always ready for uaa"

An Imaginary Soliloquy of Big Businoaa

ffVXTE ARE the directors of the largest banking

VY house in the world, with headquarters at New York. It was our concern that bought, for Lord North-difie, the editorial policy of the twenty-five leading newspapers of the United States. As a direct result of using their columns we fulfilled the promise of our agents to the Premier of France that we would see to it that the United States should enter the World War on the side of the Allies.

"We are the fiscal agents for Great Britain, loaded down with British securities of all kinds. These securities will be worthless unless Britain makes a success at her League, and through it controls the world to suit her policies.

"We tried to get the United States into the League head foremost in 1919, but failed wretchedly. Now we would like to get them in by any route conceivable; What shall we do ? We will lie low until another presidential year (1924) comes around, and then we will try to get the women voters on our side. If we get them the battle is won (maybe).

"How can we get the women voters? They are all sore over the war. Well I There is dear Mr. Bok. Was he not for years editor of the Ladies Home Journal, the most widely read woman’s paper on earth? Oh, Mr. Bok, you are just the man to bring it about I AU th* ladies know you and will vote for anything that will look good to you.

"And as for getting something that will look good to you, leave that to us. Or rather leave it to Elihu Root. He knows what we want He is the cleverest lawyer in America; be is one of the principal American champions of the League, via the World Court route. Nothing will get by him that does not incorporate his ideas We do not care where the ideas come from, so long aa they are his *^jWs 4h1s is to say, our ideas—that is to say, Britain’s ideas.                         '

"But how shall we get publicity? Oh, that is too easy! Did we not use the Associated Press to get ua into the war? Yes ! Well I Who is at the head at that institution? Melville Stone. All right! Melville Stone will be on the Policy Committee and see that the adopted plan gets publicity to the nth degree.”

And, if yon will look at the personnel of the Policy Committee, you will see that Melville E. Stone is one of its members and you will know what to expect during 1924. Very likely there will be an effort to stampede both conventions, Republican and Democratic, to adherence to the adopted plan; but if the conventions will not adhere *the candidates will In other words, the United States goes into the League, anyway, willy nilly; that is, it will if big business san bring it about -.    ■

But Mr. Brisbane says, humorously and pointedly:          -

“You know the fable about ‘The Mountain in Labor.’ Much groaning and travailing, and when the critical moment came, out popped a little mouse. That was the mountain’s baby about which it had been making all the fuss.

“That story of the mountain must come back to Mr. Edward W. Bok as he contemplates the result of his $100,000 peace prize offer. It's a very small mouse that he got for his money.

“That Bok prize peace plan will amuse you. Poor Mr. Bok must feel rather silly paying $50,000 for a suggestion that the people of the United States should do now what four years ago they refused to do with 7,000,000 votes to spare.

“Go into the World Court now and join the League on a modified basis is the $50,000 suggestion. It is as though serious people, discussing what they should have for dinner, should see a well-meaning doggie drag in a cat long dead and offer that as a solution.

“The League of Nations is a dead cat.

“The United States doesn't intend to join the League of Nations, doesn’t intend to pay Europe's bills, or be held responsible for them, and does not intend to enter any World Court that would cause the affairs of the United States to be submitted to a foreign tribunal.

“Mr. Bok can charge his $50,000 to experience.”

Out Own Plan

OUR own plan is quite different from that selected by the committee of which Mr.

Root is chairman, which automatically rejected every plan that did not favor the League.

A Practicable Plan Whereby the United States Can Take Its Place and Do Its Share toward Preserving World Peace, while Not Making Compulsory the Participation of the United States in European Wars.

The Plan hereinafter set forth seeks to establish:

• 1. That unless something be done speedily civilization is in a fair way to be blotted out.

• 2. That a central authority, wise, just, benevolent and able to enforce its decrees, is essential.

• 3. That such a central authority must have the confidence of those in every nation who are molders of public thought and directors of public action.

• 4. That before such central authority can be given world position it should have demonstrated its ability to deal with questions at issue.

• 5. That credible and widely published record® of such achievements should be available, which could be cited to the peoples of all lands.

• 6. That no record of unwisdom, injustice, lack of benevolence, or inability to carry out its purposes could be laid at the door of the central authority; otherwise its influence would be impaired or become nil.

• 7. That one such central authority exists, and only one; that there is sound reason for belief in its potent influence in American affairs, and that America, of all countries, is best fitted to place this one in proper position before the world, and thus gain the world peace which by no other means can now be gained or preserved.

• 8. That central authority is well known to many of the members of the committee which shall pass upon this plan, and it is urgently requested for their own welfare, and for the welfare of mankind in general, that they give diligent heed to the evidence herein presented, so that they may not thoughtlessly turn down the best of all possible plans without giving adequate attention to the key which controls human destinies.

• • • •

Detatta of the Plan, with Argument There-^s for, Numbered as in the Above Summary

• 1. On July 18,1923, Newton D. Baker, former Secretary of War, stated before an audience of Cleveland women:

“Europe is now more nearly ready for war than it was in 1914, so far as underlying causes are concerned. I cannot see how it can be prevented unless some substitute is found. If the devil has it in his heart to let forth upon the human race more deadly instruments of destruction than were used in this last terrible war, it means international suicide so far as the civilized nations are concerned."

Mr. Weeks, the present Secretary of War, has said:

“The United States is preparing for a war that would tax us to the utmost in man-power resources."

Viscount Grey, of the British Government, has said:

“I think it is certain that if there be another such war civilization will never recover from it.”

Sir Philip Gibbs, of the same government, has said:

riMUABT 18. 1924

“No man unless he is drunk with optimism can deny that the world is very sick, and it may be a sickness unto death.

Ramsay MacDonald, the British Labor leader, has said:

“There is no settlement in Europe. Governments can do nothing. They are afraid to do anything and they stand by and allow things to go from bad to worse. 1923 is worse than 1914.”

Lloyd George has said:

“A new chapter opens in the history of Europe and the world, with a climax of horror such as mankind has never yet witnessed.”

To the foregoing words of British and American statesmen we add the comments of a few journalists, publicists, and educators. Frederick J. Libby has said:

"Airplanes, poison gas and hatred mixed together are spelling the doom of civilization. America is preparing for war on a scale so colossal that it has no parallel in the history of the world. Our civilization will perish unless we strive for international peace.”

W. L. Warden, of the London Daily Mail, has said:

“The next war will last but a few days. I mean it literally. And in those few days, with the air and gas attacks which have been planned by headquarters’ staffs, London and Paris will be wiped out in a night.”

Jesus of Nazareth, greatest of all prophets, referring to the same identical items, said:

"Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved.”—Matthew 24:22.

Dr. Bernard L Bell, college president, has ’said:

"Before the war people often supposed that ours was a Christian culture. The war has revealed us to ourselves. Civilization is pagan.”

Mr. H. G. Wells, journalist, has said:

"We have come to the crossroads, and no one knows the way out”

Dr. H. L. Brailsford, publicist, has said:

"The future is very dark. We have reached the twilight of civilization.”

In view of the foregoing opinions of some of the world’s most thoughtful men it must be conceded that the first point has been proven; namely, that unless something be done speedily civilization is in a fair way to be blotted out

• • •

• 2. Within the past century there have been many international conferences, such as those more recently held at Washington, Genoa, and The Hague. In spite of these the World War

295

took place; in spite of them another similar but greater cataclysm is feared. At Versailles an attempt was made, in the Covenant of the League of Nations, to provide the central authority which all see is needed. Insofar as such a central authority exists it has not been so exercised as to prevent numerous wars, and it is in spite of such central authority that the future looks so dark. The United States, thus far, has been unwilling to entrust its interests to such central authority; and if Great Britain is willing to do so there are great numbers of Americans who believe that her reason for so doing is because she believes that, with her colonies, she can control instead of being controlled. The fact that so many capable men have given serious attention to the establishment of a central authority shows the world’s need of just such an authority. It needs no argument to establish further the second point: That a central authority, wise, just, benevolent, and able to enforce its decrees, is essential*

• • •

• 3. Without discussing here the reasons for it, it is self-evident that the central authority which was sought to be established by the Treaty of Versailles has been unable to gain the confidence of many of those in the United States who are molders of public thought and directors of public action, and hence it is not in the confidence of the American public as a whole. What is true in America is true to some extent in Great Britain and in other countries. If a nation is sufficiently great to be admitted to a council of nations, it is evident that a majority of its people must by some means become convinced of the wisdom of recognizing and supporting a world central authority, or that nation, and all other nations like-minded, will always be a disturbing factor. The only way that the public in general can be convinced of a thing is through the molders of public thought and the directors of public action, and these cannot and will not teach and practise principles of which they are not themselves convinced. Many honest and influential Americans will always use their powers to combat any plan which could possibly result in the United States being drawn into another European war. It is undeniably true that if a central authority is to function properly it must have the confidence of at least a majority of the molders of public thought and the directors of public action in every country of consequence in the world.

• • •

• 4. It is but reasonable to require that before anything shall exercise such great powers as are implied in the term central authority it shall have demonstrated its ability to deal with the questions at issue, or any questions which may come before it. No thoughtful person could claim that either the League of Nations or the Roman Catholic Church, two of the leading contestants for this position, have made any such demonstration. Rather, it must be admitted that both of these organizations have not once but many times proven themselves helpless to prevent war. If the League of Nations had been organized at the same time that the Roman Catholic Church was organized there is nothing in its history to indicate that there would have been a less carnival of hate, unwisdom, injustice and bloodshed than there has been throughout-the years that the latter institution has been in existence. The very fact that civilization is now in danger of being blotted out shows that neither of these organizations has the ability to deal with the questions at issue.

• • •

• 5. If a central authority is to gain almost universal respect and obedience it is self-evident that the molders of public thought and the directors of public action would be greatly aided in their work if there were already in existence credible and widely published records, illustrating the wisdom, the justice, the benevolence and the ability of the authority supported, and setting forth instance after instance where the most difficult and seemingly unsolvable problems were handled with a despatch and a thoroughness that left nothing to be desired. These records would have to be such that a most critical examination of them by any thoroughly unbiased student would leave no doubt as to their truthfulness. They would have to be supported by an overwhelming array of corroborative evidence, leaving no doubt as to their authenticity.

• • • •

& In order to obtain- and retain the full confidence of all persons in interest, a central authority would need to have the remarkable record of not being chargeable with a single instance of either unwisdom, injustice, lack of benevolence, or inability to carry out its pur poses. If such an instance could be clear!;, proven it would do much to shatter confidence. Every person in interest confronted with the evidence would withhold much or all of his confidence, fearing to entrust his own interests, or the interests of his loved ones or his nation, because he would fear, and properly, that if unwisdom, injustice, lack of benevolence, or inability had been manifested in one case it might be again and his interests might be the ones to suffer.

• • • •

7. The object and intent of this plan is an act of humility on the part of the Government of the United States, whereby this government shall take the lead among the nations of the earth in officially acknowledging its inability to deal adequately with the problems now confronting mankind; shall admit, officially, its past ‘ and present failures in dealing with other nations along lines of wisdom, justice and benevolence; and shall acknowledge that the power to bring about and to maintain peace among the nations rests wholly in the hand of the One who has claimed it from time immemorial; namely, Jehovah, the God of the Bible. The intent further is that the United States should make an appeal to all the nations of the earth that, officially, their joint petition may humbly be laid before God Almighty, that He will deign to hear the cries of His creatures, and to spare them further wars. The belief is that the world is now in the very crisis foretold by Jesus, the Son of God, concerning which He said: "Except those days should be shortened, there should no fiesh be saved'*; and the realization, based upon the Bible, is that the only possible escape in this Day of Wrath is a national repentance and a world-wide repentance toward God.

Either the Bible is the Word of God or it is a lie. There is no middle ground. Jesus believed the Bible just as we have it today, the New Testament having not yet been written. Ho referred by name to the experiences of Noah and of Jonah. St Paul refers by name to Adam on numerous occasions. If the Christian religion be true the Bible is true, the whole of it If the Bible be untrue, Jesus and St Paul taught a false religion. If the Bible be untrue, there is no true religion in the world, no hope of a Cen-' tral Authority here or hereafter, and no hops of everlasting life to anybody. If the Bible be untrue, then self-interest is the only law for men or nations and peace can never come, and can never be maintained if it does come.

Let us now examine some of the claims of the Bible respecting Jehovah's place in the affairs of men. He selected and dealt with one nation for a time, in order thus to illustrate what His power will be. world-wide, when the due time has come for its full exercise. That nation was Israel, and we choose several illustrations.

Seven times, within a period of 450 years, Jehovah visited national calamities upon the Jews, and the Bible states that in each instance these calamities were from Him. They are recorded in the book of Judges. In Judges 2:14, as a rebuke for misdeeds, they were delivered "into the hands of spoilers”; in Judges 3:8, He sold them into the hand of the king of Mesopotamia; in Judges 3:12, He strengthened the king of Moab against them; in Judges 4:2, He sold them into the hand of the king of Canaan; in Judges 7:1, He "delivered them into the hand of Midian”; in Judges 10: 7, He "sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon” for a period of eighteen years, and in Judges 13:1, He "delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.”

While yet on the way to Canaan they were warned that it was useless for them to fight unless the Lord was with them; and when thiy did attempt to fight without His approval they were defeated, after first being forewarned that such would surely be the case. See Numbers 14:40-45.

Before Moses' death they were warned that after their period of probation as a nation had ended the Lord would bring against them a fierce nation from afar that would put an end to their national existence with one of the most terrible sieges of history. All of this was perfectly fulfilled when the army of Titus overthrew Jerusalem after the lapse of seventeen centuries.—Deuteronomy 28:49-57.

When the .divine decree had been placed against the house of Ahab, and Ahab repented and "rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth and went softly” there was a mitigation of the penalties against him. See 1 Hangs 21:27-29.

When three of Jehoshaphat’s enemies formed a confederacy against him, and he appealed the case to Jehovah, the attackers fell out among themselves and destroyed each other without a man of Israel needing to lift a hand against them. Israel was expressly told in this instance that "the battle is not yours, but God’s.” Soo 2 Chronicles 20:1-30.

When Sennacherib's general wrote a taunting letter to Hezekiah, demanding his surrender on the ground that his God was not able to care for him. Hezekiah spread the letter before the. Lord, with the result that the angel of the Lord stew the whole Assyrian army in a night. See Isaiah 37; 8-36.

Now as respects some other nations, tho Bible shows that the Pharaoh who had impudently demanded: "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey bis voice” was drowned in the Red Sea after a series of defeats that were in some respects worse than death.—Exodns 5:2; 14:1-3L

In Jehovah's hands nations are granted times for development and testing; also punishment. Abraham could not in his own day possess certain lands because "the iniquity of the Amoritss is not yet full.”—Genesis 15:16.

The Pharaoh reigning in Joseph’s thne was a recipient of special favors at God's hands. Joseph declared: "God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace”; and the promise was fulfilled.—Genesis 41:16-57.

God expressly claims responsibility for the destruction of Sodom, and gives the reason for it "I took them away as I saw good.”—Ezekiel 16:50.

• • • . .

The peace of the world is peculiarly the problem of the people of the United States. Not only do the Scriptures show that "all the earths should reverence Jehovah who "bringeth tho counsel of the heathen to nought” (Psalm 33: 8,10); not only do they declare that "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psabit 33:12), but the Revised Version pronounces a special blessing upon the United States in them words: "Ah, the land of the rustling wings [tho American eagle], which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea* even in vessels of papyrus.” (Isaiah 18:1*2) The only land west of -or beyond the rivers of Ethiopia is the United States. A special blesfr* ing is here pronounced upon'some message^ printed upon paper, that shall go forth to other peoples.

We are expressly told in prophecy that following the World War, when European kingdoms would be broken in pieces: "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed.” (Daniel 2:44) Why hesitate to give God His rightful placet

Nebuchadnezzar, a great king on the pages of secular history, did not hesitate to promulgate a decree regarding Jehovah "that every people, nation and language, which speak anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces and their houses shall be made a dunghill.”—Daniel 3; 29.

Daniel, man of God, thought to help Nebuchadnezzar later by warning him that he was about to go insane, and to urge him to righteousness and mercy toward the poor, so that the time of his tranquility might be lengthened. Nebuchadnezzar was insane seven years and at its close was not ashamed to say: "Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.”—Daniel 4:27,37.

Darius, another great monarch on the pages of secular history, after the deliverance of Daniel from the lions* den, "wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end. He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in the earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.”—Daniel 6:25-27.

One more illustration of a truly wise monarch was that of the ruler of Nineveh who, when warned by Jonah that the city was about to be destroyed, even as you are now warned that Christendom is about to perish, "arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock; taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not! And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”— Jonah 3:6-10.

Has not Jehovah declared His ultimate intent that "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”! (Isaiah 2:4) Why not be the first nation to issue a mighty appeal to Him to begin the operation of that law! But in making that appeal let the nation speak as a nation, through the mouths of its legislators, and not at all through the mouths of those who, professing to teach the Bible, really disbelieve it, or who, knowing this rule against war, were for war when they should have been for peace.

Why wait! Why wait! Was it not for you that the message was written three thousand years ago! "Be wise now therefore, 0 ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve Jehovah with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”—Psalm 2:10-12.

Nicholas Aligel, nine years old, of South Ozone Park, beat the police to it. Nicholas tired of school, so he engaged for a day as a traveling fruit peddler’s assistant Before night his father and mother and a squad of detectives were all looking for him. Worn out with their fruitless search, Nicholas’ papa and mamma returned heartbroken to their home late at night, only to find Nicholas sound asleep in his bed. We do not know what happened to Nicholas afterward. Perhaps his parents were so glad to see him that they said nothing and did nothing; and then, again, perhaps—but we draw the veil!

"Soon we shall have thinkers in the place Of fighters; each found able as a man To strike electric influence through a race^

Unatayed by city wall and barbican.”

THE result of the general election in Britain was an unexpected blow for the Conservative party, which has been pleased to consider itself as the only true support of the British constitution. The Conservative leaders were not at all prepared for the great set-back which they received at the polls and which, to their horror, brought the dreaded Labor government within view. To very many it is as if the enemy were already within sight of the city gates.

The present position is that there are three parties elected to the House of Commons, each approximately as strong as the others; and none loves the other. Here is disclosed one of the weaknesses of parliamentary government. No doubt Britain, the mother of this form of government, will join the general demonstration of the failure of all forms of human governance.

The wisdom of the world is visibly perishing here as well as elsewhere, not only because of the self-interests and class interests so assiduously sought, but because of the great complexity of the problems which have arisen, and which do not decrease but increase rapidly.

The Labor party is by no means opposed to the present constitution; so no great changes are probable even if and when it comes into power, which event seems near at hand. There are in it some who would break down the constitution, but the leaders are not of that mind.

It will be one of the ironies (or humors) of the situation if some of the leaders of that party are made Lords of the Kingdom and take a place amongst that oft-derided company. Strange things are possible in these days of upheaval. Out of the melee the Liberal party has come back.

This may almost be said to be a personal triumph for Mr. Lloyd George. Some fondly hoped that Mr. Lloyd George was a spent force, once and for all. But his trip to America restored his name and fame, and he came back to a set of circumstances which made him a very powerful force. Also he wrought like a Titan.

Probably Mr. Lloyd George is one of the signs of the times, and one of those who are to be used to do a work for the kingdom of peace, even though indirectly used of Jehovah. His motives are surely good, and he is no doubt seriously desirous of amending the conditions of the people. He is not merely a politician.

little lower. They are indeed about 400,000 less than this time last year; and yet there are about 1,000,000 persons getting unemployment money. Trade shows a slight improvement, though, say the authorities, there is no improved outlook, nor is one to be expected till Europe is settled. The Christmas season has been a busy one. Never were such shopping crowds, nor ever had' the railways a busier time.

The country has been afflicted with a bad outbreak of cattle foot-and-mouth disease. As the policy of Great Britain is not to trust to remedial measures but to kill and burn all the livestock on the farms where the disease shows itself, there has been a great slaughter. The total number of local outbreaks to date is 1,846, and 117,257 animals have been slaughtered: 62322 cattle, 30,758 pigs, 23,631 sheep, and 46 goats, This represents gross compensation amounting to £1,846,000.

Most of the trouble has been in the county of Cheshire, one of the most fertile of the English counties, and where its best dairy farms are. The condition of the county is pitiable; Habak-kuk*8 word may be applied: “The dock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls.” (Habakkuk 3:17) Its well-stocked fields and its farmyards are empty. The farmer may get some compensation for the destruction of his beasts, but the life of the farm has gone; and he is much in the same position as the man- • ufacturer who has had his mill burnt out.

Now, when so many animals have been destroyed, the government department is questioning whether or not it is using the right method of fighting the disease. In France and Belgium remedial measures are tried. Here they kill the animal, and think afterwards.

From Germany

FOUR years ago Austria seemed doomed, but was placed upon its feet by the combined efforts of the Boman Catholic Church and the great banking interests which center in America. Something of the same situation now confronts Germany. The bands of a very extensive secret organization of Rome are being quietly wrapped closely and more closely round about the German country and people.

In a recent address Heir von Graefe, member of the German Parliament and speaker for the German-nationalist party, with great force and clearness declared that Herr von Kahr, the Bavarian Premier, intends nothing less than the destruction of Protestant Germany, and the restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy with its ultramontane (Church of Home) influence.

For some time it has been plainly evident that all the powers of Germany's leading statesmen were unable to bring about a stable government without surrendering to the Centre Party, the Catholics. In spite of every effort to stabilize the value of money, the Reichsmark decreased more and more, while prices mounted astonishingly.

It was evident that some secret influence was working against the Protestant statesmen. Every effort made by them was rejected with disdain by the papers, largely under Catholic influence, so that the people had no confidence and a general stoppage of industry and business was the result

As a consequence of this secret influence, the cabinets changed one after another, so that within the whole Parliament it seemed quite impossible to find a new cabinet member who would have the confidence of the majority, or be able to undertake the formation of a new cabinet.

But suddenly, in the hour of the greatest exhaustion of the Reich and of the people, and amidst the general fear that another dissolution of the Reichstag was inevitable, with its inevitable delay of reform and prosperity, the Centre Party and its famous leader, Herr Dr. Marx, came into the limelight

Herr Marx offered to form a new cabinet, with the remarkable result that the newspapers, which had formerly been sowing seeds of distrust, at once took an opposite course. There was evident, all over the country, a systematic secret political force in favor of the new Government Prices immediately declined and almost incredibly the Reichsmark rose upon the foreign exchanges, under the pressure of ultramontane influence.

The tone of the new Government suddenly hardened, becoming almost a dictatorship. Of course this cannot be kept secret, and has resulted in general discontent. The empowering law, passed at the instance of the new cabinet, is not well received by the people; but after a bitter fight in the Reichstag it was finally accepted, and the Reichstag adjourned to meet again several weeks later.

The adjournment of the Reichstag virtually means that its members have been sent home and told to keep their lips dosed. Hence at this moment all the people are looking intently to Rome to see and hear what the "Old Wife” (the Roman Catholic Church) will command from there. Meantime, it does not forget that Protestant Germany has been compelled to surrender the Rhine and the Ruhr to Catholic France, and Upper Silesia to Catholic Poland.

All in all it may be said that at this time, more than at any other thus far, the German people see fulfilled in their midst the words of our Lord that at the time of the setting up of His kingdom there should be "upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring.”—Luke 21:25.

Significant Utterances of Lloyd George

STATESMEN are not always able to put into effect the things that they plainly see ought to be done. There are too many obstacles in the way, too many enemies who must be pacified, too many friends who must be catered to, too many interests involved.

Lloyd George is being criticised now because some of the statements he has made in the past have not been too well lived up to. But these statements are of interest, anyway. They show how far the world's greatest statesmen have moved forward within the history of men now living. Only a few years ago the following utterances by England’s greatest statesman would have been condemned as rank socialism by the capitalistic press. But today they do not attract more than passing notice.

“What (hall we tax? We shall tax the man who Is getting something he never earned, that he never pre* duced, and that by no law of justice and fairness ought ever to belong to him.”—Speech of December 8,1909.

