T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S The carpenter must test his work and rectify it by means of the straight edge, the spirit level and the plumb line. The thinker in like manner for mulates his arguments in accordance with the rules of logic and uses the syl logism as a lame man might use a crutch. Since the fall, knowledge is relative, mediate, partial and inferential. The keenest intellect may become unbal anced. The most brilliant mind may be the victim of a hallucination. Rea son, therefore, cannot be the source of ultimate authority. Pragmatism is now the popular philosophy. It teaches that there is no absolute standard of right and wrong, that everything must be judged by its effects, that what is right for. one may be wrong for another, and »that what is right today may be wrong tomorrow. Is it any wonder that under this teaching men lose their sense of responsibility and that the sense of ob ligation to be right and to do right is gradually fading out of sight? The prophet Amos had a vision of God standing with a plumb line in his hand and heard him say: “ Behold, I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel’’ (Amos 7). The Word of God is a plumb line and a straight-edge needed in these days as never before. Canon originally signi fied a carpenter’s rule and was used to denote whatever was correct in morals and religion. Orthodoxy is straight thinking. Or thopraxy is straight living. Creed and conduct are alike dependent on Scrip ture. If a man would believe that which is true and do that which is right, he must accept the Bible. “ All Scripture - is God-breathed and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous ness; that the man of jlod may be per fect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16).
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TOBACCO TRAPS. FOR CHINESE Christine I. Tinling, writing for the Union Signal, of her observations' in China, says that one day in a town ly ing well off the main routes of travel, her party met an old man, walking at the head of a procession of small boys;., that he was carrying a gong by which he attracted attention; that “ the,boys, mostly stripped to the waist, poor little chaps, carried posters on which were pictures and characters, advertising a popular brand of cigarettes.” This is part of the plan of the Ameri can tobacco men to “ place a cigarette in the mouth of every man, woman and child in China,” which is their slogan. The. paper, Outward Bound, quoting from a letter from Chingtang, China, gives, as follows, another method used to accomplish this purpose: “ As we were on our way to church last Sunday we saw a great crowd gathered on the hillside, all looking in one direction. The object of interest was a balloon sent out by an American tobacco company. It drops paper rib bons, each of which entitles the finder to a box of cigarettes, and thus the habit is started with those who would not otherwise buy.” In the letter also ap peared this statement: “ Sometimes agents will stand at each end of* a nar row street and give a cigarette to every person who passes. By such means there has been created a great demand for American cigarettes. Women are smoking, as well as men and boys.” China’s greatest enemy is not some other country, but tobacco men who are working for the nicotine enslavement of all its citizens.—Will H. Brown.
^¡4. .$!£.. Is§ js i CAUTIOUS ON THE TRUTH
Rowland Hill once said of a man who knew the truth, but seemed afraid to preach it in its fulness, “ He preaches the truth as a donkey mumbles a thistle ■—very cautiously.”
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