The Signs of the Times

Southland Times, Issue 13207, 3 May 1895, Page 3

The Signs of the Times

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— l note a correspondent mentions my name and calmly proposes to cure selfishness—the great human disease which alone can be restrained by the hope of future reward as offered in the Bible. “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee was the condition imposed ; Gen d Luke finding the philo. opher’s stone, or Columbus seeking the fountain which would restore youth, thia great problem, “ the destruction of selfishness,” seems the one thing needed to make paradise on the earth. But has the effort succeeded ? No;*, even the Bible cure is restraining selfishness until it shall be taken away—as Cor. I—l 3 c. states. Considering, too, that scarcely any two men arealike us to their temptations to gratify self and their powers of resisting though your simple correspondent assumes all are cast in the same mould. I say heaven help him ; he forms a very poor estimate of what need for a world of heroes there is to revoke the curse of Eden ; and how few, how very few, exist. As to a number of people starting to interpret Revelations at this late hour of the world’s history; the first thing to inquire about is the cause of the mist which still enshrouds it. It could scarcely have been there erfbept so designed ; and these modern discoverers, entirely ignorant of the original language the book was written in merely quibble over the meaning of a word they find in an English dictionary, and substitute what (to them) seems the most likely equivalent. Everyone knows that classical knowledge will soon be extinct, and that the old generation of scholars was probably superior to any now to be found. The drying up of the river Euphrates in order to prepare the way for the kings of the East would much more likely mean bridging over the Atlantic Ocean by shipping, and the conquest of America. What hour the hands point to on the dial of time is very uncertain. The Bible seems not to have been meant for it, but simply to destroy selfishness. Duty to God and man make the sum total of the commandments ; the first five to the one, the last five to the other. —I am, &c., Pessimist. Ist May.