"Who ordained that a few should have the land d Britain as a perquisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land d ow birth? Who ia responsible for the scheme of thin^

▼hereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labor, to win a bare and precarious existence for himself : and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbor receives in a whole year of toil?”—Speech of 1912.

"I say to Labor: You shall have justice; you shall have fair treatment, a fair share of the amenities of life; and your children shall have equal opportunities with the children of the rich. You shall not be plundered nor penalized. Labor must have happiness in its heart We will put up with no sweating. Labor is to have its just reward. There will be abundance to requite the toil and gladden the hearts of all.”—Speech of December 5, 1918.

Lloyd George sees what is easily possible; indeed, everybody sees it. But the thing which he desires, and which everybody desires, can never come as a result of human efforts. Experience proves this, positively.

Taking the Clock Apart By Benjamin Iwm

XTEAIiS ago, when I was in the jewelry business, several boys came to me, each having a piece of a clock which they had taken apart. Each claimed that the piece in his possession was the most valuable, and they all had something to sell. Everything they had to sell, however, was deformed, twisted and bent by their violence in taking the clock apart.

Ignorant boys have torn the Bible in pieces; each piece is a creed. Those creeds are bent and twisted clock-wheels which the clergy, like the inexperienced boys, imagine comprise about all there is of value in the Scriptures, when really all that each one has is junk.

Yes; those boys got into an argument and "het up” till their countenances resembled a ripe erysipelas—just like the rich master-parsons of flocks who do violence to Scripture. Those boys knew instinctively that those violently-handled wheels of a clock were of no use to me; but if I was silly enough to buy them, they in turn could buy peanuts.

The men "sent” from theological and divinity schools know instinctively that a few verses of Scripture with "sectarian finger-prints on them” are worse than useless; but they pander to the heterogeneous mass, and are looked upon as "wise men.”

Those "wise men” have mince-pie dreams, "and cannot rest day or night,” till those dreams are made into laws. An "office seeker⁹' must first endear himself to the "wise men,” or he will be defeated on election day. The "wise man” wants his dismal nightmare on the statute books so that he can father a "reform movement ” to make saints of us by law, that he can say on the day of judgment; 'tHere, Lord, are the saints I redeemed from the earth with the mutilated constituent components of an alarm clock. Please decorate my crown with garnets and diamonds.”

Those "wise men” who have mince-pie dreams take special delight in arguing with one another about their respective wheels and pendulums. One "wise man” says that the pendulum is the most important part; another, that the ease is more important; still another declares, in a temperature of 1,000 degrees, that the hands of the clock are all there is to it; and yet another answers that the figures on the dial are the chief of the tribe; another remarks that the key and the muscle applied keep everything moving. Thus we have violence from start to finish; force, not connection, is the fountainhead of sectarianism.

A wheel, case, pendulum, dial, and key separated—these are not a clock. "All scripture is given by inspiration for instruction in righteousness? Not a verse nor a chapter is complete in itself. Neither can a toothed wheel, mainspring, dial, time wheels, hands, or case be a clock till each part is properly assembled and adjusted between power and resistance. When this is done, we have a mechanical device for measuring time. When the Scripture is Scripture, it is a time guide; but when we separate it into creeds, we divide the “vesture of Christ,” which his murderers had the unlimited gall to do.

The “wise ones” of today have the audacity to tell us that "the world is growing better”; that it is "safe for democracy.”. Instead of preaching “the good tidings of great joy,” they preach war, causing bloodshed, famine, and pestilence. Christ knew full well when hesaid: "Woe unto you lawyers, . . • scribes, Pharisee^

hypocrites* that they were, as they are today, I will apologize. But it is my firm conviction the aristocracy of Satan's realm.                that the choicest maledictions in prophecy can-

If I have made any statement that is not true, not do these “wise ones'* injustice.

Antediluvian Giant By John c. Ne ft

I AM greatly enthused about the “Antediluvian Giants/* in The Golden Age No. 109. On that line I have some information which no doubt will be of interest.

I was once a globe-trotter; and before I knew anything about present truth I did not appreciate wonders when I saw them.

In 1907 there was exhibited at various places throughout the United States a giant—a son of one of the fallen angels, without a doubt.

I will reproduce the history, connected with this monster, to the best of my ability.

In the early part of this century two fossil giants were found in a cave in the Ural Mountains, on the eastern border of Russia. The larger is something over eleven feet, from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet. The other is much smaller, and was considerably decomposed before petrifaction took effect. Therefore I will say no more about that one.

The larger giant is in almost a perfect state of preservation, except that one ear had begun to decompose, also his upper hip and part of his abdominal wall; part of his stomach is therefore visible. This decay, of course, took place before petrifaction took effect.

A specimen like this has never been recorded before or since, with the exception of Mr. Hubbard's find, described in Golden Age No. 109.

It is probable that this giant did not perish in the flood; but that he died before the flood, is evident from the fact that he lay as straight as any corpse could lie, and with hands folded.

The finders stated that, due to the surroundings of his tomb, he might have been a chief. He had neither beard nor moustache, but a heavy head of long hair, a rope-like portion extending from the top of his head to each shoulder. That also is petrified, and is also proof that he was laid out with special care. I do not believe that special care was the order of the day when those monsters saw the great deluge coining.

Truly, he is a wonderful sight; but I did not appreciate it then; for I knew not whence it came.

But someone might conclude: "Ohl well, somebody just molded that thing out of cement, to make some easy money.** From here it would be hard for me to convince you to the contrary; but try I wilt

Let anyone that doubts the genuineness of this narrative gaze upon his own hands, arms and feet, and notice every detail—the wrinkles, the knuckles, the nails, the skin, the muscles— and then imagine them turned into stone. Portions of this giant are just that perfect. His teeth are as natural in setting as mine are! Another feature I noticed was what is commonly called the Adam*s apple. I tapped on it with my knuckles. The sound indicated that there was a cavity therein.

If anyone is further interested in this, I believe that he will find this giant in the National Museum in Washington, D. C. If he is not there at present he could be easily located.

No genius could model anything like it Truly he is one of those giants that filled the earth with violence in the days of Noah.

These which I mention here and those of Mr. Hubbard’s finding are the only petrified giants on record. But there have been many bones of this race found throughout the United States, of which the American Indian is not ignorant ^; When some of these bones were unearthed 'during the early days of the Middle West, the red man recited his tradition as follows:

"Long time ago great big men live here; heap fierce; when thunder cracked, they mocked; when lightning flashed, they laughed, and said that they were greater than both. Great Spirit sent heap big flood; kill’em all.”

This is Indian tradition, recorded in history; and yet it is not so far from the truth. It was handed down to them by their ancestors from the days of Noah.

A Concluding Chapter of Interrogations

THE publication of ‘'Interrogations” in The Golden Age No. 109, being answers to sundry questions and objections brought forward by Mr. Jasper Jones, has produced another crop of interrogations in the form of five more letters from Mr. Jones, one from Ludwig Larsen, one from Axel Hjalmarson, and one from Thaddeus Tornowicz, all following the same general lines. For convenience we consider them collectively.

’As the letters from Messrs. Jones, Larsen, Hjalmarson, and Tornowicz all come from the same post-office, are all in the same handwriting, and as none of these gentlemen appear on our list of subscribers at the post-office named, we assume that this one answer should suffice; and we will not carry the matter further.

*We are glad to devote a reasonable amount of effort to assist any one to a clearer view of God’s plan, though we do not forget the command of Romans 14:1: “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations.” This Scripture text we understand to mean that we are not expected or even permitted to waste consecrated time in disputing with one who, at the moment, seems more eager to find something which he can criticize than something which he can commend.

⁴We ask Mr. Jones-Larsen-Hjalmarson-Tor-nowicz not to take offense at this statement We ask him also to bear in mind our oft-repeated and self-evident proposition that we do not know it all, and to be reasonably patient while we try to give some answers to what we recognize are unusually intelligent criticisms. We proceed as before, with quotations from the letters, interspersed with our answers or comments on the same.

Necessity of Understanding the Scriptures

jlHE original doctrine propounded by Pastor Bus-J- sell was sufficiently plausible to solve every doubt of the confirmed skeptic—for the time being. Unfortunately too much of its credibility depended on the infallibility of a set of dates, and the parallels based thereon, which the relentless logic of events has shown not paralid.”

•From our point of view the original doctrine propounded by Pastor Russell still solves every doubt, and would be wholly credible if it was divorced entirely from any set of dates; but the logic of events shows that his chronology was correct and is correct Chronology is not a proper basis for faith. It should never be anything more than an aid to faith, but it may be that, and it is that.'

’"Your doctrine is rooted in the presumption that Pastor Bussell wrote under divine inspiration. Indeed, the candor, temperance, charitableness, lucidity and apparent logic manifested in his words impress the reader as favoring that assumption. Any careful student of history must have drawn the conclusion that our civilization was to end in a cataclysm, and Pastor Bussell points out (whether it was his own discovery or not, I do not know) that the Bible prophesies this very thing. But it seems strange that Pastor Bussell, writing under supposed divine inspiration, could have perpetrated so many egregiously false guesses concerning the date 1914, the keystone date of his whole scheme of parallels.”

•It was never the thought of Pastor Russel] that he was inspired, nor was it ever our thought respecting him. We prefer to accept his own statement on this subject, “If it was proper for the early Christians to prove what they received from the apostles, who were and who claimed to be inspired, how much more important it is that you fully satisfy yourself that these teachings keep closely within their outline instructions and those of the Lord; since their author claims no inspiration, but merely the guidance of the Lord, as one used of him in feeding his flock.” (Watch Tower, June 1,1893) We could reproduce this sentiment from Pastor Russell’s pen many times. This was always his thought of himself and our thought of him. However, we hold that Pastor Russell was right in regard to 1914, as your next sentence practically admits.

•"It is true that events of stupendous importance did transpire on this date, but not exactly what was expected by him and his followers came to pass, nor on schedule time, but several months earlier. Your attempt to explain this discrepancy seems to me entirely inadequate; and the fact that even the Great War did not occur as per schedule, and that your other anticipations cosh cerning this date failed, serves to invalidate your whois scheme of chronology and parallels based thereon, wheel harmony and exactness it refutes.”

¹⁰We cannot undertake here to quote at any considerable length from Pastor Russell’s writings as to his expectations regarding 1914; but from his journal, The Watch Towek, for January, 1881, we quote the following paragraph: “We see, too, that not only are the harvest of Jewish and Gospel ages parallel in point of beginning, but also in length of duration; theirs being in all forty years from the time of Jesus* anointing, at the beginning of their harvest, A. D. 30, to the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. So ours, beginning in 1874, closes with the end of the day of wrath and end of the times of the Gentiles, 1914, a similar and parallel period of forty years. The first seven years of the Jewish harvest were especially devoted to the gathering of ripe wheat from that church; three and one-half of it were while He was present as the Bridegroom and three and a half of it after He had come to them as ETing and had entered into glory”

An Error Lew than One-Half of One Percent

BOM the foregoing it appears that as early as January, 1881, Pastor Bussell expected the end of the Times of the Gentiles in 1914 (about October 1). In the year 1881 the leading statesmen and publicists of the world expected nothing of the kind; but they now admit that the World War, which began on August 1st, 1914, has created a situation which all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put back together again. The Bussian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, and many other monarchies and kingdoms have disappeared, never to rise. From January, 1881, to October, 1914, is 405 months. According to your thought Pastor Bussell missed his calculation by two months; that is to say, he committed an error amounting to a trifle less than one-half of one percent.

“Now it seems to us that to discern “events of stupendous importance” 403 months before they happened, and to hit upon the date within less than one-half of one percent of error is such a remarkable phenomenon that the value of the discrepancy is negligible. However, there are critical, keenly analytical Bible Students who hold that the World War began exactly on time, even to the very day; and that the exact beginning of the Times of the Gentiles was not 606% years B. C., but two months previous. (This is based on 2 ELings 25:8, and the supposition that in that year the month Nisan began on March 27th, five days after the Spring equinox)

“"You have suggested a new reading for the chronol-' ogy of Volume II, by substituting the date 1918 for 1914; but the sequel has proven conclusively that your expectations concerning this date, also, were unwarranted.^w

“It is true that in the Seventh Volume of Scbipture Studies the suggestion is made that the harvest of the Gospel age would continue on beyond the close of the Times of the Gentiles. At the time that book was written it was believed that the Spring of 1918 would mark the end of the harvest work.

