Part 18

But may not public opinion, or even the Church, decide wrong? It may, and, no doubt, does sometimes. So may any court, man can establish; and it may turn out that the world may become so bad, or the church may become so perverted or corrupted, that a man can not get a fair decision. Still, it is the best that can be done, for us all to be free alike, before the court of public opinion, and the church, and if we should get a wrong decision here, the last or final appeal is to the court of heaven, to the judgment of the Great Day. But in a country like this, where a man has been among a people all his life; been an upright and true man; conducted himself with consistency and propriety; there must be something very singular in his course, and peculiar indeed, if he can not get a fair hearing and decision from public opinion, or from the church. There must be something very peculiar in his course to unsettle their confidence; to start doubts in their minds in reference to his soundness; to fill the public mind with distrust. There must be something not _straightforward_.

REIGN OF A THOUSAND YEARS.

We know of no proof that the righteous will be raised a thousand years before the wicked. The Lord says, “The hour is coming when all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth; they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation.” We see no _thousand years_ between the resurrection of those that have done good and those that have done evil here.

The quotation from John v. 28-29, above, connects the coming of Christ and the resurrection, and the following connects the coming of Christ and the judgment: “I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at _his appearing_ (his coming) and kingdom.” II. Tim. iv. 1. Other Scriptures show the same. At the close of Matt. xxv. it will be seen, as it is from other Scriptures, that all will be judged at the same time, and at the same time that the righteous “enter into life eternal” the wicked “go away into everlasting punishment.” This connects the coming of Christ, the resurrection, the judgment, the separation of the righteous and the wicked, and the entrance into life on the one hand, and the going away into everlasting punishment on the other hand.

We listened to the Millerites in 1843, read pretty much all they wrote about a thousand years’ reign of Christ, between the resurrection of those who are Christ’s and those who are not his, and whatever the thousand years may mean in words, “the rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were ended,” we find no clear evidence of its coming between the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked. Sundry Scriptures show that the judgment of all, will be at the same time.

Christ sitting on the throne of David does not make him a king, in the temporal sense, as David was, but only that he is in the royal family, and, in the sense of that Scripture, he is now in that reign, and not to be in the Millennium. In the end he will deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall put down all rule, and all authority and power. For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. See I. Cor. xv. 24, 25. “When all things shall be subdued to him, then shall the Son also himself be subject to him, who put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” I. Cor. xv. 28. The Lord has come to receive a kingdom, and is now reigning over that kingdom—a kingdom not of this world—and on David’s throne, in the only sense he ever will be.

METHODIST CLERICAL PRETENSIONS.

Who duly appointed the ministry in the Methodist body? A body that is not, and admits that it is not, the body of Christ! Where did this body get authority to appoint a ministry? It has no authority to appoint any thing in the kingdom of God. Who “divinely called” the ministry in the Methodist body? Not the Lord, for he has no Methodist body. He never called a man to minister in a body that he never authorized. The men called in that body were not called of God at all, nor divinely called. They either _called themselves_, or were called by a body that has no divine authority in it, and therefore are not divinely called. Nor are they divinely qualified. The apostles were divinely qualified. They had the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth. They never preached any Methodism, nor built up any Methodist churches. They never authorized a Methodist steward, class-leader, circuit-rider, presiding elder, or bishop, any more than they authorized that unmeaning _bread and water love-feast_, the band-society, the class-meeting, circuit or conference, either quarterly, annual or general. The Methodist church has not a duly-appointed ministry, a divinely-called and sent, or divinely-qualified ministry in it. Its worship, ordinances and discipline are not duly nor scripturally administered. Indeed, it has but little in it that hears any similitude to the original church. To talk of its having a divinely-qualified ministry will strike any one a little acquainted with the Scriptures with peculiar force. A more absurd idea could hardly be uttered.

The apostles were divinely called, sent and _qualified_, and should one of them appear in a Methodist revival, where persons are “seeking religion,” crying, “What shall we do?” as they did on Pentecost, and answer as Peter did on that occasion, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,” in the place of the loud response, “Amen,” dismay would run all along the line, and the _divinely-qualified_ ministry would want the divinely-qualified apostle out of the meeting. His voice would be a _strange_ voice in their meeting. If he were to tell the seekers, as Ananias did Saul, “Why do you tarry? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord,” they would soon want him out of their meeting.

MOODY AND SANKEY.

The above named men referred to in the following, were popular evangelists among the sects, and, though not educated for the ministry, or ordained to that holy calling, performed all the functions of those divines who claim to be called and sent of God. The recognition they received in the great cities of the land, by clergymen of all sects, Bro. Franklin regarded as a surrender of their clerical pretensions and as equivalent to an acknowledgment of the fact that any christian man, possessed of good christian character, and a knowledge of the word of God, may preach the word.

J. A. H.

In the operations of Moody and Sankey, as also others that have conceived virtually the same idea, and their surroundings, we have some lessons of much importance. To some of these we now invite attention:

In all the principal parties there are some clerical pretensions. They nearly all have some kind of clerical standard, that a man must pass, to enter into holy orders at all. They have some kind of regular process through which a man must pass, to be an authorized minister, or to be permitted to minister in holy things at all, or to make ordinances valid administered by his hands, or to give him official grace and functions. But here come Moody and Sankey, Whittle and Bliss, or Hammond, without ever having been tried by the _clerical standard_, or ever having passed through the regular process to holy orders, and never made clergymen at all, preaching and exercising ministerial functions. All sorts of clergymen are rallying to them, recognizing and indorsing their work! What becomes of clerical pretensions in all this? Clergymen of all sorts recognizing and indorsing _laymen preaching_, and laymen exercising all the functions of the ministry, who have never been measured by the ministerial standard, and never have been made clergymen. In this they are conceding that their clerical pretensions and claims are empty—that there is nothing in them, that men that have never been measured by the standard, nor made clergymen at all, have as good a right to preach and minister in holy things as they. In this they concede that the clerical cloak is nothing, and that men can and may rightfully preach the word of God, without having it on. The people ought to lay hold of this concession, read the Scriptures, learn them and teach others, and thus go on till they fill the earth with the knowledge of God. No man need wait to have clerical hands laid on him to authorize to preach Jesus, or teach the saints in the way of righteousness. To know the gospel and the teaching of Christ, and be able to preach Christ and teach saints the way to heaven, prepares any man to preach and teach. To appear in a proper manner and exercise a good influence in preaching and teaching, a man must be a christian, and have a good life as such, a life of piety and devotion, corresponding to the preaching and teaching. But a man is in no shape to appear before the world as a preacher of Christ, and a teacher in the kingdom of God, who has no standing in the church of God, where his home is, and a good recommendation to satisfy those abroad that his standing is good at home.

TOO LATE FOR THE CARS.

On going to the depot we found our information about car time was wrong, and we got to the depot just in time to see the train go out and leave us. This has two lessons in it: 1. That it is not true “that what a man thinks is right, is right to him.” The time we _thought was right_ proved _not to be right_. 2. That we ought to be cautious about saying, “There is time enough yet.”

LORD’S DAY MEETINGS.

Churches should not be compelled to hear preaching every Lord’s day, and that the dullest and dryest kind, from the same man, the same thing, over and over again; but instead of this, have a variety of good songs; sundry readings of interesting Scriptures, from different persons, each occupying from five to ten minutes, with two or three prayers at suitable intervals, and words of exhortation. The overseer who can so conduct these matters as to interest the whole congregation, develop and bring out the most talent, and make the whole the most conducive to the edification of all, is the most efficient and successful overseer, whether he can preach or not himself. No man, overseer or not, ought to appear before the people publicly more than is acceptable to them. Many men kill themselves off by talking too much and being too officious.

LAYING THE CORNER STONE OF A CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL.

But what was to be done? What was all this about? We are ashamed, for humanity’s sake, to tell. It was to see a bishop _pow-wow_ over a corner stone, _bless it_ and _lay it_ for a Romish meeting house! That was what all this was about! What was there in that? No more than any other pagan ceremony. No more than to see any other Irishman laying any other stone or brick in any other building, aside from tradition and superstition. This is the procedure of the Anti-christ, the Man of Sin, the power gone out to deceive the whole world with sorceries; a compound of Judaism, Paganism and Christianity, but described in the book of God as the Apostasy. It has corrupted the four quarters of the earth with its abominations and idolatries. It has two hundred millions of the human race under its domination. It has caused the blood of fifty millions of martyrs to flow. But the tide is receding. The wheel is turning back. His secular power has departed. He does not have Victor Emmanuel to bow down and kiss his great toe, nor to come and crave favors of him. But he goes to Victor Emmanuel to know what favors he can have. This puts the shoe on the other foot. Prince Bismarck banishing the Jesuits from Germany, is another turn in the same direction. The revolution in Mexico is in the same direction. The Pope gets no favors in all these moves. He is strengthening his hands in the United States a little just now, but this is only temporary, and, we trust, will only serve to open the eyes of the people in this country. Our people need a few demonstrations to rouse them from their slumbers. They need to be made sensible who they are that want their drinking saloons, and want them open on Sundays, that intend to parade our streets with bands of music and long processions on the Lord’s day, who they are that are trying to undermine our common schools and ruin them, who they are that publish in our faces that our marriages are all null and void—that we are all living in adultery because we were not married by priests! We need a little more of this impudence in our faces to rouse us up and cause us to see the viper we have taken into our bosoms, and see what claim this Mystery of Iniquity has on our charities.

