AN INTERESTING QUESTION ANSWERED Question Please explain Romans 6:7: ‘‘For he that 1s dead is freed from sin.’’ Answer—The Apostle is not here speaking of original in—the transgression which brought the death penalty upon the race: he is addressing those who had passed from death unto life through Christ, and who now, at the time of his writing, were new creatures in Christ Jesus. He is representing sin as the great taskmaster which previously held them in slavery to wickedness, and he exhorts them now to consider themselves as though they had gotten free from that slavery to the taskmaster in as full and complete a sense as a slave would be free from his master if he died. You will notice this thought running through the discourse of this chapter, as for instance in verses 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, and this is explained to be figurative language in verse 19. It will be noticed that this is not a question of sin having dominion over the new creature, but a question of sin still having dominion over the flesh, the earthen vessel. Carrying on the same argument, the Apostle says (8:10), ‘‘If Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness.’? Then he exhorts that it be not satisfactory to us merely to count our bodies dead to sin, so that we will not permit them to serve ein, but that the new mind in us shall take control and actuate these mortal bodies, and make of them servants of the new mind, servants of righteousness, servants of Christ. He assures us that the spirit of God which was powerful enough to raise our Lord Jesus actually from the dead is powerful enough, if we lay hold of it properly, to permit such a quickening of our mortal bodies to newness of life. Man can pay his penalty in death; but when the penalty has been inflicted to the full there is nothing of man left: hence it means his utter and everlasting destruction. To suppose anything left after the penalty had been inflicted, would be to suppose some part of him that had not been condemned; but we know that the language of Genesis is, ‘‘Thou shalt surely die,’’ and that the law was stated to Vou. XXVIII be, ‘‘The soul that sinneth it shall die.’’ We see, then, that nothing of the man, nothing of the being, is exempted from the penalty, and so Jong as the man lay under the penalty he could have no right to life to all eternity. There is no provision for a second life except through a redemption accomplished by our Lord Jesus—the work being finished at Calvary, and subsequently accepted of the Father, and his acceptance manifested by the outpouring of the holy Spirit at Pentecost. But God did not deal with the man to acquit him. God merely passes the man as a purchased possession over to the care of his Redeemer, Jesus,—Justice giving to Jesus a full title to the man, and all the rights, etc., which he ever enjoyed. You will perceive that this gives the man no rights ot his own, but commits all things to the Son. We must therefore inquire of the Son how he proposes to deal with the purchased possession. Briefly we understand the testimony of the Word to be that the Son, during the Millennial age, will judge the world by, through and in conjunction with his elect church, and that all shall have the opportunity of coming up to human perfection under the chastisements and disciplines of the Millennial age, and that failing to improve these blessed opportunities they will be cut off in the second death. Some of the Scriptures bearing upon the subject would seem to imply punishment for misdeeds of the present life—but we believe only for such misdeeds as were committed against some degree of light, or against some of the children of light. Those who had no knowledge whatever of the divine arrangement in Christ could have no responsibility in the sense of meriting special punishment, because they were under the original condemnation, and their personal responsibility under the New Covenant could only begin when they came to some degree of knowledge respecting it. However, we can readily see that to whatever extent any violate the laws of pature, they degrade themselves; and that every step downward in the present life, will require effort to retrace it during the Mui'lennial age. ALLEGHENY, PA., AUGUST 15, 1907 No. 16 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER THE MISSIONARY WITHOUT THE HALO The American conception of a missionary is ‘‘a man with a book, going out among the natives, preaching, preaching, always and everywhere preaching, ‘as a dying man to dying men.’’’ So says Mr. William T. Ellis, who is at present engaged in looking at the transplanted preacher with unemotional eyes. His present field of observation is China, which, he says, ‘‘furnishes the greatest variety of missionaries.’’ This prevalent idea is a misconception, we are told, for ‘‘there is probably cs little of accosting wayfarers in China on the subject uf religion as there is in America.’’? The missionary is a man not different from those who preach at home except as, in the minds of his supporters, a kind of religious romanticism has invested him with a halo. ‘‘The man or woman who engages in foreign missionary work,’’ says Mr. Ellis (in the New York Tribune, May 26), ‘‘is commonly regarded as a person of peculiar sanctity, chivalry, devotion, sacrifice, and courage.’’ The ‘‘real’’ missionary is deseribed in these words: ‘*Oecasionally J have met a missionary, usually young and second-rate, who takes himself quite as seriously as his friends at home take him, and who, well aware that he is one of the noble army of martyr spirits, goes about wearing his halo with all the self-consciousness of a girl with a new easter hat. ‘¢Most missionaries, on the other hand, feel foolish because of the false attitude in which they are placed by their idealizing admirers at home. Some of them have used quite unmissionary forcibleness of speech on this point. They say that they are neither extraordinary saints nor heroes, and that they are not living lives of physical hardship and sacrifice; those who really have hardships say nothing about them. That, in reality, they do not correspond to the image of themselves ever being held up in sermons, speeches, and articles no one knows quite so well as themselves. If permitted to speak frankly, they would say, as many have said to me, that they have fewer material discomforts than the average home missionary or country pastor.’’ The missionary himself may have shared the romantic views of the home people before he entered upon the work of the foreign field; but Mr. Ellis shows how his change of view comes about through perfectly natural causes. Thus: [4041] ‘“‘Phe recruit reaches the field in a state of spiritual exaltation. He has renounced home, friends, country, and worldly prospects, in order to preach the Gospel to the heathen. Fully expectant of hardships and self-denial and possible martyrdom, he has nerved himself to the worst. His first shock comes when he finds a welcome awaiting him in a comfortable American home, possibly better than the one he has left. He looks about in vain for the crosses that he has strengthened his shoulders to bear. Then, instead of life on the qui vive for the conversion of the heathen, he finds existence quite a hum-drum matter. He discovers that he is not to preach to crowds or to converse by the wayside upon salvation, or to teach the ignorant or to heal the sick; two solid years must be devoted to the deadening duty of learning the language. Not romance, but routine, such as schoo’boys know, is his lot. There is no glamour about mastering Chinese characters and Chinese pronunciation; it is all grind, grind, grind, until the poor student wonders whether, after all, missionary work is worth while, ‘‘During these first years, which plane off the corners of the soul’s enterprise and initiative, the new missionary becomes adapted to his environment; the heathen are no longer a novelty; they are everywhere—in his kitchen, in his study, in every highway and byway. He meets them whichever way he turns. Soon the missionary discovers that the heathen half a world away are far more intcresting than the heathen swarming about him on every hand. In this latter fact is a depressing power difficult to define or desctibe, but tremendously real in experience. The atmosphere of a heathen land seems to steal a man’s enthusiasm. It reins the war-horse, chafing at the bit, down to the dogtrot of the livery hack. fo the ordinary missionary finds himself plodding along established lines and living not at all the life he expected to live when he sailed from his native shores. ‘‘My own judgment has affirmed the criticism made to me in numerous specific cases that the dwellings of the missionaries are entirely too sumptuous for persons of their vocation. Rightly or wrongly, the church and the world associate the idea of sacrifice with the missionary’s calling; the natives, too, quickly come to see the apparent discrepancy between the preaching of self-denial and the practise (239-243)
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