King's Business - 1927-06

343

June 1927

T h e

K i n g ’ s

B u s i n e s s

A ll’s Ready for Another War D AILY papers and secular magazines have, during recent months, been dropping plenty of hints that another great war in Europe is in the making, and that, in all likelihood, the United States will be involved. That Europe is feverishly preparing for war there can be no doubt. “War Minister Voroshiloff tells Russia that a great war .is impending; that his country must militarize the whole population. King Alfonso extends clemency and. reinstatement to the artillery officers who were punished for last year’s rebellion against the Rivera dictatorship, and tells them they must be prepared to carry out obli­ gations undertaken in the treaty with Italy. France has her best troops concentrated on the Italian border con­ fronting Fascist forces which are suspected of designs'to seize Nice and other ‘Italian’ territory. The Polish For-’ eign Minister openly. accuses Germany of intriguing against the League of Nations and Poland, and so men­ acing the world’s peace, Germany politely declines to meet French and Polish demands for dismantling of the powerful forts on the Polish border, and the French Nationalist press is bitterly charging trickery and bad faith and demanding vigorous measures to meet the Ger­ man threat to French safety. ‘Virtually every nation in Europe hates the United States, and Europe is, seeking a strong man,' such as Benito Mussolini of Italy, to lead it in knocking Uncle Sam’s block off his shoulder,’ Gen. Payton C. March, former Chief-of-Staff of the,United States Army, said at Deriver a few weeks ago. Gen. March has just completed a five-year tour of the seventeen major countries of Europe. ‘We fought our . great World War so that democracy might live,’ he declared, ‘but the nations of the Old World are through with democracy.. They want a dictator, a one-man government, a political Samson. There are three great “strong men” across the sea today—Mus­ solini, the greatest of a l l P r i mo de Rivera in Spain, and Kemal in Turkey, another capable fellow. Italy and Spain and Turkey have their dictators; all the other coun­ tries are waiting with open arms for their own broods to produce "similar great leaders.’ ” Something of what the next war will be like may be judged from the following from an English exchange: “The Commonwealth Premiers, assembled near Aider- shot, saw (in the words of an eye-witness) ‘a terribly and a gripping sight, a leap into the inhuman battlefields of the future. Not a man showed. First came a number of tiny armoured vehicles. One was like an ordinary two- seater with a visor on. Others were simply steel safes, driven by a solitary man. One gave a fleeting impression of a sedan chair ; another of a sort of stove. They came so quickly and scuttled so rapidly over the uneven ground that one hardly grasped their varying peculiarities; one had a general impression of being attacked by a lot of boxes. These were the scouts of 1930. Quickly they scattered to make way for a semi-circle of dark forms that came plunging through the mist. They came down on us, roaring, with the wet, black soil spouting in little waves from either side, heightening the illusion of ves­ sels. It was-a most fearsome sight, as all the manless engines of battle closed in upon the position' from which the Premiers watched; a sight which surely none placed there in battle would have lived to .gee.’ , This is a day when human strength and valor count for little outside of- the athletic field or -the prize ring. “The invention of gun powder made the trigger finger of a

Testament. In this sense there is progress of truth in the Bible. The Bible itself claims to be the revelation of God— final, supreme, absolute. Its climax is Christ, for although “God, at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, He hath in these last times spoken unto us by His Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2). He is the sum of all truth. There is nothing beyond. It remains to us to possess ourselves of the “unsearchable riches” openly displayed before us, nor have we begun to discover the wealth contained for us in, the Bible we have. Those who look upon the Bible as simply a record of the past religious experiences of men, usually proceed to look beyond the Bible for religious truth. As a Unitar­ ian writer says.: “We get our message from modern prophets arid poets also. Literature is full of the divine thought, and shapes that thought for our own age. The lips of the Eternal have not been silent all these centuries. The canon of Holy Scripture has never been closed.’¡H This, however, is most, subtle error. The canon of divine revelation is closed. Nothing is to be added to it or taken from it. If God has been silent for nearly 2000 years, it is because He has said all that is to be said until His Son comes 'again in power and glory. Age after age, God is bringing forth new light from His Word, and His Spirit is guiding the saints into all truth, but He who looks beyond the Word for the way to heaven is taking the “way that seemeth right unto a man,” but “the end thereof is the way of death.” WM Hi A Practical Word to Sunday School Teachers I T is said of Barnabas that he was “a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith” (Acts 11:24). The result was, we are told, that mariy people were added unto the Lord. Barnabas was just the man to teach the victorious life, for his own life was a confirmation of his teaching. Said a church member of a man who taught a large Sunday School class, “I don’t see why that man doesn’t have more influence over his class of boys. He gives them wonderful lessons, yet none of them ever seem to develop spiritually and he has no control over them.” “Perhaps,” replied a friend, “his- talks are like postage stamps without mucilage. There is nothing" back of them to make them stick.” Let us remember that it is far more important that we should be filled with the Holy Spirit and faith in God’s Word than that we should be brilliant. We can never edify young Christians by means of a stuffed head. There must be an overflowing heart and a life of goodness back of all our teaching. Those who have made any progress in the spiritual life know that they owe much to the tes­ timony of such men and women, and that without such encouragement they would have been many times tempted to give up. What a great need there is in our churches today for such men! “Real goodness,” said Daniel Webster, “does not attach itself merely to this life,—it points to another world.” God give us more men and women who have the charm of spiritual goodness. and faith about them!

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