Notable Event* Occurring in 1918

THE Spring of 1918 did not mark the end of the harvest work, however, in the sense that the harvesters were not able to find any more “wheat” But in 1918 the work of harvest was stopped, the leaders of the movement were imprisoned for what amounted to life sentences, the tracts and plates from which their tracts were printed were destroyed, the Jewish commissioners landed in Palestine to undertake the formation of a new Jewish polity, the Bussian Bolshevists announced their purpose to overthrow Christendom; and ever since that date the special effort of those interested in Pastor Bussell's teachings has been to announce the new message, the message of the kingdom, that “millions now living will never die.”

“Hence we hold that the sequel proves that our expectations regarding 1918 were fully warranted, and abundantly fulfilled. We think it also likely that on that date Jehovah, from His vantage point, saw, knew and personally recognized, whether in or out of Mystic Babylon, every person who will eventually go to make up. the bride of Christ

^1T“The sobriety and moderation of Pastor Bussell's earlier writings do, I believe, unmistakably stamp them with sincerity. His explanation of some of the phenomena of past and current history is, as far as I know, unique in its revelation of hitherto hidden truths. But the mistake which I suspect his followers have made ia in assuming that divine revelation has been completed in the Studies, which are to serve aa an appendix or digest of the Bible; and that it is superfluous to the point of impiety to criticize any of the statements of [Pastor] Bussell, although it is patent that some at these, now advanced aa facts, were only hazarded by himself as hypotheses and not conclusive proofs. I believe Bussell was really inspired by an honest zeal to advance the cause of eternal truth. There is an appeal both to the heart and to the reason in his earlier writings that I am sensible of *in none of his commentators. In Volume VII and in subsequent publications of the I. B. S. A. the declarations become less and less convincing, the demands on the readers¹ credulity more and more exacting; in fact, there seems palpable anxiety to perpetuate a new system of orthodoxy by insisting on the sacred character of Bussell’s words, meanwhile gradually departing from the same spirit, and by degrees even in actual tenets of doctrine.”

^MIf it was proper for Pastor Russell to say of his writings that “their author claims no inspiration, but merely the guidance of the Lord, as one used of him in feeding his flock,” there is the same spirit visible in the Seventh Volume, page 295, where the observation is made in that book that “it would be unreasonable to expect that the Lord would miraculously use imperfect tools to do an absolutely perfect work, and each must use his judgment as to the value of the interpretations in this book.”

“And as to the Studies exhausting the Scriptures, there is the hope, expressed on page 292 of the same book, that “the marriage supper (Luke 14:15) will be like all the other feasts the church has had, not of physical food, but of truths divine. That will be the time when the Lord, the Head of the family, will explain to us every part of every verse in all His Holy Word. We shall have perfect memories then, in which to treasure every word He utters, and perfect bodies, too, in which to perform to the full all God's holy will We have the will to do it now. We have tried to understanding Word, and tried to help others to understand it; but the best we could do was far from perfect.” What is there about a statement of this kind that can properly be considered as a demand “on the readers' credulity more and more exacting”?

Some Misapprehensions of I. RS A. Teachings UmHE various features of this gradual revision of

-L Russell’s doctrine I will not hen point out in detail, merely alluding to your recent views concerning the resurrection. The Bible teaches that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. I may have misapprehended your recent teachings, but latterly you seem to consider that in the Tart days’ those professing Christians who decline to 'come out of Babylon^ by embracing Russeilism will have part in neither resurrection. The plain implication seems to be that whoever fails to repudiate the present political, finaneiri, social, religious and industrial system, and to alienate their friends, fraternal and business associates, etc., that whoever fails to actively support the I. B. S. A. by financial aid and cooperation in the dissemination of its literature is more blameworthy that the heathen and is incurring the gravest of all dangers. Of course, a skillful casuist can apply Bible texts to justify almost any doo-trine, but the above seems to the writer unscriptural and surprisingly like a revival of medieval ecclesiastical intolerance.”

^Present views withhold a resurrection from none except the wilfully and incorrigibly apostate, the modern scribes and Pharisees, of the prototypes of whom the Lord said: “How can ye escape the condemnation of Gehenna [utter destruction] ?” You err wholly in our views as to the'necessity for salvation of earning out of Babylon, embracing Russeilism, repudiating systems, alienating friends, supporting the L B. S. A. in any way or cooperating with it in the distribution of its views. But some of these things may and will, in our judgment, have a marked effect upon the kind of reward some will receive and the time when they will receive it.

““Every religious system that was ever promulgated contained a bogey of some sort to cow weak-minded proselytes into obedience, to stimulate lethargic members into more active seal, to discourage inquiry that was calculated to undermine the integrity of the system and to dissuade the disillusioned ones from haoksBdteg and withholding remittances.”

“Has anybody ever asked you for any remittances? That is one of the things the 1B.8.X does not do. "Tree Seats and No Collections¹⁹ is the battle-cry of the Fifth Universal Monarchy, and distinguishes the L B. S. A from every other religious organization on earth.

““Given a psychic application, this bogey aright nodfly become a whip to exact an abject will-submission, of the individual to the Order, to terrorize the superstitious^ and throw the recalcitrant one into a frame of mind approaching religious dementia.”

“If any of our readers feel that they have been whipped into will-submission, or terrorized, or brought close up to religious dementia by anything they have seen in our columns will they not please drop us a line? To us the antics of Babylon are indescribably funny, an absolute scream; and we have tried to assist our readers now and then to a chuckle, if not a good laugh, at some of her follies—one of the best deterrents to religious dementia we can think of.

’•"There exists today a great variety of pseudo-Chria-tian cults, of which depend more or less on psychic phenomena u impose on the credulity of their votaries. Each one declares its particular doctrine to contain the only valid interpretation of Holy Writ, and the same to constitute the true road to salvation. In some way incomprehensible to the writer each one of these sects manages to persuade its adherents that that power which is now universal is only holy in its own particular case, and therefore proves its truth, but is with others diabolical.”

"Very good! And just here please bear in mind the eleventh and twelfth paragraphs of this article. Pastor Russell alone, of all Bible expositors, four hundred and three months ahead of time wrote of the close of the Times of the Gentiles. None of the rest of these religious cults knew anything about it. The evidence is plain who was right

""It seems to me that Pastor Russell at first advanced the view tentatively as a hypothesis, rather than as conclusive truth, that the dead would be gradually resurrected in response to the prayer of faith. Gradually perhaps, though I think not explicitly so stated—[sentence is left unfinished]. But it is nowhere written that the divine plans depend for their consummation on the belief of the faithful. That thought underlies much of pagan mysticism, that existence is in the mind. It is flattering, no doubt, to self-importance to fancy that celestial hosts watch their slightest acts and even thoughts with breathless interest, but never in authentic human experience have we seen the eternal cosmic laws suspended because some finite creature failed to observe a rigid piety. I would not discount humble faith, but we frequently witness colossal conceit disguised as this. For every true saint I suspect there are one thousand self-elected ones, and the latter comprise the main reliance of the multitudinous sects and cults that have so measurably brought true piety into disrepute. It is written that the divine plans go forward irrespective of any human being's theories concerning the same; ‘though ye believe not, yet he abideth faithful'; but every religious sect demands a faith that must be maintained against reason. Hence the scoffer affirms that it is all delusion; for whatever you believe in is fact so far as you are concerned.”

"The sentence in the above which was left unfinished evidently meant to say something about some of Pastor Russell's followers accepting as conclusive what he put forward as tentative. We cannot say as to this, having no evidence upon the subject. To us his suggestions on this matter are still tentative. But when we find that Elijah "cried unto the Lord” before raising the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:20-22), and that Elisha "prayed unto the Lord” before raising the Shunammite's son (2 Kings 4:33), and that Peter "kneeled down and prayed” before awakening Dorcas (Acts 9:40), and that Jesus lifted up His eyes in prayer before awakening Lazarus (John 11: 41,42), we see no reason to question Pastor Russell's method of reasoning.

“We believe that here are "authentic human experiences” in which “the eternal cosmic laws” were suspended because certain finite creatures had faith in God and exercised it, and we believe that what happened in the past on a small scale will happen in the future on a tremendous scale. We believe it just as possible for Jehovah to he interested in earthly hosts as in "celestial hosts.” They are all His creatures, are they not! And if He wishes to show His favor to earthly beings, are they any less needy of it than the celestial ones! They may be even no less worthy.

End of the Old Order

«TT IS written that the ‘last days’ will be like those 1 before the Flood. But the Flood came as * sudden, overwhelming cataclysm, and did not steal on the world so gradually and imperceptibly that it was in the world nine years before the world realized it. It seems to me that if the old world ended veritably, it ended eleven years before you say it did; for about that time a change came over all flesh, distinguishing the present from all the centuries which preceded it. To me it seems almost lacking in candor to proclaim the end of the world for 1914; and then when your expectations concerning this data failed of realization, to revise you statements, saying that it came legally an that date.”

"You confuse the days before the Flood with the days of the Flood itself. The days before the Flood were not strung out for nine years merely, but for a hundred and twenty. (Genesis 6:3); and so far as 1914 is concerned we refer you once more to the eleventh and twelfth paragraphs of this article. It is not at all true that our “expectations concerning this date failed of realization.” Others now admit for that date all that we ever claimed for it.

^IJ, The Master said emphatically that when He came -again every eye should see Him, and warned His disciples not to be led astray by the false Christs who would impersonate Him, misrepresenting the hour of His coming, saying that He had come when He had not come. I wish not to be dogmatic, for in truth I do not know; but this seems to be clearly intended to enlighten the disciples concerning the true manner of His coming, as if the same would be unmistakable in character and recognized by all mankind, and not only by a few-souls, sts the impostor Christs would be. In ages credulous enthusiasts have been misled by a supposed ‘inner light/ though I disclaim any positivenesa in making this criticism."

“The Master also said that He would come "as a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2) which certainly implies stealth and secrecy; and that “the kingdom of God cometh not with outward show." (Luke 17:20, margin) We cannot here go further into this matter. All scriptures bearing upon the manner of our Lord's return are fully and satisfactorily discussed in Volume H, Scripture Studies, Chapter 5. The evidence is complete and overwhelming that the world at large will never behold Christ with their physical eyes; they will come to a mental comprehension of His presence or not at all Read the chapter again; it speaks for itself.

"“The Master queried if there would be faith left in the earth at His second coming, implying, it would seem, that it was doubtful You say that He came in 1874, through the world has no knowledge of this other than your assertion; but faith was then still vibrant in the earth. But in this present century faith of all kinds has rapidly decayed. A change came and all over the planet, everywhere among human beings faith commenced evaporating, as it were, leaving men disillusioned of their world-old ideals, cynically disclosing to them that personal salvation depended solely on the power of the will to defend itself from all other wills —the rest was cheateryt Faith decayed in those time-honored customs, institutions, duties, and principles which were as old as the primal ooze I Faith decayed in political, social, class distinctions; in racial pride and family loyalty; in parental authority and filial respect; in connubial fidelity and personal honor; in feminine modesty and childhood's innocence; in the relations of master and servant; in the balance of the sexes. Soldiers lost faith in their colors; constituents in their representatives; capital and labor mutually lost faith in their own propaganda. Faith decayed in laws, legislators and the enforcement of law. Faith decayed in the intrinsic economic law of supply and demand, in the safety of investments, the integrity of interest, even in the stability of money. Faith is a force of incalculable potential!* ties and faith is approaching its lowest ebb; yet it Is far from being extinguished, for mankind is not yet satiated with humbuggery!"

"We see no reason to question or comment on anything in the above paragraph. To our mind it tells the truth, the plain truth, and nothing but the truth, except that we think the writer was over-enthusiastic about the faith of 1874. If there was so much faith then, how comes it that there is so little nowT The answer is that we now see more clearly just how false and untrustworthy was the faith structure of that time. Could a faith that rested upon three fundamental and totally unscriptural errors be properly considered a vibrant one?