It refuses to allow its adherents to become members of the Masonic order, because it is a _secret Order_. The trouble is that it is a _secret Order_ itself, with its _sworn members_ and _bound priests_, its prowling Jesuits, nuns and friars, the most dangerous and complete and perfect—the consummation of all secret Orders, from the hired girl in the kitchen, and the hired man on the farm, up through every position held, every situation in life, and every office held by a Papist, to communicate intelligence to a set of men bound up in this _Order of secrecy_, who are not even citizens in our Government, that they may report to the Holy See in Rome! It is a secret, Pagan and Jewish mixture with Christianity; an intriguing, insidious and stealthy scheme, prying into the secrets of every nook and corner of every land, and every move of every civil government on earth, and a friend to no civil government on the face of the earth, only so far as it can be made subservient to the purposes of the Pope.

The new Cardinal in this country is a minion of the Pope, and, without being a citizen of the United States, when he pleases to do so, will control the vote of some six millions of our population; and this all done by the _secret workings_ of the Papacy, without any man seeing the secret wires that are pulled to do it. These priests, bound all over by religious _vows or oaths_, in a _secret conclave_, plan schools to be taught by nuns, all in the _secret Order_, and gather up vagrant children, while many of their own children are beggars, to make Romanists of them, and shut them out from the light of the common schools and colleges of this country.

Then how do these priests propose to gain power? Do they propose to come out in open day; publicly teach the people and enlighten them? Not a word of it. Do they propose to discuss their claims? Not a bit of it. How then are they doing this work? _Insidiously._ It is all in the dark, except an occasional demonstration like that we had here on the first Lord’s day in July. What were the people taught on that day? Did any one hear any instruction? Thousands of dollars were expended. Thousands of people were weary and exhausted, but no one was enlightened. No one was taught even Romanism, except those, who from the word of God have learned the power of the grand delusion, the mystery of iniquity that now works. They can understand the power of the sorceries practiced to deceive and allure unwary souls.

UNIVERSALISM UNBELIEF.

The mission of unbelief, in this direction, is—

_First._ To force the Bible to agree with the Atheist, in theory, that a man’s conduct in this life, no matter what it may be, can not destroy his happiness in another life.

_Second._ That there shall be no reward in another world, for virtue, righteousness and obedience rendered to God in this life.

_Third._ That there shall be no punishments in the world to come, for disobedience, corruption, and crime, committed in this life.

_Fourth._ That the death of Christ amounts to nothing, as the consequences of sin all follow now, and fall upon man just as they did before he died.

_Fifth._ That repentance amounts to nothing, as the punishment of sin is simply the natural result of a violation of a natural law, and must follow its violation whether you repent or not.

_Sixth._ That there is no pardon of sin—that as you put your hand in the fire, the burn must follow—as you spend your money, you must become poor—as you dissipate, your physical energies must be impaired; so, as you sin, in all cases the penalty must follow.

_Seventh._ All this being conceded, the grace of God is at an end. There is no such an attribute as mercy in the government of Jehovah.

_Eighth._ No love of God is manifested either in the life or death of Jesus, nor has his death produced any change in the world.

No wonder that infidels hail this theory with joyfulness, flock around the Universalian preacher, and call him “brother.” His operations are fatal to the Bible, to the mission and divine authority of the Lord Jesus, and better calculated to turn the whole subject of religion into ridicule, than any open infidelity ever advocated in the world. By this kind of circumlocution, the Bible is now sought to be subverted, and its influence upon the world destroyed. But all men of discernment can see, that this is only a scheme to pull down and destroy—that it has no efficacy to save, to make good, or improve mankind—that it can do no good, in any event, to one soul of our race, either in this world or the world to come. It is only an instrument, one of the most effectual instruments of unbelief, in destroying all good, all virtue, and all piety.

PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL.

