"Them That Are Bound"

Shocking" said my secre­tary. "Striking!" added our copy editor. I had just shown them the photograph that pro­vides our cover picture for this issue, and, of course, since pic­tures speak to each of us in different ways, both exclama­tions were correct.

To me those hands represented all men who long for deliverance—from imprison­ment, persecution, enslavement, anxiety, bitterness, disappointment, habits, sorrow, poverty, hunger, unhappiness; and above all, from conscious guilt and sin. Some­where in this picture stand you and I, for all finite men are prisoners in some sense.

We do not know the extent of human longing for something higher and better. "How long, O Lord" is the cry of untold millions since the world began. It is the cry of countless multitudes today. In fact, the story of human frustration, inhibition, and suffering is so colossal that we could know no happiness at all if we did not at times forget it.

Temporary forgetfulness may become habitual indifference to the world's suffer­ing; and in the Christian, that is base be­trayal: "In slighting the claims of the poor, the suffering, and the sinful, we are proving ourselves traitors to Christ."—Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 137.

One of the most appalling pictures to a sensitive Christian is that in a world like ours, more than half of its inhabitants go to sleep hungry every night. If you've never seen starving people, this paragraph will not shock you; but if you have seen mal­nutrition and starvation on a large scale, it will haunt you.

I listen to the agony of God—

I who am fed,

Who never yet went hungry for a day.

I see the dead—

The children starved for lack of bread—

I see, and try to pray.

—GEORGIA HARKNESS

I was once in a wartime prison camp, and I studied the faces of hundreds of men day after day. They were living on low rations, but they were not starving men—just lonely, apprehensive, shut away from home and loved ones, and their future was hid­den by a huge, dark interrogation mark. Every time a squadron of war planes passed overhead, they looked up; then they fell into chilly silence, hoping that their homes were safe, that their loved ones would live to see tomorrow.

Every minister visits hospitals. Every mis­sionary comes in contact with sickness and suffering. Among the gravely ill—high, low, rich, poor—as their lack-luster eyes so often show, there are imprisoned men and women, some hoping desperately for the recovery that would spell relief, others hop­ing for the death that would spell release.

Countless human beings will lie down on mother earth tonight, homeless, stateless, hopeless—refugees, dispossessed through no fault of their own. Some may be prison­ers in hope; many, alas, prisoners of hate.

I listen to the agony of God—

I who am warm.

Who never yet have lacked a sheltering home.

In dull alarm

The dispossessed of hut and farm,

Aimless and "transient" roam.

The worst picture of all is that of the vast army of men whose souls are bound in sin. The greatest prophetic hope ever set before men is contained in these words of the Holy Spirit: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me . . to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound" (Isa. 61:1). When our Lord claimed this prophecy as the seal of God upon His own work, He read before all the people: "He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives" (Luke 4:18). Christ preached victory over evil, from which every form of captivity springs.

The world forgets its captives, but "the Lord . . . despiseth not his prisoners" (Ps. 69:33). The psalmist spoke out of his own sad experience with the "joyful certainty of his own deliverance."—Perronne. In Psalm 146:7 (R.S.V.), the psalmist declares: "The Lord sets the prisoners free." Five times this psalm triumphantly declares something about Jehovah's work and be­ing. "The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the right­eous: the Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow. . . . The Lord shall reign forever."

The man bound by habits and sins can find immediate release. It is true that Satan does not open the house of his prisoners; but Christ has conquered sin and burst open the prison house of Satan. "But now being made free from sin, and become serv­ants to God, ye have your fruit unto holi­ness, and the end everlasting life" (Rom. 6:22).

Our business is the preaching of liberty to the captives of sin. Our work is to relieve the oppressed. Our burden should be to help, to inspire, to save, against the great day when "the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" shall be so complete that "there shall be no more curse" and no more captives of any kind.

It may now look, at times, as though suf­fering, frustration, and injustice assume such tremendous proportions as to becloud our view of God as the beneficient Ruler of the universe. But clouds always roll away, and light triumphs in its struggle with darkness. Just so, God will finally hurl back the curse forever, and set all captives free.

H. W. L.