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(223-227) God and the worship of Mammon? Is it, or is it not, true that while nominally worshiping Jehovah the vast majority are bowing down to the golden calf of wealth, honor of men, dignity, titles, ete., ete. We fear that it is only too true that there never was a time when money, influence, power and honors of men were more exalted or worshiped or more striven for than at present. We are not making wholesale condemnations, nor suggesting that no excuse or allowance should be made in this matter. On the contrary, we would claim that it is true of many today, as it was true of Aaron, that they are led, yea, almost forced, into the positions which they occupy in respect to the worship of Mammon, in respect to their obedience and servility to the popular sentiment—to the general craze for the worship of the golden calf; the worship of great human institutions; the worship of wealth; the worship of titles and influence, and the tendency to be identified with these and in some measure to share in the glory, both by contributing to and by participation in their revels. It 1s nearly nineteen centuries since the New Covenant* was sealed with the precious blood of our Mediator, and he left his people and ascended up on high,—going up into the mountain, into the presence of God. His absence was longer protracted than had been expected, and meantime many of those who had trusted in him and waited for him and expected his coming again to lead his people into the land of promise, have ceased to expect him, and are claiming that he will not come again to lead and deliver them—are claiming that it is necessary that other leaders should take charge and deliver the people. The heads of the various parties in conference have decided, not that Mammon shall be to them instead of God, but that Mammon shall be the representative of God, to lead the people to success; that Mammon shall convert and civilize the world; that Mammon shall bring in for the groaning creation, in a natural way, the various blessings craved, and cause the earth to blossom as the rose. Meantime the leader whom God had appointed to bring the deliverance returns, is present. He is justly wroth and indignant at present conditions. He has set up his standard of truth and righteousness, and is even now standing at the gate of the camp, and is calling, as did Moses in the type, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come unto me! And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves unto him.” (Exod, 32:26) Let all who are truly the Lord’s, however much they may have been entangled with the popular fallacies of our day, with its love of money and titles, its selfishness, love of honor of men, etc.,—let all of the true-hearted be prompt to take their places on the Lord’s side. Shortly the great time of trouble is to begin, which will mean the complete overthrow of all who uphold the worship of Mammon, however much they claim that it is really the worship and service of Jehovah. * See February 15, 1909, and June 15, 1919, issues in re Covenants. ZION’S WATCH TOWER ALLEGHENY, Pa, Moses as a Mediator showed himself grandly as a man, and beautifully typified the faithfulness of our Lord and Redeemer. How pathetic is Moses’ plea—If thou wilt forgive their sins—.” He left the sentence incomplete, as tho it were beyonce thinking that God could permit such an infraction of the Covenant he had just made. But Moses proceeds and expresses to the Lord his willingness, his preference, but if Israel’s sin cannot be forgiven he also may be blotted out of the book of life. We exclaim, Noble man! Pure patriot! And we take to ourselves a lesson of unselfish devotion to others. But when we look from Moses the type, to Jesus the antitype we see the same lesson brought out in a still more pronounced form. The Mediator of the New Covenant, realizing that it is impossible for God to forgive sin, to blot out sin, gave his own life as the redemption price for sinners. He actually did what Moses proffered to do and meant, for he gave not merely a prospect of life and a temporary existence such as Moses possessed, but he gave his all, with his rights to eternal life as a man, on our behalf. But tho the Father was pleased with his devotion—indeed had foreseen it, and had made this arrangement for the cancelation of man’s guilt and sentence of death, yet he purposed that the great Mediator of the Covenant, through whose blood—death —it was sealed, should not suffer everlasting extinction, but that on the contrary he would reward him for his nobility and devotion, both to men and to God’s law, by raising him from the dead to a still higher plane of life—to glory, honor and immortality.—Phil, 2:5-11. And as the Lord said to Moses, “Go now; and lead the people unto the place” designated, so he has appointed that our Mediator who has actually given his life for us and has received the new life with superior power and glory, should be the leader and the commander of the people, and bring whosoever of them wills back into full accord with God, back to the Edenie conditions, the land of promise. But as the Lord said to Moses in respect to the people and their sin, so it will be with mankind; viz., “Their sins shall be visited upon them.” They will receive stripes or chastisements in proportion as they participated willingly or knowingly in a course of sin. So it will be during the Millennial age; altho the Lord will forgive the original sin, and remit its penalty of death, nevertheless, to whatever extent men have sinned wilfully, on their own account, against light and knowledge and opportunity, in that same proportion they are personally responsible, and will be obliged to suffer stripes of chastisements even while being brought by the Redeemer back from the plane of death to the plane of perfection, harmony with God and everlasting life. And those who will not profit by the lessons, who will not obey the great Teacher and Leader, the antitype of Moses, shall be “cut off from amongst the people,” as the Lord has declared.—Acts 3:23. Vou. XXITI ALLEGHENY, PA., AUGUST 1, 1902 No. 15 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER TROUBLE AMONGST METHODISTS For many years Rev. Agar Beet, D. D., has been theological tutor of Richmond College, England. Of him a prominent English journal says: ‘‘Dr. Beet occupies a unique position in Methodism. He is the only Methodist theologian today who has won a very great reputation outside his own denomination. His writings, particularly on the question of eschatology, have won a very wide circulation, and have produced a profound effect in many quarters.” Dr Beet, it scems, got to studying the Bible and found in it nothing to support the common supposition that God has so constituted man that he can never eease to be. He has found it to teach, on the contrary, that everlasting life is God’s gift through Christ to our dying race, and that a refusal of that gift would signify death—not life, in torment or otherwise: that “the wages of sin is death;” that “the soul that sinneth it shall die:” that “he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God [the curse—the sentence of death] abideth on him.” Dr Beet’s crime consisted in teaching these Bible truths with which Methodist doctrines, like those of so many other “traditions of the ancients,” conflict. To teach along these Biblieal lines would quickly extinguish all the “fires of hell” which Methodists have pokcd so industriously for a century; it would relieve God of the charges of injustice and lovelessness and devilishness hurled against him by some of his fallen creatures who, nevertheless, know well that they are not so depraved as either to plan or work out such diabolical tortures; it would show up Methodism as well as other “isms” as slanderers of God in these respects, and would undermine confidence in the infallibil ity of their teachings, and send the people for instruction to the Bible instead of to creeds and eatechisms of the dark ages and to other blind guides, The “Wesleyan Institution Committee” concluded that the foregoing grounds were quite sufficient for dropping Dr. Beet from the eollege faculty. There is plenty of room for Higher Criticism Infidelity and for anti-Scriptural evolution theories in all such institutions, but no room for the truth—the Bible must not be heard, for it, being the great antagonist of error, would speedily make havoc of the multitudinous errors developed in medieval times and duly labeled “Orthodoxy.” In a defense of his position, published in The Methodist Times (London), Dr. Bect says: “During the last century Methodist opinion ahout the doom of the lost has completely changed. Very few Wesleyan ministers can now read Wesley’s sermons on ‘Hell’ and on ‘Eternity,’ Nos. 73 and 54, without repudiating much of their teaching with indignation. Evidently the writer aceepted on these topies current phraseology without duly weighing its meaning. But I notice that, when selecting fifty-three sermons as an embodiment of his distinctive teaching Wesley did not include these sermons; and that, in the sermon on ‘The Great Assize,” which he did include, there is very little which contradicts the teaching of my book. “This change of opinion has been carefully ignored. Many scholarly and godly ministers have nursed their doubts in silence, some under a sense of guilt for concealing their opinions, until the need for concealment has become to them a humiliating and intolerable bondage. In some eases, men have not dared even to think, lest the thoughts they dared not utter [3048]