The Golden Rule
"As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise," is the Master's, rule for a square deal. It is His way for Christians to live, not in the kingdom to come, but in this present evil world. It is Christ's way for Christians to treat others.
The golden rule stands for equity in dealing with our fellow men. It includes our enemies as well as our friends,—those who would do us good, and those who would do us evil. One who lives by the golden rule will keep the last six of the ten commandments.
The old dispensation had another law—the law of retaliation. But even that law fixed boundaries beyond which the revenger could not lawfully pass, —"an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but not more. The Master said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Christ inaugurated a new order of conduct. Those who adopt this plan, and live it, become sons of our Father who is in heaven, who "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
Most of us treat our friends kindly, and love them—if not as much as we love ourselves, at least we love them more than we love our "enemies." But the golden rule causes the minister to eliminate all enmities, and to love enemies as well as friends, even to love those who persecute him and use him despitefully. There can be no retaliation, no desire for vengeance, in the heart of the ambassador for Christ. His Master was meek and lowly of heart, and such the true servant of God must seek to be.
The golden rule leads the Christian to substitute himself for the other man, and to do only such things to him, and to speak only such words about him, as he would like the other man to do to him and speak about him. To live by the golden rule ends all disparaging remarks about others. Many who would refuse to steal a man's purse will thoughtlessly destroy his reputation by suggestions and insinuations, and by repeating damaging reports. Yet a man's good name is far more valuable to him than money. Tennyson sets forth the wickedness of defaming others, in the character of Vivien's vicious denunciation of King Arthur's court, when he says that she—
"let her tongue
Rage like a lire among the noblest names,
Polluting, and imputing her whole self,
Defaming and defacing, till she left
Not even Lancelot brave nor Galahad clean."
Who can estimate the wickedness of hasty, scornful insinuation against a fellow man, and especially against a companion worker? The world gives redress in courts of justice and the evil tongue can be made to indemnify the slandered; but in the church the sufferer must endure because of "conscience' sake." The golden rule permits us to say of another nothing that we would resent if said about ourselves. It permits no dark suggestion intensified by a sneer of scorn or a look of hate.
Every minister should stand for justice and equity on all occasions—just judgment, just dealings, just talk, just conclusions. Always he must exchange places with the under man, and extend to him the very treatment that he himself would crave. None save the Lord is so great that we need to fear him. Equity in hearing, and certainty in giving every fact its place and value in deciding, is to be our guide, and the golden rule our law. Ourselves in the other man's place is the command.
When the golden rule is the measuring line, equity is ever tempered with mercy. Seldom can we judge rightly till we enter into the motive behind the deed. This is difficult for man to do. We conjecture the motive, but we can seldom fully understand the inner working of another's mind. Only God is sufficient for this delicate work. That is why we are commanded to "Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God." How different the scripture reads from the severe condemnation we often pronounce upon some one whom we feel has done wrong. The golden rule will lead us to be merciful, as it causes us to act Justly.
We can never meet divine approval save as we apply the golden rule to all our dealings with others. Majorities are not always right, and power and authority must ever remember that God is judge, and "with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." In every bargain, in buying and selling, in every recital of what affects another's life, in word and thought toward others, the golden rule must ever apply. What we would have others do to us under similar conditions; what we would have them say; how we would like to have them treat us, were we to change places with them, must be our guide.
The golden rule is the rule of equity, that justice which, though it may seem delayed, will be carried out in God'a good time.
Happy the minister who lives by the golden rule, thus fulfilling the law and the prophets,—the measure of kindness and love for others that meets the mind of God.
I.H.E.
Our Matchless Equipment
It is pre-eminently experimental rather than simply informative. It is an operative power rather than a correct knowledge. It embraces regeneration, transformation, reformation. While it corrects errors, it changes life. Its paramount sphere and burden of contact is with the soul's relation to God. It deals with a new birth, a justification from guilt, and a sanctification from the power of sin that culminates in eternal glorification, and that right soon.
