Once more we find ourselves on the threshold of a new year. Our hearty greetings to all our friends, with sincere wishes for every good to each and every one. In the midst of an atmosphere charged with the varied evils which man has learned and done these six thousand years, may our Lord's parting legacy to His disciples, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you" (Jno. 14 :27) be yours and enjoyed, whatever the earthly circumstances may be. We know not what the morrow may bring. The last of Daniel's seventy weeks must yet be fulfilled under the dark clouds of which his prophecy speaks. Illusions of peace fill the minds of many. They cannot give up the false hope of a millennium of peace and prosperity through the agency of twentieth century civilization, with the United States as the highest exponent of that civilization -a pride which of itself prophesies no good. If the present war be the preliminary to that sad last week of years, the nations of earth need not look for peace again till the arrival of the Prince of Peace from heaven. He and He alone it is who will bring the millennium of peace through the knowledge of the Lord, which civilization has been, and is, as incompetent to produce as the eternal salvation of a human soul. Jesus, the Son of God, is the only hope for the earth's regeneration. It may be very humiliating, after the treatment He was received at the hands of many, to confess such dependence on Him for the realization of the desired blessing, but nothing else will do it, and it is our business to keep this continually before men. The least compromise here, the least share in the prevailing mind, mars our Christian testimony and but helps to deceive men.
Our own exemption from the sorrows of the last week of Daniel's prophecy will keep our hearts at rest. The rapture of the Church is what we look for, either before that week begins or soon after, and so all is bright for us. Our trial is in suffering « with a rejected Christ, and at His coming our trial ends. Only let us not seek to evade it while it lasts, nor seek to escape its edge by any measure of return to what we have destroyed in taking the path of separation. Those who lead are especially responsible. A false step, a compromising affiliation, anything which may prove a snare to a weak soul, is a most guilty thing in one who, by virtue of gift from God, has special influence over the sheep of Christ. We may claim our rights and please ourselves, but this is not serving Christ, and He will not honor it when He comes. Let us not miss His approval. Let us not parley with our own likes or dislikes, or talk about our rights, for all this savors not of devotedness to Christ and His interests upon earth. The chief failure of Israel and the cause of their downfall was compromise and unfaithfulness in the place of separation in which God had set them. It is separation from evil in the power of enjoyed truth which also unites the children of God. The spirit of the clay which aims at bringing together the broken fragments of God's people, apart from their spiritual condition, is not of God, and can only add to the existing confusion. God has never left the exercised soul without an open door and a plain path, and faith can find them today as ever, though the difficulties be greater than ever. The blind man of the ninth of John had plenty of difficulties to meet in connection with a faithful confession of the Lord, but they only brightened his faith; and what a lovely place he got in the end.
Every one of us needs to find his way through present difficulties, by being, like this once-blind man, true to what we know of God and His word. God is with such people, and therein lies their strength for true testimony.