King's Business - 1914-11

596

THE KING’S BUSINESS would be and revealed that they would be to the end of the present dispensa­ tion. W h a t h a s failed a n d failed utterly is m a n . That man would fail in the present dispensation, every one who knew his Bible understood from the beginning. It was what Christ and the prophets predicted. Man has failed in every dispensation. Some day he will awaken to the completeness of his failure, but during the past generation he has been puffed up with pride as never before in all his history. The present war simply manifests what every student of man and of the Bible has known from the beginning, that man for all our much vaunted twentieth century civilization is simply a veneered savage. And what this old world needs is not civilizing but re­ generating, and what the individual needs is not culture and civilization but regeneration. What Germany’s unparalleled culture and science has enabled it to do is, to prosecute war in the most diabolical and damnable way it has ever been prosecuted in all the world’s history. Let us never forget that civilization is not Christianity, even though civilization has- been affected by Christianity, and that churchism is not Christianity. The life of Christ lived over again in us by the power o f the Holy Spirit dwelling in us is Chris­ tianity. Man has failed and history again proves the Bible to be true, the inerrant and far-seeing Word of God. Our President’s Call to Prayer W E reproduce here President Wilson’s C a l l to P rayer : “ Whereas, it is the especial wish and longing of the people of the United States, in prayer and counsel and all friendliness, to serve the cause of peace: “ Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States ot America, do. designate Sunday, the fourth day of October next, a day oi prayer and supplication, and do request all God-fearing persons to repair on that day to their places of worship, there to unite their petitions to Almighty God, that overruling the counsel of men, setting straight the things they can not govern or alter, taking pity on the nations now in the throes of con­ flict, in His mercy and goodness showing a way where men can see none, He vouchsafe His children healing peace again and restore once more that concord among men and nations without which there can be neither happiness nor true friendship nor any wholesome fruit of toil or thought in the world; praying also to this end that He forgive us our sins, our ignorance of His Holy will, our wilfulness and many errors, and lead us in the paths of obedi­ ence to places of vision and to thoughts and counsels that purge and make wise.” With this Call to Prayer we are in the heartiest sympathy; first, as an expression of the sympathy of this nation with the nations now at war; sec­ ond, as an expression of the President’s sense, and what should be the sense o f the nation, of its dependence upon God in prayer. But if prayer is to be answered, there must be something accompanying prayer. First of all, there must be humiliation o f self and confession of sin and repentance. We have seen little sign of this. The nations that are at war are all boasting, it is always the other side that is to blame: Germany boasts- that it has gone to war for the defense of civilization and culture; Eng-

/ ( !

Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs