“HENGIST, who boldly aspired to the conquest of Britain, exhorted his countrymen to embrace the glorious opportunity; he painted in lively colors the fertility of the soil, the wealth of the cities, the pusillanimous temper of the natives, and the convenient situation of a spacious solitary island, accessible on all sides to the Saxon fleets. The successive colonies which issued, in the period of a century [A.D. 455-582] from the mouths of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine, were principally composed of three valiant tribes or nations of Germany; the Jutes, the old Saxons, and the Angles. The Jutes, who fought under the peculiar banner of Hengist, assumed the merit of leading their countrymen in the paths of glory, and of erecting, in Kent, the first independent kingdom. The fame of the enterprise was attributed to the primitive Saxons; and the common laws and language of the conquerors are described by the national appellation of a people, which, at the end of four hundred years, produced the first monarchs of South Britain. The Angles were distinguished by their numbers and their success; and they claimed the honor of fixing a perpetual name on the country, of which they occupied the most ample portion.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.1

“The barbarians, who followed the hopes of rapine either on the land or sea, were insensibly blended with this triple confederacy; the Frisians, who had been tempted by their vicinity to the British shores, might balance, during a short space, the strength and reputation of the native Saxons; the Danes, the Prussians, the Rugians, are faintly described; and some adventurous Huns, who had wandered as far as the Baltic, might embark on board the German vessels, for the conquest of a new world. But this arduous achievement was not prepared or executed by the union of national powers. Each intrepid chieftain, according to the measure of his fame and fortunes, assembled his followers; equipped a fleet of three, or perhaps of sixty, vessels; chose the place of the attack; and conducted his subsequent operations according to the events of the war, and the dictates of his private interest. In the invasion of Britain many heroes vanquished and fell; but only seven victorious leaders assumed, or at least maintained, the title of kings. Seven independent thrones, the Saxon Heptarchy, were founded by the conquerors, and seven families, one of which has been continued, by female succession, to our present sovereign [George III.], derived their equal and sacred lineage from Woden, the god of war. It has been pretended, that this republic of kings was moderated by a general council and a supreme magistrate. But such an artificial scheme of policy is repugnant to the rude and turbulent spirit of the Saxons: their laws are silent; and their imperfect annals afford only a dark and bloody prospect of intestine discord.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.2

“While the continent of Europe and Africa yielded, without resistance, to the Barbarians, the British island, alone and unaided, maintained a long, a vigorous, though an unsuccessful, struggle, against the formidable pirates, who, almost at the same instant, assaulted the Northern, the Eastern, and the Southern coasts. The cities which had been fortified with skill, were defended with resolution; the advantages of ground, hills, forests, and morasses, were diligently improved by the inhabitants; the conquest of each district was purchased with blood; and the defeats of the Saxons are strongly attested by the discreet silence of their annalist. Hengist might hope to achieve the conquest of Britain; but his ambition, in an active reign of thirty-five years, was confined to the possession of Kent; and the numerous colony which he had planted in the North, was extirpated by the sword of the Britons.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.3

“The monarchy of the West Saxons was laboriously founded by the persevering efforts of three martial generations. The life of Cerdic, one of the bravest of the children of Woden, was consumed in the conquest of Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight; and the loss which he sustained in the battle of Mount Badon, reduced him to a state of inglorious repose. Kenric, his valiant son, advanced into Wiltshire; besieged Salisbury, at that time seated on a commanding eminence; and vanquished an army which advanced to the relief of the city. In the subsequent battle of Marlborough, his British enemies displayed their military science. Their troops were formed in three lines; each line consisted of three distinct bodies, and the cavalry, the archers, and the pikemen, were distributed according to the principles of Roman tactics. The Saxons charged in one weighty column, boldly encountered with their shord swords the long lances of the Britons, and maintained an equal conflict till the approach of night. Two decisive victories, the death of three British kings, and the reduction of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, established the fame and power of Ceaulin, the grandson of Cerdic, who carried his victorious arms to the banks of the Severn.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.4

