sion and endure undaunted the rage of the wicked. For who can crush him; who can rob him of his Re deemer?’’ Would anyone dare to say that this young man didn’t know the truth? Yet, knowing is not believing. The proof of that statement comes in the fact that the young man who wrote that essay was Karl Marx as a student in a Christian school in Germany. He knew the plan of salvation and all about sanctification. He knew what union with Christ means as well as service for the Master. But while he knew it, he didn’t believe it. History records that Karl Marx left his home and turned his back upon God. He e m b r a c e d dialectical materialism known better as Godless atheism. He wrote his diabolical theses and his suc cessor today is none other than the head of the Union of the Soviet So cialist Republic. The man who ulti mately put Joseph Stalin into office was Karl Marx, a person who knew the truth of the Word of God. Yet he is one who must bear the responsibili ty for the untold sufferings through communism, the hatred, the bitterness, the misery in the world today. Am I writing to someone like these two examples? The first young man, a very fine church member, said, “Sure, I knew it all. I taught it, but I never personally received Jesus Christ as my own Saviour.” Have you? Are you just a good Presbyter ian, or a good Baptist, or a good Epis copalian, or a good Lutheran, or a good anything else? It is true, you know, “knowing is not believing." There must come a day when, with childlike faith, you realize that you are a sinner and that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save you. Will you say, “Blessed Lord, in childlike faith, I want to trust you as my own per sonal Saviour.” God grant that every one of us may not only know but may also trhly believe for His name’s sake. * A man's character is like a fence: it cannot be strengthened merely by whitewash. * *
cult questions. Yet history clearly re veals that none of these nations was ever able to shake off the chains of superstition, pride, and the emptiness of vain religious concepts. “There has never been a nation whose ethics and morality were free from personal aggrandizement and ig noble limitations. The virtues of the nations are not the products of the striving after true achievement, but rather are the products of a crude and brutal bigness, a boundless ego ism, and ignoble limitations. Likewise, if we examine the history of man’s nature as an individual, we constantly observe the spark of divinity in his breast, the enthusiasm for what is good, the struggle for wisdom, and a longing for truth. These are being smothered by the flame of desire and greed. The zeal for virtue becomes deafened by the tempting voice of sin and turns into a mockery as soon as we feel the full impact of life. “Yet the gracious Creator was in capable of hating His handiwork. He wanted to raise it up to Himself so He sent His Son, and causes us to be holy through these words, ‘Now ye are clean through the words I have spoken unto you.’ Our hearts, reason, history, the Word of Christ, all call out to us loudly and convincingly to tell us that union with Him is abso lutely necessary, that without Him, we would be rejected of God. He alone is able to deliver us. In union with Christ we therefore turn our loving eyes toward God, offer Him our fer vent thanks and bow our knees before Him, joyfully. So the union with Christ consists of the most intimate and living communion with Him. We have Him before our eyes and in our hearts. We are filled throughout by the highest love towards Him. We turn our hearts at the same time to ward the brethren whom He has so intimately linked with us, and for whom also He sacrificed Himself. Once a man has attained this union with Christ, he will await quietly and composedly the blows of fate, he will bravely oppose the storms of pas
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