022
Why Not
Russell ism'?
alias 'MILLENNIAL DAWNISM'
1/6
FRANK BALLARD, Nrt
U.D., M.A., B.Sc. (Lond.), &c.
159
Why Not 'Russellism'?
Alias 'Millennial Dawnism'
CONTENTS
PACK
I. INTRODUCTORY NOTE . . 161
II. FACTS 167
III. HISTORY AND CHARACTER OF
' PASTOR RUSSELL ' 173
IV. GOOD POINTS IN ' RUSSELLISM ' . 178
V. ITS CLAIMS AND ITS REFLECTIONS ON
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES . . 186
VI. THE DISTINCTIVE DOCTRINES OF
' RUSSELLISM ' 194
VII. ITS ERRORS AND DANGERS . . 207
VIII. CONCLUDING SUMMARY . , . 263
/VJ
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
IT will be news to most people, whether believers
or unbelievers, that the year 1872 was exactly the
six thousandth year since Adam and Eve were
suddenly created and placed in the Garden of Eden ;
that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ definitely
happened in 1874 ; that in 1878 ' the dead in Christ '
rose ' first/ ; that all the prophets, apostles, saints,
mentioned in the Bible, with all the faithful saints
' down to our own day/ were raised up, and are
now ' possessed of the glorious spiritual bodies
promised them ' ; that in the same year all the divine
' disfavour ' of the Jews ended ; and there began a
period of ' favour ' which culminated in 1914. That,
further, in 1878 ' the spring of that year marks the
date when nominal church systems ' i.e. the ordinary
Christian churches of to-day ' were spewed out/
so that ' from that time they are not the mouthpiece
of God, nor in any degree recognized by Him.'
That, further, in October, 1881, the ' special favour
to Gentiles to become joint heirs with Christ and
partakers of the divine nature ' closed ; that ' Baby-
lon/ i.e. ordinary Christianity, fell ; the days of
vengeance ' arrived a time of trouble such as
was not since there was a nation.' Furthermore,
that between 1910 and 1912 the ' great time of
trouble began/ culminating with the end of the
' Times of the Gentiles ' in October, 1914. Yet
162 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
more ; that in 1914 the Jews ' were received into
full divine favour,' whilst ' Earth's great Jubilee,'
which began in 1878, ended with the ' overthrow
of Gentile power ' ; the ' kingdoms of this world '
came to a ' final end, and the Kingdom of God was
fully established ' ; ' earth's present rulership '
was ' completely overthrown ' ; ' the Gentile king-
doms ' were ' ground to powder, and utterly removed,
no place being found for them,' whilst ' Christ's
Kingdom was fully established.'
In a word, 1914 ushered in the Millennium, and
all the kingdoms of the world became the kingdoms
of the returned invisible Christ. That year was
' the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men ' ;
so that the kingdom of God obtained ' full universal
control, and was set up on the ruins of present
institutions.' Also, before the end of that year,
' the last members of the divinely recognized
Church of Christ, the Royal Priesthood, were
glorified with the Head ; whilst all the dead out of
Christ began to be recreated, with a view to a second
probation on earth. Meanwhile, the Jews were
restored to their own land, and Jerusalem became
the capital of the world, so that Abraham and the
patriarchs, being recreated from the dead as visible
glorified men indeed, ' princes in the earth '
began their work as ' intermediaries between the
world and the invisible Church, the New Creation.' l
x The repetition of inverted commas, or paragraphs spaced off, may
prove tedious to the reader ; but as limitation of space forbid the giving
exactly every reference to pages from the six books, and yet, in face of
such confident avowals, it is necessary to be exact, either of these signs
in the following pages will mean that every such phrase or sentence
is taken verbatim from the authoritative issues mentioned in the next
section.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 163
But if most of us have not been aware of these
amazing happenings, how can we know that they
have transpired ? Or how can we be called upon
to believe such marvels? Because we
must bear in mind that all these things have been hidden
by the Lord, in such a manner that they could not be
understood or appreciated, until the due time had come ;
and then only by His earnest faithful children who esteem
truth as more precious than rubies, and who are willing
to seek it as men search for silver.
So that since 1878, when all the churches were
' spewed out,' the only saints who have thus sought
for the truth and found it, have been the followers
of the author of these announcements, an American
known as ' Pastor Russell/ whose discoveries
are summed up under the general name of ' Millen-
nial Dawn.' But how does he know all this ?
Because ' the Lord more than two thousand
years ago gave, through the Prophet Daniel, a clear
description of the times in which we are now living.'
Since, however, the testimony of Daniel and the
rest of the Bible was not sufficient, a further revela-
tion has been vouchsafed to Pastor Russell and
his friends, in the construction of ' the Great Pyra-
mid of Gizeh/ not far from Cairo. Concerning
this we learn that
The fact that the Pyramid's secrets were kept until the
close of six thousand years of the world's history, but that
now it begins to give its testimony as the Millennial Dawn
draws on, is in perfect harmony with the written Word,
whose abundant testimony relative to the glorious plan of
God has likewise been kept secret from the foundation of
the world, and only now is beginning to shine forth in its
completeness and glory.
164 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
But what if this alleged double testimony fails to
impress, let alone convince, us? Only this, that
we are among the ' many who profess to be watching,
but are reading the prophecies through the coloured
glasses of old and long-cherished errors, and with
their eyes miserably crossed by prejudice.' But
what if, undeterred by such an alarming diagnosis,
we proceed to show how this whole scheme is a
delusion, for all its overwhelming detail of confident
quotations from the Bible and exact measurements
in the Pyramid? Then, indeed, it will be on our
part a display only of ' bubbles of self-complacency,
pride, sarcasm, and folly, set afloat by those who
think themselves to be somebody, and discredit the
inspired revelation and those who stick closely to
the Book.'
Alas, that is not all. Others also will undoubtedly
exclaim ' What, controversy again and between
professing Christians? Why can we not let each
other alone ? If certain folk bearing the Christian
name do claim to be special Bible students, and
hold peculiar views, what does it matter so long as
they live decent lives and give proofs of their
sincerity ? Why can you not let things go, and have
an end of controversy, so as to give the world the
comfort of a real Gospel ? ' One knows well that
such questions will be asked, and that it will in
many cases be useless to answer them. None the
less, so long as Christianity is worth a moment's
regard, it will be best to be in the Apostolic succession
and heed the word addressed to the Philippians
' Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true
these keep well in mind.' So it must suffice here
to reply that the Christian name is a mere matter
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 165
of convention in our English and American midst ;
that sincerity is no guarantee for truth ; that a claim
is nothing unless it will bear investigation ; that
so far from its being unchristian or unworthy to
undertake such investigation, the New Testament
abounds in instances of both exhortations and
actions to that effect. Paul, we know, went so
far as to say to the Galatian Christians:
There are some that trouble you, and would pervert
the Gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from
heaven, should preach unto you any other Gospel than we
preached unto you, let him be anathema.
And even John, the Apostle of love, wrote :
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits,
whether they are of God, for many false prophets are gone
out into the world. . . . Whosoever falls away and does not
remain in the teaching of Christ, has not God. If any one
comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not
receive him into your house, nor welcome him. 1
Such exhortations are entirely in harmony with the
whole attitude of the New Testament. The notion
which is not seldom met with, that ' controversy '
is always unspiritual and harmful, finds there no
support whatever. At least half of the Gospels
and Epistles is controversial; that is to say, it is
concerned with maintaining truth against untruth.
To do that, therefore, is quite as real and necessary
a part of Christian faith and duty as the preaching
of comforting sermons, or ' proclaiming the Gospel '
upon the basis of wholesale unchallenged assump-
tions.
1 ijohn iv. i ;, 2 John 9, 10.
166 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
But even apart from general Christian prin-
ciples, when a company of avowed Christian believers
make it a part of their special creed, in our modern
midst, to declare that all Christendom is in error ; and
that half a century ago God ceased to recognize any
of the ordinary Christian churches ' in any degree ' ;
and when it is found that the advocates of this
conceit and falsity are going through the country
and by various plausible devices are drawing after
them no small number of followers, besides trou-
bling very many more, then, if Aposto ic teaching
and example count for anything at all, it becomes
the duty of some one, whether he be thanked or
scorned for his pains, to endeavour to save Christian
faith from becoming a disappointment to those who
cherish it, and a derision to those who turn away
from it. For such reasons the following brief but
careful and sufficient examination of Russellism,
otherwise known as ' Millennial Dawnism,' is thus
issued.
167
II
FACTS
It may be said without fear of exaggeration, that
never before in Christian history has the word
written of old to Timothy been so conspicuously
fulfilled as in our modern midst :
The time will come when men will not endure healthy
teaching, but with itching ears will heap up for themselves
teachers after their own fads ; they will give up listening
to the truth, and will be swept away after myths. 1
One has but to notice the number of announce-
ments of religious services in the Saturday papers,
alike in London and the provinces, to see how many
and various are the tastes or convictions of religious
people in these days. The list is, indeed, bewildering.
To say nothing about foreign faiths which have their
representatives in this country, Christianity is repre-
sented by Romanists, Anglicans, Free Churches
i.e. Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists,
United Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists,
Presbyterians, Unitarians, Quakers, Plymouth Breth-
ren, Christadelphians, Brethren of Christ, Sweden-
borgians, Spiritists, and others. From the East, we
have the strange medley which calls itself ' esoteric
Buddhism,' but is generally known as ' Theosophy.'
Whilst from the West, Mormon missionaries have
endeavoured to propagate, even in this country, some-
thing far worse than the Shakerism which preceded
it. The two latest vagaries consist of large numbers
of devoted followers of an ambitious woman and a
168 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
1 pushing ' man. The former call themselves ' Chris-
tian Scientists/ though their principles are demon-
strably neither Christian nor scientific. The only true
appellation for their creed is ' Eddyism/ seeing that
it is neither more nor less, from beginning to end,
than the religious imaginings of Mrs. Eddy. In
like manner, ' Millennial Dawnism,' the latest
American contribution to religion, ought certainly
to be known as ' Russellism ' ; for it also is nothing
else than the theological fancies of one ' Pastor
Russell,' who claims to be the prophet of the age,
and to supersede all other forms of Christian faith
by his wonderful ' Plan of the ages,' based upon his
interpretation of the Bible and the Great Pyramid.
It was first made known in this country by means
of profuse and costly advertising in leading news-
papers, which is still continued. Every one knows
that in such journals large space as an advertise-
ment for long sermons must represent great expense.
Many, indeed, were driven to wonder what man
or what Church could afford, to such an extent and
for so long, to make known in such a way the peculiar
doctrines which characterized these productions.
' Pastor Russell ' was unknown in our midst ;
nor was it easy to find out much about him and
his work in America. Soon after, however, further
information was forthcoming, in the shape of gra-
tuitous lectures given in the largest halls in all the
best known cities and towns, under the title of the
' Photo-Drama of Creation/ illustrated with lantern
slides and some moving pictures, and accompanied
by gramophone descriptions. These latter, however,
amounted to little more than an ordinary Sunday-
school lesson programme, except for the introduction,
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '? 169
wherever feasible, of the peculiar tenets of Russell-
ism. Large audiences naturally gathered to see
pictures on religious themes without entrance fee
or collection. What impression was made, it is
difficult to estimate.
But the chief agent in the propagandism of
' Millennial Dawnism ' has been, as one might
expect, the press ' The Watch Tower Bible and
Tract Society/ of Brooklyn, New York, and Ever-
sholt Street, London, has issued numberless periodi-
cals and booklets, including, it is said, five millions
of tracts each month more especially The Watch
Tower and, Herald of Christ's Presence, a semi-
monthly, and The People's Pulpit, published both
in Brooklyn and London. These are issued, for
the most part, without any date attached, as is also
The Bible Student's Monthly. They represent what
is called ' The International Bible Students' Asso-
ciation,' which is connected with ' The People's
Pulpit Association ' and ' The Watch Tower Bible
and Tract Society.' The following note is
appended :
Brother Charles Taze Russell is President of all three of
these organizations. Newspapers and the public often
refer to him by the title Rev., Mr., and Dr., but he prefers
to be known as ' Brother ' or ' Pastor,' because these are
Bible terms.
To him personally we will presently turn. Here
it is most to the point that we should make special
reference to the standard work of Russellism, from
which all the references in the present scrutiny
are taken. It consists of six good-sized volumes,
comprising altogether more than three thousand
pages, of well-printed matter, neatly bound in
170 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
brown cloth, and entitled variously: (i) The
Divine Plan of the Ages', (2) The Time is at Hand;
(3) Thy Kingdom Come ; (4) The Day of Vengeance ;
(5) The At-one-ment between God and Man ; (6)
The New Creation. They are all said to be ' Studies
in the Scriptures a helping hand for Bible students.'
The circulation of these volumes, whether by sale
or gratuitously, has been very large, if the appended
figures may be trusted. On the opening page,
indeed, of the first volume appears the statement
' 3,920,000 Edition.' What is meant is not clear.
One can but suppose it to be that this edition
completes the issue of that number of copies.
All these volumes are translated into some other
languages ; of the first it is said translations are made
into six other tongues.
Along with these are published also many volumes
of sermons preached either by Pastor Russell him-
self at Brooklyn, or by some of his associates in
the London Tabernacle. The notice accompanying
the latter is as here given.
PEOPLE'S PULPIT
International Bible Students' Association.
LONDON TABERNACLE,
CRAVEN TERRACE, LANCASTER GATE, W.
Monthly is. per year. Sample Free.
Divine Worship every Sunday.
London Tabernacle.
ii a.m., 3 p.m., and 6.30 p.m.
Seats Free. No Collection. You are invited.
and the following invitation accompanies the printed
issue :
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 171
In the midst of all the confusing voices of this evil day,
the Lord's sheep will hear the voice of the Good Shepherd,
and, following him, will not be left in the outer darkness of
doubt and unbelief, but will be guided into all the truth
now due to the household of faith. . . . Write to us at once
if you feel a hunger and thirst for the bread of life and the
living water ; for Luke xii. 37 is now being fulfilled. We
send sample tracts and papers free to applicants.
In all the six volumes referred to more than
three thousand pages for js. 6d. the same Preface
occurs. It is to the effect that ' a great tidal wave
of unbelief is sweeping over Christendom ' through
modern views of the Bible. In one issue the Higher
Criticism is represented as the devil sitting on a
chair, with a long tail, instructing a student from
one of the colleges. Whence ' Our society, real-
izing the need, is seeking to do all in its power to
stem the tide and lift up the Lord's standard for
the people.' Like Mormonism and Eddyism, there-
fore, Russellism declares itself to be not an enemy
to Christianity, but a friend. It is, as usual, the
discovery of the only real and final Christianity.
It would be strange if this latest religious pro-
paganda had not met with some effective opposition
in the land of its birth. It has, indeed, been there
vigorously dealt with. But, unfortunately, average
American theology, with some few worthy excep-
tions, is definitely behind what the most careful and
reverent modern thought accepts as true. So
that the booklets which have been issued, like those
of Messrs. Cook, Haldeman, Ross, Stephen, and
others, though forceful and in some respects impres-
sive, do not meet the situation. In fact, for the
most part, they leave wholly untouched the main
172 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
fallacy of Russellism which lies at at the root of all
else.
