Editor " Help and Food ":
Your warning in last year's volume concerning " Bible Students," and the doctrine by which they seek popularity, suggests a few thoughts.
As one views the various popular evil doctrines of the day, and their followers, it is evident that the pivotal point with most lies in denying God's right to visit eternal punishment upon the wicked. This spirit of rebellion begins not with the ignorant, but with those to whom the knowledge of the gospel has come, to whom "deliverance from the wrath to come" has been offered, but who " received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." They refuse to own themselves sinners, defiled by the sin that is in their nature, and guilty by the sins which they have committed. They and their rights are of primary importance, but God and His rights are naught. Under plea of great philanthropy, they are anarchists toward the government of God. It is no wonder therefore if they seem to hypnotize themselves into the acceptance of interpretations which utterly nullify the force of the simple Word. When we see such as come under Mrs. Eddy's teaching utterly ignoring the very things which strike the senses of every man who has any, is it a wonder if rebels against God should so twist and turn the plainest statements of His Word ?
" The wages of sin is death," God says. They deny sin, and so close their eyes to death. "God is love," they say, and love cannot inflict eternal punishment; but they refuse to hear that "God is light" as well as love, and that His love is expressed, not in winking at our sins, revealed by the light, but in providing a Saviour to deliver us from the condemnation under which they have brought us. Mrs. Eddy appealed to perverted wills. Mr. Russell appeals to perverted sympathies. Both simulate faith. Both have the same end. They are Satan's religious products-delusions sent of God in judgment upon a people to whom the light has shined, but who have not loved it. Awful judgment! They will " eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices" (Prov. 1:31). " If thou be the Christ, come down from the cross, and save thyself and us! " they cried. Their unbelief and hardness of heart hid from them the need of the eternal sacrificial atonement which was of absolute necessity to save men, and which Christ was accomplishing there. Temporal relief they cared for. They saw no need of eternal deliverance.
The words of the repentant thief have more wisdom than is found in them all:" Dost thou not fear God ?"- Him who, " after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell"" seeing that we are in the same condemnation ; and we, indeed justify; for we receive the due reward of our deeds." Is this temporal judgment merely ? His further words forbid such a thought:" Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." Eternity is before him. So also his guilt in view of that eternity. So he appeals to the Lord-this Man who "hath done nothing amiss." Here is the "acceptable sacrifice" being made for his sins-"Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God to purge your conscience from dead works " (Heb. 9:14)- " To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise" is the Saviour's reply; for the soul that justifies God in its judgment is justified of God; forever delivered from the wrath to come, as also from this scene of corruption and darkness, being " translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. i :13).
To question God's eternal judgment is to undermine all that abides. J. E. H. S.