Blessed gospel and power and experience! Yes, and it must be experimental before it can be rightly, truly, and effectively taught. Because of this we are unlike lecturers, salesmen, propagandists. Our position is unique. Rightly communicated, our message will correct every error and counteract every perversion and depravity sin has introduced. how glorious and solemn to be so equipped, authorized, commissioned, empowered!
L. E. F.
The Blessings of Adversity
L. E. F.
A Heart Burden for Souls
The statement recently appeared in I a reputable religious journal that in the early building days of one of the prominent Protestant denominations, in the period when their ministers carried a heart burden for souls, the average active life of such a burden-bearing preacher was but nine years. But it was stated that, due to revolutionary changes of vision and relationship to souls that had come through the years, the ministers of that communion are now rated as the best life insurance risks to be found.
Be that as it may, the question of heart burden for souls is not only a Dertinent but an inescapable one for us. Are we formal, or are we fervid? Are we professional, or do we glow as burning coals, imparting warmth and light to others? Do we just perform our required tasks, or is the saving of as many men and women as possible the consuming passion of our lives? Some seem to take their serious responsibilities so lightly. Such will never break down, for they do not carry a soul concern for perishing men and women. They do their assigned work. They reach their required goals. But the difference is clearly discerned by others. People do not feel free to go to them as spiritual counselors, as they can easily detect the professionalism of their conduct. Let us think anew of the seriousness of God's expectations.
L. E. F.
Build Upon the Foundations
There has ever been a true church spanning the centuries of the Christian era. Its course is traced by the divine hand in the seven churches pictured in Revelation 2 and 3. We are consequently the spiritual inheritors of the truth that has been discerned and proclaimed in varying degrees through the centuries past. We are, in particular, the heirs of the Reformation Christians. We are tied to these spiritual ancestors by the truths we share in common. But our special responsibility is the completion of the arrested Reformation; hence the task of discrediting those errors which had been absorbed through the centuries of apostasy, and to which they unwittingly clung.
There is no diminution of gloty to this movement by acknowledging our indebtedness and our kinship to the true positions of the past. Rather, such an attitude greatly strengthens our position as witnesses today. It places us at a distinct advantage in evangelism, from which we can effectually face a hostile world, and successfully repudiate the charge that we are but an upstart sect with fanciful notions.
J. N. Andrews clearly showed our spiritual kinship to a line of Sabbath keepers stretching back through the centuries to apostolic times. We capitalize this fact, and properly so. It is neither true, nor would it be advantageous to declare it if it were true, that the Sabbath truth was abandoned through the centuries and only discovered and restored by us. That very position would lay us open to serious challenge.
Research will disclose the same fact and principle to be true relative to many of our other outstanding doctrines, and our prophetic interpretations as well, especially those of Daniel and the Revelation. If our prophetic interpretations were largely original with us, we might be plausibly charged with new and fantastic innovations; but if essential principles, such as the year-day principle, and such applications as the symbolic beasts to nations, together with the main identifications, can be established as discerned with increasing clarity through the centuries, we are tremendously strengthened in our positions.
And precisely such is the case. From early centuries onward pious men in the true church for the period, pondered and wrote with increasing light and accuracy thereon, and their writings are available. Practically every major prophetic position—with the exception of the sanctuary truth —was iterated and reiterated through the centuries, especially from Reformation times onward, and particularly from the time of the end.
Instead of creating the impression of originality for the bulk of our prophetic interpretations, why do we not build upon the clear and Scriptural features of the expositions of the past, leading on to the fullness of present-day understanding and application, as we do in the case of the Sabbath truth? This will but add strength to our cause. It will be in harmony with fact and truth and logic. It will give a greater effectiveness and cogency to our appeal. It will not detract from our distinctive denominational glory, but will give a truer, more abiding luster thereto, by showing our rightful place as the spiritual inheritors and consummators in God's unbroken line of witnesses.
L. E. F.
