Topics Beginning with "N"

300 -- NEW YEAR, A Happy

     We wish a Happy New Year to all our readers! May the richest blessings from the Father of mercies rest upon you! To a great extent, our happiness depends upon ourselves. If the conscience is not at ease, there is no such thing as happiness. You can not have a good conscience until, as far as possible, you have made all wrongs right. and had, through the atoning blood, your "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." Give yourself at once to God to be right at any cost. Health and happiness are connected. By obedience to God's natural laws, health is preserved. If it has been injured by sin, come to God by repentance and reformation and faith, and strive to secure for yourself the promise, "For I will restore health unto thee." But above all, if you would be happy, you must have the Comforter to abide with you forever. This you can not have unless you walk closely with the Lord. He can support you in trials and afflictions, make you patient in tribulation, guide you aright in all the affairs of life, light up the valley of the shadow of death, and minister to you an entrance abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Whatever else you have at this opening of the year, be determined to have the indwelling Spirit.

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301 -- NO SECTISM

     An association of forty-five years with members of churches has brought us in contact with some sectarianism and church bigotry. But we have never found sectarianism pure and unmixed in any of the churches. In the church there is, with it, some charity for those of other denominations.

     But for genuine, unadulterated sectarianism; for unmitigated, ferocious bigotry, that tolerates no dissenting opinion, that goes to the extent of the law in its efforts to kill off those whom it assumes to control but who do not submit to its dictation, we must go to a leader of a no-sect sect. Here we find it in its pure form, restrained by none of the amenities of life, guided by no principle. If you come in collision with it, it will assume as fact anything which it wishes to believe concerning you, and then proceed to anathematize you "with bell, book and candle," as heartily as if your condemnation had been pronounced by an infallible tribunal. No-sectism is a prolific breeder of sectarianism. It is the soil on which bigotry thrives.