Palestine and Gentile Rule

ftT T IS written that Jerusalem shin be trodden down

A (ruled, oppressed) by the Gentfles until the expiration of Gentile Times. You say those Times ended in 1914; but Palestine continues under Gentile rule, as a British mandate, and ninety percent of the population are Gentiles (Arabs). According to a Jewish telegraphic agency report quoted in the Chicago Tribune, the Jews complain bitterly that the British High Cammurionar discriminates against themselves, favoring the Arabs in every way. They claim that they were lose oppressed in Old Russia and enjoyed more privileges even under Turkish rule. So discouraged is Israel Zangwill at the non-fulfilment of British promises to assist the Jews in realizing their political aspirations for a national home in Palestine, where it is alleged that they are not even allotted 'state lands' and *waste lands/ that ho oounselo the delegates to the American Jewish Congress to abandon Zion and center their efforts on saving humanity from another world war."

"The Lord said that Jerusalem would bo trodden down of the Gentiles until the Times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled; but He did not say that the very day that the Times of the Gentiles ended the Gentile nations would all be thrown upon the scrap heap at one and the same instant. Every despatch from England shows that England is headed in that direction. When it goes down, we apprehend that Zionism will be a reality in Palestine. We doubt the accuracy of the suggestions that the Jews have less liberty under British rule than they did under Russian or Turkish rule, and the data regarding the placement of the Jews upon Palestine Boil are out of accord with data on this subject which have appeared in our columns from time to time. Israel Zangwill is not a fit spokesman for the Jews, in any sense of the word.

""It seems to me that your argument for eternity for our planet can hardly find endorsement in the text, 'One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever/ I am not disputing that the prophecy concerning the destruction of the earth by fire may be symbolical; but the inference to be drawn from this particular text would naturally be, I should think, that the earth abideth as long as the familiar sequence of birth and death prevails: 'for ever* being used in a comparative sense, signifying during many successive generations.”

"To us it seems that if "the earth abideth for ever,” then the earth abideth forever, no matter what may happen to the generations. Anyway, God says of His earth that "he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18); and in Psalm 78:69 He tells us that the perpetuity of His sanctuary, the Christ, is like the perpetuity of "the earth which he hath established for ever.” Both are endless in duration.

Shifting Sando of Human Teachings

N ALL ages priestcraft has stultified progress and J- retarded human enlightenment by piously denouncing honest inquiry as a profane meddling with sacred mysteries. Whenever the logic of incontestable facts exposed the fallacy of theological theorizing, the 'spiritual* guides of mankind condemned the evidence as Satanic delusion, solemnly admonishing the laity not to imperil their souls' salvation by trying to find out things for themselves.”

"Yes, verily; just what we have always claimed. But where do we come in on all this! But we read on and then run into this:

""The priestly ideal was a medieval condition of affairs, combining filth, ignorance, squalor, brutality, fanaticism, ecstaticism, and implicit obedience. When in the course of time sacerdotal efforts proved futile to suppress the revelations of science, the theologians were fain to accept part of the conclusions of science, and to formulate new theories more In accordance with the same. I observe, however, that the multifarious latter-day sects and cults display a marked predilection for pseudo-science, for ingenious sophistries, plausible conjectures, anomalies and paradoxes^ whereby they purport to reconcile the Bible to science. But the plain truth seems to be that, so far, no one has formulated any reasonable scheme of theology whereby the Bible and science are really brought into harmony.”

"Inasmuch in the so-called scientists of our day publicly admit that they are continually shifting their positions and changing their theories, we know of nothing in reason or in the Bible that would prohibit others from doing the same thing with those same findings and theories. Naturally, the child of God is interested in any discovery that seems to throw additional light upon his Father's Word. Why not? Why leave it all to the guess work of those who cannot agree among themselves even in the present and agree still less with those who have gone before? Must we conclude that in matters of science the only ones that can be trusted are the ones who first of all admit that they have no faith in their Creator? And this when they cannot make even one living cell, to say nothing of a tadpole or a scientist!

*⁸"My criticism is not levelled against any honest attempt to reconcile the two; it is against that absence of candor which pretends to have effected such reconciliation when the same will not stand the test of critical analysis. You admit that almost any line of argument can seem to find endorsement in the Biblical text, and you declare that man is expected to use his God-given reason in discriminating truth from error. You then pretend to supply a reasonable interpretation of the Scriptures (and reasonable it is, indeed, in some main essentials, but in other points it will nob stand a critical examination). But here you prohibit the exercise of reason wherever the same confute! your reasoning. You must admit that many of your statements have been proven errors by the remorseless logic of events; how, then, can you lay claim to infallibility, and forbid private recourse to reason?”

"Please see again paragraphs 18 and 19 of this article and advise us, after reading them, what there is left in this paragraph to answer. The assumptions you have made regarding our prohibition of the exercise of reason by others and our claim to infallibility fall completely to the ground in the light of those statements, which we again endorse.

Intolerance of the Dark Ageo

“PRIVATE interpretation was so dangerous te -L Papal supremacy that it was put under the ban, and inquisitorial courts created to discourage it However, the Romish doctrine had this claim to popular credibility, that it was the consensus of opinion of generations of churchmen, and did not depend for authority on the interpretation of any one man and his commentators. Arians, Manichees, Nestorians, Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards, and Hussites were early examplea «t

;rivate interpreters whom the church weeded out with thoroughness. Galileo was a private interpreter; and bo, with all his orthodox zeal, was Columbus. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Campbell, Miller, arose from time to time to reassert the inalienable human right to liberty of thought Pastor Bussell himself remarked that in each instance the principal anxiety of the disciples of these innovators seems to have been to close the door against any further private interpretation, one and all prftrlaiming that divine revelation was each time completed in the discoveries of their leader. In fact every new reformatory departure in religion seems to commence with a real illumination and Hie uncovering of hidden truths, but invariably the tendency is to ossify into an indexible, intolerant, arbitrary system whereby the enthusiasm of truth-lovers is cunningly diverted into seal to maintain a new orthodoxy and to anathematize any criticism of the same. Interest is centered on rules and formulas, vows and resolves, types and parallels, forced interpretations of the Scriptures, cant and leaderworship, to the prepudice of the cause of eternal truth.”

“We agree very well with the statements above, and are faithfully trying to avoid the attitude of mind and the errors of practice here declaimed against

^4KTn works of such eternal importance to mankind as the Studies in xhx Scbiptubes should be, if they are actually directly referred to in the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, it seems strange that such palpable historical errors should enter as the following: Pastor Bussell mentions the Goths as an ‘Asiatic race,’ and in Volume VII this statement is repeated with uncritical fidelity, though it is a fact which has bean well known to historians and philologists for centuries past that the Goths were a Germanic people, and no evidence exists (outside of the now rejected Aryan hypothesis) that they over had a home in Asia. The classic writers first refer to them as inhabiting Scandinavia. They were converted to Arianism by Wulfila, who translated part of the Bible into Gothic, and fragments of this Ma. exist as the oldest example of a written Germanic language. They were a powerful, not an obscure people; and ample data exist concerning their religion, laws, customs, institutions, dress, physique, eta, to unmistakably identify them as Germanic.”

“In confirmation of the foregoing, the "Standard Dictionary,” under the word "Goth” quotes from Baring-Gould's "Story of Germany": "The Goths were divided by the Dnieper into the East Goths (Ostrogoths) and the West Goths (Visigoths) and were the most cultured of the German peoples. They had been converted to Christianity by a bishop named Ulphilas, who translated the Bible into old Gothic." Evidently Wulfila and Ulphilas are one and the same person. Hence, on page 184 of Volume VII, instead of the Ostrogoths being referred to as an Asiatic race, they would more properly be referred to as Germanic. They lived east of the Dnieper, which separates West Russia from East Russia.

“We do not know that it can be proven that these natives of East Russia did not originally come from Asia, but we are quite content to seo this word Asiatic changed to Germanic. Wo cannot believe that this desirability of changing one word for another should argue seriously against the value of Volume VIL In the paragraph in question the attempt was merely being * made to show that the Ostrogoths came from east of the Adriatic Sea; and this is proven to be correct, in any event.

God’s Word Before Man’s Theories

HTtf SECULAR history there is no record that

JL even one universal monarchy ever existed on this planet. Babylon had for independent contemporaries Egypt, Lydia, Media, Persia, Greece, Carthage, Ethiopia, Italy, Sicily, Spain, Gaul, Germania, India beyond the Indus plain, China, etc. Alexander's empire never extended over Italy, Sicily, Carthage, Spain, Gaul, the British Idea, Scythia, the Gangetic plain, Ceylon, China, Indo-China, etc. The utmost extent of the Roman dominions never embraced Germany beyond the Elbe, Scandinavia, Sarmatia, the bulk at the African continent, the Iranian plateau, India, Ceylon, Indo-China, China, Thibet, Japan, Corea, Malaysia, Siberia, etc., not to speak of Australia, the two Americas and the Pacific archipelagoes. Even the suzerainty of ‘spiritual* Rome was never univenally acknowledged.”

“To answer this paragraph properly we need to quote Daniel 2:38: "And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the heaven, hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them alL Thou art this head of gold.” We think that this is to be accepted as a hyperbolical statement, a form of language commonly used in ancient times in addressing potentates, and used to some extent still, as, for example, when the Pope is called "His Holiness.” But the Babylonian empire was dominant, powerful, and sufficiently extensive to make Daniel's words intelligible to the eye of faith. Besides, the natives of some of these other countries named were probably little else than naked savages, not properly included in Nebuchadnezzar's view of "earth,” civilization, much less Daniel's. The

310 succeeding statement of verse 39 that the third kingdom should “bear rule over all the earth” is to be understood in the same way.

"“You teach that Pastor Bussell’s interpretation of the Bible contains the only true gospel (good tidings) ; and that to carry orthodoxy, with its ‘immortal soul’ and ‘hell’ dogmas to the heathen is to carry bad tidings and not the true gospeL I would inquire, then, if the Studies have yet been translated into the 5,000 languages of mankind, so that the Hova, the Waganda, ths Basuto, the Pygmy, the Abyssinian, the Veddah, the Loaa, the Thibetan, the Miaotze, the Ainu, the Igarrote, the Andaman Islanders, the Koriak, the Innuit, the Seri, the Aymoral, the Tierrardel-Fuegians, can hear this witness? Many dialects differ eo materially from others of the same language as to be mutually unintelligible, and it is doubtful if even the Bible itself has yet been translated into every dialect. It is written that the end (end of the world) shall not come until every nation and tongue has received the witness; yet you proclaim the old world ended and the new world begun.”

^MTo our understanding, when a thing has been made known in all the principal languages of earth, the languages that are principally used in Europe, it may properly be said to have been given a world-wide witness, for the reason that virtually the whole earth is under European domination. The backward races are simply ignored in the fulfilment. But the literature of the LB. S.A. is in thirty-four languages.

Millennial Conditions Misunderstood

I <fpHE Bible statement is that the old world will not

JL be remembered, nor come into mind. You assert, on the contrary, that it will be perfectly remembered, to serve as an object lesson throughout eternity. Yet in the new made-over-by-man Millennium which you herald, wherein nature is to be supplanted by artificial contrivances, natural law by incongruities and paradoxes, and the inexhaustible, intricate marvels of nature’s delicate mechanism by man’s cumbrous imitations—in a world wherein the logical sequence of cause and effect will be superseded by such arbitrary assumptions as perhaps emanate from the minds of those whose experience of the out-of-doors has been restricted to city parks, of what use will such lessons be that apply to extinct, never-to-be-revived conditions of life? Shall the charging warrior recall the thrill, and the folly of it? Shall victims of painful accidents, terrible diseases, miserable poverty, hopeless incarceration, abusive servitude, and the like*, be perpetually reminded of past suffering? Of what use will lessons be that apply to sex, war, commerce, politics, diplomacy, law, parenthood, stock-breeding, fisheries, forest-conservation, flood-pro*

Brooklth, N. Y.

vention, vice, danger, Insanitation, etc., in a world wherein these things are absent or superfluous? The lessons would seem superfluous.”

"We presume the passage which you have in mind is the one which says: “The former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes. For behold, I create new heavens [ruling powers], and a new earth [social conditions]; and the former [ruling powers and social conditions] shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” (Isaiah 65: 16,17) Nothing in this leads us to suppose that mankind will not be able to recall any of their experiences, if they wish to do so, nor to profit by them, if the need for past lessons becomes apparent. But we do understand the passage to mean that the things which have marred our happiness hitherto will not be always before us, like Banquo’s ghost, but will be out of mind.

