WHAT COMMERCIALISM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR IN CHRISTENDOM3

3 "The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ," by Willis, Waldo Mead. Pages 237, 239, 240 and 241.

This first-born daughter of Babylon Commercialism has filled the world with its numerous forms of wickedness: its desecration of the Lord's Day, by newspaper, trolley, travel, traffic, and trade; its evil amusements; its illegitimate occupations and professions; its prostitution of body and soul to do the works of hell. It corrupts the halls of legislation; befouls the springs of justice; poisons our food with hurtful and deleterious adulterations; and is silencing or corrupting the testimony of Christ's ambassadors.

DISTRUST OF NATIONS.

Which are the nations today that are looking at one another with mutual distrust lest one get the advantage over the other commercially? They are chiefly the nations of Christendom. They are learning war and arming themselves at enormous cost, entailing great miseries to their people, because of what they desire to get, or from the fear that other nations will covet and try to take what they have. This insatiable thirst for commercial supremacy, this hunger for territory for stealing a whole empire, is not new, to be sure, but today it is eminently " Christian."

Again, consider how this same commercial spirit has so often led to the persecutions of Israel, God's covenant people. Who have been the persecutors of the Jews during the past 1,500 years? Apostate Christendom in every case

OPIUM AND RUM.

How came it about that China's millions are cursed today by the opium evil? Because, for commercial gain, "Christian " England forced it upon them at the edge of the sword. And the opium traffic in India may thank the same symbolic woman of Revelation 17 and 18.

What is the case with the ivory and rubber trade in the Congo, which, it is declared, surpasses in its atrocities the awful slave trade? Another nominally Christian nation, for commercial gain, is the offending party.

Who were the participants in the slave trade of Africa, of America, of the islands of the Pacific? Again the answer is, the nominal followers of the Lamb!

Whom have " the merchants of the earth " to thank for their enormous wealth made in the alcohol and tobacco trade? "They were made rich by her." Christendom is the producer, and Christendom largely the consumer.

For what cause did the great nations of the world recently take united action for the suppression of the sale of rum and fire arms to the heathen peoples of Africa, and the islands of the Pacific? Was it because of their body-and-soul-destroying character? Not in the least; but because these things were destructive to their commerce with those peoples! for rum and guns would depopulate those countries and thus destroy the market for their goods.

What are we to think of the " Christian " character of a civilization that tolerates, legalizes, and protects, by law, the liquor business, that annually, in the United States, sends one hundred thousand victims down to drunkards' graves, not to speak of the sorrow and misery, the poverty, degradation, and inherited tendencies which it entails?

GOD'S PLANS vs. MAN'S EXPECTATIONS.

All these crimes, and many others of a similar kind, are laid at the door of this Woman, Babylon the Great, the False or Anti-Church. " For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen. And the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness." To her was it spoken, " For with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived."

Dark indeed is the picture thus drawn, but who that has the mind of the Spirit would dare affirm that it has been overdrawn? Nay, the tenth part has not been told. With every passing month, the charm of her sorcery and the fumes of her body-and-soul-enslaving wine become more irresistable. Every new invention and every advance in knowledge is eagerly seized by her to increase the power of her wantonness.

In the meantime, God is calling to us by the heavenly voice, saying: " Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues" (v. 4).

The day of grace is drawing to a close. The doom of, this City of Destruction, with all that appertaineth to her, is not far off. But when it comes, it will be as sudden and unexpected as it will be awful and complete. For " in one day shall her plagues come, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judged her" (v. 8).

Such, however, is not the view men take today as to the means by which the regeneration of society is to be effected. They are busy making new plans for bringing about commercial, industrial, civic, legislative, and administrative righteousness; for the suppression of intemperance; for the enforcement of law; for putting an end to war; and for ushering in the era of " liberty, equality, fraternity." Vain expectation! It will never come by these means, nor by the efforts of men. God alone can do it, and it will be by terrible judgments. In proof of this we recommend a careful reading of Isaiah 59.

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