The greatest question of all for modern Chris-
tianity is the treatment of the Bible. It is here that
the noxious growth of Millennial Dawnism makes
its maybe well-meant but deadly blunder. From
'this all else flows, and the chief difficulty in dealing
with its mischievous doctrines and misleading
attitude is that vast numbers of those who, both
in this country and across the Atlantic, are asso-
ciated with Evangelical Churches, are more or less
disposed to make the same mistake, and to anathe-
matize rather than thank any man who endeavours
to show them the truth. That difficulty, however,
must not deter us from our task, but must be met as
frankly as sympathetically.
173
III
AS TO THE FOUNDER
The question ' Who is this Pastor Russell ? '
cannot but arise, and must be answered with equal
truth and charity. The American replies to his pub-
lications, above mentioned, certainly do not lack
force. Dr. Haldeman declares that this new doctrine
from beginning to end is one of the most terrific religious
perils that ever came forth in the name of Christ, or sought
to authorize itself with a ' Thus saith the Lord.' It is the
peril of an audacious counterfeit and a concealed poison.
It is the counterfeit of perverted truth and downright
falsehood. It is poison of a subtilly distilled blasphemy.
But in these days strong invectives do not count
for much. Something very definite must be known,
both about the man who founded this vast movement
and about what he actually teaches, to warrant such
a philippic as the above.
First of all, then, about ' Pastor Russell ' himself.
The Rev. J. J. Ross, of Hamilton, Ontario, was
so moved with indignation at the spread of Russell-
ism that he published in 1912 a leaflet against the
whole procedure. For this, Pastor Russell brought
an action against him in the Canadian Court of
Law, 1 but the case was thrown out of court on the
1 Full details of this action, together with the leaflet in question,
in a small booklet entitled Some Facts and More Facts about the Self-
styled Pastor Charles T. Russell, may be obtained from C. C. Cook,
150 Nassau Street, New York ; also all the other booklets here mentioned
and other publications bearing on this subject.
174 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
evidence furnished by Russell himself. In his
published statement Mr. Ross has set forth the
whole case, and completely justified his action.
From him, therefore, we may safely take the
following :
Though the name of Russell is quite familiar, very little
is known about the man himself. Nothing is known of his
parentage, nor of his early boyhood. We first hear of him
selling shirts in Alleghany, Pa., having inherited this business
from his father. He lectured on religious subjects from
time to time, in various halls and churches, becoming
known as ' the crank preacher.' He got a considerable
following of the common people, and sold out the five
men's furnishing stores which he owned, thenceforth
devoting all his time to teaching and preaching his peculiar
religious doctrines, and giving out that he himself was
some great one.
We learn, further, that he received no college
training, has no acquaintance with the original
languages of Scripture, l and has no special know-
ledge of history or philosophy. He was never
ordained to any church, in any way beyond his own
adoption of the title ' Pastor/
In regard to his domestic life, seeing that we
have here no desire to dwell upon that, and yet are
bound to tell the truth, it shall suffice to quote again
from the pamphlet by Mr. Ross, seeing that it has
been legally endorsed.
Russell's domestic life was such as to make life intolerable
to his wife, and to justify her in leaving him, and afterwards
suing for a limited divorce, which one Court granted and a
1 In the examination, before the Court in March, 1913, he showed
badly, inasmuch as he first affirmed that he knew Greek, but when a
Greek New Testament was handed to him had to confess that he did not
even know the alphabet. After which he owned that he knew nothing
of Latin or philosophy
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 175
higher one on appeal confirmed, at the same time most
severely censuring Pastor Russell for his conduct, which the
Court described as insulting, domineering, and overbearing
to a sensitive Christian woman.
The divorce was given, and the alimony granted to Mrs.
Russell. Russell had considerable property in his own
name. He tried to practise fraud upon his wife by trans-
ferring his property to corporations and societies over
which he himself had absolute control.
This attempt at evasion was frustrated ; also another
such. In all the evidence it came out that
First, his conceit, egotism, and domination were such as
co make life intolerable for his wife. Second, that his
conduct in relation to other women, if not immoral, was
definitely improper. Third, that on one occasion he was
silent to his wife for four weeks. Fourth, that he sought
by most despicable means to isolate his wife from society,
and designed to get her pronounced insane in order to put
her away.
Into his business relations we need not here
penetrate far. Mr. W. T. Ellis, editor of The
Continent, who investigated Pastor Russell's in-
dictment of Foreign Missionary work, says :
I sought a prophet, and I found a business man. In-
stead of a humble seeker after truth, I found the cleverest
propagandist of the age a man before whom John Alex-
ander Dowie, Mary Baker Eddy, Madame Blavatsky, Abbas
Eifendi, Elijah Sanford, and Joseph Smith, pale into puerile
ineffectiveness.
That there must be some truth in this estimate,
is manifest from the growth of Russellism, and from
the way in which throughout the country it is
able to provide gratuitous lectures and literature.
As regards the proceeds from ' The Watch Tower
RUSSl LLISM a
176 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
Bible and Tract Society ' ' of which Pastor Russell
is the head, and which society is the mother of all
his other business corporations/ representing between
four and five million dollars they were in 1912
no less than 202,000 dollars.
When the Brooklyn Eagle made known the
facts, as to his connexion with certain business
companies, he brought an action against that
journal. But under examination
he was asked, ' Are any of these charges true ? ' ' They
are not true,' was his most emphatic answer. ' Not true.'
But when he was forced into the witness-box by the defence,
and learned that we had the facts about these companies
on hand, and the charters of them in our possession, he made
a clean breast of the whole thing.
Then, in the face of such direct lying, what can be
said against the final summary of Mr. Ross in this
regard ?
This is the way it works. The international Bible stu-
dents all over the world, and others who are foolish enough
to do so, send their money into the Watch Tower Bible
and Tract Society, which is Russell. A part of that money
is used to pay the expense of circulating Russell's literature,
paying his advance agents and ' Pilgrims,' which always
means the glorifying of Russell, and the rest goes through
to U.S. Investment Co., Ltd., which is also Russell, and is
invested in lands, lots, timber, limits, houses, &c. You
can see it is all Russell. It is claimed that he is many times
a millionaire, and yet he has not one cent that we could
find in his own name. If Mrs. Russell were not living, or
if the divorce were not a limited one, permitting alimony,
would such be the case ? To ask the question is sufficient.
In the little booklet mentioned above, from
which this indictment is taken, will be found other
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 177
details of reasons for a sombre estimate of the
moral character of this man who professes to know
and interpret the Bible better than all other Christian
teachers, and does not hesitate to denounce all
the churches as leading the people astray by false
doctrine, the truth being that which only he and
his associates, as ' the elect ' of God, possess and
dispense. Without pronouncing here any wholesale
condemnation, one cannot but affirm that, despite
the venerable appearance in leaflets and on posters,
the personal character of this man does not bear
out his assumption of superior sanctity, as one of
God's ' elect,' specially chosen to judge the world
during the Millennium. Nor does it predispose any
careful thinker to believe that his peculiar teachings
are as he claims so divinely inspired as to mean
condemnation for all who reject them.
IV
GOOD POINTS IN 'RUSSELLISM'
It is difficult indeed to believe that in these days
of ever-growing intelligence, millions of men and
women could be so hoodwinked by plausible error
as to become followers of a man, and devotees of
a system, wholly and only bad. In all the known
heresies of the past there has ever been some germ
of truth, some elements of good, some sound wheat
amongst the chaff. The Millennial delusion is no
exception to the rule. However much we may
deprecate the behaviour of the founder of this
vast movement, as noted in the previous section,
there are no sufficient reasons for bringing a sweep-
ing charge of insincerity or hypocrisy against him
and his associates. Sincere fanaticism has ever
done more harm to truth than downright fraud or
falsity. So here we will avoid imputing motives,
and content ourselves with facts. Certainly there
are practical reasons for asking, with Mr. Cook :
How does Pastor Russell win the crowd and get the
money ? He is literally drawing the crowd and getting
the money in vast sums, for his advertising schemes are
world-wide, and entail expenditures that stagger the minds
of those who know the cost of such efforts.
But it is not sulficient simply to avow that ' Mil-
lennial Dawnism is about the flimsiest religion that
has ever been unloaded on a gullible humanity.'
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 179
Nor does it by any means explain all the success
of Russellism to say that
Give the average man a guarantee that there is no hell,
and you will tickle him in the right place. Tell him that
the heathen are not lost, and it meets his heartiest approval.
He will wax eloquent in expatiating upon and defending
such an easy-going, common-sense, satisfying religion, and
will subscribe handsomely and voluntarily for its promul-
gation.
That may be American, in estimate as in style, but
it does not meet the case, nor does it do justice to
the accused. If what is known as ' orthodoxy '
is true, it can afford to be both fair and charitable.
There are quite sufficient reasons for dismissing
Russellism, without either vituperation or in-
justice. It is impossible to study carefully these
three thousand odd pages without., noting some
features which must provoke respect, if not admira-
tion. It is only right to mention these before
making plain the other side.
These six volumes undoubtedly represent a vast
amount of labour on some one's part. Whether
it be true or not that Pastor Russell's divorced wife
wrote as she claims a large portion of it, it is
simply impossible to question the great expenditure
of time, and pains, and patience, which these closely
printed thousands of pages represent. The style,
moreover, throughout, is lucidity itself. If certain
well-known Doctors of Divinity in British churches
could be induced to take lessons herefrom, it would
be greatly to the advantage of their readers and
hearers. It might seem unkind to say besides, that
these chapters are plausibility incarnate. But it
i8o WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
would be true ; for so smoothly, easily, unhesitat-
ingly, does the stream of exposition run on, that one
cannot wonder at its making real impression on
uneducated but sincere readers, wearied as they
too often are with ordinary religious platitudes and
obscurities. What, for instance, could be fairer
than this ?
As seekers after truth it will not do for us to say, in
view of these passages, that the majority of them seem to
favour whatever view we incline to prefer, and then
to ignore the others. Until we have a view of the
matter in which every Bible statement finds a reason-
able representation, we should not feel sure that we
have the truth on the subject. One statement of God is as
true and as firm a foundation for faith as a hundred. And
it would be wiser to seek for a harmonious understanding,
than to arrive at a conclusion or adopt a theory based on a
one-sided interpretation, and thus to deceive ourselves
and others.
The pity is that the method which here is so wisely
condemned is that by which the whole structure of
Millennial Dawnism is reared. Even in this appar-
ently rational protest it makes itself manifest.
' One statement of God ' is really a quiet begging
of the whole question as to the true interpretation
of the Bible.
But it must be owned that the writer or writers
undoubtedly the latter of these volumes, have
achieved a wonderful intimacy with the ' Author-
ized Version ' of the English Bible, and in their
more than five thousand quotations from it they
display a marvellous ingenuity of application to
their peculiar cause. Their whole method is,
however, vitiated by one or two fundamental but
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 181
false assumptions, and it soon becomes plain that,
starting from these assumptions, they have come
to the Bible to find in it what they desired, not to
accept what it actually conveys to an unbiased
reader. The dexterity with which isolated passages
are made to buttress their main scheme is, indeed,
noteworthy. One cannot wonder that great num-
bers of well-meaning but uninstructed readers have
been deeply impressed, or even carried away.
The most attractive note, probably, in the first
appeal of this new Gospel to the world of half a
century ago, was the strong denunciation of the
' orthodox ' eschatology which then obtained amongst
Evangelical Churches. Most of the stress of their
preaching was then laid upon the doctrines of
' everlasting punishment ' and ' eternal torment '
in some cases enforced and embittered by gruesome
and repulsive details of physical sufferings, with
added emphasis upon Calvinistic notions of election
and predestination. The unsparing denial and de-
nunciation of these doctrines undoubtedly procured
Russellism an early hearing and brought him many
lonverts. Then, on the positive side, the confident
ease with which he marshalled his passages from
Daniel and the Pentateuch, as well as from ' Revela-
tion,' on behalf of his theories, could not but win
the confidence of very many.
In some respects, it may be acknowledged, he
did service to Christian truth and influence. His
protest, occasionally, against the crass and childish
literalness with which the figurative language of so
much of the Bible was interpreted, was truly needed
and timely. We have here no space to give instances,
but the pity is again that in regard to some of the
182 WHY NOT 'RUSSELLISM'?
most important and emphatic statements of Scrip-
ture, just where he should have been most of all
true to his own protest, he utterly forsook it.
In regard to the much-disputed matter of Christ's
' Second Coming,' one paragraph at least demands
quotation here, because it deals as plainly as gently
with the lamentable fallacy which still obsesses
the minds of myriads of good Christian folk. The
notion that there must be in the future and some
insist in the immediate future some overwhelming
celestial cataclysm, some staggering spectacular
physical catastrophe, in which the concluding words
of the second letter attributed to Peter will find
absolutely literal fulfilment, yet weighs upon the
minds of vast numbers of modern believers, quite
as influentially as did the corresponding delusion
on the minds of the earliest Christian converts
including even the Apostles. Paul's first letters
to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians bear
indubitable witness to that fact.
Some take Peter's statement literally, that ' the heavens
being on fire shall be dissolved and pass away with a great
noise ' ; also the Revela tor's description of the same events by
a very similar symbol, ' The heaven departed as a scroll when
it is rolled together.' It would seem, however, that one
glance upward, at the myriad gems of night shining through
millions of miles of space, with nothing between to roll away
or to take fire, should be argument enough in one moment
to convince such that they had erred in supposing these
statements to be literal should convince them that their
expectation of a literal fulfilment is absurd in the extreme.
If we consider the wisdom and prudence of our Lord's
methods of manifesting His presence to His disciples after
His resurrection, as well as previously, it may help us to
remember that the same wisdom will be displayed in His
methods of revealing Himself at His second advent, both to
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 183
the Church and to the world methods not necessarily
similar, but in each case well suited to His object, which
never is to alarm or excite men, but to convince their cool,
calm judgements of the great truths to be impressed on
them. Our Lord's first advent was not a startling, excit-
ing, or alarming event. How quietly and unobtrusively
He came ! So much so that only those who had faith
and humility were enabled to recognize in the infant of
humble birth, in the man of sorrows, in the friend of the
humble and poor, and finally in the crucified one, the long-
looked-for Messiah.
This conception is well applied to the last scene
as recorded in Acts i. n ' Shall so come in like
manner as ye have seen Him go ' :
What, then, was the manner of His going ? Was it with
great splendour and with great demonstration ? Was it not
as quietly and secretly as was possible consistent with His
purpose of having thoroughly convinced witnesses of the
fact ? None saw Him or knew the fact, except His faithful
followers.
This is much sounder exegesis whatever becomes
of Millennial dates than that which obtains at not
a few Evangelical ' conventions.' And the sober
support which Dr. W. N. Clarke gives to it in his
invaluable volume on Christian theology, merits
both much more notice and more acceptance than
it generally receives.
No visible return of Christ to the earth is to be expected,
but rather the long and steady advance of His spiritual
kingdom. The expectation of a single dramatic event corre-
sponds to the Jewish doctrine of the nature of the Kingdom,
but not to the Christian. '
1 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 444.
