AFTER THE WAR-WHAT?

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 283, 18 January 1919, Page 7

AFTER THE WAR-WHAT?

With ecstatic joy the armistice was welcomed. As the harbinger of peace surely the Millennium is in view ! Now is at hand a good time for the oppressed of earth ! But before the end of the war; before there could be peace demonstrations; before there could be a readjustment of world-matters befitting the Millennium, 10, Pestilence stalked abroad. And for his victims he has claimed many of what yet remained of the flower of mankind. Domestic, social, business, political life are alike disorganised. Who would have thought that States would have to add to their burdens the support of orphans and others disabled by Pestilence? How often are we confounded in presence of evils against which we believed ourselves immune! Why all the sorrow and distress that have befallen us as a nation, as communities, as individuals? That God has a voice in national as in individual life is referred to in His judgments on aj)ostatc nations in Deut. 3 : iq, 20 , and the unrooting of a people from their own land for sins as truly ours as Israel’s, sins' positive and negative. ‘“Therefore are my people gone into captivity” (Is. 5). Israel was God’s barometer, rising or falling according to His attitude God-ward. If we arc to continue to be used as an ally of the Most High, surely it must be as we purge ourselver from our national sins, as, too our individual.

Of Pestilence God distinctly says, “I send pestilence” (2 Chron 7:13). Can such disasters be averted? Have thev 1 nverted? Can they* be averted by “Peace Congresses,” bv

“legislation,” by civic efforts to stamp out disease? Assuredly not! \\c may cope with them but in one way: “If My people, which arc called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will 1 hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). Woe worth the day if we ascribe to cause other than God the cessation of hostilities, and the departure of Pestilence. “Thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame ttiat hated us” (Ps. 44:7). Alas! what do we find? Instead of responses to the call of prayer, humiliation, the putting away our sins, we find a people still bent upon their own will, —gain, pleasure, and these only held in abeyance through stern necessity.

Our manv disasters and the fact that we have been perilously near defeat, coupled with our national de* c tension from God, and our now surely undeserved victory, should have a sobering effect upon us, and drive us to our knees. Will God put forth His hand in further judgments? Yes, when all shall eventually have been reduced to “•/cace and safety,” and men are settling down to enjoy the fruits of their own labour, “then sudden destruction 1 The*. - Warning upon warning may be sent till God eventually pour'' down uihmi this apostate world the full fury of His wrath in “The (coming) Tribulation.” “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to * this time; no, nor ever shall be.” But between now and then there shall be certain caught uo to meet the Lord in the air. Who are they? The “alive” in Christ, “and the dead in Chri*t” '1 The- |:i6, 17) Oh! reader, where will you and I figure in the portentous events close at hand 3 GERTRUDE COCKKRE! I.