The Duty of Battling for the Truth.—“We ought to set ourselves against perversions of the truth and to rebuke them sharply. For if we wink at them and let them pass, we give them our support. And then we may boast as we please about being Christians, but there are more devils among us than Christians if we countenance falsehood.
“Therefore, let us look well to the doctrine intrusted to us, and if we see wicked persons trying to infect the Church of God, to darken the doctrine or destroy it, let us endeavour to bring their works to light, that everyone may behold them, and thereby be enabled to shun them. If we attend not to these things, we are traitors to God and have no zeal for His honour, nor do we care the salvation of His Church. We must be the out-and-out enemies of wickedness, if we will serve God. It is not enough to refrain ourselves from wrong and sin but we must condemn these as much as possible that they may not gain influence or get the upper hand.”
—JOHN CALVIN.
Spurgeon’s Concern about the Metropolitan Tabernacle:—
Extract from a Sermon on Our Last Journey, preached by Mr. C. H. Spurgeon from Job 16, 22, Treasury of Old Testament, Vol. II., page 251:—
“Consider the fact we shall not return. . . . Neither can we come back to rectify any mistakes we have made in our life work, nor even return to look after it, in order to preserve that which was good in it. I sometimes think if I were in heaven, I should almost wish to visit my work at the Tabernacle, to see whether it will abide the test of time and prosper when I am gone. Will you keep the truth? Will you hold to the grand old doctrine of the Gospel? Or will this Church, like so many others, go astray from the simplicity of the faith, and set up gaudy services and false doctrines? Methinks I should turn over in my grave if such a thing should be. God forbid it. But there will be no coming back, and therefore we must build well, rejecting all wood, hay, and stubble, using nothing but gold, silver, and precious stones. We must build quickly to get the work done, but fast as we labour, we must do it surely, and honestly, and thoroughly, for the fire will try it when we are gone. It will be a pity our work should suffer loss, even though we ourselves should be saved. We cannot return to save the burning mass, nor to rebuild the ruin, but we shall doubtless see, and know what comes of it. ‘Establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.’”—Gospel Magazine.
National Sins.—A correspondent in the English Churchman says: “We know not how far God may have permitted this German scourge as a judgment upon the nations (ourselves among them) for our ‘manifold transgressions and mighty sins.’ It is startlingly true that within the last 30 years there has been a national departure from God on an increasing scale, and the downgrade pace is accelerating every year with a terrible momentum. The rejection of the Holy Scriptures as the very Word of God, the promulgation of pure rationalism from Christian pulpits and platforms, the determined secularization and open desecration of the Lord’s Day, the flood of impure literature and debasing stage plays, the mad lust for pleasure, the shameless indecencies in dress, and the unblushing immodesties of the rising generation—these are some of the more apparent symptoms which betray the cancer that is eating out the heart of our national life, religiously, socially, and domestically.”
Papal Plotting.—Signs multiply in several directions, says the English Churchman, indicating a very active attempt on the part of the Vatican to pull the strings in connection with post-war settlements in the interests of the Church of Rome. The seductive influence of the Papacy has drawn British and American statesmen and military leaders to the Pope’s audience chamber and it is evident that diplomatic negotiations with the Vatican have recently taken definite shape. That this should be so is a cause of grave concern to Protestants who know how far-reaching is the political machinery of Rome and with what subtlety, under the guise of concern for the well-being of mankind, that machinery is directed to the ultimate aim of Papal domination in the nations of the world. A well-informed writer in The News Chronicle holds that “the Vatican will try to regain its prestige and its power by developing a Catholic political bloc in Europe which would include the Catholic Centre Party in Germany and would seek to produce ‘soft’ terms for Germany and create an anti-Russian bias in all the Western countries.” He adds that “into this pleasing picture comes the figure of Mr. Robert Murphy, suspect on both sides of the Atlantic, who has been assigned to London with the personal rank of ambassador, in order to take part in due course as the chief American official in the Allied military government of Germany.” That Mr. Murphy is “one of Roosevelt’s favourites” is a matter for added concern when we remember how repeatedly the President has sought unto the Pope in counsel.