1 84 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
Another strong point in the protest of Russellism
which very many of us cannot but deem as alike
good and timely, is its unflinching denunciation of
priesthood or sacerdotalism, in all its forms, as
foreign to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. That
there are many sincere Christian believers who will
not endorse this, we are quite aware. But the
utmost exercise of Christian liberty and charity
must not prevent our expression of conviction that
in this respect Russellism is right, and the Romanism
which herein virtually includes High Anglicanism
is wrong, so long as we have any regard for the
New Testament. Assuredly no one will call in
question the assertion of these volumes that ' the
responsibility of those who have undertaken the
Gospel ministry in the name of Christ is very
great.'
In many other matters these writings are undoubt-
edly on the right side. The vigorous and unsparing
protests against the evils of drink, selfish extra-
vagance and wasteful luxury, the miseries and
devilries of war, the crying wrongs of our present
social system, are all set forth in their true light
as contrary to the Gospel of Christ no less than to
the wellbeing of men. Even in regard to Socialism,
the brief reference is much more sensible and
true than one often finds in orthodox religious
circles.
Socialism differs from Nationalism in that it does not
propose to reward all individuals alike. It differs from
Communism in that it does not advocate a community of
goods or property. It thus avoids the errors of both, and
is a very practical theory, if it could be introduced gradu-
ally and by wise, moderate, unselfish men.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 185
On some such lines most surely, in coming days,
Evangelical individualism will have to express
itself, if Christianity is to count for anything
nationally or internationally.
These few hints must here suffice to show that
the rapid spread of Russellism, on both sides of the
Atlantic, is not merely due to clever propagandism
beguiling the unwary, but also in some real measure
to attractions other than those suggested by its
American critics. In spite of the unattractive
personality of its founder and the demonstrably
wrong principles upon which it is based, there is
gold mixed with the dross. Even as we proceed to
show its mistakes, we cannot but acknowledge the
apparent sincerity as well as intensity of conviction
which permeates the whole, and may well serve to
attract anxious inquirers who are dissatisfied with
ordinary churches and their methods. The utmost
anathema which would seem to be justified is that
expressed by the Apostle Paul in his dealing with
certain opponents of the true Gospel in his day ' I
bear them witness that they have a zeal for God,
but not according to knowledge.' The reasons for
so dismissing ' Millennial Dawnism ' we now proceed
to consider.
i86
THE CLAIMS OF RUSSELLISM AND ITS
REFLECTIONS ON CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
Like all other abnormal religious developments,
Millennial Dawnism is due to the influence of one
strong human personality, and seeks to justify its
existence by strictures on the forms of Christianity
already in existence. It is scarcely necessary to
point out how these two features have characterized
all the most noticeable modern religious cults,
as in Shakerism, Mormonism, Eddyism, Theosophy.
So far, indeed, as personal influence goes, all branches
of the Christian Church, and Christianity itself
as a whole, are results of its effectiveness. In the
present case Millennial Dawnism is Russellism.
It has been growing under Pastor Russell's guidance
for some fifty years, and has all the tune been
protesting vigorously against current forms of
Christian belief. These protests have taken final
shape in the volumes we are considering. The general
mildness of the language and suavity of the style
do not lessen the severity and comprehensiveness
of the reflections sometimes even sneers at the
ordinary churches of to-day and their work.
The nominal Church of to-day, because of her mixed
condition, the Lord calls Babylon confusion. The nominal
" Church contains many hypocrites who have associated them-
selves with her because of her honourable standing in the
eyes of the world, and who, by their conduct, are making
Babylon a stench in the nostrils of the world. . . i Babylon
holds so many doctrines contrary to God's Word.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 187
The great human systems called churches have never
been more than nominally the Church. They all belong to
a false system which counterfeits, misrepresents, and hides
from the world the true Church, which is composed only
of fully consecrated and faithful believers who trust in the
merit of the one great sacrifice for sins.
The ' fully consecrated and faithful believers '
are, of course, only those who have accepted the
interpretations of Pastor Russell. In the constant
and severe indictment of Romanism, Protestants
also are largely included.
While many faithful souls, igro'ant of the real state of
the case, have reverently worshipped God within these
Babylon systems, nevertheless this does not alter the fact
that they are one and all ' harlot ' systems. Confusion
reigns in them all, and the name ' Babylon ' aptly fits the
entire family mother Rome, daughters, and accomplices,
the nations styled Christendom.
The most learned and prominent among them have written
massive volumes of what they term Systematic Theology,
all of which, like the Talmud of the Jews, is calculated to a
large extent to make void the Word of God to fetter free
thought and honest reverent investigation of the sacred
Scriptures, with a view to simple faith in their teachings
regardless of human traditions. The masses drift off in
the popular current towards infidelity in its various forms
Evolution, Higher Criticism, Theosophy , Christian Science ,
Spiritism, or other theories, denying the necessity and merit
of the great Calvary sacrifice.
Sincere truth-seekers will most quickly convince them-
selves that Christian people in general have for centuries,
in thought at least, been adding to the Word of God, much
to their own confusion.
A mill is a place where food is prepared ; the ministers
and theological schools do the grinding of the spiritual
food for Babylon, and turn out very poor grist not clean
provender. The food supplied is largely husks and chaff,
which will not sustain spiritual life and strength, and each
i88 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
grinder is obliged to prepare what is given him by his own
denomination. He cannot hold his position and yet
provide clean provender for the household of faith.
In reply to his own question ' What shall we
say of those who blaspheme God's holy name by
teaching doctrines of devils ? ' ' the hollow mockery
of Christendom's false pretensions ' the writer
of vol. iv kindly predicts, on the authority of
Rev. xviii. 21, and Jer. li. 61, 64, that Christendom,
with all her boasted civil and ecclesiastical power, with all
her assumed dignity, wealth, titles, influence, will be cast
into the sea (the restless sea of ungovernable peoples), to
rise no more. Her destruction will be fully accomplished
by the end of the appointed Times of the Gentiles, i.e.
by 1915.
There is no need of words to refute these wholesale
slanders. But they do not dispose one to welcome
the claims of superiority which follow naturally
in their wake. In brief, they are as follows, and
will be best considered under two heads (i) The
estimate and treatment of the Bible, and (2) The
doctrines resulting therefrom.
As to the Bible, the main claim which we
will estimate presently is that only Pastor Russell
and his disciples either appreciate or understand
the Bible. Consequently they alone are qualified
to teach its meaning and lessons. In the Preface
which is found in each of the six volumes this is
quietly assumed, and these ' Studies in the Scrip-
tures ' are said to be so complete and satisfactory
that in regard to any modern difficulty all that is
necessary is
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 189
sit down and read the short study on that subject, and the
whole matter of your question will be fully and satisfactorily
settled ; and if your doubt ^ever again arise, come over
and read the same afresh.
The whole attitude cannot be more fairly and truly
expressed than in Pastor Russell's own words from
The Watch Tower of September 15, 1910 :
If the six volumes of the Scripture studies are practically
the Bible topically arranged, we might not improperly name
them ' The Bible in an arranged form ' ; that is to say, they
are not merely comments on the Bible, but they are practi-
cally the Bible itself, since there is no desire to build any
doctrine or thought on any individual preference, or any
individual wisdom, but to present the entire matter on the
lines of the Word of God.
Furthermore, not only do we find that people cannot see
the divine plan in studying the Bible by itself, but we see also
that if any one lays these Scripture studies aside, even after
he has used them, after he has become familiar with them,
if he has read them for ten years if he then lays them aside
and ignores them, and goes to the Bible alone, though he
has understood the Bible for ten years, our experience shows
that within two years he goes into darkness. On the other
hand, if he has merely read these Scripture studies with
their references, and had not read a page of the Bible, as
such, he would be in the light at the end of two years, because
he would have the light of the Scriptures.
Upon this deliverance Dr. R. A. Torrey who will
not be accused of pandering to modern views or
new theology says :
When any man makes such claim as this, it is unnecessary
to read or listen to anything more that he has to say. By
such a statement he proves himself to be beyond question
a charlatan and religious impostor. This is simply th
old Papal error in a new form.
190 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
But the completeness of his claim to a monopoly
of truth in regard to understanding the Bible, is
yet more manifest from his own explanation :
Though the Bible contains no direct statement that the
seventh thousand year will be the epoch of Christ's reign,
the great Sabbath Day of restitution to the world, yet the
venerable tradition is notwithoutareasonablefoundation. . . .
The reader must not expect to have passages of Scripture
pointed out in which these matters and dates are plainly
written. On the contrary, he must bear in mind that all
these things have been hidden by the Lord in such a manner
that they could not be understood or appreciated until the
due time had come, and then only by His faithful children
who esteem truth as more precious than rubies.
The faithful children, of course, are those who,
as above intimated, let the Bible go unread in order
to follow the leading of Pastor Russell's ' Studies.'
This is a large claim, and we will consider it fairly
and fully.
For the moment, however, it is necessary to have
before us the other claims which naturally arise out
of the foregoing. If he alone possesses the true
clue to the interpretation of the Old and New
Testament Scriptures, it stands to reason that only
he can teach the truth concerning all those matters
which rest ultimately upon the Bible for their
foundation. For awhile we will postpone the actual
detailed statement of his distinctive tenets, and
note only his general claim. It may, indeed, be
expressed in a sentence. All other Christian teach-
ings are wrong, and only those doctrines are right
which are enunciated by the true Church the
' little flock/ as they are often called i.e. those who
follow Pastor Russell and his ' Scripture Studies.'
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 191
One statement, which is typical, in his own words,
will suffice.
The Church of the Gospel age is frequently spoken of in
the Scriptures as a New Creation its ultimate members,
the overcomers, being specifically mentioned as ' New
Creatures ' in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. v. 17). Unfortunately,
however, it has become customary with fully consecrated
Christians, as well as with others, to read the words of divine
inspiration in a mazy-hazy manner which fails to give to its
utterance their real import, and deprives the reader of much
of the blessing and comfort and instruction which might
be his if he but pursued a more reasonable course, and were
more thoroughly filled with the spirit of discipleship with a
desire to comprehend the divine revelation.
When it is borne in mind that ' the Church of
the Gospel age ' consists only of Russellites, the
enormity of the claim which is thus as throughout
all these volumes so plausibly stated, becomes too
manifest to need comment. It can be very briefly
expressed
The temple of the Lord are we,
And heathen all beside.
Whether such a claim is justifiable remains to be seen.
There is, however, another claim which cannot
be overlooked, to which a large portion of vol. iii.
is devoted. The last seventy pages of that section
are occupied with an elaborate attempt to justify
the assertion that the Great Pyramid of ' Gizeh,'
in Egypt, near Cairo as already hinted constitutes
' a Bible in stone,' to such an extent and in such a
manner that every detail of Russellism's exposition
of Scripture is there anticipated and expounded.
God showed signs and wonders in Egypt when He brought
out Israel in triumph ; but He also set signs and wonders
there which remain ' even unto this (our) day.' The Great
Pyramid, we believe, is the principle (sic) one of these
RUSSB1XISM 3
192 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
very signs and wonders ; and it now begins to speak to
scientists in their own language, and, through them, to all
men.
Much reference is made to the labours of Professor
Piazzi Smyth and Robert Menzies, whence this
claim is said to be derived.
Soon it became apparent that the object of its construc-
tion was to provide in it a record of the divine plan of salva-
tion, no less than the record of divine wisdom relating to
astronomical, chronological, geometrical, and other import-
ant truths. However, not having discerned the scope and
completeness of the plan of salvation revealed in the Scrip-
tures, these gentlemen have thus far failed to note the most
wonderful and beautiful features of the Great Pyramid's
testimony in this direction, which we now find to be a most
full and complete corroboration of the ' plan of the ages,'
and the times and seasons therewith associated, as taught
in the Scriptures and presented in this and the preceding
volumes of the Millennial Dawn Series. And further, we
see that this storehouse of knowledge, like the major part
of the Bible store, was kept purposely sealed until its
testimony should be needed and appreciated.
It is ' conjectured ' that Melchizedek built this
Pyramid by means of Egyptian labour in the
year 2170 B.C. And the Scripture description of
it is said to be found in Isa. xix. 19, 20. From
this it is but a short step to say that
This ancient structure being thus repeatedly referred to
in the Scripture, we cannot doubt that, if questioned, this
witness of the Lord in the land of Egypt will bear such
testimony as will fully correspond with His written word.
That is, with Pastor Russell's interpretation of it.
For
it is remarkable that, like the plan of the ages in the written
word, this stone witness kept silence until now, when its
testimony shall shortly be delivered to Egypt the world.
But the saints, the friends of God from whom He will hide
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 193
nothing, are privileged to hear the testimony of this witness
now, before the worldly mind is ready to appreciate its
testimonies. Only when ready to obey the Lord can any
appreciate His witnesses.
Here, again, it must not be forgotten the few
specimens given above are only typical of a host
of utterances to this effect that only those who
follow Pastor Russell's ' Studies ' are the ' saints
and friends of God who obey the Lord.'
So that there is really neither room nor need to
quote more concerning the scope and significance
of the claims made by this latest candidate for the
religious devotion of modern humanity. It is not
necessary for us to enter into the elaborate series
of quotations which are adduced as corresponding
so exactly with measurements in the Great Pyramid.
The same plain principles which exhibit the falsity
of the ingenious attempts to get Millennial Dawnism
out of the Bible, will suffice no less to explode the
plausible but misleading delusions connected with
the ' miracle in stone.' Both schemes alike are well
calculated to impress a certain type of religiously
disposed minds ; but under calm and rational
scrutiny in the light of modern knowledge which
cannot be gainsaid, they are seen to be such ' cun-
ningly devised fables ' that Dr. Torrey's summary
can hardly be pronounced too severe :
Doubtless there will yet be some blinded dupes who will
still hold to him, just as has been the case with every other
religious impostor and false prophet and fraud throughout
the centuries, even when they were totally discredited by
the failure of their predictions. But all real lovers of the
truth and all well-balanced men and women will wash their
hands of Russell and his predictions arid his societies foj
ever,
VI
THE DISTINCTIVE DOCTRINES OF
' RUSSELLISM '
In the remarkable propagandism which has sent
forth millions of publications from the Brooklyn
centre of ' The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society,'
throughout this country as well as America, there
is not a little to be admired in the way of devotion
and system. Seeing, moreover, that it is all done in
the name of Christ and Christianity, it becomes the
more necessary that a definite idea should be
obtained as to what those specific doctrines are, upon
which Millennial Dawnism bases its claim to be the
only true church and its right to denounce all
others. It is not easy to state in succinct form
notions which are elaborately diffused throughout
three thousand pages, but under seven heads we will
here state, with brief and dispassionate carefulness,
the substance of this new Gospel which aims at
superseding all other Christian faith. When this
is clearly before us, we will in the next section
estimate it.
(i) The one great main claim of Russellism, from
which all else flows, is that it alone understands and
truly interprets the Bible. To it the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments constitute ' God's Word '
in the most absolute and comprehensive sense.