“After a war of a hundred years, the independent Britons still occupied the whole extent of the Western coast, from the wall of Antoninus to the extreme promontory of Cornwall; and the principal cities of the inland country still opposed the arms of the barbarians. Resistance became more languid, as the number and boldness of the assailants continually increased. Winning their way by slow and painful efforts, the Saxons, the Angles, and their various confederates, advanced from the North, from the East, and from the South, till their victorious banners were united in the center of the island. Beyond the Severn the Britons still asserted their national freedom, which survived the heptarchy, and even the monarchy, of the Saxons. The bravest warriors, who preferred exile to slavery, found a secure refuge in the mountains of Wales: the reluctant submission of Cornwall was delayed for some ages; and a band of fugitives acquired a settlement in Gaul, by their own valor, or the liberality of the Merovingian kings.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.5

“Resistance, if it cannot avert, must increase the miseries of conquest; and conquest has never appeared more dreadful and destructive than in the hands of the Saxons; who hated the valor of their enemies, disdained the faith of treaties, and violated, without remorse, the most sacred objects of the Christian worship. The fields of battle might be traced, almost in every district, by monuments of bones; the fragments of falling towers were stained with blood; the last of the Britons, without distinction of age or sex, was massacred, in the ruins of Anderida; and the repetition of such calamities was frequent and familiar under the Saxon heptarchy. The arts and religion, the laws and language, which the Romans had so carefully planted in Britain, were extirpated by their barbarous successors. After the destruction of the principal churches, the bishops, who had declined the crown of martyrdom, retired with the holy relics into Wales and Armorica; the remains of their flocks were left destitute of any spiritual food; the practice, and even the remembrance, of Christianity were abolished; and the British clergy might obtain some comfort from the damnation of the idolatrous strangers.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.6

“The kings of France maintained the privileges of their Roman subjects; but the ferocious Saxons trampled on the laws of Rome, and of the emperors. The proceedings of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the titles of honor, the forms of office, the ranks of society, and even the domestic rights of marriage, testament, and inheritance, were finally suppressed; and the indiscriminate crowd of noble and plebeian slaves was governed by the traditionary customs, which had been coarsely framed for the shepherds and pirates of Germany. The language of science, of business, and of conversation, which had been introduced by the Romans, was lost in the general desolation. A sufficient number of Latin or Celtic words might be assumed by the Germans, to express their new wants and ideas; but those illiterate Pagans preserved and established the use of their national dialect. Almost every name, conspicuous either in the church or state, reveals its Teutonic origin; and the geography of England was universally inscribed with foreign characters and appellations. The example of a revolution, so rapid and so complete, may not easily be found.”—Dec. and Fall, chap. 38, par. 44, 46, 37, 39.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.7

From that time the history of the Angles and Saxons—the Anglo-Saxons—has been but the history of England—Augersland—and, having so far separated from the other nations that shared in the breaking up of the Roman Empire, we shall not have occasion to mention them again.SITI August 19, 1886, page 500.8

“Restoration of the Papacy” The Signs of the Times 12, 32, pp. 503, 504.

LAST week we showed that the National Reform movement, if successful, would be the union of Church and State in this Government. And we showed that in the union of all churches and organizations in favor of the Sunday, and its enforcement by law, lies the assurance of the success of the National Reform movement. This movement being carried forward by Protestants, when it succeeds, being the formation of the union of Church and State, it will be a likeness to the Papacy, an image to the beast. It is true that its advocates deny that it has the slightest tendency toward a union of Church and State; and argue that it is merely for the recognition and establishment by law of the Christian religion, of Christianity in the abstract, with no reference whatever to any particular church, and that, consequently, it cannot be a union of Church and State. But that is all that Constantine did. He simply made the Christian religion, Christianity in the abstract, the religion of the Empire. And that has been always viewed as the union of Church and State. But whatever it was, either in theory or in fact, there is one thing about it which admits of no shadow of dispute, that is, out of it grew the Papacy. And when this nation, following in the steps of Constantine, makes Christianity the religion of the State, out of such action will grow the living image of the Papacy—the image of the beast. This result is just as certain as that “like causes produce like effects.” History does repeat itself, and that it is going to do so in this matter we deem just as certain as that two and two make four.SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.1

