March 1932
122
T h e K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Notice the order: lust, sin, and then death. C rime fter G od had talked with Cain, Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and said, “Let us go into the field.” In the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and slew him. That is mere religion for you! Religion leads to bloodshedding. Cain was too refined to slay a beast unto the Lord, but he was not too refined to slay his brother. So it is that the religions of the present hour do not believe in the blood, and they say, “Let us purge our hymn books of the word ‘blood’ ” ; but they are not too cultured to lead in bloodshedding. The pages of history are wet with the crimson of slain innocents, most of which have been slain in the name of religion. How ever, Christianity has slain no one. Religion persecuted the prophets which God sent unto Israel. It was religion that crucified our Lord. It was religion that persecuted the martyrs of the church. It was religion that hounded Luther and the reformers. It was religion that drove the Hugenots out of France. It was religion that burned witches in America. Religion persecutes today. The hands of Chris tianity are clean. In countries and communities where reli gion dominates, woe unto non-conformists! Where Chris tianity rules, wholesome restraint is practiced, but persecu tion is absent. Religion is a nursing mother of crime, but Christianity curbs crime. There is much talk today about the crime wave that has swept over America. Some attribute this to the Eigh teenth Amendment. Wrong again! Crime has ever been with us. England is also suffering from a crime wave, and there is no prohibition in England. Crime may be traced to sin. In Genesis 3, we have the record of the first sin and, in Genesis 4, the record of the first crime. Crime is the product of sin. Sin is the product of unbelief. The crime wave is not nation-wide, but world-wide. It is pos sible to suppress crime by law, but it is not possible to eradicate sin, the source of crime, by law. That can be done only by the power of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. B irds of a F eather Liberals are creating sympathy for Cain. They say that Cain was misunderstood, and that he was ahead of his time. He certainly is a first cousin of the present-day ra tionalist. Cain slew his brother. Behaviorism slays the souls of men. Humanism destroys faith. Modernism takes away from old and young the solid foundation upon which souls are to build. The first crape was hung, the first grave was dug, and the first martyr was buried. The first home was broken up, and the first parents were disgraced. In a magazine of national proportions, there appeared a significant picture. Abel was shown lying on the ground slain. Cain stood by with a cigarette in his face. Adam was quite excited. Eve was remonstrating with him, saying, “Adam, you don’t un derstand this generation. Do not be perturbed. The younger generation is quite different. We must let the young people express themselves in their own way.” How true to twentieth century ethics! The younger generation is as it always has been. Part of the younger generation is like Cain—full of sin, criminally minded, disobedient to parents, blatantly willful, scornful of God. But there are others—consecrated, spiritual, true to God, honoring parents, blessed by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The faith of our fathers has ever been the object of attack. But it still lives, and it shall live forever. Cain slew Abel, but the first martyr still speaks. The lips of truth shall never be shut.
and the Jews being His clock, and the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled and all that.' Sonia seems to have learned more, much more, than I have, and she’s been a Christian such a short time, too. “But there is a wonderful thing that has happened that I want to tell you—I ’ve actually helped to get Sonia a job. I ’m really being useful at last, as well as dressy. “Uncle Ed told me that the merchants of the city had had a luncheon and talked over hard times and all agreed they wished that they had a clever youth to do better ad vertising. I spoke of it to Sonia, and she announced that that was her specialty. So down I took her to Uncle Ed, and they have tried her and think her very fine. She has all sorts of little dodges for helping the store people to get purchasers in their stores and then to sell them something after they get there. She tells the household furnishers to feature rag rugs at ninety-eight cents. There’s hardly a woman in the nation who can resist home-made-looking rag rugs, she says. Then of course, there are always silk stockings for the dry goods. Women will come early for them. And then there are electrical labor-saving things that the more well-to-do will rush down to purchase be cause they have let the maid go and are trying to do the work themselves, and the kitchen is a sight, and they like to get breakfast in the breakfast nook anyway. Sonia fixed up a model breakfast nook on the sixth floor of a department store, and I offered to sit in it and show how to work the electric things. But it soon developed that I did not know how to use them all, and Sonia says a person must be really experienced to be convincing. “But everywhere we went, Connie, it was the same story—merchants waiting to sell, and hardly any one to buy; people wanting to work, and none wanting to employ them; families starving for food, and wheat rotting on the sidings. And you say, there in California, it’s the same—- even with oranges! “Sonia says the book of Revelation, tells all about an economic crisis where people in desperation are going to let a powerful one take command, one who will turn out to be an enemy of Christ, and that then, when things are at their worst, Christ will come and the rule He will establish over the earth will be righteous and wonderful. “I suppose you knew all this, but thought I was not far enough along in the Christian life to tell me all these things. Perhaps you were wise not to rush me too fast, and now God has sent Sonia. “O h ! There goes that bell. And I must be off to a class meeting and have not time to tell you all about my super fluous clothes and the momentous decision reached by Sonia and Company (I am the Company). I ’ll tell you next time, dear thing—and in the meanwhile tell that Thin Red Line we are forming a famous beginning here on a famous campus, and who can tell what other members we may find, perhaps by chance, as I found Sonia. But I am find ing help now in that quiet time in the morning alone with Him. I talk to Him and tell Him all the little things that bother and the big things that harm me, and I find such joy in it. “More soon from your ever loving “E leanor .” RELIGION AND CRIME [Continued from page 115] transmitted through you to posterity.” However, Cain did not obey the voice of God. James tells us that, when lust has conceived, it bringeth
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker