tion of the heathen and the reverence that restrained the Jew, the oath to such is made of no effect, as is established by the testimony of many judges and the manifest perjuries in all the courts of the world. Adam Clarke says, "An oath will not bind a knave or a liar; and an honest man needs none ..... But as a sample of the amazing blindness of learned expositors we find him placing the qualified statement of the heathen Epictetus ("Swear not at all, if possible; if you can not avoid it, do it as little as you can"-Enchir. c 44) ahead of the clear and unqualified commandment of Christ, "Swear not at all."

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. God is "the same yesterday, today and forever." How then can His law be changed?

God is unchangeable in nature and attributes, but changes His law and attitude to meet the changed conditions in man. In Jer. 31:31 the prophet foretells a change, in Heb. 7:12 an apostle declares the necessity of it, and in the Sermon on the Mount the Savior gives examples of it.

2. If God, angels and holy people have taken oaths, how can it be wrong for us?

Some things are wrong in themselves, and no law can make them right. God Himself can not lie, from the fact that the moral law can not be changed. The oath evidently belongs to the other class of things that are right or wrong, depending upon the will and law of such as have the right to govern. When God in His wisdom commanded the Jews to swear by His name (Deut. 6:13) it made it right for them to do so. And when He saw fit to forbid all swearing to Christian people (Matt. 5:33-37), it certainly makes it wrong for them to swear. It is a mistake to think that all things that were right under the law are right under the Gospel. Under the Old Testament it was right to call down fire from heaven upon the enemy (II Kings 1:12); under the New Testament it is forbidden (Luke 9:54).

3. Did Christ not approve the oath when He answered under the adjuration of the high priest?

He was also adjured by a man possessed with devils; but it is only reasonable to believe that He was consistent with His teaching, and ignored them both.

4. Does not Paul give the oath his approval in Heb. 6:16?

If Paul had said, "We verily swear by the greater," and “an oath is to us an end of all strife," it would indeed have weight; but as it stands, the wording itself evidently limits it to the world. When Paul here speaks of a sanctioned oath, he says "men" "to them;" but where James speaks of a forbidden oath he says, "My brethren." Jas. 5:12.

5. Did not Paul take oath in II Cor. 1:23? "Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul?"

We are told that Paul has written some things hard to un erstand and are warned against the danger of wrong interpretation. II Pet. 3:15, 16. Suppose that Paul did here take an oath (which he did not)-the conduct of an apostle is nowhere claimed to be perfect, but the commandments of the Lord are. If therefore we should be compelled to decide between the doing of an apostle and the commandment of Christ, our duty would certainly lie with the latter. The very essence of an oath is the invoking of a special curse upon unfaithfulness, no trace of which we see in Paul's words, but only an invocation to God to record things as they are.

6. What is the difference between an oath and an affirmation?

That there is a difference is clear from the fact that the New Testament forbids the one and sanctions the other. Jas. 5:12; Tit. 3:8. The affirmation is a simple declaration, without uplifted hand or other ceremony, while an oath is a declaration associated with words or ceremonies that imply the invoking of a curse in case of perjury. "God do so and more also to me if the head of Elisha .... shall stand on him this day" (II Kings 6:31), was a common form of oath, while Paul's simple statement of the resurrection of Christ, as in Acts 26: 23, is called an affirmation. Acts 25:19.

7. Was it not simply profane swearing that Christ meant to condemn?

Jesus (Matt. 5:33-37) forbids what once was lawful. the profane oath was never lawful. James certainly covers the whole ground when he forbids swearing by heaven or earth or any other oath. Oaths for confirmation, being more than "yea" and "nay" are manifestly condemned by both.

8. Why did God take oath, seeing that He is free from ignorance, superstition and dishonesty?

God can not lie, and therefore the oath was not for His sake, or to make the promise more sure, but evidently to secure the confidence of the people, who by experience with men had come to lightly esteem all promises unconfirmed by an oath.

9. The most learned expositors of Scripture do not consider all swearing to be wrong.

The opinions of the learned are valuable only in proportion to the Scripture proof that they can produce in support of them. In the time of Christ there were "the wise and the prudent" who rejected His doctrine, and to the "unlearned" fishermen the truth was revealed.

10. In what light should we consider the action of Christ in cursing the fig tree?

To curse is God's prerogative. Uninspired man has neither the authority, wisdom nor power to pronounce an effective curse, for "he can not make one hair white or black."

11. What is the duty of one who has promised under vath what he finds afterwards to be unscriptural?

No promise to sin is binding before God. Lev. 5:4, 5.

12.

What should be our course when officers of the law demand the oath?

In the leading nations provisions have been made exempting conscientious persons from the oath. But in any case "we ought to obey God rather than man," and, if necessary, suffer for Christ's sake rather than to sin.

CONCLUSION

To give the words of Christ full weight and abstain from all oaths can not bring condemnation upon the soul; but if the teaching of Christ and James is not to be discounted then

all who swear in any sense, whether it be profanely, colloquially, judicially, or in printed form, are certainly transgressors. Let the absolute truthfulness of real religion be preserved, that even the world may see that the Christian speaks the truth from inward principle and not from outward pressure.

Profanity is one of the greatest sins against God in that it simply gives place to anger, hatred and irreverence. They who lie and steal and kill do so for some personal advantage; but he who uses profanity, as one has said, "bites at the bare hook of God Almighty's wrath!" In the Old Testament it was punishable by death (Lev. 24:16), and such as sin in this way against the added Gospel light must treasure up against their souls a terrible condemnation against the day of wrath. Rom. 2:5.

The Savior rebuked the Jews as hypocrites for carefully abstaining from the use of God's name in their oaths but using substitutes that implied as much (Matt. 23:16-22); and shall not the same condemnation rest upon those who have the spirit of profanity in their hearts but hope to escape guilt of it through using "by-words" somewhat similar to the common forms of profanity used by hardened sinners? Let us remember that for every idle word that men shall speak they must give account in the day of judgment (Matt. 12:36), and therefore endeavor to have our speech "always with grace, seasoned with salt."

CHAPTER VIII

SECRET SOCIETIES

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.-Eph. 5:11, 12.

The purpose of this chapter shall be to set forth in good faith the principles in which secrecy is fundamentally wrong and then to show that the proper attitude of the Christian Church toward the Lodge is that of absolute separation. It will not be possible in this brief compass to point out every evil in modern secrecy. Neither is it needful to discuss the initiations, obligations, and rites of the three hundred or more secret orders of the world. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to observe the more apparent evils of the more common orders.

Accepting as true the testimony of hundreds of seceding lodgemen; accepting as accepting as correct the printed rituals of the leading lodges; accepting as a witness the testimony of lodgemen themselves relative to the nature and character of their lodges; in a word, suspending judgment until the evidence is all in, we unhesitatingly make the proposition that no man can be a consistent and true Christian and at the same time be a true and consistent member of any of the leading secret, oathbound fraternities.

When we say "leading fraternities," we mean such as the Freemasons, Oddfellows, Knights of Pythias, Modern Woodmen, the Elks, the Red Men, and others. The above proposition we propose to defend upon the ground that the character, spirit, and workings of modern secrecy are fundamentally anti-Christian.