This brings us then to the question, Will there not be persecution? Assuredly there will be. In the very nature of the case that must be the inevitable result. When the question as to what constitutes Christianity becomes a matter of judicial decision instead of conscientious conviction, such decisions to be of any force at all must be respected. And if there should be any who decline to accept a Christianity that is thus made to order, the decision of the court must be enforced. Of course in the idea of the court, and of the majority, such enforcement would not be persecution, oh no,—it would only be punishment for contempt of court.SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.2

Now Sunday being the one question upon which all classes unite, that can be wielded by the National Reform leaders; Sunday being the one question upon which turns the whole Constitutional Amendment movement,—when Sunday becomes the national sabbath, and laws are enacted for the enforcement of its observance upon all, without exception, as the Christian sabbath, then to refuse to keep it is to disobey the law; and therefore, if the law, or the amendment, is to be of any effect at all such dissidents must be compelled to keep it. Because this having been constitutionally declared to be a Christian nation, and Sunday being the Christian sabbath—the great badge of our national profession—for a person to refuse to keep it is to deny Christianity, and so to place himself beyond the protection of the Government. Not only beyond its protection, but subject to its severest displeasure; because as it is, and will be, held that all the judgments that come upon the Nation are because of the desecration of Sunday, whoever refuses to observe it thereby becomes doubly guilty—guilty not only of violating the law but of bringing disaster and perhaps death upon the innocent, and therefore how can punishment be too severe? Especially so when the disobedience is persisted in in spite of penalties; lighter penalties will be laughed at, heavier ones will be defied, and if the Nation is to maintain its position there will be nothing left for it to do but to rid itself of such persons. It will not matter in the least that in defense of their conduct they cite the plain letter of the law of God, and of the Constitution itself, that, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” the State, at the dictation of the Christian Church, will have declared that Sunday is the sabbath; this declaration must stand, the State cannot yield to a few seventh-day fanatics, and the preservation of the State will be held to depend upon its riddance of them. Of course such action would not, on the part of the State, be considered persecution, but only punishment for violation of the law, and for obstinate rebellion.SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.3

Again, the purpose of the Religious Amendment is to declare that God is Sovereign. Then when the amendment has been made, the argument will be this: 1. God is now Constitutionally Sovereign. 2. “The keeping of the sabbath is an acknowledgment of the sovereign rights of God over us.” 3. Sunday is declared by national law to be the sabbath. 4. Conclusion, whoever refuses to keep Sunday denies the sovereignty of God. That is the inevitable conclusion. There can be no other from the premises. And these are the premises which even now are maintained by the Religious Amendment Party. But, when God shall have been Constitutionally declared to be the Sovereign of this Government, to deny and refuse to submit to this sovereignty as defined by the law will be treason. Then if the State is to maintain its position, what is there left for it to do but to impose the penalty which attaches to treason? There can be no other alternative. This is exactly the length to which the Nation will be driven just assure as it adopts the Religious Amendment to the Constitution; and the adoption of the amendment we consider is as sure as that this is a nation. This last step, like all the others, would not be considered by the authorities as persecution, it would be but the punishment of treason.SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.4

But all such argument in justification of such actions, is well named by Robert Baird in his “Religion in America,” when he calls is a “miserable excuse.” Here are his words:—SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.5

“The rulers of Massachusetts put the Quakers to death, and banished the ‘Antinomians’ and ‘Anabaptists,’ not because of their religious tenets but because of their violations of the civil laws. This is the justification which they pleaded, and it was the best they could make. Miserable excuse! But just so it is; wherever there is a union of Church and State, heresy and heretical practices are apt to become violations of the civil code, and are punished no longer as errors in religion, but infractions of the law of the land. So the defenders of the Inquisition have always spoken and written in justification of that awful and most iniquitous tribunal.”—P. 69.SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.6

