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T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
March 1926
An Antidote for Pessimism A Bible Reading *" / Rev. John G. Reid, Ph.D., Spokane, Wash. Dr Reid gives ns a much needed, heartening message? Present world and church conditions are prophesied, and our Lord has'W vhtedthe antldotefor our discouragement in His unfailing Word. This note o f cheer is comforting and assuring for all His saints. The worst confronts the world, but the best is before the church. . •
when organized — powerlessness to check the flood. All our well-meant and most desperate efforts are too like the efforts of children trying to hold back with their hands the rapids of Niagara! "We have no might against this great company that cojneth against qs.” Again we sink back dis heartened, sorely tempted to abandon the unequal struggle! "What’s the use! What avails further effort?” As again and again I have been brought face to face with one or an other of these menacing foes; as I have seen and deplored the havoc wrought; as I have sought to enlist the co-operatloq of others in the effort to stem the tide; as I have summoned all my courage and will-power to re sist "the motions of sins in my mem bers, warring against the law of my mind” , I have had pressed upon me the profound truth which, however, in it self brought no relief. No wonder that we are utterly dis couraged, for "our wrestling, (our con test) is not against flesh and blood,” i.e., against our own equals, a match ing of wits and strength against human opposition, “ but against the principal ities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness (i.e .) against the spiritual hosts of wicked ness in the beavenlies.” In other words, against supernatural foes,— malicious spirits, demons,— marshalled under the leadership of the Master of malice and cunning, Satan, intent upon dragging down to ruin— present and eternal— as many as possible of the children of men! As realization of this truth grew, pessimism even to despair, all but superseded disheartenment. As often however, as this gloom thickened, and pessimism seemed inevitable, in re sponse to the despairing cry: "Alas! Master! What shall we do?” have come the reassuring words: "Fear not! They that are for us. are more than they that be with them!” and upon one signal occasion years ago, this chain of corroborative Scriptures was brought to my remembrance. True, it is, that "our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, Jiut against principalities and powers, etc.”— against supernatural forees. With our
heartaches of broken-hearted wives and mothers, the ruined lives of sons and daughters; - T The appalling disregard for human life, disclosed in the fact that the United States leads all the nations of the world in the percentage of mur ders to the population; and still worse, in the fact that the overwhelming majority of those guilty go unpun ished, or inadequately punished, which seems to indicate a deplorable (let us hope that it is only an apparent) in difference of the public thereto; The alarming increase in narcotic addiction, evidenced by the astounding fact (as officially reported) that the United States consumes more opium per capita than England, France, Ger many, and Italy combined— in fact more than, any nation except China, which should lead us to hang our heads in shame, or Immediately to "sit up and take notice” ; and closely allied to this, that frightful menace to which the nation is just awakening (God grant it may not be too late!), the alarming traffic- fostered by fiends in carnate with all the malicious cunning of the pit of the distribution of heroin among the children and youth of our schools, threatening the irremediable ruin,— physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, temporal and eternal,-—-of the next generation. As each towering billow of the rap idly rising tide rolls in, more terror- inspiring than those preceding, "our hearts melt within us and become as water.” Our spirits sink. We realize our individual and collective— even
OW often, and with what ap parently good reason, we are assailed by "the indigoes,” utterly cast down, discour
aged, disheartened, "our hearts do meet, and neither doth there remain any courage” , because of conditions by which «we are confronted. Not alone, nor chiefly, in the vicissitudes, the "ups and downs” of our daily lives, but in our conflict with the trinity of evil,— the world, the flesh and the devil; in the persistence and force of „temptations ad extra, and In our deep er, inner spiritual experiences; in our effort to subdue and keep under "the old man” with his tendencies and bring our lives in thought, speech and be haviour up to our ideal, or to 'the exalted standard set before us In the revealed will of God,— how often we are disheartened by lamentable fail ure! "When we would do good, evil Is present with us. The) good that we would we do not, and the evil that we would not, that do wef” We are pow erless to overcome inborn corruption, the always reliable ally of external temptations. We are fain to give up in despair, and to say: "Oh! What’s the use? These forces without and within are too strong for me! Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?” Then as we survey the rising and oncoming tide of evil on every side, the patent and growing laxity of moral tone in all walks of life, graft and dis honesty in high places and in low ; impurity— no longer confined to the underworld, and red-lights, but flam ing itself openly in silks, and furs, hnd plumes, riding in luxurious limousines, domiciled in elegant mansions in the most exclusive districts; the increas- ing prevalence of crime, especially gmong the youth of our land; the open defiance of law and decency, in patron izing and condoning or defending violators of those laws which are the expression of the resolute determina tion of the overwhelming majority who regard the welfare of their homes and the future of their children paramount to "personal liberty” of indulgence, and are inflexible in their refusal to weigh any amount of gold or treasure in the balances against the tears and
MY REQUEST I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be A pleasant road; I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me Aught of its load. For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead; Lead me aright, Though strength should falter and though heart should bleed, Through peace to light. — Adelaide Proctor.
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