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THE KING’S BUSINESS
been able to work that one, there are none of which He is not capable.— Vinet. W hat a miserable mistake Jacob made when he said, “All these things are against me (Gen. 42:36).” The son he supposed to be dead was seated in glory; and what Jacob took to be against him was happily and glor iously for him. Truly, “the end is better than the beginning” when God plans it; and all things work good to them that love Him. How much better trustfully, joyously to an ticipate the glad surprise of the future, than despairingly to mourn and mope in the pres ent. W endell P hillips being asked, “Mr. • Phillips, did you ever consecrate yourself to God?” “Yes,” replied the great orator and philanthropist, “Yes, when I was a boy four teen years old, I heard Lyman Beecher preach on the theme, ‘You Belong To God.’ And I went home and threw myself on the floor in my room, with locked doors, and prayed, ‘O God, I belong to Thee; take what is Thine own. I ask this that whenever a thing is wrong it may have no power of temptation over me; whenever a thing is right it may take no courage to do it.’ ” I saiah 33:22 represents Jehovah as con stituting in Himself the three functions of His Kingdom represented by the Legisla tive, Judicial änd Executive branches of our government. And He is all-wise, all-just and all-powerful to exercise those preroga tives. It is a curious fact, not brought out in our version, that the original is both rhythmic and assonant. It reads, Jehovah Shophetenu, Jehovah M’hoqqenu, Jehovah Malkenu, hu Yoshenu .. That is, Jehovah our Judge, Jehovah our Lawgiver, Jehovah our King, He is our Saviour. The rhyme and rhythm may be reproduced in: Jehovah our Adjudicator, Jehovah our Legislator, Je hovah our Autocrator, He is our Salvator. A tourist says, “When we came one even ing, in our journey through Palestine, to the gate of Nablus (once Shechem), we
found the big gate shut. We were told that it would be necessary for us to go around to the other side of the town, where the gate was kept open an hour later; or if we chose, we could go through 'the needle’s eye’ (Matt. 19:23, 24), and the animals with the baggage could be sent around. We preferred to keep with our baggage, and ac cordingly we went around with it. ‘The needle’s eye’ is a small door by the side of the big gate. Upon enquiring whether camels ever went through this door, the answer was ‘YeS; but it is necessary that the beast should get down on his knees, have his load removed, and then he must go through on his knees.’ ” To this we add: This is the way into the kingdom of heaven, for rich men and all men. They must get on their knees; get rid of their load, sin and substance and "go through.’’ on- their knees. W e quote below a few sentences from a war correspondent of The Saturday Even ing Post, not because they are exceptional but because they represent the prevailing comments of even the secular press on the moral aspects of the great war. It seems as if the world had suddenly become ortho dox on the doctrine of the depravity of human kind. Had we said these things— and we did say them—two months ago we should have been scored as bigoted adher ents of exploded dogmas, and frowned on as cynical pessimists. The writer referred to says : “We have reverted to the primitive. The human in us has been subjugated by the ne cessities of the State.” “ it takes only a day of war to shake a nation back to the primitive. We revert rapidly: almost instantaneously. Notwith standing .our centuries of culture, we are barbarians at heart.” “ The brotherhood of man Is sadly disor ganized. The whole scheme of the brother hood of man vanished so quickly that its al most instantaneous disappearance proved how diaphanous a dream it was.” “ The present war has in every respect brutalized a continent. Everybody is brut- ishly demanding the blood of his neighbor and brutishly exulting when it is spilled.” “If Sherman’s war was hell, this war is a
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