With the exception of a few references to a ' Diaglott '
translation, which is itself the property of Pastor
Russell, and is of no critical value whatever,
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 195
all the quotations are taken from the version of
1611 though in some cases, by no means in all,
its mistakes are corrected, i.e. whenever it will help
the theories of Millennial Dawnism. These ' Bible
Studies ' embody the ' wonderful way ' in which,
through Russellism,
God by His Spirit has been bringing numbers of His
people into a clearer understanding of Bible truths, cleansing
the Word from the dust of centuries, bringing out things
new as well as old for examination, clinching and dovetailing
its various books so that it can be seen that not a single
one can in anywise be done without, and causing the whole
Scripture to shine forth in all its undimmed glory as the
one great, glorious, all-sufficient, perfect Word of God to our
fallen but Christ-redeemed world.
Thus the whole Bible is, to use the old term, so
' verbally inspired ' that any portion may be taken
to apply anywhere, for any purpose, with equal
authority. No critical notice whatever is taken
of the Revised Version it is, indeed, scarcely
ever mentioned but on every possible occasion
criticism is denounced, and the ' Higher Criticism '
especially is said to be the work of the devil. The
opening chapters of Genesis are so literally true,
historically and scientifically, that any thought of
the modern suggestion of evolution is to be utterly
scorned.
We find that the Word of God most absolutely contradicts
this entire theory, so that no harmony is possible between the
Scripture teaching and the teaching of evolution science
falsely so-called. Whoever believes in the evolution theory,
to that extent disbelieves the Scripture theory. To whatever
extent people hold the theory of evolution, to that extent
they are off the only foundation for faith which God has
196 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM'?
provided ; to that extent they are prepared for further errors
which the Adversary will be sure to bring forward, presented
so forcibly that they would, if it were possible, deceive the
very elect.
When the whole Bible is thus taken, without
any qualification, as the ' Word of God,' its teaching
must reveal a ' plan of the ages,' and this plan it is
the purpose of these ' Studies ' to make clear. It
does so ' from an altogether different standpoint from
that of any other work ' the special subjects being
' the coming of our Lord and the prophecies and
symbolism of the Old and New Testaments.' The
Book of Daniel is to be taken as unrolling the future
as surely and clearly as Genesis reveals the past.
The voice from The Watch Tower is :
Do you know that the Lord more than two thousand
years ago gave, through the Prophet Daniel, a dear descrip-
tion of the times in which we are now living ?
Do you know that the Bible, in referring to this present
time as ' the time of the end,' does not signify the destruction
of the earth, but the end of the present dispensation, after
which a new age will be introduced the Millennium ?
' The earth abideth for ever.'
Do you know that, according to the Scriptures, ' the time
of the end ' above mentioned began in A.D. 1799, and will
continue until A.D. 1915 ?
Do you know that God promised that in this ' time of
the end ' in which we are living, the wise (toward God, not
the worldly wise) should understand the hitherto secret
things of His plan and Word ? And do you wish to be one
<jf God's humble ' wise virgins ' ? (i Cor. iii. 18-20).
Do you know that Millennial Dawn, vol. i., is reclaiming
more infidels, helping more sceptics, and establishing more
Christians, than any other book in the world ? It is indeed
a ' Bible key ' and a ' helping hand for Bible students.'
Do you know that the Lord is raising up many who are
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 197
voluntarily giving their time and going from house to house
to call attention to these matters, and that if ' one of the
least of these ' the Lord's ' little ones ' an angel or messenger
of the truth should at any time call upon you and be re-
ceived in a spirit of meekness and love, he will show you
free of charge the ' Chart of the Ages,' the examination of
which w:ll help you rightly to divide the word of truth
and to apply and understand all Scriptures, and thus
prove a lasting blessing to you ?
Fifty-five of these ' Do you know ? ' inquiries
have been sent forth in millions of copies ; the
above are fair specimens. All these avowals con-
cerning the Bible, with all that flows from them,
are said to be repeated, as we have already noted,
in the ' Great Stone Bible ' of the Pyramid.
(2) The doctrine of God deduced from the Bible
thus considered is simply Unitarian, as will be
manifest when we notice what is said concerning
Christ. Here the following statement will suffice :
The Scripture teaching concerning the Holy Spirit is that
it is not another God, but the spirit influence or power
exercised by the one God, our Father, and by His only
begotten Son.
Does not every intelligent person know that if God is
one in person, He cannot be three ? and that if three in
person, there can be only one sense in which the three could
be one, and that not in person but in purpose, in mind, in
will ? Verily, if it were not for the fact that this trinitarian
nonsense was drilled into us from earliest infancy, and the
fact that it is soberly taught in theological seminaries by
grey-haired professors, nobody would give it a moment's
consideration. How the great Adversary ever succeeded
in foisting it upon the Lord's people is the real mystery.
(3) Unitarianism always seems to help for the
moment by clearing the thought of God, but inevit-
ably leaves upon our hands an inscrutable problem
tgS WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
as to Jesus Christ. In this respect Russellism,
however, outrages Unitarianism quite as flagrantly
as Trinitarianism. According to it, the real origin
of the Jesus of the Gospels was the Archangel
Michael. He was the beginning of the creation of
God, and was created a spirit being by the divine
fiat In obedience to the will of God he gave up his
pirit being and was born of the Virgin Mary as
an ordinary human being. Thus he became a
perfect man, as perfect as Adam was before he fell,
and had only one nature, the same as Adam's,
during all his earthly life.
Our Lord Jesus changed His nature when He left the glory
of the Father and became a man, taking our nature. He
changed His nature again when He sacrificed Himself as
a man, and was begotten as a New Creature at the time of
His baptism at thirty years of age. It was this New Creature,
no longer earthly but heavenly, that was resurrected on the
third day, and received a body as it pleased the Father
a spirit body. He received immortality only at His resur-
rection, and as a reward for His faithful obedience to the
Father's will to the extent of self-sacrifice unto death,
even the death of the cross.
Thus it appears clear from God's own revelation on the
subject that only Himself and His only begotten Son pos-
sessed this quality of immortality at the time the Apostles
wrote their Epistles. Indeed, had the Only Begotten been
immortal sooner than at the time of His exaltation, He could
not have been the Saviour of the world, because He could
not have died, and, under the divine arrangement, to be our
Redeemer He must die.
At His death, like all other men, He ceased to be.
In other words, He was annihilated. His human-
ity was destroyed for ever. Thus He was never
raised from the dead, and there was never any real
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '? 199
resurrection. What that word means to Russellism
is that on the third day God caused Him to be
recreated as an invisible spirit. His body was
never raised, but probably dissolved into gases.
Whenever He appeared afterwards to His disciples,
it was in a body and clothes which were specially
created for each occasion. But He only became
immortal and divine at His re-creation. He has
no longer any connexion with human nature,
but is an invisible spirit. Still He is called the
Second Adam, and is now the Father of mankind
from 1914 to 2914, when the Millennial reign will end.
(4) As to man and human nature.
The Bible view is the only consistent one, and hence the
only truly scientific and orthodox view of this subject.
Going to the Genesis record of man's creation, we see that
the body was formed first, but it was not a man, soul, or
being until animated. It was not a man but a corpse.
In Adam's case it, of course, required no laboured effort on
the part of the Creator to cause the perfect organism which
He had made to breathe the life-giving oxygen of the
atmosphere.
In like manner Eve's body was literally made out of
Adam's rib, and caused to breathe so as to become a
' living soul.' This happened quite suddenly, exactly
six thousand and forty-four years ago. As a result,
Adam and Eve were absolutely perfect physically,
mentally, morally because ' all God's work is
perfect (Deut. xxxii. 4).' Though, unfortunately,
' the flood completely obliterated all evidence of
the genius and handiwork of the perfect father of
our race.' Still, he was not in any sense immortal,
but was only capable of going on with his animal
200 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
life, if he had had continued access to the trees of
life in the Garden of Eden.
When he sinned God drove him from the garden lest he
put forth his hand, and take also of the trees of life, and eat,
and live for ever (i.e. by eating continuously) (Gen. iii. 22).
How the fogs and mysteries scatter before the light of
truth which shines from God's Word !
Consequently the death-sentence for his disobedi-
ence meant the entire cessation of his being,
because he was cut off from the chance of living.
In this there is no difference between him and the
animals. All alike perish when they die.
The curse brought the death of all mankind ., 5 . This
death-curse rests upon us from the moment of birth, and
hence demonstrates the fact that it is not the result of our
individual sins, but of inherited sins a curse or blight
which has reached us from Father Adam by heredity.
' The dying has been a gradual process with the
race in general/ but in all cases the dead have been
extinguished. Except for a few who have been
recreated since the Millennium began, in 1914, all
the 50,000,000,000 who have died are now out of
existence. But
during the Millennial age the resurrection (i.e. the new
creation) is to be a gradual process ; inch by inch, as it
were, mankind will be raised up, up, up out of the mire of
sin, out of the terrible pit of degradation and death, to the
grand height of perfection and life from which he fell in the
person of Father Adam.
As to how God could in resurrection reproduce the
millions of earth completely, so that each will
know himself, and profit by the memory of present
life experiences, all things aie possible to God, and
WHY NOT ' RVSSELLISM ' ? 201
David referred prophetically to this very process
in the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm.
(5) In face of this curse it is most of all necessary
to ask, What, then, was the ' Atonement ' of Jesus,
and what did it accomplish ? To this theme the
whole of vol. v. is devoted. The pith of it all may,
however, be put into short space. Adam and Eve
were quite perfect, yet through wilful disobedience
they became liable to the curse, which was death,
i.e. extinction of being. So the entire human
race became in the same sense ' children of wrath.'
For four thousand years God justly executed the
sentence of His law, in that all men died without
mercy. But in the death of Jesus,
by virtue of the ransom paid to justice, a transfer of man's
account has been made, and his indebtedness, &c., is wholly
transferred to the account of the Lord Jesus Christ, who
paid to justice the full satisfaction of its claims against Adam
and his race. Thus Jesus, by reason of this purchase with
His own precious blood, is now in consequence the Owner,
Master, Lord of all.
One object in this arrangement for Adam and his race was
the annulment of the death-sentence which prevented love
from any efforts to recover the condemned.
Another object was the placing of the fallen race beyond the
reach of divine justice, and under the special supervision
of Jesus who will ultimately turn over to the justice of
the divine law all who show their desire for harmony with
justice, but who will then be so perfected as to be able
to endure its perfect requirements.
(6) Thus we come to a true and full meaning of
' salvation,' in the Christian sense. In order to do
no injustice to Russellism in |his regard, it will be
well again to quote rather than summarize.
202 . WHY NOT ' RUSSELL1SM ' ?
God's plan of salvation for the general race of Adam is
to extend to each member of it, during the Millennium, the
offer of eternal life upon the terms of the New Covenant
sealed for all with the precious blood of the Lamb. But
there is no suggestion anywhere that immortality, the divine
nature, will ever be offered or granted to any except the elect
church of the Gospel age the ' little flock ' the ' Bride,
the Lamb's wife.' For the others of Adam's race the offer
will be restitution (Acts iii. 19, 21) to life and health and
perfection of human nature the same that Adam possessed,
as the earthly image of God, before his fall from grace into
sin and death. And when at the close of the Millennium
(A.D. 2914) all the obedient of mankind shall have attained
all that was lost in Adam and redeemed by Christ, then
all, armed with complete knowledge and experience, and
hence fully able to stand the test, will be severely tested
(aswas Adam), but individually (Rev. xx. 7 to 10), and only
those found in fullest heart-sympathy, as well as in outward
harmony with God and His righteous arrangements, will be
permitted to go beyond the Millennium into the everlasting
future, or world (age) without end by continuing to eat
food. All others will be destroyed in the second death
' destroyed from among the people ' (Acts iii. 23).
(7) As it is thus impossible to separate salvation
from the Millennial age, or to consider the future
without also appreciating the present, let us now
finally see what Millennial Dawnism seeks to spread
throughout the world as the only true and reliable
Christianity.
An accompanying chart is given to show in sum-
mary how by elaborate calculations it appears that
the year 1872 was the exact six-thousandth year
from the creation of Adam and Eve. Hence the
seven-thousandth year of the world began in 1873.
In 1874 tne Second Coming of Jesus took place,
invisibly but really. ^
In 1878 the period of the ' disfavour ' of the Jews
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 203
ended. ' The exact year of Israel's rejection we
know yes, even the very day.' So now we know
the exact time of their reception into favour. The
spring of the same year, 1878, marks the time when
' nominal church systems were spewed out, and
ceased to be in any degree recognized by God/
From that date to 1914 the Gospel age was ending
and woes preparing for all Christendom. But in
that year also ' all the Apostles and all the dead who
had consecrated their human nature to the Lord,
and lived the perfect Adam life, were recreated
and changed into spirit beings like the Lord Jesus.'
The year 1881 was the close of the special favour
to Gentiles, the close of the high calling to them to
become joint heirs with Christ and partakers of
the divine nature. Between 1910 and 1912 came
the times of great trouble which culminated with
the end of the times of the Gentiles in 1914
two thousand five hundred and twenty years
from 606 B.C. That date was ' the farthest limit
of the rule of imperfect men.' Then according
to Russellism there was the ' full establishment '
of the kingdom of God, and the final end of the
kingdoms of this world ' the Gentile kingdoms were
ground to powder, and utterly removed, no place
being found for them.'
From all of which it would seem that since the
Bible has given infallible directions, and its long-hid
secrets are now infallibly revealed by Russellism
the following results have to be acknowledged
by all seekers after truth.
The only true Church of Christ consists of those
who accept Millennial Dawnisra.
204 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
Only this church has been thus far really benefited by
the Atonement, but the teaching of the Scriptures is that
this church shall constitute a priestly kingdom or royal
priesthood with Christ, the Royal Chief Priest, and that
during the Millennial age this royal priesthood shall fully
and completely accomplish for mankind the work of remov-
ing the blindness which Satan and error and degradation
brought upon them.
In this work they are being helped by Abraham
and the patriarchs, who have been recreated as
visible glorified men. These are ' princes in the
earth,' and are acting ' as the intermediaries between
the invisible Church and the world.' In 1914 the
Jews were restored to their own land, and became
the head of the nations, Jerusalem being now the
capital of the world.
It is important also to note that with the arrival
of 1914 this according to Russellism came to
pass :
In harmony with all the rest, is the statement of Scripture
that the first work of Christ in connexion with His Millennial
reign will be to bind or restrain Satan, that he shall deceive
the nations no more for the thousand years.
So that, although Satan may have been loose
most folk will think so when the Germans wrought
their unutterable devilries in Belgium, he was bound
when he same villains deliberately murdered all
the innocents on board the Lusitania. And the
whole German nation which rejoiced thereat, must
have all the credit of it, without any share being
due to Satan. The same applies to all the infernal
devices which have since disgraced their military
leaders, as well as dishonoured their army, and
all the unmeasured lies which have distinguished
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '? 205
their Government, from the Kaiser and Bethmann-
Hollweg downwards. It is something to know that
Satan is not responsible for these.
The future as Russellism asserts is perhaps
sufficiently outlined in the paragraph above quoted.
But the following statement from the same source
will complete the picture. It must not be forgotten
that we are now in the Millennium. The processes
above specified are now going on, and will continre
until 2914. What then ? This.
Thus at the close of the Millennial age, by the year A D.
2914, the world will be fully back in the divine favour, fully
at one with God, as mankind was representatively in har-
mony at-one with God in the person of Adam, before
transgression entered the world ; but additionally they will
possess a most valuable experience with evil, for by it they
will have learned a lesson on the sinfulness of sin, and the
wisdom, profit, and desirableness of righteousness. Addition-
ally also they will possess an increase of knowledge, and the
wider exercise of the various talents and abilities which were
man's originally in creation, but in an undeveloped state.
And the lesson fully learned by all we may presume will
stand for all time applicable to other races yet uncreated,
on other planets of the wide universe.
The above summary constitutes a true and fair
statement of what is now being promulgated through-
out the civilized world as the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is not merely in this country and America that
the vigorous propaganda mentioned above is being
carried on. The first volume of the ' Studies in the
Scriptures ' announces that it has also been trans-
lated into German, Swedish, Dano -Norwegian,
French, Italian, and Greek. So that there would
seem to be more than sufficient need that this most
206 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
elaborate, pretentious, and plausible system should
be scrutinized as thoroughly as charitably. The
plain fact that if Russellism is true, all the other
Christian churches are false mere blind leaders
of the blind ought to be enough to protect any
one who sincerely and carefully probes it from being
accused of uncharity, or credited with any other
motive than the desire to serve His cause who said,
' If you remain faithful to My teaching then truly
are you My disciples, and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.'
20?
Vii
THE ERRORS OF ' RUSSELLISM *
In the case of any rational student of the Bible, one
might truly say that the bare statement of Millennial
Dawnism should suffice for its definite and emphatic
condemnation. For that reason pains and space
have been taken in the foregoing pages to allow it,
as far as possible, to speak for itself. But all men
are not rational in religion, and often are so least
of all in their treatment of the Bible. Hence it
cannot be enough in presence of widespread error
simply to let it ' severely alone.' The policy of
laissez-faire may sometimes be wise, but not always.
Sheer denunciation, again, is as ineffective as con-
tempt, for purposes of truth. Even when some cults
and their advocates appear to be beyond reasonable
reply, it is still necessary for the sake of others to
deal rationally, as well as plainly and patiently,
with their weird extravagances. That undoubtedly
is the mind of Christ. It is also the only way in
which in these days truth of any kind can be
maintained.
It may be definitely owned that we speak here
from the standpoint of a liberal Evangelicalism.
This may be left for justification to other occasions.
It is quite in place here because the propaganda of
Millennial Dawnism naturally appeals most to those
who have sufficient religious conviction to grant
Pastor Russell his premisses. He makes no attempt
to convince any, save those who already accept in
RUSSELLISM 4
208 WHY NOT 'RUSSELLISM'?
fullest sense the inspiration of the Bible. The
' evangelical ' attitude, however, needs, in our day,
careful statement. Those who have neither time
nor disposition for large volumes of theology may
find in the little manual recently published by
Dr. Garvie 1 an admirable expression in succinct
form of what is really connoted by evangelical
doctrine in the light of to-day.
It is most necessary to say plainly that neither
Russellism nor any other modern form of faith can
be truly or wisely estimated by the standards of
' orthodoxy ' which prevailed a century or even half
a century ago. The world of Christian truth has
no more stood still during recent years than the
worlds of science and philosophy. Whatever be the
developments or difficulties of Christian belief in
our midst, they are not to be settled by simply
quoting our fathers, any more than by waving the
sacerdotal hand. Hereupon Dr. Garvie has well
said, speaking from the truly evangelical stand-
point :
I am entirely opposed to the mental indolence and cow-
ardice which seeks a refuge from intellectual difficulty and
labour, in either ecclesiastical authority or mystical intuition.
To arrest the process of thinking is a voluntary humility
of a rational personality which deserves only condemnation.
Even to accept the Christian faith as historically given either
by the Bible or the Church, and to decline to relate it to
science, philosophy, and criticism, is to show a distrust of
the reasonableness of the Christian revelation.
The Evangelical Alliance in its credal basis attempts to
perpetuate some articles of belief which we cannot now hold
at all, or, if we hold at all, must express in different language.
Only a liberal and progressive evangelism can answer the
1 Manuals for Christian Thinkers The Evangelical Type of Chris,
tianity, by Dr. A. E. Garvie (Charles H. Kelly).
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 209
cry out of the depths of some bewildered minds and bruised
hearts. *
There can be no doubt that Millennial Dawnism,
with all its wild imaginings, has troubled, and is
troubling, great numbers in ordinary Evangelical
Churches.* But if these all think that the sufficient
answer to it is simply to reiterate the exact creeds
of our fathers, or hurl anathemas at any who depart
from prearranged ' standards,' they have yet very
much to learn and to unlearn.
All this finds its most pressing application as to
the Bible.* The real difficulty in dealing with
Russellism is that its fundamental error, which
makes void the whole complex structure of his
much-vaunted ' plan of salvation,' is shared yet,
to no small extent, by a large number of Christian
believers whose sincerity is beyond question. The
general attitude towards the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures of very many besides the members of
the Bible League, is the same as that of Russellism.
The only real difference is in the general thoroughness
pp. 116, 59.
* I have received many letters for some time past from all parts of
the country asking me to include it in this ' Why Not ? ' series, but
hoped it might prove unnecessary.
1 The true modern evangelical appreciation of the Bible as against
not only the sneers of Russellism at the Higher Criticism, but the
general attitud* of the Bible League and others, is sufficiently stated
in the following easily accessible works : The Bible, Its Origin, Sig-
nificance, and Abiding Worth, Dr. A. S. Peake (Hodder) ; The Bible,
Its Origin and Nature, Dr. Marcus Dods (T. & T. Clark) ; The Inspira-
tion and Authority of Holy Scripture, Dr. Monro Gibson (Free Church
Council) ; Sixty Years with the Bible, Dr. W. N. Clarke (T. & T. Clark) ;
Shall We Understand the Bible? T. Rhondda Williams (A. & C.
Black) ; An Introduction to the Scriptures The Temple Bible late
Bishop of Ripon (Dent & Co.) ; What is the Bible ? Dr. J. Warschauer
(Jas. Clarke). There are, of course, many others, but these are sufficient
for any unprejudiced student.
210 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
with which the latter applies the principles assumed,
and in the exegesis of certain particular passages.
In both cases the assumption holds that the Bible is
so utterly, equally, verbally inspired, in all its parts,
as to constitute it in every sense the absolutely
perfect ' Word of God.' This is really the crux
of the whole issue. But the time has come to say
plainly, for the truth's sake, and for Christianity's
sake, that upon the principles of those who speak
and write as if all the truth concerning the Bible
and Christian faith was so absolutely known to our
fathers, that we have neither right nor power to
alter one jot or tittle of their theological conceptions,
evangelical Christianity can no more be maintained
than Russellism can be disproved.
Apart from the latter' s blunders' and misrepre-
sentations, which will be presently shown, its greatest
harm and danger is that it seeks to rivet for ever-
more upon the minds of modern men and women
and children an estimate and use of the Bible which
could only result to-day in the rejection of the Bible
altogether by thoughtful people. Especially by our
young people whom we are ever seeking, through
improved educational methods, to train more and
more thoroughly in modern knowledge. Such a
procedure rings the knell of Christianity for the
century before us. Whatever else Christianity is,
it must be modern, if it is to survive. That is,
it must be correlated with ' whatsoever things are
true.' The Apostle who wrote that would not
shrink, we know well, from its most thorough appli-
cation to the science and philosophy and history of
to-day. Neither tradition nor venerable associa-
tions, neither creeds nor standards, nor anything
WHY NOT ' RUSSEI.LISM ' ? 211
else, can be retained for Christianity, if in any respect
they are now shown to be contrary to fact or reason.
Nowhere more nobly has this principle been expressed
than in the words prefixed to the first number of the
Minutes of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference.
What are we afraid of ? Of overturning our first prin-
ciples ? If they are false, the sooner they are overturned
the better. If they are true, they will bear the strictest
investigation.
If, for instance, we assume here, in our liberal
evangelicalism, the inexpressible religious value of
the Old Testament, and the substantial reliability
of the New, it is not because our fathers thought so,
or because trust deeds affirm it, or because our
standards say so. It is because these Scriptures
have been put into the crucible of modern inevitable
and necessary scrutiny, and have come out of it all
the more precious for what has resulted therefrom.
The very fires of criticism which by Russellism and
many mistaken believers are denounced as wickedly
destructive, have merely consumed the dross of
antiquated traditions and theories of inspiration
which were never true, and have left us the pure gold
of truth which no modern atmosphere can corrode.
To say that the Bible is not inspired would, no doubt,
shock many sincere believers other than those who
look for the Millennial dawn. Nevertheless, it
is the real truth. No book, no writing, was ever
inspired. That is the fundamental error. It was,
or is, the writer who is inspired. There are valid
reasons for affirming that the writers of the sixty-six
portions that make up the Bible were in a real sense
inspired. But there are no reasons whatever for
212 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
declaring that they were all equally so ; or that they
made no mistakes ; or that they were thereby enabled
to exactly anticipate modern science ; or that all
they wrote is equally true concerning God, or binding
upon the consciences of all men, especially Christians,
to the end of time.
In plain point of fact they were not all equally
inspired ; and they did make mistakes ; and the 'one
feature of the Bible which now stands out more
clearly than any other is that there is definite
and unmistakable progression in all that relates to
the true knowledge of God and His will for men.
The manifest progressiveness of the revelation does
not disprove the inspiration of the Biblical writers.
What it does disprove is a theological theory of
inspiration which, under special circumstances,
was brought to the Bible by our fathers, and not
learned from the Bible itself. That theory of verbal
inspiration, with all that it involves, is the very pith
and marrow of Russellism, as it has been, and yet is,
of many other pernicious notions under the Christian
name, which have hindered the real coming of
Christ's kingdom more than all the assaults of
unbelief combined.
For which reason the time bashfully come to say,
quite unequivocally, that for the true ' evangelical
type ' of Christian faith, some former conceptions
of the Bible and of theology must be as definitely
given up i.e. given in exchange for something truer,
and therefore better as in days gone by Christian
believers had to give up the Ptolemaic astronomy
which satisfied Paul and the Apostles, and adopt
that of Copernicus and Galileo.
One instance, specially germane to any scrutiny
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 213
of Millennial Dawnism, we may well quote from Dr.
Garvie's excellent little book.
The theories of original sin and total depravity cannot be
defended to-day, and need not be defended, as they are not
the foundation on which the evangelical representation of
the Christian message needs to be built. The story of the
Fall, in Gen. iii., is now admitted generally as not literal
history ; and although Paul undoubtedly regarded it as
literal history, it is certain that the doctrines of original
sin and total depravity, as they were afterwards developed
in Christian Theology by Augustine, Luther, Calvin, go far
beyond anything Paul ever thought or taught.
Evangelicalism has been entirely misled by a dogmatic and
not a moral or religious interest, when it has assumed that
the plan of salvation rested, and must rest, on the story of
the Fall, or the doctrines of original sin and total depravity
based upon it. Christ never in His teaching alludes to
that story. He simply assumes that men are sinful, and
need forgiveness; lost, and need salvation. 1
If this be so and it is not too much to say that it
is accepted and endorsed by almost all educated
Christian thinkers of to-day then the whole foun-
dation of Russellism is gone at one stroke, and the
complicated structure of theological details built
upon it comes clattering down to a mere heap of
religious verbiage. As for the special Millennial
inferences which formed the pinnacles of his system,
beyond his mere assertions there is no reason what-
ever to think that it was definite part of the divine
plan to contradict beforehand what Jesus Himself
so plainly said in response to earnest inquiry
' It is not for you to know times or epochs, which
the Father has reserved within His own authority.'
Nor are there any grounds whatever, other than an
1 pp. 60, 61, 64. 2 Acts i. 7 (Weymouth).
214 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
inflated pietism on his part, for the idea that to
Pastor Russell there have now been imparted
' in due time/ as he claims sacred secrets which
have been hidden from all the true saints and servants
of God in past and present generations. This, of
course, is the usual claim of all adventurers into
occult regions in the Christian name. One has
only to acquaint oneself with the strong declarations
of Joe Smith, Ann Lee, Mary Ann Girling, Alex-
ander Dowie, Mary Baker Eddy, to become quite
familiar with the form of religious monomania which
in recent as in ancient times comes at intervals
upon certain individuals. It is ever the same, and
is to the effect that all humanity has been kept
waiting from the beginning for this one special and
final revelation. How soon Christianity began to
suffer from this malady, is witnessed by the words
of the beloved Apostle protesting against the
Gnostics of his day. They form still, when inter-
preted in the light of the rest of our New Testament,
the .wisest counsel that can be given to the churches
of the twentieth century.
Beloved, do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits,
whether they are really from God ; for many prophets that are
false have gone forth into the world. This is how you will
recognize the Spirit of God every spirit which confesses faith
in Jesus Christ as having come in real human nature is from
God, and every spirit which does not so accept Jesus is not
from God. This, indeed, is the mark of the Antichrist
which you have heard was coming ; and now it is in the world
already^
In this spirit and on these principles we will now
proceed to test Millennial Dawnism. It may be well
to keep to the same order in which we have already
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 215
stated its specific doctrines. Here we point out their
definite falsities. Every item of the following
indictment can be abundantly supported by quo-
tations from the six volumes mentioned ; only
considerations of space prevent their being here
printed in extenso.
I. As TO THE BIBLE
(1) Russellism's reiterated reference to the Bible
as God's Word is, we have seen, of such a kind as to
affirm by implication a theory of verbal inspiration
which has long since been shown to be unwarranted,
by the common consent of all the ablest modern
Christian scholars. It is simply not true that all
parts of the Bible are equally inspired and authorita-
tive, applicable to Christian times or binding upon
Christian consciences. So that the way in which
it is handled by Russellism, and picked portions
applied to anything and everything, irrespective of
context or natural significance, is wholly unjustifi-
able. On such principles the Bible may be made to
prove anything.
(2) The assumption that the opening chapters of
Genesis are to be taken as literal history and exact
science is altogether unwarranted. They are neither ;
and any thesis which rests on such an assumption
is therefore necessarily false. The truth concerning
the first two chapters is unanswerably expressed
by the late Dr. Driver.
The writers to whom we owe the first eleven chapters of
Genesis report faithfully what was currently believed among
the Hebrews respecting the early history of mankind, at
the same time making their narratives the vehicle of many
2i6 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
moral and spiritual lessons, yet there was much which they
did not know and could not take cognizance of ; these chapters
consequently, incomparable as they are in other respects,
contain no account of the real beginnings either of the earth
itself, or of man and human civilization upon it. l
To take the third chapter as literal history, is,
as soon as the narrative is honestly faced in its
detail, grotesque in its childishness and blasphemous
in its implications. Yet this foolish proceeding is
really the main pillar of Russellism.
