A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin. Бенджамин Франклин
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days, as described by Moses, is wonderful beyond all human imagination. We can comprehend but little of it. We may well exclaim, as Paul did, in view of a different matter: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor? For of him, and through him, are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen.”
LOTTERIES.
THE entire lottery scheme is gambling. The desire and intention in lotteries is to get money by a base method, or, in other words, dishonestly. The desire and intention is to get money without rendering an equivalent, or to get something for nothing. The man or company that conducts a lottery knows the precise per cent. that is made in selling out the tickets. If everything is conducted fairly; that is, what they call fairly; that is, to conduct according to their proposed rule, some few would draw prizes of much value and some larger number will draw small prizes, while the great body of them will draw nothing. They simply give their money to make up the prizes that others draw, and make a fine purse to run the establishment. Think of the following:
1. We do not profess to know, but probably if the green ones that buy lottery tickets would pay $100,000 for tickets, all the prizes they would all draw would not amount to more than $66,000, thus leaving $34,000 in the concern. This is swindle No. 1, to the tune of $34,000!
2. There can be but very few who can draw prizes of any considerable value, for there are but few of that kind in the concern. The purchasers of lottery tickets would be astonished to know how few could possibly draw a prize to the amount of $1,000, if enough would draw tickets to pay in $100,000.
3. They would be still more astonished to know how few can draw even small prizes, and most of all astonished to know how few can draw anything.
4. The concern proceeds on a principle of dishonesty on both sides—the principle of getting something for nothing. The man that studies how to do this, and tries to accomplish it, studies dishonesty and how to practice it. In its very nature it is corrupting, and must end in degrading a man. Young men ought to shun it as they would a viper.
NO PREACHERS ON DANCING, ETC.
NO man goes through the country delivering able and finely-prepared discourses advocating dancing, going to theatres, playing innocent games for amusement, etc., etc. These things, like the weeds in the garden, need no advocates, but come themselves, and that, too, in opposition to all moral feeling, restraints and entreaties. They are not cultivated fruit, but the spontaneous growth that must be removed before we can have the precious fruits of the Spirit. They are the fruits of the flesh, of the carnal mind. The man who builds up churches, maintains the spiritual devotions, order, purity, discipline, elevates and ennobles humanity, must work; war against the flesh and all the works of the flesh; cultivate, be faithful and watchful. He has something to do more than to inquire, what harm is it?
The Romish Church has reached the climax in the easy system. She makes her members chiefly of infants before they can make any successful resistance, and then never excludes except for heresy. In this way she has grown up to the enormous number of about two hundred million, or one-sixth of the inhabitants of the world. Dancing, drunkenness, or any other works of the flesh except heresy forfeit no membership in that carnal body. We do not want to go back toward that body.
There are more than seven thousand or seven times seven thousand, remaining, who have not consented to any departure, who are to-day as determined for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as A. Campbell was in the best days of the Christian Baptist, and the man who talks to them about any new departure under the name of progression, or any other name, is not only idling away his time and talent, but letting himself down in their estimation from the faith to sectarianism. They estimate a man, not by his learning, his talent or money, but by his love to the Lord Jesus the Christ. They judge of this love by his integrity to the Lord, as seen in a strict adherence to the gospel, the teaching of the Lord and his apostles; his example; his appointed worship; all he said and did; his devotion to the Lord in all respects; a settled and determined adherence to him in all things.
Men may turn away from him, and some will, as some did under the eyes of the apostles. Whole churches will turn away and go to nothing, and the names of some men will stand ingloriously connected with these ruins. The first churches the Lord established have long since been buried in ruins, but the men who spread the desolation will not be overlooked in the eternal judgment. They will there receive their last notoriety. The Lord has not raised the building now standing on the rock, in vain, but to stand the pillar and support of the truth. The main body understand that they have entered into covenant with God, and that they are bound by all the honor that is in them to maintain every inch of ground they have gained. There is, we believe, salt enough in this body to preserve it. It has the power and Spirit of God in it; and God will hold it up and perpetuate it when men who have it not will be forgotten. By the grace of God it will stand till the Lord comes. Let us labor to “present it to him a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.”
HARDENING PHARAOH’S HEART.
THERE are two senses in which things are ascribed to God. 1. When he does things directly, as in the work of creation. 2. When he permits things to be done. In this latter sense God raised up and hardened Pharaoh. It is simply in the sense of permission—permitted him to rise up and be hardened. The hardening is also ascribed to Pharaoh. He hardened himself. This was the direct act. He did it. When the holy writer is looking at the providence of God, in permitting him to rise up into power, and assigning a reason for it, the explanation is made, that it was done to make known his power in all the earth. This is the sense in which God raises up kings and other rulers, that are bad, and uses them as vessels fitted for destruction. He permits them to rule and rule badly, do wickedly; oppress the people, as vessels of dishonor and wrath, making them examples to all the earth, in their overthrow and utter ruin, to teach other rulers and the people that they are all in the hands of the Lord.
The judgments of God have two different results on men, either, on the one hand, to subdue the heart and lead to repentance, or to harden the heart and lead to greater deeds of cruelty and oppression. When the holy writer speaks of it, in view of the case where men are hardened and become worse by it, he says, God hardened them. In the other case, where they are subdued and led to repentance by it, he says, God makes them “vessels of mercy,” leads them to repentance and saves them. The dealings of God are precisely alike in both cases, but the result is different. In one case it is a savor of life, in the other of death. The difference is not in the divine treatment, but in the patients. The one becomes a vessel of wrath, and the other a vessel of mercy. God is said to save the one and harden the other, because we have the two results from the same treatment. In that sense it is from God and ascribed to him, in both the hardening and saving. See the following:
“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil I thought to them.” See Jer. xviii. 7, 8. This