"Bible Students"

A convention took place recently near Washington, D. C., composed of people who style themselves '' Bible Students." They have legislated Hell out of existence, declaring in the name of their Christianity that there is no such thing, and calling upon ministers of all denominations to preach against a belief in it.

The call is of little use, for, alas, ministers of all denominations had already ceased pretty much to speak of this distasteful subject long before this convention of " Bible Students." Only, those ministers are more consistent than the "Bible Students." They know the Bible teaches beyond the possibility of a doubt that there is a hell-a place of everlasting punishment, prepared for the devil and his angels- which will also be the abode of all men who, like them, rebel against God. Knowing this well, and that no twisting and turning about the Greek original can change it, they have taken to denying that the Bible is the word of God. It contains the word of God, they say, but it is not itself the word of God. Thus they make themselves free to choose what they like, and eliminate what is distasteful to themselves or their hearers.

But these "Bible Students" have the hypocrisy and the audacity to pretend to believe that the Bible is the word of God. This gives more force to their denial of everlasting punishment. It gives it the authority of God, and thus the devil is better served.

Reader, the "Bible Students" may as well legislate the Great Bear or the North Star out of God's creation as to legislate everlasting, conscious existence in the lake of fire out of His revelation. They are there, whether men like it or not. Moreover, men will find out in the end that " Scripture cannot be broken; " that "not one jot or tittle" of it shall fail, and that it had been far better for them to have betaken themselves to the way of escape from hell, which God in grace is offering them now, than to plunge headlong into it with eyes wilfully shut.

Faces bloated with drunkenness and vice may be seen at any time among the crowds coming out of "Pastor Russell's" meetings, glorying in that "smart man who has knocked hell out of the Bible." What a story this tells! What a satanic way of acquiring popularity! What cruelty thus to deceive men, and turn them from the blessed gospel which delivers from the wrath to come! The Lord said of Judas, "It were better if he had never been born." What will He say to such "Bible Students? "

In the same line of things there reaches us by mail, at the distant point where we now are, a copy of a New York newspaper one of whose reporters gives an interview he had with the present leaders of the Jerry McAulay Mission in Water Street. If the language used by those men is fairly reported, the name of Jerry McAulay, that dear Christian man, should certainly no longer be associated with the mission. He loved the souls of men, and he knew that Christ alone could save them from the eternal consequences of their sins. He knew that His blood alone could wash them from their guilt, and His Spirit alone deliver them from the present power of sin. He pointed fellow-sinners to Christ therefore.

If the report before our eyes be true, his successors, alas, know nothing of Christ and nothing of their own hearts. Salvation to them is to stop drinking and become respectable among men once more. God's claims over man are ignored. His holiness they know not. Their language is blasphemous, and its vulgarity of the lowest and most repellent order. Men everywhere are growing profoundly ignorant of what Christianity is. A copy of The Bible in the World–the organ of the Canadian Bible Society-handed us recently, publishes the following from one of its agents in India:"When the jubilee of the occupation of India by the Crown was celebrated in Salem, a united prayer-meeting was held in the Town Hall, at which prayer was offered in English by Mr. Robinson, in Tamil by a Brahmin priest, and in Hindustani by a Mohammedan Moulvie. Twenty, or even ten, years ago, such a thing would not have been possible."

No, but it is possible now, for they who twenty, or ten, years ago were still "the salt of the earth," have lost that savor; and salt without savor is "thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men."

Such is the trend on all sides. Under all kinds of pleas-love, peace, union-indifference to the claims of the Son of God, unconcern for truth and righteousness, grow apace. Like the temple at Jerusalem, which was to be "a house of prayer," but had become " a den of thieves," soon to be left " without one stone upon another," so Christendom is fast approaching the hour when "the Amen, the faithful and true Witness," will fulfil His warning, " Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth " (Rev. 3:16).

A Hint to Mothers

In Judges 13 is the account of Samson s birth. An angel is sent to his mother to tell her that God is about to break in upon her barrenness, and give her a son who will be a Nazarite (a separated man) to Him from his first to his last breath. This was great honor from God, even if it made Samson a man of reproach among men, as the long hair signifies-a self-denying man, as abstaining from all that comes from the vine witnesses, even if he failed much in the responsibilities of his Nazariteship. The parents realize the honor, and the father entreats the Lord to send again the messenger to tell them how they should bring up such a child. God answers his prayer, and sends back His angel; but to the father's question, " How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him ?" the angel only replies how the mother is to order herself.

If other vocations are worthy of patient training, is not that of a Christian mother? But such training is gotten only in God's school. O, Christian mothers, cherish God's school for yourselves.