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E D I T O R I A L
John "W. Pritchard, Editor.
This is the Thanksgiving and Book Number of
The Christian Nation. During October and November
of every year a very large number of new
books are sent to us for review. Within these
weeks as many new books are published as during
all the balance of the year; as many new
books are received during these few weeks as
are contained in the average library of a wellto-do
family. They are sent to our table for review,
but some of them are not even mentioned
in our columns; they are not fit. Out of the multitude
of books we endeavor to select those the
reading of which will he helpful, and direct the
attention of our subscribers to these. Almost
three ipages of this issue are devoted to more or
less brief notices of such books.
The war has hurtfully affected numerous lines
of business, many hundreds of thousands of men
and women are temporarily out of. work, and
these in turn economize my limiting their purchases
to the necessaries of mere existence, and
in seasons of financialdistress books are esteemed
a luxury. Some publishers have mistakenly
ceased advertising on this account, and their announcements
will be missed from religious papers
this season. The advertising pages of the
book numbers of religious papers this year are
noticeably meagre judged by the standard of
such publications established by years of their
use. Super-cautious publishers who are this year
advertising at all in religious papers are doing so
only in such as are backed by denominational
•publishing houses in which their books are kept
on sale.
There are publishers who see a greater need
for advertising during hard times than in prosperous
years; who realize that a religious paper
whose pages are the marketing place of an entire
denomination, is a better-paying medium for
them than a paper whose subscribers have not
been educated and accustomed to look tp its
columns almost exclusively for information concerning
new books. There are in this issue of
the Christian Nation the announcements of a
goodly number of publishers of this wiser sort
who will reap the benefit to which their thoughtfulness
for and confldence in our book-buying
readers entitles them.
"THE RETURN OF POIJLYANNA."
All who have learned to iplay the "Glad Game"
with Pollyanna will be delighted to learn that
she has returned, and that Mrs. Porter's sequel
to Pollyanna, which she has happily entitled "The
Return of Pollyanna," is to be published at once
in serial form beginning in The Christian Herald
of even date with this number of our paper, Nov.
25, their Thanksgiving number. Nothing which
this really great religious paper has ipublished in
years appealed so universally as will the simple
announcement that Pollyanna, who made her debut
in the Christian Herald two years ago, is to
reappear in their ipages, just as we left her at
the close of Mrs. Porter's story, and that she
is to remain with us through her young womanhood
and her courtship. We are passing through
the most sorrowful days in the world's history.
Never before was there such need of playing the
"Glad Game," and Pollyanna has come to the
kingdom for such a time as this. It is our judgment
that the Christian Herald's presses will be
strained to their capacity to supply the world's
demand to get Pollyanna's message in these days
of aching hearts.
THE CHRISTIAN NATION. vcl. 61.
THE CHEISTIAN AND THE BALLOT.
X ov. 3rd was a general election day throughout
the country, and the morning's papers
spread the results before the people. The officials
chosen will be duly inducted into office
by various ceremonies, an essential feature of
every such occasion being the taking of the
oath of office, which contains the Constitutional
pledge, whether the office be State or Federal.
The elector may not have voted for the
winning candidate, but he has become a member
of the electoral body, and has given his consent
to the result, so that the successful candidate
and he are identified in what the former
does in the regular discharge of the duties
of hia office.
The Constitution is the ordinance of the people
of the United States, for great purposes indicated
in the Preamble. It was marred in its
making by the allowance of the slave trade till
1808, a trade afterwards declared to be Piracy,
and by provisions for the rendition of Fugitive
Slaves within the bounds of the Union, and
for the enumeration of slaves in the ratio of
5 for 3 persons in the census for representation.
The fruit of the Civil War was the
amendment that abolished slavery. Still the
Popular Will is the sole standard, Eeligion is
explicitly excluded.
The Covenant of this Church in 1871 contains
this obligation:
"We take ourselves sacredly bound to regulate
all our civil relations, attachments, professions
and civil deportment, by our allegiance
and loyalty to the Lord, our King, Lawgiver
and Judge." Hence our members do not
vote for public officials. But is there anything
in the Covenanter obligation we have quoted
that should distinguish one Christian from another
Christian Consider the words of the
Apostle Paul when he stood on Mars' Hill and
addressed the Grecian philosophers as to God,
and added:
"He hath appointed a day, in the which he
will judge the world in righteousness, by that
man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath
given assurance unto all men, in that he hath
raised him from the dead." (Acts 17:31.)
Again the same Apostle wrote to the Christians
in Corinth:
"We must all appear before the judgment
seat of Christ; that every one may receive the
things done in his body, according to that he
hath done, whether it be good or bad." (3 Coiinthians
5 :10.)
These are two very definite statements os
to the accountability of men to Christ. There
is no way of escaping this giving of account.
The Lord Jesus rose from the dead, as Paul
declares, and is the Judge. Wherein the Popular
Will is not his will, and wherein it is his
will, this reigning Lord clearly discerns and
marks.
How necessary that the Constitution be
brought into consistence with the verities by
an acknowledgment of the Governor of the
Nations, ordained of God, "The Father judgeth
no man, but liath committed all ju-dgnient
unto the Son; that all men should honor the
Son, even as they honor the Father." (John 5:
22, 23.)
The Chronicle, a monthly publication of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, quotes the Catholic
Citizen of August 15, 1914, as follows:
"What more natural after the defeat of
Italy, for the conquering nations to give Rome
and a small strip of seashore to the Holy See
It would punish Italy and at the same time
please millions of Austrian and German Catholics.
The Kaiser would become a hero with
the Center party, whose aid and support he
may need in crushing Socialism. He might
also consider that this stroke would win favor
for Germany throughout the Catholic world,
and help to make permanent the new map of
Europe drawn by the German sword.''
THE
FINANCIAL SIDE OF TITHING.
By Thomas Kane.
Are there not practical, financial and business
reasons for the fact that tithing pays the
tither in temporal prosperity We all understand
and are influenced by illustrations more
than by arguments.
longer.
Also we remember them
Is not the following an almost exact illustration
of the relation we occupy toward our
Heavenly Father in the matter of what we
call our worldly possessions
Suppose my banker lends me $5000.00 on
condition that I pay him every year ten per
cent of all the profits I make by the use of it.
Not ten per ,cent of the capital, which would
be $500.00, but ten per cent of the profits
whether they be little or much. If I make
$500.00, I would owe my banker $50.00. If
I make $1000.00 I would owe him $100.00. If
he should lend me $10,000 and I make
$2000.00 by the use of it, I would owe him
$200.00. The same proportion, of course, would
hold for larger or smaller profits on the borrowed
capital.
Suppose my banker had a large number of
people at work for him, people I know, or
know of, and I also know how faithfully they
serve him. Suppose these people are dependent
for their support, their daily bread, upon
the wages they receive from the banker or
through his agents. Suppose that besides
these workers for the banker there are many
sick people, poor people, and people in distress
in all of whose "welfare and happiness he
is deeply interested.
Suppose my banker tells me that while he
continues to lend me the principal, I need n