T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S thony (Times, April 18, 1922), Metropoli tan of Kieff, to the Archbishop of Canter bury:' “From 1917 till 1920 the Bolshe vists killed one metropolitan, five arch bishops, sixteen bishops—thirteen shot, nine tortured cruelly to death. From 1921 no information.” The number of priests executed (Times, March 16, 1922) is 1215. It is probable that Hie true fig ures are far higher; in one district alone, writes a Russian lady (Guardian, Jan- 30, 1920), 500 clergy were executed for refusing to part with their crosses. The numbers of private Christians done to death we shall never know until we see the Lamb’s Book of Martyrs. The Archbishops of Omsk and Simbirsk —doubtless themselves since martyred— telegraphed to Dr. Davidson on Feb. 13, 1919: “Wherever the Bolshevists are in power, thé Christian Church is perse cuted with even greater ferocity than in the first three centuries of the Christian era.” But worse than political assassina tion, worse even than wholesale martyr dom, is the murder of little children— bodÿ and soul. At the Commissariat of Public Health, a report on the moral status of the Soviet schools was put in, so shocking that even the complacent conscience of the Soviet Government col lapsed, and the superintendent was dis missed. Sev.enty-five per cent of the children are suffering from venereal dis eases (Times, Oct. 28, 1921). The gen eration now rising in Russia is a genera tion inconceivably awful. All this had occurred before the Most High levelled at Russia the greatest famine of history. "Ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done, saith the Lord God” (Ezek. 14:23). “ Millions Doomed to Die”
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¡ An Incomparable
1 Phenomenon ¡
§ By D. M. PANTON ¡ nillllllllHllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!IBIIBIIIIIIirilllllBII|lll|l|l|l |l|11111^ |HE Russian famine is the hugest portent now blazing In the mid night sky. It is difficult to say which is the more portentous: the starving of millions before our eyes, or the complete unconsciousness of what is happening on the part of vast sections of the Church of Christ. For we are waching one of the hugest phenomena of history—“a spectacle” (says the Times, Aug. 5, 1921) “that is apocalyptic in its awful suggestion of collapse.” “Never in the history of the world,” says the Archbishop of Canterbury, “ has a condi tion of things existed comparable to the ghastly death by famine of whole mil lions of men, women, and children.” Dr. Nansen says: “The famine is beyond all doubt the most ¿appalling that has ever happened in the recorded history of man;” Something no less cataclysmic must have occurred in the spiritual world. “Son of man, when a land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I break the staff of the bread thereof” (Ezek. 14:13); “When heaven is shut up, there is no rain, because they have sinned against Thee” (1 Kings 8: 35). God Himself has revealed the master- principle on which He uses this dread famine-weapon. “He suffered thee to hunger, that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live” (Deut. 8:3). The Soviet autocracy—as iron an au tocracy as the world has ever known— has raised its mailed hand against Christ. Here is a telegram from Archbishop An
Now it is well that we should deeply ■understand even the immediate—and not only the more awful remote—conse quences of sinning against God with a high hand. The greatest famine hitherto known (I believe) was the Chinese, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when nine millions perished, or five thou- HELP US REACH THE 100,000 MARK
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