To arrive at treason by the course which we have marked would not be the first instance in America. Two hundred and forty years ago, in New England, Christianity, in the garb of Congregationalism, was the religion of the land, and says Bancroft:—SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.7

“Since a particular form of worship had become a part of the civil establishment, irreligion was now to be punished as a civil offense. The State was a model of Christ’s kingdom; the very thing which the National Reformers declare that this Government shall now be made by the Religious Amendment on earth; treason against the civil Government was treason against Christ.... The creation of a national uncompromising church led the Congregationalists of Massachusetts to the indulgence of the passions which had disgrace their English persecutors; and Laud was justified by the men whom he had wronged.”—History of the United States, chap. 10, under 1651, July 20.SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.8

But, although the “mi9serable excuse” may be made, that such punishments are only for infractions of the civil law, the fact remains that all such conduct on the part of the State is persecution; and for the very good reason that the State has no business to have any such civil laws; the State has no right to make religion a part of the civil law. But all these evils always have followed, and they always will follow, such an illicit union. Gibbon’s words are fitting advice to-day to those men who seek for the Religious Amendment to the Constitution:—SITI August 19, 1886, page 503.9

“It is incumbent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect whether they are determined to support it in the last extreme. They excite the flame which they strive to extinguish; and it soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy, as well as the crime, of the offender. The fine which he is unable or unwilling to discharge, exposes his person to the severity of the law; and his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety of capital punishment.—Decline and Fall, chap. 37, par. 23.SITI August 19, 1886, page 504.1

That the authors of persecution will support it in the last extreme is a foregone conclusion, because none but religious bigots ever attempt it, and they are always ready to go to any length that circumstances may demand, in support of whatever degree of power it may be with which they succeed in clothing themselves.SITI August 19, 1886, page 504.2

Now what connection with the Papacy or its restoration has this Religious Amendment and its outcome? Just this, the Sunday institution, the protection of which is the main object of the amendment, is the institution par excellence of the Papacy, it rests solely on the authority of the Papacy. No man can present any authority of Scripture for the observance of Sunday; and all attempt to do so is only a perversion of Scripture. The keeping of Sunday by Protestants, “is an homage they pay in spite of themselves to the authority of the Catholic Church;” so says “the Church” and Protestants cannot deny it. Therefore when American Protestantism, and its allied powers, by national enactment enforce upon all the observance of Sunday, it enforces the observance of a papal institution, and compels men to honor and obey the Papacy. And so he “causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” The cruel culmination to which we have traced the working of the Religious Amendment, when it shall have been carried, is the inevitable logic of the question; and the justness of our deduction is confirmed by the prophecy which we are discussing. “And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Revelation 13:15.SITI August 19, 1886, page 504.3

The course which we have outlined in this article is the one which will be pursued in the working of the Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Very few people believe it. But it is the truth if nobody at all believes it. Events themselves will confirm what we here have shown, or else the events of all history have been enacted in vain and no lesson can be drawn from what has been. We have yet more to say upon this subject.SITI August 19, 1886, page 504.4

“Notes on the International Lesson. Jesus Comforting His Disciples. John 14:1-14” The Signs of the Times 12, 32, pp. 506, 507.

(August 29. John 14:1-14.)

“LET not your heart be troubled.” Jesus was about to leave his disciples. He had just told them that he would be with them but a little while, and that whither he was going they could not come. So they were troubled for two reasons, first, that he was going away from them, and secondly, that where he should go they could not come. The disciples had learned to love and trust him as the Son of God, as the Messiah that should come into the world, and now that they were to be separated from him and left thus in the world, troubled them. But the tender Saviour did not leave them, nor us, comfortless. True, he said, “In the world you shall have tribulation,” but he also said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Verse 27. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.” Verse 16. This is what should comfort his disciples for his absence,—the first reason in their sorrow.SITI August 19, 1886, page 506.1

BUT there was not comfort in this on the second reason, “Whither I go ye cannot come.” John 13:33. Yet Jesus did not leave his disciples comfortless on this question either. He said: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.”SITI August 19, 1886, page 506.2