(3) The constant denunciations of modern science,
with special reference to evolution, are equally
unwarranted and unworthy. It is easy enough to
reply that our fathers ' held the Scriptures to be
given by inspiration of God, and to all gainsayers
answered Let God be true and every man a liar.'
That is precisely the principle upon which the Chris-
tian Church ages ago murdered Bruno and persecuted
Galileo. It blindly begs the whole question as to
what inspiration means, and it illustrates once more
the vicious practice just mentioned, in chopping
a few words of the Apostle out of then: necessary
context, and attributing to them a meaning which he
never for one moment intended. To say, as another
religious journal does, that
The Darwinian theory of evolution overlooked such
multitudes of facts, and is now so widely rejected, that the
path has been smoothed for a penitent Church to return
to the Bible as a little child,
is even worse, for it is simply false. Evolution is
not merely a ' Darwinian ' theory, but the general
conclusion of all the ablest men of science living.
1 Genesis, p. xlii.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 217
Darwinism may be criticized to the uttermost, but
with it evolution does not stand or fall. Whilst
so far from being ' widely rejected,' no man of
science, with any claim to regard, can now be found
who rejects it. Nor is it in these days desirable that
the Church should come back to the Bible ' as a
little child.' The Apostle's ideal is not only much
higher, but absolutely essential, if the Christian
faith is to endure. ' Howbeit in malice be ye babes,
but in mind be men.'
(4) Equally unwarranted and unworthy are the
reiterated sneers (they are nothing less) of Russell-
ism and some others at the principles of criticism
in general, and the ' Higher Criticism ' in particular.
This is not the place to discuss at any length what
these much-abused terms mean and involve. 1 In
the abler words of a scholar whose verdict might
well be taken as final :
I think it can be shown that criticism, so far from throwing
doubts upon either the uniqueness of Israel's true knowledge
of God or the personal influence of God as producing this,
certainly proves the former, and leaves us with the latter
as its most natural and scientific explanation. Or to
put this otherwise the most advanced criticism provides
grounds for the proof of a divine revelation in the Old
Testament, at least more firm than those on which the
older apologetic used to rely. a
In spite of all the innuendoes, and even anathemas,
which Russellism and some others think fit to hurl
against the more thorough examination of the
1 1 have stated the case with fair fullness in two chapters of Why
Does Not God Intervene? and elsewhere, in answer to questions, in
The Bible in Modern Light. Both these can be obtained of C. H. Kelly.
2 Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, Dr. G.
Adam Smith, p. 115.
218 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
Bible, the summary of Professor W. J. Moulton
remains true and significant.
In their broad outlines the results of modern criticism
have secured the allegiance of nearly all the scholars of all
the Protestant churches, and seem to be impregnable.
The task of the future will be much more to interpret than
to disprove these results. 1
(5) The whole method of quotation exemplified
in these volumes is unjustifiable on rational grounds.
By ' rational ' is meant only what the Apostle meant
when he said ' In mind be men.' What is per-
petually done in the five thousand references to the
Bible made in these six volumes is to cut out any
verse, anywhere, that admits of being verbally
applied to some one of the elaborations of the scheme,
and claim its support as a ' Scripture proof.' Noth-
ing would be easier than to fill these pages with
instances. Take one case only, obtained by opening
vol. ii. quite at haphazard at this moment. What
do we find ?
Dan. ix. 25.
The fall of A.D. 1874, where the Jubilee cycles point out
that our Lord was due to be present, corresponds to the
time of His baptism and anointing by the Holy Spirit,
when He became Messiah the Prince (Dan. ix. 25) and
began His work of reaping the Jewish harvest.
The spring of 1878 marks the date when the nominal
church systems were ' spewed out ' (Rev. iii. 16), and from
which time they are not the mouthpieces of God, nor in
any degree recognized by Him.
Now trouble is impending over nominal Christendom,
but the storm is stayed until the wheat is garnered, until
God's messengers seal His servants in their foreheads
(intellects) with the truth (Rev. vii. 3).
1 Thirty-ninth Fernley Lecture, p. xviii.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELUSM ' ? 219
Have these three verses, thus appealed to, any-
thing whatever honestly to do with the matter in
hand ? No ; nothing whatever. It is simply a case
of tying attractive fruit on to a barren tree, in order
that the tree may seem to have naturally borne
the fruit. There is no exaggeration in saying that
this is what is done in these volumes thousands of
times.
(6) A further extension of the same vicious
proceeding appears when, on almost all these pages,
the writer takes in hand to interpret what he quotes.
These interpretations form, indeed, the veritable
bricks and mortar of the whole elaborate structure.
Again it is not too much to say that, with really
few exceptions, the method and matter of inter-
pretation are alike forced, artificial, and false
throughout. If only space permitted, here should
be given definitely before the reader's eyes one
hundred and fifty instances carefully selected
of this procedure. It would be easy to multiply
them. But as that is not practicable, the few
following specimens are submitted, as being truly
typical of all the rest. They are found equally in all
the six volumes, and are all alike, viewed as professed
expositions, unwarranted and misleading. They are
simply made to fall in with notions to which they
have no real application whatever.
Rev. vii.
As intimated, aside from those who, falling from the position
of the elect, go into the second death, there is yet another
class brought to our notice as failing to make their calling
and election sure, but who will not go into the second death
because they have not sinned wilfully in gross immorality,
nor in denying the merit of the precious blood. This class
we have already referred to as the ' Great Company '
220 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '?
who will come up ' out of great tribulation, and wash their
robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb ' ;
but while gaining a spiritual nature and a great blessing,
and a participation in the Marriage Supper of the Lamb
as guests, they will nevertheless lose the great prize which
is to go to the very elect only the faithful overcomers,
those who will follow the footsteps of Jesus rejoicingly
and heartily (Rev. vii.). This great company fails to
maintain its place in the elect fails to be of the very
elect because of insufficient zeal ; therefore the Captain
of our Salvation will lead these to a spiritual blessing to
perfection on a lower plane of spirit being because they
have trusted in Him.
Is this an exposition ? No ; it is nothing but a
verbal imposition in the interests of the scheme of
Millennial Dawn. Precisely the same applies to
all these which here follow, and the list may be
extended to any length.
Matt. viii. 22 ; 2 Cor. i. 10 ; Rom. viii. 24.
Our Lord's estimate of life and death is illustrated by
His words, ' Let the dead bury their dead ; go thou and
preach the Gospel.' Here unbelievers are referred to as
still dead, because of having no union with the Life-giver ;
while the believers are equally referred to as alive, though
they are saved from death as yet only by hope, and cannot
experience the actual delivery from the power of death until
the resurrection.
Acts in. 19 is a favourite quotation, occurring
many times. It is always taken from the version
of 1611 which is manifestly a blunder, and is cor-
rected in the Revised. But no notice is here taken
of the latter ; for a manifest reason it would
plainly contradict Russellism. In all the quota-
tions, moreover, the word ' restitution ' is carefully
employed.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 221
There shall ultimately come to mankind at the second
advent of our Lord great ' times of refreshing ' times of
restitution of all things which ' God hath spoken by the
mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began.'
Whoever may think the Apostle Peter was preaching a
doctrine of evolution when preaching the Gospel of resti-
tution must have closed his eyes and stopped his reasoning
faculties ; for if the original condition of man was that of
a monkey, or if it was anything whatever inferior to our
present condition, the Apostle would have been the
veriest fool to hold out as a grand hope and prospect times
of restitution, for restitution means a restoration of that
condition which previously existed.
2 Pet. i. 4 ; Rom. viii. 10.
The Bible view honours God in revealing to us His mercy
and magnanimity towards man in his fallen estate in the
provision for man's redemption and for his restitution to
his original condition, at the hands of his Redeemer, during
the Millennium. But a fruitful source of confusion in the
minds of Christian people when studying the nature of
man, and particularly when attempting to obtain the scrip-
tural views upon the subject, is their failure to distinguish
between mankind in general and the Church, the ' little
flock ' which God is selecting from amongst men during
the present age, and fitting and preparing for new and
superhuman conditions spiritual conditions. Failing to
' rightly divide the word of truth,' they apply to all men the
statements and promises of the Scriptures, especially of the
New Testament, which are addressed only to the Church
class, and which have no bearing whatever upon the
restitution hopes held out for mankind. These ' exceeding
great and precious promises ' are proportionately as untrue
of the world as they are true of the Church. Thus, for
instance, the Apostle's words ' The body is dead because
of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness '
(Rom. viii. 10) which apply only to the Church, the special
and peculiar conditions of the call of the Church during
this Gospel age, is interpreted to mean the same with
respect to all humanity.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
In appreciating this it must be borne in mind that
throughout these ' studies ' ' the Church ' means only
the followers of Pastor Russell. All the rest of the
ordinary Christian churches as we now know them
are included under the term ' Babylon,' which is
said to be the New Testament symbol for Chris-
tendom.
Is it at all surprising that this mass of four hundred
millions professedly constituting the Church of Christ, and
calling itself His kingdom ' Christendom ' is disowned by
the Lord, and by Him given the more appropriate name
' Babylon ' (mixture, confusion) ?
Acts in. 19, 23, as already intimated, appears
again and again. This is a fair specimen :
Another text frequently misapplied to the world which
belongs to the Lord's consecrated people says : ' We have
this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the
power may be of God and not of us ' (2 Cor. iv. 7). Here
the Church alone is referred to those who have received
the treasure of the new mind, the new nature. The highest
possible aspiration ever to be opened to humanity according
to the divine word of promise is ' restitution ' to be
restored to the full perfection of the human nature, lost in
Eden, redeemed at Calvary (Acts iii. 19, 23).
2 Cor. iii. 12.
Likewise heavenly beings are described as spirit beings,
i.e. invisible beings possessed of power, intelligence, &c.
This is applicable not only to God, of whom our Lord said
' God is a Spirit,' but ft is applicable also to our Lord
Jesus, since His resurrection, for of Him it is declared
' Now the Lord is that Spirit.' It is applied also to angels
and to the Church which is assured that in the first resurrec-
tion each overcomer shall have a spirit body.
A fair type of incorrect quotation even from the
older Version, along with an utterly unwarranted
WHY NOT ' RVSSELLISM ' ? 223
exegesis, is found in reference to Ps. Ixxxv. 12. Let
the reader turn to this Psalm and mark its natural
application ' Yea, the Lord shall give that which
is good, and our land shall yield her increase '
and then note the exposition of Russellism. The
question in hand is Can the earth in future ages
support such a Millennium as is suggested ?
The last century closed, it is estimated, witi
i53 I 639*i5 people living.
Now with this large allowance and liberal estimate every-
where, what can we say respecting the ability of the earth
to furnish these habitation and food ? Remembering the
Lord's promise that in the Millennial period ' the earth
shall yield her increase,' and that the desert and wilderness-
places of the earth shall become as a garden of Eden, we
may safely estimate upon all the land, which we find,
according to recent estimates, to be 57,000,000 square
miles, or over 36,000,000,000 acres. What would this
mean as to space for each individual who has ever lived
in the world i.e. 28,441,126,838 persons ? It means that
there would be twelve hundred and seventy-five acres for
each little village of two hundred families. Quite a suffi-
ciency of room, all will agree, under the new conditions
promised. But if more space be necessary, with faith we
will readily see that it will be quite within the divine power
to raise vast continents from the depths of the oceans, or,
indeed, to give a literal as well as a symbolical fulfilment to
the declaration ' There shall be no more sea.'
Rom. xii. 2.
The bringing of every thought into harmony with the mind
of God is a gradual work. The Apostle terms this process
transforming work, saying ' Be not conformed to this
world ; but be ye transformed (to the heavenly nature) by
the renewing of your minds, that ye may prove what is
that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. ... It is
commonly believed that when a man is converted or turned
from sin to righteousness, and from unbelief and opposition
RUSSEU4SM 5
224 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
to God to reliance upon Him, that is the transforming
which Paul meant. Truly that is a great change a
transformation ; but not the transformation which Paul
here refers to. That is a transformation of character ;
but Paul refers to a transformation of nature, promised
to believers during the Gospel age, on certain conditions,
and he was urging believers to fulfil those conditions.
Those thus transformed are reckoned new creatures,
begotten of God, and partakers to that extent of the
divine nature. This new divine mind is the earnest of our
inheritance of the complete divine nature mind and
body. Some may be a little startled by this expression
' a divine body ' ; but we could not imagine either our
Divine Father or our Lord Jesus as merely great minds
without bodies. Theirs are glorious spiritual bodies, though
it doth not yet appear how great is the glory, and it shall
not until we also share the divine nature.
Isa. xxxv. 8.
The way back to actual human perfection is to be made
very plain and easy ; so plain that none may mistake the
way ; so plain that the wayfaring man and those un-
acquainted therewith shall not go astray.
Here we see that ' the way of holiness ' is repre-
sented as being the way back to be humanly ' perfect/
as Adam was. The exegesis is false, and we will
consider the case of Adam presently.
Lev. xxvi. 17, 1 8, 24, 28.
' And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto Me, then I
will punish you seven times more (further) for your sins.' This
threat of ' seven times ' of punishment is mentioned three
times. The connexion in which the seven times are threat-
ened indicates that they include a final and conclusive
punishment upon that people, after the other chastise-
ments had repeatedly failed to reform them permanently.
These seven times, therefore, refer to the length of time during
which the Gentiles should rule over them. And to this
period of seven times our Lord undoubtedly referred when
speaking of the ' times of the Gentiles.,'
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 225
Mark well here, as being thoroughly typical, the
worth of ' therefore ' and 'undoubtedly.' Of such
flimsy stuff as this, the whole structure of Millennial
Dawnism is built up.
I Cor. xv. 8.
' Last of all He was seen of me also as by one born before
the due time ' (i Cor. xv. 8 literal rendering) . As the
resurrection of our Lord was His birth from the dead to the
full perfection of spiritual being (Col. i. 18, Rom. viii. 29),
so the resurrection of th^ Church, the body of Christ, is
here and elsewhere referred to as a birth. Paul's statement
means that he saw Him as we shall see Him as He is ;
he saw Him as all the body of Christ shall see Him, but before
the due time, before he was born from the dead, and there-
fore before able to endure it yet as each one so born shall
in due time see Him.
To call such exegesis as this childish is far too mild ;
it is utterly false, and correspondingly misleading to
such as do not know better.
Isa. Hi. 7.
'.How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings.'
The Church [that is, Russellism] is thus enabled to point
out to the world the cause of the trouble [which closed in
1914] ; to announce the presence of the new Ruler [Christ,
who came in 1874] ; to declare the policy, plan, and object
of the new dispensation, and to instruct the world as to
the wisest course to pursue in view of these things. It is
to this mission of the ' feet,' or last members of the Church,
who will declare upon the mountains (kingdoms) the reign
of Christ begun, that Isa. lii. 7 refers.
Every honest reader of the chapter thus mentioned
can see for himself that the words quoted have no
such reference whatever.
Again, as to Ps. xlvi. 6 :
The same thought viz. Christ as taking control is
expressed by Daniel when he says ' Then shall Michael
226 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
the great Prince stand up.' To stand up signifies to assume
authority, to give commands. See ' ariseth ' (Isa. ii.