"“You bid us rejoice and be exceeding glad became the Golden Age is at hand. Then it seems to me that you proceed to dispel this budding hope for the majority of reasoning people by announcing conditions of life which to the normal mind must appear monstrous, unnatural, undesirable, and inconceivable. If the Bible prophecies are to be understood literally, the laws of nature are to be revolutionized during the Golden Age and new laws substituted which are simply contrary to nature, as men have known nature from immemorial antiquity. So far back as human records or tradition* go, so far back as geological evidence extends, supported by the most overwhelming testimony of all life’s experience, existence has been a struggle for survival between the strong and the weak, the acute and the stupid. This has been modified and tempered by two fundamental self-sacrificing factors, the maternal instinct and the herd impulse. The rest was ruthless. Now, in the new age, the twentieth century, this struggle seems also to have become psychic, a will contest between entities, immeasurably augmenting the ruthlessness of nature’s struggle, and gradually breaking down the ancient distinctions that kept the world in order.”

••What better reasons could anybody have than the foregoing for praying from the heart, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven”! Is it “monstrous, unnatural, undesirable and inconceivable” to want to get away from a condition where somebody stronger is always trying to take advantage of somebody more noble, more just, more honest, more Christlike I

"“This struggle of existence, whether it be material or psychic, is the negative of Christ’s teaching; or eh* right and wrong are euphemisms merely, expedients to disguise the reality of the struggle or divert it into new channels. The Bible understood literally seems to intimate that the laws of nature will not obtain any longer during the Golden Age. Such a statement must either be taken on trust, or rejected altogether as preposterous; for the rational, normal mind is incapable of comprehending conditions of life wherein the laws of nature, as we know them, are apparently to be reversed."

•^xIt was Christ Himself that taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That does surely imply drastic changes here below; but it can hardly be claimed that the inauguration of those changes negates Christ’s teachings, if they come in answer to a prayer that He taught us to pray.

Bible Study a Neceseity

attempt to formulate theories concerning

JL these deep mysteries, theories so contrary to known facts and laws of nature, seems like a bungling attempt to reconcile science to untenable hypotheses, and seems calculated to bring the promise of a Golden Age into disrepute, rather than to strengthen faith in the Ramp-"

"Ouch! We have always been suspecting that at some time or ?ther either you or somebody else would really find out how little we actually do know, and that then the jig would be up.

""Very few people desire a spirit-existence; fewer yet are willing to forego the rewards and expectations of this life for what seems to them like shadows merely. What practically all men and women yearn for is the return of their youth, a repetition of present life conditions, only under more favorable auspices, and with a knowledge bought by present-life experience sufficing to enable them to avoid the mistakes, the snares and pitfalls of this life. At first you seem to justify this hope, but it seems to me that a critical analysis of your reasoning condemns it as illogical.”

"This is a restatement of your argument in paragraph 56, which we have already answered in paragraph 57.

"“If the promises concerning the Golden Age are to bo considered symbolically, you must revise your doo-ferine materially."

"This statement is indefinite and is much condensed; but we assume it may have reference to Isaiah 11:6-8, which reads: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall He down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den."

"It is in no sense a denial of the truth of this passage that we have to confess honestly that we do not know how much of it is literal and how much of it, if any, is symbolical. We have confidence that the time will come when its true meaning will be transparent to all The wolves and lambs may refer to men of wolflike or of lamblike dispositions; we do not know. The fact that we do not now clearly understand a thing does not mean that it is not true nor that it can never be understood.

"The passage opens with a description of earth’s new King, that "the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of Jehovah: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes; neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.” It is evident that this passage is partly literal and partly symbolical. The rod, the breath, and the girdle are symtalicaL

"The passage closes with the statement, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.” Here the word "mountain” is symbolical for “kingdom,” which it always represents in Bible symbology.

Critic⁹* View Too Narrow

VOLUME VII, page 181, Revelation 11:18, X you make the statement that whereas the World War waa scheduled, as it were, to break out in October, 1914, the nations were so angry that they did not wait for the divinely-appointed moment, but went to war some months sooner, thereby frustrating the divine intention foreordained from the beginning. Is that consistent with a belief in the omnipotence and omniscience

’’This is a restatement of the interrogation propounded in paragraph No. 9, answered in paragraphs 10-12 inclusive.

™Tn Volume VII, Studies in the Scbiptureb, page 161, Revelation 9:13, referring to the Adventists, in connection with the other Protestant churches, the statement is made, ‘The common ground on which they stand is this, their affirmation of spiritism in some form.’ The writer is not an Adventist, nor affiliated with any church; but he believes in fairness. It seems to him that Adventism, which maintains that all the dead are still unconscious in the grave, leaves the field less open to spiritist delusions than does your doctrine, which declares that, since 1878, the righteous dead are conscious spirits; for in another place you disclose with great particularity [in "Spiritism” and "Talking with the Dead”] how the fallen angels possess almost unlimited powers to impersonate even the righteous dead. It occurs to the writer that this doctrine also exposes the believer to lying telepathic communications from the living. It resembles strikingly the Roman Catholic belief that only a few of the dead, the saints, etc., have any communication with the living ”

"The ground for including Adventists in those tainted with spiritism has reference to their acceptance some years ago of the delusions of "Mother White/’ and not to their sound theology on the question that the dead are dead. However, the doctrine that the dead do really die does not in any way interfere with the doctrine of the resurrection. Christ really died; and when He died He was really dead (Revelation 1:18); He remained dead until He was resurrected. This is the case with all the saints who fell asleep in death prior to the Spring of 1878. Since then we understand that we are living in the special season when the overcomes are, at death, “changed in a moment, in the twinkling¹ of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52) and do not need to remain asleep in death. But our doctrine would forbid any intercourse with any of these; indeed, none of the Lord’s people would undertake it.

^TK'On page 129, Volume VII, Studief in the Scmf-tuxk, it ia remarked; T now see that the Jewish Time of Trouble did not end until the year A. D. 73. What then are we to expect in the parallel year 1918?’ You explain: ‘Since the year A. D. 78 saw the complete overthrow of nominal natural Israel in Palestine, so in the parallel year 1918, I infer we should look for the complete overthrow of nominal spiritual Israel, 4. a, the

Brother Russell replied: ‘That ia exactly the inference to draw.’ May I ask, do you consider that Russell made that reply under divine inspiration? I should suppose that a work of such eternal importance that it is to serve as the only authoritative elucidation of the mysteries of Revelation, ought not to embody mere surmises and inferences. If the above parallel is really of value as such, it ought, I should think, be capable of proving itself both ways, both backwards and forwards. If it were, we might deduce therefrom that since the Jewish Time of Trouble did not end in A. D. 73, therefore nominal spiritual Israel was not completely overthrown in 1918; or, we might argue that because Babylon fell in 1918 nominal natural Israel was subverted in A. D. 73. You say that the parallels have not lost their value; but what value can a parallel have which the relentless logic of events has proven to be no parallel? What value can this parallel have except to promote skepticism?”

"On the subject of Pastor Bussell’s inspiration, see paragraph No. 8. As to the date 1918, see paragraphs 14 to 16 inclusive. We see nothing in nominal spiritual Israel since the Spring of 1918 to indicate that it now has any spiritual life at all Moreover, this is the general opinion even of those who are still in Babylon; and if this does not indicate that Babylon has fallen, it is hard for us to think of anything that would prove it It is not easy to convince a pronounced skeptic of anything, even if self-evident.

Further Misapprehensions

C < V^0U claim that the members of the I. B. S. A

J- constitute the true ecclesia, and that all the nominal churches are impostors, now under condem-nation. ’

"This is putting it pretty strong. But in effect we do say that we feel confident that we have the truth regarding God’s character and plan, and we see in the Scriptures reason to believe that before the harvest work is finished all the Lord’s true saints will see eye to eye with us on this proposition.

"“On page 58, Volume VII of the Studies, I note the following: ‘The Laodicean period of the church extends from the Fall of 1874 to the Spring of 1918, 3y₂ years of preparation, and 40 years of harvest* Prior to 1914 you omitted the 3% years. I would askt If the Laodicean period ended in 1918, what period of the church do the five years constitute which have elapsed since that date?”

“Those five years would be somewhat analogous to the years of the first epoch of the church before St. Paul began his ministry. We hold that some members of the true church are still here, even though the nominal church has ceased to function as a spiritual assembly.

^n/fIf that period did not end there, what place have these five years in the parallel?"

“We understand that the Laodicean period did end there and that the parallels ceased at that point, with the utter repudiation of the sects by the Almighty.

“"Or do you hold that the church is now regnant? Do current events justify such a view?"

"We believe that we are now living in the time indicated in Psalm 149:5-9: “Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honor have all his saints.” We believe that current events show the saints on this side of the vail engaged in the very work here mentioned by the Psalmist.

"“Is not the logical inference to be drawn from this parallel one that no living representatives of the church now remain on earth ?”

"Prior to 1918 we supposed this to be the logical inference -to draw, but we now see the matter as explained in paragraphs 82 and 84.

"“Then, what does the I. B. S. A. claim to be? And on what authority does it rest its claim to be the only legitimate interpreter of the Scriptures—so infallible that all private interpretation is forbidden ?”

"On the subject of its inspiration the I. B. S. A. takes and has always taken the same position as we have explained in paragraphs 8, 18 and 19.

••“You repeatedly refer to the church as already translated, saying that the sleeping saints were resurrected in 1878, the high calling ended in 1881, the church was glorified in 1918, and the heavenly way closed in 1921, when the last members of the Messiah passed beyond the vail."

"It is true that we hold that the saints who slept were raised in 1878; also that since 1881 those who enter the high calling take the places that were vacated by some who were consecrated to the Lord at that time. As to the glorification of the church in 1918, our present view is expressed in paragraph 84; we expect the full glorification of the church in about two years. The item regarding our expectations in 1921 was corrected, and the correction published in The Watch Tower, in 1920.

Consecration a Personal Matter

^TS IT necessary to remind you that Pastor Bussell

J. plainly taught, and this is the essential point of his doctrine that reassures the neophyte, whereby he is led into an interest in the Studies, that consecration is optional, not obligatory, until the devil is bound, and the way made easy? Nevertheless, those Bible Students whom I have met urged and insisted on consecration, under threat of divine displeasure for non-compliance. Was Pastor Bussell's more reasonable teaching merely milk for babes, a preparation for the strong meat <rf applied Russellism?"

"There is a chance for an honest misunderstanding here, all around. Pastor Russell was always consistent in his teachings that consecration now is optional; yet he believed, and his followers all believe, that those who do consecrate now, and who are faithful in carrying out their consecration vows, are greatly advantaged by that course; that they are far happier here and now and will be more advantageously situated in the future for the dispensing of blessings to others. Sincere desire for another's welfare may be, and often is, so zealous as to do harm where good is the sole motive.

••“These sisters and speakers seemed to think that ft was permissable to induce consecration during transient emotionalism, under the spell of religious music. Pastor Bussell warned converts to deliberately and cautiously count the cost in advance. One of his traveling speakers reminded his auditors that each one of them had dons so afterward.”

"This is quite possible; we see no inconsistency. We think that the cost (and the profit) should first be counted as well as one is able, and that later one will see more items of cost; but one will see items of profit, too, stretching out toward eternity in an ever-widening stream of joy and peace.

••“Have not orthodox evangelists customarily relied on what amounts to a kind of hypnosis to induce <m> secretion ?”                                     *

"Yes, unquestionably.               ,

^07(rDo you hold that the Maker of a billion-billion stars would hold one of his weak creatures bound who, in a fit of transient emotionalism, pledged himself to a step that his sober judgment and normal intention disavowed ?”