“I GO to prepare a place for you.” Where did Jesus go? Luke tells us that on the day of His ascension, “It came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into Heaven.” Luke 24:51. On the same occasion Mark says: “So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into Heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.” Mark 16:19. When Stephen was about to die, he said, “Behold, I see the Heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” Acts 7:56. Jesus then has gone to Heaven where God is, and he has gone there to prepare a place for his disciples,—for all who put their trust in him. Heaven, therefore, is a place, and not an imaginary, immaterial, intangible nothing, “beyond the bounds of time and space.” The people of God are to be taken to a real place. “That I may excise those that love me to inherit substance,” saith Wisdom. Proverbs 8:21. And Paul says that a certain people took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, “knowing in yourselves that ye have in Heaven a better and an enduring substance.” Hebrews 10:34. There is then in Heaven a substantial place for the believers in God and in Christ.SITI August 19, 1886, page 506.3

NOW HE gives the word that comforted them, and that comforts all his people, upon the words “Whither I go ye cannot come.” “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you unto myself.” We cannot go where he is, but he will come and take us to himself. This is the comfort that he gives his disciples. This he gives as the hope of the righteous dead, and as the comfort of the righteous living who sorrow because of the wounds that death has inflicted. “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.... For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”SITI August 19, 1886, page 507.1

HOW many are there of His professed followers who obey this plain command? On occasions of death, how many “comfort one another with these words”? Very few, very few indeed. Now a-days, instead of “with these words” that which is offered as comfort is in such words as, “He is in Heaven now;” “She is safe in the arms of Jesus now;” “The little child is an angel now,” etc., etc. But all such comfort is a deceptive comfort, because it is not true. People do not go to Jesus, nor to Heaven, nor do they become angels, when they die. Jesus said, “Whither I go ye cannot come,” and men cannot reverse it. Paul says that the Lord shall descend from Heaven, the dead shall rise, the living shall be changed and caught up together with them to meet the Lord, and “so shall we ever be with the Lord.” “So,” means in this manner, in this way. In this way it is, and in no other way, that Christ’s people shall ever be with him.SITI August 19, 1886, page 507.2

THIS is further shown by the words of Jesus. “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” The word “that,” in such a connection, means in order that. I will come again, and take you unto myself, in order that where I am, there ye may be also. Such are Christ’s words; such is the order which he has established, and men cannot reverse it. All other ways are mere theories, and false at that. The way that Christ says, is the only way in which anybody can ever be with him where he is, and that way is by his coming again. Nor was that coming at his own resurrection, nor “on the day of Pentecost,” nor is it in his “spiritual presence in our midst,” nor “at the day of our death;” but only at his coming in glory, with all the holy angels with him, when all the righteous dead arise, and all the righteous living are changed,—all to immortality,—and are all caught up by the angels to meet the Lord in the air, and all the wicked in all the earth are terrified; that, and that alone, is the coming of the Lord which he has promised.SITI August 19, 1886, page 507.3

PROOF: The angels, when he ascended, said, “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven.” Acts 1:11. John says, “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” Revelation 1:7. And Jesus himself says: “The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.” Matthew 16:27. “Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Matthew 24:30, 31. This is the coming of the Lord that is referred to in the lesson to-day. It is the promise of this coming with which he comforted his disciples that dismal night, and with which he commands his disciples now to comfort one another. But alas! the comfort which the Lord offers is neglected, and forsaken for theories of men. Brethren this thing ought not so to be.SITI August 19, 1886, page 507.4

“JESUS Comforting His Disciples” is the International Sunday school lesson for to-day. Will the comfort Jesus gave to the disciples of old, be given to his disciples in all the Sunday-schools to-day? Will they all be told that Jesus is coming in his glory, that the righteous dead shall rise, and the righteous living be changed, and that all shall be caught up by the angels together, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord? Will they all be comforted “with these words”? If not, why not?SITI August 19, 1886, page 507.5

August 12, 1886

August 26, 1886