May 1, 1902 methods; perhaps also by slander, back-biting, evil speaking, which are works of the flesh and of the devil, but never works of the Lord or prompted by his spirit. This furnished the oceasion for a remarkable manifestation of divine power through the Apostle Paul, who denounced the magician, and pronounced upon him, in the name of the Lord, a curse, that is. a blight—blindness for a time. We are not to understand that such power and authority belong to us, or the Lord’s people in general; nor did it belong even to Barnabas. Paul was chosen of the Lord to be an apostle—to take the place of Judas—and the power of discerning spirits and of restraining them was accordingly his. It was appropriate that some such manifestation of divine power should be given at the beginning of this age, not only for the establishment of the truth then, and thus the establishment of the believers of that time, but also for the establishment and information of all the household of faith from then until now. The Apostle upbraided the magician by a plain statement of his case—that he was full of cunning and deceit and villainy; that the spirit operating in him was not the spirit of God but the spirit of the adversary of God, and that therefore he was an enemy of all that was right and true, and seeking to pervert the right ways of the Lord; and that as a punishment the hand of the Lord (not the hand of Paul)—the judgment of the Lord—was upon him; and that he would become so blind that he could not even see the light of the sun for a time. The blindness came upon him gradually, first a mistiness, which subsequently settled into complete darkness. We are not to think of the apostle as pronounccing this sentence in any harsh attitude of mind. We believe, on he contrary, that he was full of sympathetic interest and kindly de “THY WILL My Lord, thy will not mine be done: Whatever path thy love shall choose for me, Through desert sands, or if beside the sea,— Thy will be done! Oh, may thy will in me be done! Should “harvest” labor be for me thy will, Or if I may but suffer and be still,— Thy will be done! Vou. XXIII ZION’S WATCH TOWER ALLEGHENY, PA., MAY 15, 1902 (141-147) sire for the wrong doer, hoping that the result of his experiences would be profitable to him. Doubtless Paul remembered his own case, and what blessing had come to him when he was smitten with blindness, and doubtless he hoped for the magician a similar recognition of the Lord and similarly the opening of the eyes of his understanding, as well as of his natural eyes, This manifestation of the Lord’s power was convincing to the deputy (proconsul)—not that this incident converted him, but that having already heard the teachings, and being in the process of comparing these, in his judgment contrasting them with his previous views, and with the presentation of Elymas, he was enabled, by this incident, to reach the right conclusion; and to decide his matters on the Lord's side. It would be difficult to find an exact parallel to this in our experiences. The nearest approach probably would be when the truth comes in conflict with the error, when the sword of the spirit, wielded by some of the Lord’s simple followers, proves mighty in the overthrow of error; when the light of present truth, and the clearness with which it is presented, and the beauty in which it can be seen and appreciated, is contrasted with the error, the result is either that the truth is seen in its beauty, or the erring one opposing it becomes more densely blinded than before. But only for a season, let us hope; the time is near at hand when the great Deliverer, in his Millennial kingdom, shall not only restrain the great adversary, but spoil all of his house, overthrowing all the works of evil, and opening the blinded eyes and permitting all to see out of the obscurity of sin and darkness and misconception and prejudice. BE DONE!” My Father, let thy will be done: If sweet the Cup thou pourest for me to drink, I'll praise thee; but, if bitter, I'll not shrink,— Thy will be done! Forever may thy will be done: I would not choose, I leave it all with thee,— The pilgrimage, if short or long it be,— Thy will be done! —G. W. SEIBERT. No. 10 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER SCIENCE FALSELY SO CALLED We are glad to note that the Richmond Christian Advocate is not yet ready to repudiate God’s Word and accept the theory of evolution. We agree that scientists who deal in millions and billions of years evidently forget the meaning of the word “science.” We clip from its issue of March 6 the following :— “THE ORIGIN OF MAN “We had hoped that after the repeated failures to find the missing link in the chain of evolution the advocates of that theory would be less bold and positive in their assertions. True science is always cautious in its statements. Its teachings are supposed to be based on determinate and well-ascertained facts. Otherwise it ceases to be science and becomes mere speculation. These remarks have been suggested by the following extract from the Chicago InterOcean “<The International Congress of Zoology, in session at Cambridge, England, during the current week, was remarkable for a fascinating paper by Professor Haeckel on the world’s present knowledge of the descent of man. He did not hesitate to declare that science has now established the absolute certainty that man has descended through various stages of evolution from the lowest form of animal life during a period estimated at 1,000,000,000 years. This knowledge, which must now be accepted as the crowning achievement of science during the nineteenth century, was won through recent discoveries of fossil remains in Java, Madagascar, and Australia and is made still more complete evidence by available proof of discoveries wherewith Darwin’s name is most commonly associated.’ “Professor Haeckel ig known to be a Darwin of the Darwinites. Indeed, in some of his views upon his pet theory he hag gone far beyond Darwin himself. Why does he seek for proofs of the doctrine of evolution in such remote and widely-separated regions as Java, Madagascar, and Austra lia. instead of the original centers of population? Besides, Professor Haeckel must have known that the evidences he adduces from certain fossil remains in Madagascar and Australia have been demonstrated to be utterly unreliable. What particular find he refers to in Java we do not know; but take it for granted that it is worthless as the rest. The fact is, the evolutionists have been so pushed to find that ‘missing link,’ without which their whole system falls to the ground as incomplete and insupportable, that they have been ready to snatch at anything which would seem in the remotest manner to connect—the broken series. “The Professor evidently intends to allow himself ample time to work out his progressive developments from a protoplasm to an ape, and from an ape to a man. He assumes a round billion of years. We say assumes it, for every one must see that it is sheer assumption. Why not say five billions instead? There is no geological table by which he could fix the time at one billion of years. When science thus goes out of the domain of exact truth, we have a right to question its statements and its calculations. We don’t know where Professor Haeckel got his arithmetic, and he does not know himself. When he declares, and does not ‘hesitate’ to declare, that ‘science has now established the absolute certainty that man has descended through various stages of evolution from the lowest form of animal life during a period estimated at one billion of vears,’ we demand proof; but the proof is not forthcoming. The declaration is about as satisfactory and sensible as the silly reply that Aaron made to Moses when the latter questioned him about the golden calf. He said: I cast the gold in the fire, and there came out this calf” So the evolutionists would have us believe that all these wonderful things in nature just ‘came out’ of themselves entirely apart from divine agency. “Which is the more rational theory, that all things were made by Him ‘who is before all things and by whom all things consist,’ or that things just evolved of their own free [3007]
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