••Certainly not; even human laws recognize that a contract that is made under duress is not binding. Unless the contract represented the mature, calculated, deliberate design of the one consecrating, it would not be a consecration at alL

••“You have referred to 1925 as a date plainly indicated in the Bible as one of scarcely less importance than 1914. In fact, you have announced that in 1925 the second resurrection will commence, and the ancient worthies reappear in the flesh. In a February, 1923, issue of The Watch Tower you recommend Bible Students not to lose faith if the promised events fail to materialize as per schedule, rpminding them that God will not change His plans. Assuredly He will not! But would not your mistake concerning this important feature of them argue that your knowledge of God's plans is largely conjectural? You advance evidence in proof of God's plans being thus and so, evidence which you claim to find in the Bible; then you warn your members not to lose faith (faith in the doctrine propounded by yourselves) if God’s plans fail to harmonize with your preconceptions of them. But your principal claim to credibility depends in the accuracy, exactness and harmony of your set of prophecies and parallels based thereon. If the sequel is to show repeatedly that these prophecies are not fulfilled on your schedule, and that the parallels based thereon are not parallels, how are rational people to continue their faith in yourselves as the earthly representatives of celestial purposes?”

^x00We cannot be blamed for presenting from the Scriptures such evidence as they afford which leads us to believe that a certain event will take place at a given time. Sometimes the Lord has let His people look for the right thing at the wrong time, and more frequently they have looked for the wrong thing at the right time. But all the enemies of the cause of present truth in the earth are fervently hoping that the Bible Students will not be so successful in 1925 in looking for the right thing at the right time as they were in 1914. If they are, however, it will be the other fellow that will have to do the explaining, and not we.

i«“Many of the articles which appear in The Goldxbt Age we so instructive, sensible and timely, so well calculated to educate the public in correct thinking, and bo valuable in counteracting much of the propaganda mt afloat by a variety of self-interests, that myself, as well no doubt as other readers of your periodical, mutt note with regret such statements as I am calling attention to in the leader, ‘Forms of Insect Life/ in No. 111.

io««To begin with, you refer to the spider as ‘one of the most useful insect friends of man? I remember, years ago when I was & small boy, a grown-up acquaintance of mine was quite surprised when I corrected him for calling oysters insects; in fact, it is as incorrect to speak of spiders as insects as it would be to call bats birds. Spiders are in a distinct class by themselves, and not considered much more closely related to insects than they are to cray-fish and lobsters. Suffice this for spiders.”

^1MThe editor was about to acknowledge that this is one more of the mistakes which may be said to constitute one of his principal claims to distinction, when he chanced to notice, in the “International Dictionary,” under the heading Insect, the second definition of the word, which reads: “Any air-breathing arthropod, as a spider or a scorpion.” We pass this along for what it is worth.

Satanic Powers Malific

< < TN THE second place, I doubt if you are warranted A in such assumptions as appear in paragraph 10, page 163; paragraph 5, page 167, and in the concluding paragraph of the article. If these statements are intended facetiously they certainly would have the effect of misleading many readers, who would accept them aa intended seriously. I doubt if there is any authority, either Scriptural or zoological, for accepting such theories as facta. It is certainly unscientific to suppose that this great class of the arthropods family sprang separately by diverse creations, certain species being created by the will of the Creator of all things, and others (even of the same entomological order) being separately created by the author of sin.

¹⁰*“So far aa tangible evidence is concerned (and of course there is a vast deal of it) all insect forma are interrelated, and are members of interallied species. Your assumption, on the face of it, seems analogous to userting that light and warmth, daytime and summer, ire works of a good deity; and that darkness and cold, night and winter are works of an evil spirit. That la to revert to Dualism, the doctrine of the fire-worshiping Persians of old. You must have yourself observed how animal life ascends by repeated branchings from a common stem, each branch being a more complex development of more primitive physical forms. Pastor Russell conceded the likelihood of the process of evolution with respect to the lower forms of life below man.

^1M“I doubt if there is any Scriptural warrant for supposing that Satan participated in the work of material creation; in fact, the Gospel of John seems to state otherwise. Pastor Russell explained that only that part of physical life survived the Flood which had escaped corruption by the fallen angeh. When, then, could noxious insects have been created by the devil? Their fossilized rpma-ins are found in the old geologic strata. If Satan created them, or they were polluted by evil spirits, as ‘unclean’ creatures they must have perished in the Deluge. I have read an unauthoritative magazine article wherein the writer expresses his private opinion that insect life is an exotic, properly foreign to our planet, not correlating or harmonizing with our planetary life. Dreamingly he opines that insects are like interlopers from some other planet. This, of course, is a patent absurdity, as any one who even casually considers the interrelations of planetary life and the important role which insects play in Nature’s economy, must perceive.

^10T"I can think of no other foundation for your hypothesis (if, indeed, it is seriously considered as onel) unless it should be that because the Akkadians of lower Mesopotamia worshiped a fly-god, whose name is rendered Beelzebub in the Bible, and there used as a synonym for Satan, therefore all noxious insects were originally created by the father-of-lies. To my thinking meh a train of reasoning would be analogous to pronouncing sulphur matches a work of the devil, because in some countries they have been known as ‘Qucifers.” The implication in the Bible would more likely be, I should think, that flies act as Satan’s unconscious agents in promoting evil works—but so do many, many other creatures not originally created by him 1”

*“Our argument that Satan is probably the author of some of the pests that mar man's present habitation is based upon a thought suggested by Pastor Russell in The Watch Tower for July 15, 1897; and as it covers this subject well *we quote it In full:

¹⁰*“But if Satan and his faithful have a knowledge of curative agencies and skill in their application, let us not forget that he has great malifle power also. This has already been demonstrated. Take the case of Jannes and Jambres, the celebrated mediums and magicians of Egypt, who in the presence of Pharaoh duplicated many of the miracles performed by divine power through Moses and Aaron. They could transform their rods into serpents; they also turned water into blood; they also produced frogs, although they could not duplicate the plagues of lice, etc.—Exodus 7:11, 22; 8: 7.

^UQMWe have every reason to believe that the fallen spirits have learned considerable during the past four thousand years and that they have a much wider range of power today. We are inclined to believe that the grasshopper plagues and the multitudinous farmer-pests and the spores and microbes of disease that are afflicting human and animal life in recent times, may be manifestations of the same power for evil."

Editorial Comment

HIS completes our examination of the inter* rogations put forward by our good friend

Mr. Jones-Larsen-Hjalmarson-Tornowicz, with one exception. The exception refers to an article which appeared in The Golden Age No. 93, entitled "Ax Average Temperature.” The author of that article was the gentleman referred to in paragraph 93, but by an oversight we omitted to indicate that the article was a contributed one. Very naturally, in view of this omission, our readers would conclude that the article was our own. But while it is extremely interesting, and quite possibly correct throughout, yet it does not in all respects conform exactly to our ideas.

^tuMr. Jasper Jones has already criticised that article at some length, and we replied to his criticisms in “Interrogations” in Goumr Age No. 109. The concluding interrogation now in hand bears wholly upon that article; and now that we have made its status dear, we will insert the interrogation with little interruption. It contains much valuable matter.

^tlsrWe feel sure that the majority of our readers have enjoyed this controversy, and that they must realize that only the truth could stand invulnerable against the pointed attacks made upon it in these interrogations. "We recognise the ability and the sincerity of the gentleman who propounded them, and hope for the Lord's blessing upon his mind and heart as he reflects more fully upon all the many points brought forward. Under another name this gentleman is known and loved by many of our readers, and many are the kind inquiries as to what has become of his facile and powerful pen as a Golden Age contributor.

Interesting Scientific Data

<< A FTER reading ‘Interrogations’ by Jasper Jones ax m No. 109 of The Golden Age; and your interesting editorial comments on same, I find it hard to reconcile some statements made by you here with others appearing previously, especially in the article 'An Average Temperature/ in No. 93 of your magazine. I do not wish to do you an injustice; but it seems as if the position defended by yourself was neither that criticized by Mr. Jones nor the one which you previously maintained.

^11B“I will try to explain. In the first place, the whole hypothesis concerning a future uniformity of temperature appears to rest on several articles which have appeared in Tan Golden Age, wherein it was predicted that the earth will overcome its ecliptic. In fact, unless the earth's axis becomes perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, how is a uniform temperature in the earth astronomically possible? Moreover, Hartshorn's Polar* Edenic theory seems to harmonize very well with the Valian-Deluge hypothesis. But in the article in No. 109 you seem to repudiate both the ecliptic change theory and that of a Polar Eden. However, the existence of that very ecliptic seems to be the chief factor in maintaining that present balance of life which is indispensable to life, as we know life, on this planet.

"•"In your comments on paragraph 4 of 'Interrogations’ you make it appear that Mr. Jones is concerned lest the disappearance of the tropics would terminate insect life, etc. You object that insect life is quite luxuriant even in temperate climates. Mr. Jones, however, was obviously arguing against your plain statements in paragraph 7, page 594, and paragraph 1, page 395, of 'An Average Temperature,’ where you hold out the expectation, on the authority of the Scriptures, that there will be no insects, no decay, no wind-storms in the Golden Age; instead, a continuous growing season with fruits hanging on the trees until harvested and tubers lying unrotted in the ground. But in your comments on paragraph 6 of ‘Interrogations’ you admit that decay will probably continue in the Golden Age. I will recur to that in another paragraph.

"^T"I would recommend interested readers of these two articles to study that phase of biology which treats of the inter-relations of all life. Life is a web, and there exists an absolute mutual dependence of animal and vegetable life on each other. They are interdependent Throughout nature a balance is preserved which man sometimes ignorantly interferes with, with disastrous consequences to himself. Many forms of life work damage to man’s interests, but offset the same by corresponding benefits. Insects axe benefactors aa well aa pests. As pests they are kept in check by birds, predaceous insects, moulds, bacteria, etc. Some beetles eat wire-worms and cut-worms; others, the gypsy moth caterpillar; the harpagns eats the larva of coddling moths and the plum curculios; another species eats armyworms; the ladybird destroys scale-insect; the prayingmantis feeds on flies, gnats, cabbage-worms, and grasshoppers; wasps are the caterpillars’ wont enemies; the tarantula-hawk kills

"•"Would you eradicate only ’injurious’ insects? It Is sometimes hard to draw the line: in their larval stage moths are very destructive to farms and orchards; as adult moths and butterflies their beneficial pollen-carrying activities have been pronounced of inestimable value. Some flies pollenate plants, and without the bee clover fertilization has been proven an impossibility. Many plant-eating insects are grave nuisances, but they also help to keep noxious weeds in check. It has been found in some instances where man has sought to exterminate mosquitoes by draining ponds and pools, that the dragonflies also disappeared, with a resultant increase in house flies, stable flies, gnats, and moths, their natural prey. Nature often regulates its economy in unexpected ways; a cold, wet Spring, with continued late rains, is bad for crops, but serves, on the other hand, to decimate the chinch-bugs.

"•“Suffice this for insects; now let us return to the question of decay, and whether it is feasible in Nature’s economy to dispense with this. All living things require five organic elements for food, but only the green plants are able to take up these in their 'stable’ mineral condition and manufacture them into elaborate compound^ the chief of which are the proteins. Plants draw nitrogen from the soil and carbon from the air, and through the agency of chlorophyll in the leaf-cells, the sun’s radiant energy is applied to manufacture grape-sugar. The chlorophyll and protoplasm in the leaf-laboratories build up protein, fats, and starches. The plant manufactures first the simple organic compounds from which all other compounds are derived, and in the process releases free oxygen into the air for animals to breathe. Life consists of the oxidation of carbon compounds, and this oxygen is supplied by plants. But plants themselves require carbon dioxid; and this is formed by the decay of organic substance, both plant and animaL Only a trace of carbon dioxid exists in the air, which, if it were' supplanted by an excess of oxygen, would plant life impossible; and hence all life would die.

^ln"Now consider what your statement concerning decay in 'An Average Temperature’ implies. Bacteria have been termed 'the ubiquitous agents of decay,’ and seven different forma of bacteria succeed each other in the ordinary process of putrefaction. It has been remarked that if all bacteria should suddenly become extinct, the ground would be littered with unrotted car* casses, the chemical elements of which would remain locked up, and unavailable for plant uses, aa highly-elaborated compounds. The existing stable carbonic arid and ammonia would soon be exhausted; and no more proteids could be manufactured for animal food, non any more oxygen liberated into the air to replace that lost by oxidizing action. The vital atmospheric gas^ oxygen, is being continually diminished by its unkre with all kinds of oxidized material, and must be replenished by plant action in decomposing carbon dioxid* Plants cannot function without CO’ as well as nitrogen; so it follows that without bacteria there would be no decay, and without decay all life would smother.