19, 21).
This, in spite of the utterly unmistakable declara-
tion of the prophet himself at the beginning of this
chapter ' The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz
saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.' So much
better than the prophet does Pastor Russell know
to whom these words refer. But again :
Another illustration of this symbol is from David, who
says of Christ prophetically ' He uttered His voice, the
earth melted.'
Whereas any honest reader of this Psalm (xlvi.)
will see that there is in it no reference to Christ at
all.
One specimen should perhaps be given of the way
in which all through these six volumes the writer
interpolates passages, in quotation, to serve his
own notions. In the following instance ' the great
trouble ' and ' this great day ' refer to the time
between 1878, when ordinary churches were to be
rejected of God, and 1914, when the Millennium was
to begin.
Isa. xxxi. i, 3, referring to the great trouble now impend-
ing, says, Woe unto them that go down into Egypt (to the
world) for help (for worldly ideas and plans and for counsel
as to how they should act in the crisis of this great day),
and stay on horses (who endeavour to ride the old false
doctrinal hobbies) ; and trust in chariots (worldly organi-
zations), because they are many ; and in horsemen (the
great leaders in false doctrines), because they are very
strong ; but who look not unto the Holy One of Israel,
neither seek the Lord (for the safety and victory in this day of
trouble will not be with the multitude). Now the Egyptians
are men, and not God ; and their horses flesh, and not
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 227
spirit. When the Lord shall stretch out His hand (His
power, the power of the truth and other agencies, as He
will do shortly), both he that helpeth shall fail, and he that is
helped (by the powers of Egypt the world's ideas) shall
fall down, and they all shall fail together.
This is precisely the same method as is adopted on
most of the pages of Mrs. Eddy's conglomeration
entitled Science and Health : A Key to the Scriptures.
The ' key ' consists, there as here, in interpolating
pseudo-explanations just where you please and as
you please, so as to make the writer mean anything
in the world but what he did actually mean.
It would be as useless as wearisome to prolong this
list. All that needs here to be plainly understood is
that these specimens of Russellism's interpretation
of the Bible are quite true to all the rest which cannot
here be printed. No comment surely is needed,
beyond marvelling, with genuine lamentation, that
in these days millions of people should have been led
to regard this pious piffle as a fair and honest way of
treating the Bible.
(7) One case calls for special though brief attention.
The Book of Daniel is well known to be the happy
hunting-ground of all forms of Millenarianism in
the Old Testament, just as that known as ' Revela-
tion ' is in the New. It is impossible and equally
unnecessary to follow the devious ways of inter-
preters in regard to both these. l But it may be
well to add to the foregoing just these two or three
1 Should any reader desire sensible as well as scholarly guidance in
regard to these much-distorted portions of the Bible, he cannot do
better than study the late Dean Farrar's volume on Daniel in The
Expositor's Bible (Hodder & Stoughton) ; and for Revelation, the little
volume by Dr. Anderson Scott in The Century Bible Series ; together
with The Book of Revelation, by J. T. Dean (T. & T. Clark).
228 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
specimens of the way in which, out of the last two
chapters in Daniel, a ' clear description of the times
in which we are now living ' is obtained.
As to chapter xi. :
The time of the end a period of one hundred and fifteen
years, from A.D. 1799 to A.D. 1914, is particularly marked
in the Scriptures. ' The Day of his Preparation ' is another
name given to the same period, because in it a general
increase of knowledge, resulting in discoveries, &c., paves
the way to the coming Millennium of favour. The last
forty years of the time of the end is called the end or
' harvest ' of the ' Gospel age,' as we read in Matt. xiii.
39, ' The harvest is the end of the age.'
All this is sheer assertion, save that the attempt
to fasten upon Christ's words the vagaries of Rus-
sellite interpretation, borders on the blasphemous.
Into Pastor Russell's attempt to find the exact
fulfilment of these difficult verses in the evils of the
Papacy, and the career of Napoleon, we cannot,
of course, here enter. It is a purely arbitrary and
quite unwarranted exegesis. Nothing is easier than
to say :
Verse 31 connects with the thought of verse 27, and we
recognize it as referring to the more successful of the two
powers in the Roman Empire Papacy.
When it comes to the very important point of noting
where Papal dominion was broken, it is but reasonable to
expect that Napoleon, the leading character associated
with this change, should be marked out by a description of
his peculiar characteristics. Such a description we do
find, and Napoleon Bonaparte's career corresponds exactly
with that description. Verses 31-35 describe Papacy, its
errors and abominations, and the Reformation and its
little help, yet partial failure through flatteries.
This is all pure conjecture, whose only recommen-
dation is that it suits the chronology of Millennial
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 229
Dawnism. Whilst as to interpretation, the follow ng
must suffice, as assuredly it ought to do :
Verse 37, ' He shall neither regard the god (ruler) of his
fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god (ruler),
for he shall exalt himself in opposition to all.' Not only
did Napoleon not respect the god of his fathers, Papacy,
but neither did he regard favourably any of the Protestant
sects, here represented as women. As the one true Church
is symbolically called the Bride of Christ, and as the Church
of Rome in unfaithful alliance with earthly empire is called
a harlot, so the various Protestant sects are called women.
By the side of this pitiful nonsense, the late Dean
Farrar's thoughtful and scholarly volume on Daniel
is as refresh ng as it is honest.
(8) Biblical chronology necessarily plays a large
part in the Russellite scheme. The latter is, indeed,
so far as figures are concerned, ' fearfully and won-
derfully made.' The calm assurance with which,
no matter how far back in the dimmest antiquity,
exact dates even to a year are announced, is truly
noteworthy. The writer is verily a great deal too
sure. Says he :
We have found a clear and connected line of chronology
from creation to the beginning of the Christian era in all,
a period of four thousand one hundred and twenty-eight
years, which, together with eighteen hundred and seventy
years of the Christian era, make six thousand years from
creation to the year A.D. 1873.
He has to own, indeed, that his dates do not agree
with those of Archbishop Usher. That, of course,
is so much the worse for Usher who is dismissed
with the pious sentence, ' We rely on the Bible alone
believing that God is His own interpreter.' When
230 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
it also becomes too manifest to be denied that there
are numerical errors in ' God's Word,' then the
conclusion is :
Such a mistake could easily occur, but God has so guarded
His Word that the few trivial errors of copyists are made
very manifest, and the full harmony of His Word gives
ample foundation for faith.
The final summary except as to the Millennium,
which we consider later on is :
So then, whereas Usher dates A.D. i as the year 4005
from the creation of Adam, it really was, as we have shown,
the year 4129, according to the Bible record ; thus showing
the year A.D. 1872 to be the year of the world 6000, and
A.D. 1873 the commencement of the seventh thousand-year
period, the seventh millennium or thousand-year day of
earth's history.
It is all too true that to myriads of men and women
animated by sincere desire to know Christian truth,
these assertions, made in such strong confidence,
have been largely impressive. And most Russellites,
together with not a few in Evangelical Churches,
will neither welcome nor accept the true answer to all
this waste of words. But the plain truth must be
told, viz. that it is all delusion together. For there
never was, as an actual historical fact and a definite
date from which all following years might be reck-
oned, a sudden creation of an individual named Adam
and his wife named Eve. We know that to-day as
surely as we know that the sun does not go round the
earth, in spite of anything said in the Psalms. So
then, apart from the actual facts of European
history, which we shall presently see crush into
foolish fragments all the vaticinations of Millennial
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 231
Dawnism on sheer grounds of our indubitable
modern knowledge, the foundation-stone of the
whole Russellite chronology disappears as mere
religious imagination, and the whole structure based
upon it comes to naught save a confused heap of
words and figures. Not only does every educated
man to-day know this, but all our children, in all
the schools throughout the land which deserve
the name, are being taught it. So truly is Mr.
George Jackson warranted in saying :
It is, indeed, hardly less than cruel to allow young men and
women to grow up in the belief that these early chapters of
Genesis are literal history, and afterwards to send them to a
University. There are multitudes who have felt themselves
driven silently and sadly to surrender the faith of their
fathers, because that faith has always been presented to them
bound up with doctrines concerning man and the universe
which they now know to be false. If, therefore, the Church
is to have any Gospel for such as these ; if she is to keep the
sons she has, and recover those she has lost, she must learn
to restate her faith in terms that will not clash with that
wider knowledge into which the Author of all truth is to-day
leading men. 1
In simple but well-supported words, Dr. G. A. Smith
sums up the case which in itself alone puts an end
for all to whom truth is anything to the vagaries
of Russellism.
The Book of Genesis fixes the building of the Tower oi
Babel in 2564 B.C., or, if we take the Greek data, in 3166,
and asserts that till then the whole earth was of one lan-
guage and of one speech. Yet we have discovered inscrip-
tions in three languages of different families, Sumerian,
Babylonian, and Egyptian, which are all earlier than either
1 Studies in the Old Testament, pp. 97, 98.
232 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
of these dates. Clearly, then, on this ground of chronology
alone, we cannot regard the early chapters of Genesis as
actual history. 1
(9) Here, then, manifestly, our scrutiny of Mil-
lennial Dawnism might well come to an end. But
as error always dies hard, it will be best to go
on patiently to estimate other features which are
noticeable in this latest pseudo-Gospel.
The assumption that a universal flood ' completely
obliterated all evidence of the genius and handiwork
of the Father of our race ' is a necessity for Rus-
sellism, because of its doctrine of human nature,
which we must soon consider. But it is neverthe-
less utterly unwarranted. Mr. Jackson is again
entirely justified in saying :
That some terrible local cataclysm which once overtook
the original seat of the Semitic race lies behind our Old
Testament story is probably true. But the narrative as
it stands is plainly unhistorical. Probably no intelligent
person now believes in a universal deluge which submerged
the tops of the highest mountains over the whole earth.*
Yet that is what the words distinctly say ' All
the high mountains that were under the whole
heaven were covered.' So then, Russellism
together with some other such Bible theories must
simply take its choice. It must either give up once
and for all its foundation principle, viz. to take as
literal history the opening chapters of Genesis ;
or, it must reduce Christian faith to sheer blind
superstition by compelling it to accept what every
educated man, woman, and child living, now knows
to be not only untrue, but unthinkable.
1 Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the New Testament, p. 91.'
* Studies in the Old Testament, p. na.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 23$
(10) Again, the claim which Pastor Russell makes
to a superior and unique understanding of the Bible
is entirely unwarranted. That a remarkable mechan-
ical acquaintance with the Scriptures is shown in
these volumes, no one can deny. But it is altogether
the knowledge of the letter, used with measureless
ingenuity to prop up a theory which starts, as we
have just seen, from really false premisses. This
ingenuity is manifest not only in the irrelevant
quotations and misleading interpretations noted
above, but in the poor attempts at critical display
which are found on these pages. We will take only
one or two as specimens.
Rev. xx. 5. This verse is a very awkward one for
Russellism, because it says so distinctly ' The rest
of the dead lived not again until the thousand years
were finished.' But as Millennial Dawnism insists
that earth's dead are all being recreated gradually
during the whole Millennium from 1914 to 2914
it passes the ingenuity even of Pastor Russell to
square it with his theory. There is, therefore,
only one course open, viz. to get rid of it. So then,
this is appended :
In this verse, the words ' But the rest of the dead lived
not again until the thousand years were finished ' are
spurious. They are not found in the oldest and most
reliable Greek MSS., T. Sinaitic, Vatican Nos. 1209, 1160,
nor the Syriac MS. Many passages in modern copies are
additions which do not belong to the Bible. Since we are
commanded not to add to the Word of God, it is our duty
to repudiate such additions as soon as their spurious character
is established.
This is very plausible ; but, apart from the false
reference to Rev. xxii. 18 which says nothing
234 . WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
whatever about adding to ' the Word of God,' but
only refers to the preceding messages in Revelation
itself it is very far indeed from being critically
settled that chapter xx. 5 is an insertion. In
fact, all the best editions of the New Testament,
both in Greek and English, include it. In Greek,
Lachmann, Tichendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and
Hort, Nestle, Souter ; and in English, the Revised
Version, Dr. Weymouth, The Twentieth Century
New Testament, and Dr. Moffatt. So that it simply
comes to the opinion of Pastor Russell against the
consensus of modern scholarship. And that opinion,
apart from its critical worthlessness, fully explained
by the necessity of his peculiar doctrine.
Again, as to Ps. viii. :
The perfection of man as created is expressed in Ps. viii.
5 ' Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour.' Heb.
ii. 7 is a quotation from Ps. viii. 5, and a critical comparison
of the Hebrew and Greek texts can leave no doubt as to the
import. The idea clearly expressed is a little lower in
degree than angels.
' No doubt as to the import ' is true, but unfortun-
ately for Pastor Russell that import is quite contra-
dictory to his assumption. In the first place, no
reference whatever is here made to the creation as
a definite bygone event. Secondly, nothing what-
ever is here said or implied as to ' perfection.'
Thirdly, ' a critical comparison shows that the
quotation in Heb. ii. 7 is taken not from the Hebrew
at all, but from the Septuagint. Fourthly, that
the Hebrew words are wrongly rendered in our
' Authorized Version,' and mean only that which
now appears in the Revised ' Thou hast made him
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '? 235
but little lower than God.' Concerning this verse
the well-known and rightly esteemed commentary
of Jennings and Lowe remarks :
There can be no doubt that the only admissible rendering
of the Hebrew is, ' Thou hast made him little less than
divine.' The lesson is the dignity of human nature as
compared with the rest of creation. But it has nothing
whatever to do with ' Adamic perfection before the Fall.'
I Pet. Hi. 18, 19, 20, are confessedly difficult verses
to interpret. But whether we accept the suggestion
of Drs. Rendel Harris and Moffatt, and read, ' It
was in the spirit that Enoch also went and preached
to the imprisoned spirits/ or not, it is certain that
the attempted exegesis of Pastor Russell is false.
It exhibits, indeed, a grammatical blunder which
would bring serious trouble to any boy in a Greek
class at school. ' He was put to death in the flesh,
but made alive in the spirit,' says the Epistle. But
the Russellite comment is :
In this passage the words ' in the ' and ' by the ' are
arbitrarily supplied by the translators, and are misleading.
The Greek reads simply ' put to death flesh, quickened
spirit.'
So that to this superior critic there is no difference
at all between the nominative case in Greek and the
dative. It is this latter which is found here, in
both words, beyond question. Hence his pseudo-
correction is merely an exhibition of his own igno-
rance. But it is nothing to Russellism to ride rough-
shod over grammar, if the exigencies of Millennial
Dawnism require it.
One other illustration of this last remark must
suffice. I Cor. xv. 22 is rightly rendered in our
236 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
English versions, ' As in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive.' But this would not
suit Russellism ; hence
the declaration of our common version Bible that '.As in
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,'
is manifestly a mistranslation. Standing in that form it is
in conflict with other Scriptures which distinctly limit the
number of those who shall be made alive through Christ.
The mistranslation favours the doctrine of universal salva-
tion. Other Scriptures, however, make plain that only
those will enter into life who do the will of the Father which
is in heaven.