Denying the personality of the Devil. Here we have more _negative preaching_—more _denying_. What a world of gospel there is in this! Who is to be saved by denying the personality of the Devil? Who is comforted and built up with this sort of stuff? The infidel laughs. The Universalist nods assent; but who repents? The scoffer is delighted. That is the man for him! But does he quit scoffing? We have recently heard of a man who had stripped his feet bare after a rain of a warm summer’s day, and, walking up through the mud to an old preacher, denied the personality of the Devil; when the preacher, pointing behind the man, replied: “He must be _alive_ and _personal_, for _there is his track fresh in the mud_!” Another preacher allowed that when the Devil has a man so completely blinded that he does not believe there is any Devil, or that he is a personal being, he never expects to have any more trouble with him. He will never listen to the truth any more.

CLERICAL YOUNG PASTORS.

That there should be occasionally a young man, with the views that have been fostered and encouraged by some among us, of a “pastorate,” who would assume authority to cast persons out of the church, and give letters of commendation, is not strange. There were some even in the time of the apostles, when no such views of a “pastorate” existed, who assumed such prerogatives and “prated against us” (the apostles.) In III. John 9, 10, we have a reference to one of them. “I wrote to the church,” says John, “but Diotrephes, who loves to have the pre-eminence among them, receives us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither does he himself receive the brethren, and forbids them that would, and casts them out of the church.” We have fallen on the track of a few young men, and some old ones, of this stripe; but their race is short. The brethren, whatever else is true of them, are not prepared for clerical assumptions. They will not have the manacles put on them. Such men will not trouble us long. Some of them will go over to sectarianism at once, thinking that the shortest road to a “pastorate.” Others will go to law, medicine, or to nothing. But the main body of our young men are true and noble in the highest sense, as humble and faithful as can be found anywhere. They are studying to know and do the will of God. We are not sure that, as a class, they are not generally sounder than their instructors in the gospel.

We regret to see anything like collision or rivalry between old and young preachers. Young men get a little _fast_ sometimes, and old men become a little _cross_; but these matters will all work their way out. As a humorous writer said some years ago, after writing a long piece about nothing, as a burlesque on certain persons, “We are all poor _critters_.” We need a great deal of mercy and grace.

It is a little trying for old men, after toiling a lifetime in the cause, and when they are struggling under the infirmities of age, to be shoved aside, as we know some of them are, and treated with contempt by the young men who ought to be a comfort and consolation to them. The cause is the Lord’s, and we are his, and we shall all give account to him. Let us keep pure ourselves, and keep the church pure; let us make a record of which we shall not be ashamed when the Lord shall come. We must study to bear our burdens, and to do so without murmuring. What we can not cure, we must endure.

EVERLASTING AND ETERNAL.

Everlasting and eternal are from the same in the original. “Everlasting punishment,” and not everlasting annihilation, nor everlasting extinction of being, nor everlasting non-existence, is what the Lord threatens. Matt. xxv. 46. At the same time the righteous enter into “life eternal,” the wicked “go away into everlasting punishment.” The original word _aionion_ here is translated, in the common version, “eternal” in one place, and “everlasting” in the other. There is no reason for not translating this word the same way in both places. It means precisely the same in both places. At the same time we repeat, that the righteous enter into “life eternal,” the wicked “go away into eternal punishment.” The same word used by the Lord, in the same sentence to express the duration of the life of the saints, is used to express the duration of the punishment of the wicked. It is as likely that the life of the saints shall terminate, as that the punishment of the wicked shall cease. There is no word in any language that more certainly expresses unlimited duration than this word _aionion_. It is used to express the duration of the life of the saints, the praises of God, and even the existence of God. A word may be used with less than its full import, but _never with more_.

ENDURING HARDNESS AS GOOD SOLDIERS.

It matters not from what cause we suffer, whether inability on the part of brethren, or parsimoniousness, we must bear hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, suffer and toil on, for we shall reap if we faint not. We must not raise up a money-loving and worldly people; and in order to this end we must not be _money-loving preachers_, nor _worldly_ men ourselves. This is our security against the evil of covetousness.

We do not believe the Lord will accept meeting in two or three conventions in a year, and making three or four contributions and a few speeches for missionary work. We must have more telling evangelizing than this. This kind of work is demoralizing the brethren and drying up all the veins of generosity in them. We shall have more and more _dying churches_ till we change our course and go out into the field as we did thirty-five and forty years ago, and hunt up these churches and wake them up. We must not live with the idea of _sending_ some one to them, but we must _go to_ them; and they must not be _helpless creatures_, and think to support those who go to their relief by _relating their stories about their being few and poor_, but do according to their ability, and not let the preacher who visits them sacrifice more than a dozen of them, and they only do their little _occasionally_, and he making his sacrifices _every meeting_. This will not stand in the day of judgment.

HOW A PREACHER MAY STAND FAIR.