'""Whether intentionally or not, you have certainly conveyed the impression that the lower forms of animal life would disappear in the Golden Age, and man be left alone with the vegetable kingdom and with his mechan- i ical contrivances. You have given the impression that man’s artificial inventions would supersede the chain of i natural life, synthetic foods and commoditiea replacing. ;

those made by nature. But without nature to build on, man could do little in his laboratories. AH life, as I have already remarked, is interrelated and interdependent; fish eat sea-worms; and the sea-worms, the microscopic sea-dust; bacteria supply food for infusoria, infusoria for crustaceans; and these for trout. Birds keep down insects and aid in seed-distribution; beetles dispose of putrifying matter; flies are scavengers, as well as disease carriers. Insects purify stagnant waters, and fish eat the insects. Man himself is the worst criminal in disturbing the balance of nature; but, fortunately, there are not enough anglers in the world to deplete seriously the stock of earth-worms—of such incalculable value in working and making the soil arable, and thereby promoting vegetation. The soil would probably always remain cold, chard-bound and unfermented were it not for the little-heeded activities of earth-worms in loosening, aerating, and making it pervious to water and humic acids, dragging down stalks and straws into ft, mixing the dirt with vegetable matter in its digestive process, and bringing the deeper soil to the top to freshen that already drawn on by vegetable growth.

its*!]} paragraph 13 of ‘Interrogations’ you disclaim the opinion that all the animal kingdom participates in Adam’s curse, restricting that participation to the domestic animals, which you say have suffered especially by contact with man. As a matter of fact, man for his own advantage has greatly ameliorated the condition of domestic animals, to compare their lot with those in a wild state. Specific comparisons are almost superfluous. Zoologists and anthropologists now generally agree that all domestic animals are the direct descendants of wild species, some now extinct, some still existing as contemporaries. Biologists mostly now hold that not all the offspring of crossed species are infertile, but only so with regard to not closely related species: Dogs interbreed with wolves and coyotes; bison with Galloway cattle. The many breeds of horses are the result of crossing and rrcrossing between two original stocks, Equus fiivalensis and Equus przevalricL The latter, now found as the Mongolian wild-horse, was hunted for food, and later on tamed by prehistoric man in Europe. Its cracked bones are found in the refuse heaps of the eaves, and its pictures are drawn on the cave walls. Cattle are derived from several species, including the aurochs, or European bison. Swine are descended from the wild boar of Europe and the wild Malayan pigs. Sheep were originally hairy, with a superficial woolly undercoat. Through climatic changes and selected breeding, man was enabled to develop the wool at the expense of the hair. The many varieties of dogs have । sprung from blending the strains of three species ci rwolf and one of jackal. The barnyard fowl came from the Indian jungle-fowL How slight the difference be-ween the tame and the wild mallard! The chain of vidence appears to be conclusive. If these originally wild creatures were brought under Adam’s curse by domestication, in what respect have they suffered thereby? As wild creatures their existence was more precarious. Do you imply that if Adam had not sinned, these creatures would not have domesticated, or that they would, like him, have enjoyed deathless life?”

Present-Day Scientists not Infallible

WE HAD not intended to interrupt this argument; but a question calls for an answer; and the answer is that if “biologists mostly now hold that not all offspring of -crossed species are infertile" it enables common folk who do not swallow all their pabulum to hold mostly that all the rest of them are infertile, and to come back to the proposition of Genesis 1:24 that the domestic animals were created so. Abel was a keeper of sheep, hair or no hair; Jabal, sixth from Adam, was a cattle dealer; the Egyptians in the^days of Joseph dealt in horses, flocks, cattle, and asses (Genesis 47:17); and there were dogs in Egypt when Moses and his friends started on their excursion. (Exodus 11:7) The trouble with these biologists and a host of other pseudo-scientists is that they Ue awake nights trying to find some way to ignore the possibility of the existence of a Creator; and they are unwilling to admit the self-evident truths of the Bible on even the simplest subjects. We do not know whether Abraham got his milk and butter from an aurochs or a plain old bossy cow (Genesis 18:8); but we know that he got it, anyway.

revert now to the matter of wind-storms. Winds are the effect of atmospheric turbulence caused by inequalities of temperature on the earth's surface. The consequence is barometric lows and highs which are so familiar to all as not to require explanation in this place. The effect of the sun’s rays on land and water is not the same, because water is dower to heat and slower to cool off afterward than is land. At night and in winter water is the warmer; in daytime and in summer water is cooler than the land. So long as there is day and night, land and water, there will be atmospheric circulation. So long as the earth rotates there will be great constant air-currents. One cause of storms is the meeting of two air-currents of different temperatures. You concede that the ecliptic will continue? Then the torrid rone will continue to receive more dtieel rays from the sun than the higher latitudes; then you will continue to have tropical storms or tornadoes. Meteorologists believe that there is a dose connection between the eleven-year sun-spot cycle and variability in the seasons. So long as there are sun-spots, then, there will be abnormalities in the seasons. A close connection is also believed to exist between the sun-spots, auroral, and magnetic storms. The latter must continue, then, so long as the phenomenon of sun-spots continues. Lightning effects electrical discharges into the air, which lead to the formation of nitric acid and nitritea which rains wash into the soil; bacteria transform the nitrites Into nitrates available for plant food—so storms are not an unalloyed evil.

Another factor in temperature irregularities is the presence of mountain ranges, which make for unequal precipitation of moisture. I am not denying that the polar ice-caps and the tropics have a great influence on the air-currents, and especially on what is called the series of depressions, or cyclone belt. But how will you get rid of the polar ice so long as the long polar winters, directly due to the ecliptic, continue ? And how will you have those seasonal changes, promised in the Bible to last as long ‘as the earth remaineth/ without the ecliptic? Indeed, these are to a large extent a factor in plant-growth; for plants will, indeed, germinate and grow at a low temperature (from 40° to 30° F.), but to ripen must reach that optimum which, with com, is 90°. Growth and decay, life and death, constitute a cycle without which any life conceivable to our experience is impossible. You have conceded decay; then how will your fruits remain on the trees and your tubers unrotted in the ground? That would be an arresting, a sterilizing, as it were, of the essential processes of nature.

¹²*“To conclude: I am not definitely pronouncing your uniform temperature hypothesis as fallacious, even to my imperfect understanding; but I do claim that the arguments so far advanced in support of the same are antagonistic to known facts concerning natural laws. Is it essential to religious faith that the same must be maintained against reason and common sense? That is not my opinion. I would observe here that the Valian hypothesis was based on an analogy drawn from Saturn's rings; but astronomers believe that these rings are composed of immense numbers of meteorites—not water or gases, which would be invisible at such a vast distance. But the collapse of a ring of meteorites could hardly have the consequences of a Noachian deluge! Can you cite any first-rate astronomer, who ranks as an authority, who endorses the hypothesis that the Pleiades is the center of the Universe ? It seems to me that one reference to them in the Bible concerning the ‘sweet influences⁹ is not sufficient to justify this inference. [The Pleiades are named three times in the Bible, Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8.—Ed.] In short, I suspect you have been hasty in citing Scripture as authority for some of your hypotheses. Pastor Russell is witness to the fact that the Bible has been quoted by many men in support of a great variety of contrary opinions."

la Another War Coming? By C. A. Turner

WE BELIEVED that we fought the last war to “make the world safe for democracy” and to end wars; hut we were fooled, reality we fought to prevent Germany from wresting the commercial and military supremacy of the world from England; and it coat thirteen million killed, twenty million wounded, and 186 billion dollars, not to mention the untold destruction of capital. England and France are now quarreling over the division of the spoils. England took the merchant ships and the colonies of Germany; and France was to have been paid mostly by a cash indemnity which Germany has as yet not produced. France unexpectedly seized the Ruhr and with it the commercial supremacy of Europe, the very thing for which England had fought. England is willing to fight again rather than let France keep the Ruhr; so another war seems inevitable. We alone are able to finance this threatened war, so we find the heroes of France and England traveling through our country in special trains making a bid for our support Don't be influenced by propaganda. If we speak loudly enough and quickly enough there will be no war. Let's tell them to pay back the fifteen billions we loaned them to fight the last war before we finance the next one. Do you know that the head of the average American family, for generations to come, must pay $400.00 extra taxes per year for the last war! Tell your representatives in Congress what you want them to do.

Oh, For Some Fresh Air By M. R. Starnee

AS The Golden Age is full of articles to aid us in keeping our health that we might be more useful in our work, may I suggest an idea of much value:

Sometimes we attend religious meetings held in halls which are used probably only on Sundays and Wednesdays. The air of course is tremendously foul and very, very apt to cause disease, as we all know.

Will you kindly allow this suggestion space in The Golden Age, advising against the traditions of old times of not airing the halls where they stand shut up for three or more days!

Good air is necessary for health and for keeping the mind clear and alert

STUDIES IN THE “HARP OF GOD” ( ^iud^^^h^^ok^rd'^s ) ry~T]     With issue Number 60 we began running Judge Rutherford's new book.     [[

[LO     **The Harp of God", with accompanying questions, taking the place of botb     a4rf

Advanced and Juvenile bible Studies which have been hitherto published.

““This Roman guard kept a close vigil over the tomb during Friday night, Saturday and Saturday night; and early Sunday morning the angel of the Lord appeared and rolled back the stone. The keepers testified that the countenance of the angel was like lightning and his raiment as white as snow, and these watchmen did shake because of fear,

”^cThe sabbath day now ended, the dawn of the irst day of the week being here, the faithful women were the first ones to start for the tomb. Tn the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake : for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, Baying, All han. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshiped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.”—Matthew 28:1-10.

““There must have been great excitement about that time among some of the people of Jerusalem. These faithful women ran to tell the disciples, while the Roman soldiers hurried into the city to notify their employers of what Lad happened. “Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade hirn, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day”—Matthew 28: 11-15.

QUESTIONS ON “THE HARP OF GOIT

Who rolled away the stone from the tomb ? fl 264.

What did the Roman guard testify concerning the appearance of the one who rolled away the stone? fl 264.

Who first appeared at the tomb on the morning of Christ’s resurrection? fl 265.

Relate what took place there between Mary Magdalene and the messenger who appeared to her; and what was the message delivered to her? fl 265.

What other wrongful thing did the priests do whan they heard of Jesus Christ’s resurrection? fl 266.

Beloved of God

'                 ^Beloved of God! while anthems ring

That hail the presence of our King, ;                   The Harp of God, in golden tone,

Proclaims the joys that thou shalt own.

*                   A chosen heir with Him to dwell,

^: For evermore His praise to swell: ♦ And share with Him, in sweet accord, ' Who died for all, our precious Lord.

. "Beloved and chosen! called to stand, Enriched with faith in this dark land; E’en though thy foes do thee surround, .   , His glorious grace doth more abound.

SiuiiuiiiuiiiiuiiiinNiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiniii

The Bible Its Own Defender

Fundamentalists hold that the teachings of the creeds are the teachings of the Bible.

Modernists, disagreeing with the creedal teachings, openly challenge the Fundamentalists to prove their creeds by scientific tests and logical reasoning.

It would seem that the Bible should have something to say for itself, although its professed ministry attempts to settle its authenticity by ignoring it

And fairness would demand the Bible’s testimony in its own defense.

To be properly understood its testimony should not be colored by creedal interpretations.

To provide such an opportunity, the Hasp Bible Study Course examines the teachings of the Bible with the scrutiny of truth-seekers, a method that spares no time-honored or much-reverenced notion.

The Hasp Bible Study Course is not sectarian, and avoids theological discussion in its text Questions are not only invited but so deliberately formed as to test the harmony of the Bible*

Self-quiz cards are forwarded as a part of the course; reading assignments allot an hour’s reading weekly.

The Hasp Bible Study Course and the seven volumes of Studies nr the ScnipruBEs provide as exhaustive an inquiry as each reader may care to follow. The eight volumes containing over 4,000 pages, $2.85 delivered.

IirruivATioivxi. Bou STcmono Amocxatmv

Brooklyn, New York

Enclosed find $Z80, payment In full for the Hast Bibis Study Course and the set of Studkbd nr teb Sckdtubm, eight Tolomea, in all containing over 4.000 pagea. Deliver to