So, in order to support the peculiar tenets of
Millennial Dawnism, it must be rendered, ' As all in
Adam die, even so all in Christ shall be made alive.'
But any honest reader of his Greek Testament
can see not only that our common version is right,
but that here Russellism first ignores the whole
context which is not dealing with salvation at all,
but only with resurrection, quite a different matter ;
and then, to suit its own convenience, has the
impertinence to invert the order of Paul's plain
words, so making him again say something quite
different from what he intended.
(n) The special attempts at exposition which
Russellism exhibits are of no more account than his
critical efforts. Considerations of space forbid more
than brief illustration. Whether the story of Dives
and Lazarus be taken as a parable, like that of the
unjust steward, or, as some insist, as a literal
history, there is nothing to recommend Pastor
Russe'l's exposition except the requirements of
Millennial Dawnism. The most natural interpre-
tation is surely that which emanates from the
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 237
context, and continues the lesson of the unrighteous
steward. And if allegorical interpretations are to
be heeded, at least they must come within the limits
of common sense. But what does Russellism teach ?
That
The rich man symbolizes the Jewish nation. His clothing
of purple represents royalty. The fine linen symbolically
represents righteousness. The sumptuous fare represents
the gracious promises of God through the law and the
prophets to the Jews. Lazarus symbolizes the Gentiles
who were outside the Jewish covenant. The dogs which
licked his sores represent Gentiles in general. The rich
man, the Jewish nation, took sick, and the dying process
began from the time of our Lord's crucifixion. The death
of the nation occurred in A.D. 70. The death of the beggar
occurred three years and a half after the Cross, at the end of
Israel's specified seventy years of special favour. Lazarus,
accepted to Abraham's bosom, means that all of that class
outcast from the Jewish nation, but hungering for the crumbs
of divine favour, were adopted as Abraham's seed or chil-
dren of his bosom he typifying God. How has this rich
man (Israel), dead as a nation but alive as a people, appealed
to Father Abraham to have Lazarus cool his tongue with
a drop of water ? It came when the Jews of this country
in a general petition requested the President of the United
States to co-operate with other Christian nations and
intercede on behalf of their members in Russia that they
might have more liberty and less persecution.
If we look for the rich man's five brethren, we find them.
There were twelve tribes of Israel, but the rich man was
composed mainly of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. Now,
if the two tribes were represented in the one man, the other
ten tribes would be properly enough represented in his
five brethren. The suggestion of the parable is that nothing
would be done for them.
Here, dear friends, we have a consistent interpretation of
this parable, and it relieves our minds greatly.
So it does ours. For when we hear of millions of
people being ' taken up ' with Russellism, we cannot
238 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
but wonder at first whether there must not be some-
thing in it. But from such performances as this we
are driven to Carlyle's estimate of the people of these
realms. For we not only find that there is something
in Russellism, but that it is a something which
makes us feel profoundest pity for those who are led
away by such childish delusions.
It will only be necessary to mention, without
detail, other two similar instances. Concerning
the parable of the ten virgins we are told :
One of our Lord's parables was given expressly to illus-
trate this period of waiting, i.e. from the .disappointment
of 1844 to the realizations at the end of the ' 1,335 days '
the fulfilment of which came exactly in October, 1874.
Concerning the four pages in which the particulars
of this utterly gratuitous assumption are set out,
it is mild criticism to say that they are but fit for
waste paper. The fact that ' millions of copies of
Zion's Watch Tower ' have been circulated is but
another instance of the fulfilment of another
prediction, timeless, indeed, but true, concerning
the people who ' will not endure sound doctrine,
but will turn away their ears from the truth and
turn aside to fables.'
Mention has been made above of the way in which
Russellism appeals to the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh,
as not only a Bible in stone, but as the complete
corroboration, according to the divine plan, of
Pastor Russell's interpretation of the Bible. It
would be easy enough to go seriatim through Study
X. in vol. iii., which is given up to this theme, and
show its preposterousness ; but it would be sheer
waste of time, in spite of Professor Piazzi Smyth
and Mr. Robert Menzies,
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 239
Call to mind that the Scriptures showed us that the
full end of Gentile power in the world and of the time of
trouble which brings its overthrow will follow the end of
A.D. 1914, and that some time before that date the last
members of the Church of Christ will have been ' changed,'
glorified.
If, then, the Great Pyramid does so exactly
corroborate that, as is here made out, all one can say
is so much the worse for the Pyramid. For we shall
see in a moment what an utter delusion this pre-
diction has proved to be. Finally, if the same
estimate of this strange structure does indeed
demonstrate the following, it sufficiently condemns
itself. For there is no more warrant in the Bible
than in science or philosophy, for such false imag-
ination. It is sheer baseless pietistic delusion.
So then, the relation of the location of the ' Pit ' to the
axis, if it have any significance in connexion with the arrange-
ments of the Pyramid above it, would seem to indicate
that the second death endless, hopeless destruction will
be the penalty, not only of the wilful sinfulness of men who
during the Millennial age of blessed opportunity will refuse
to go on to human perfection, but also of any of those
sanctified during the Gospel age who wilfully reject Christ's
proffered and previously accepted robe of imputed righteous-
II. As TO GOD
As this is not a treatise on theism or theology,
it must suffice simply to state those conceptions
of Russellism, in regard to the main elements of
Christian faith, which are, from the standpoint
already indicated, as misleading for ordinary people
as they are false. True evangelical doctrine, as
RUSSELLISM 6
240 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
we have seen, puts aside all notions of verbal
inspiration. None the less, but all the more, it
regards the Bible as the truest and most precious
of all religious records, embodying reliably the
progressive revelation of God to humanity through
the special training of the Jewish nation, and cul-
minating in all^that Christ was and taught and did.
But although the Christian belief in the eternal
and universal Fatherhood of God comes through
Christ alone, it neither rests upon a few picked
passages, nor is it the only truth concerning God
conveyed by the New Testament. Here it is enough
to recall the fact that, with the exception only
of Socinians formerly, and of Unitarians in modern
times, the Christian belief through all the ages, as in
all the churches at the present time, is in the Triune
God. How the thought of God developed in the
early Church as the whole revelation of Jesus grew
upon them, with all that the doctrines of the Holy
Trinity involves, is matter for another occasion.
There are plenty of rational and sober treatises to
justify and expound it. For a brief statement
of it nothing better can be found than the section*
given to this theme in Dr. W. N. Clarke's volume
on The Christian Doctrine of God, from which we
need now quote no more than these few words :
If we could set forth all that the historic doctrine of
the Triunity attributes to the Father, we should be setting
forth all that is conceived to be true of God, and the doctrine
simply affirms that His fullness is developed, as it were,
or brought into relations and modes of action in the Son
and the Spirit. . . Despite its mysteriousness this doctrine
has made God seem more intelligible to men, and has helped
pp. 227-248.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM'? 241
to bring Him nearer to the hearts of His children. By
its declaration of the real entrance of God into humanity,
and the taking of manhood up into God, it has placed a
crown of glory upon human nature, and has helped in
giving practical effect to the dignity and freedom of man.
This is its glory, that it has stood as a foundation that
sustained the faith of ages, and supported a worthy life. 1
This whole doctrine, however, as indicated above,
Russellism dismisses with a scornful wave of the
hand and a contemptuous epithet. It is merely
' Trinitarian nonsense.' With that disdainful dis-
missal, of course, goes also any thought of the Holy
Spirit in the usual Christian way. With unmea-
sured assurance it is declared that
There is absolutely no ground whatever for thinking 'of
or speaking of the Holy Spirit as another God, distinct in
personality from the Father and the Son.
This is, indeed, to speak in all the confidence of
ignorance if the writer does not know better than
thus to talk of ' another God.' If he has any
acquaintance at all with the teaching he denounces,
then his indictment is hypocritical. For, apart
from the Christian treatise just recommended, there
is overwhelming testimony that the ordinary Chris-
tian faith does not regard the Holy Spirit as ' another
God.' Even the old formula ' three persons in one
God,' however inadequate as to the term ' persons,'
is perfectly plain in its avowal that the doctrine of
the Trinity does not inculcate Tritheism. All that
we are here, however, concerned to show unmis-
takably is that Russellism is Unitarianism. The
nobility of many Unitarians no one calls in question.
'pp. 235, 239.
WHV NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
Only it is altogether necessary that those who follow
Millennial Dawnism should know definitely what
they are doing. This will be the more definitely
emphasized when we go on to consider what Rus-
selism teaches concerning the person of Jesus Christ.
III. As TO JESUS CHRIST
There has probably been more discussion as <to
the person of Jesus than any other theme in the
whole realm of religion. The conceptions of Rus-
selism have certainly the merit of originality, in
that no other system of Christian doctrine has
ever formulated such before. In estimating them
it is not necessary that we should become encyclo-
paedias of theology. The true evangelicalism for
which we here speak is quite as loyal to New Testa-
ment teachings as any Millennial Dawnist claims to
be. On all rational principles, indeed, the dismissal
of the methods of Russellism is the only way to any
appreciation of or regard for the whole Bible, in the
days that are before us. Neither the true doctrine
of the person of Christ, nor any other essential
element of Christianity, can be based upon a few
picked texts wrenched from their context and
made to fit into a certain theory, regardless of all
to the contrary which a fair and full induction would
involve. The general evangelical belief in the person
and work of Christ is based upon such an induction.
It is the result of the combined testimony of Gospels
and Epistles, viewed impartially in the unsparing
light of our latest knowledge through history and
criticism where ' criticism ' only means careful
scrutiny and honest acknowledgement of facts.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 243
It is on such firm ground that we stand, when we
affirm that whatever else the Russellite notions
concerning Christ may be, they are not what the
New Testament teaches.
We have already specified these notions ; it only
remains to point out that, taken one by one, they
are altogether contrary to what Jesus Himself
taught, and His Apostles developed.
(i). The identification of ' Michael ' in Dan. xii. i
with Christ is entirely fictitious and unwarranted
mere Russellite imagination. ' At that time ' in
that verse has no reference whatever to any Millen-
nial dawn ; but naturally and plainly, as Dean
Farrar has pointed out, to ' the days about the
year 153 B.C. of that final effort of Antiochus
against the holy people which ended in his miserable
death.' But to go further, as Russellism does,
and declare that Jesus was none other than the
incarnation of the Archangel Michael, is even more
revolting than false. Equally false is the assertion
that ' in obedience to the will of God Michael
gave up his spirit being, and was born of the Virgin
Mary as a human being Jesus Christ/ * It is pure
assumption on the part of Russellism, only apparently
justified by ignoring all witness to the contrary
in the Gospels, that Jesus in His earthly life was
merely human, and precisely like Adam was before
he fell ; that He was only begotten a ' new creature '
at thirty years of age, at His baptism ; that
when He died, like all other mortals who die, He
became absolutely extinct His whole being was
utterly destroyed ; that what the Gospels speak of
1 See Dr. Haldeman's summary for an impressive statement of the
whole case, in brief (C. Cook, New York).
244 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '?
as His resurrection was really His re-creation this
we shall have to notice more fully in a moment ;
that this re-creation had nothing whatever to do with
His human nature, but made Him to be for ever-
more an invisible spirit being ; that then for the
first time He became partaker of the divine nature ;
that the body and clothes in which He appeared to
the disciples were specially created for the occasion
each time ; that as an invisible spirit He came again
the second time in 1874, the second Adam, the Father
of mankind, during the Millennial age. All this is
but the spurious concoction of Pastor Russell ;
and no one item of it will bear honest scrutiny in the
fair and full light of New Testament teaching. Until
the Gospels and Epistles are ruled out of court as
witnesses, the Christ of Millennial Dawnism is in
unthinkable contradiction to their whole testimony.
IV. As TO MAN, AND HUMAN NATURE
We have seen how the whole scheme of Russellism
falls to pieces with the inevitable removal of its
main premiss, viz. the taking as literal history and
exact science of the first three chapters of Genesis.
But it is necessary in the interests of Christian truth
to set its teaching in clear light as to human nature,
so that its falsities may become as apparent as they
ought to be. From its estimate of the opening
chapters of Genesis, Millennial Dawnism insists
upon the following items in regard to humanity.
Seeing that every one of these specific assertions is
false, it is the more necessary to state them unequi-
vocally.
(i.) That Adam and Eve were created suddenly,
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 245
exactly six thousand and forty-four years ago, in a
definitely local Garden of Eden. For man, a corpse
was first made, and then vivified ; for woman, a
literal rib was taken out of sleeping Adam, first
fashioned into a lifeless body, and then also vivified.
(ii.) That as a result of such creation both of
them were absolutely perfect, because Genesis
reports that ' God saw everything that He had
made, and behold it was very good.' And because
' the Scriptures declare, " His work is perfect."
(iii.) That though he was absolutely perfect in all
respects, he was only mortal, and had to live by
eating of the trees of the garden. Also he fell by
eating of a tree of knowledge which he had been
forbidden to touch.
(iv.) That the penaJty for eating of that tree was
literal, physical death ; enforced by driving them
out of the garden where was a tree of life, to eat of
which would have made them immortal.
(v.) That Adam and Eve began to die physically
from that day, and it took Adam nine hundred and
thirty years to die ; no mention is made of Eve.
(vi.) That because of Adam's sin,
viewing man as a whole, mentally, morally, and physically,
as the Scriptures do, we can see that the curse, the sentence
of death, is in operation against every part and element
of his being. Looking about us throughout the world,
we find corroboration of this on every hand. All are
blemished in all respects ; all are hopelessly lost under this
curse as it is written, ' I was shapen in iniquity, and in
sin did my mother conceive me.'
This, it may be noted, is another fair specimen of
the Russellite treatment of Scripture in general.
That is to say, assuming that the fifty-first Psalm
246 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
was composed by David under the special circum-
stances alleged, this . piteous wail of an adulterer
and murderer is wrenched out of its context, and
so made to be a universal indictment of human
nature which does not for a moment enter into
the thought of the Psalm that the purest, sweetest,
holiest function of humanity, viz. motherhood, is
denounced as iniquity. And then we are called
upon to wonder, in face of a wholesale slander like
this, that thoughtful men and women do not accept
and revere and love the Bible. Are they likely to,
so long as such falsities prevail ?
(vii.) But more.
This death-curse rests upon us from the moment of
birth, and hence demonstrates the fact that it is not the
result of our individual sins, but of inherited sins a curse
or blight which has reached us from Father Adam by
heredity.
So then, although there really was no Father
Adam at all, for the story is allegory, not history 1 ;
although the Old Testament never once refers to
the Fall ; although Jesus never once made any
reference to it whilst He had much to say about
' individual sins ' ; although ' inherited sin ' is
utterly impossible and unthinkable ; although God
is said to be a loving Father ; in spite of all this
we are to proclaim to the world that every human
child is born under a death-curse because his pri-
maeval ancestor partook of a tree of knowledge the
very thing which all our children are now urged
1 The very names Adam and Eve speak for themselves to this effect,
Adam being closely related to the Hebrew Adamah = the ground ;
and Eve to Chavvab = life
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM '? 247
to do every day of their school life. This miserable
travesty may be Russellism, but, thank God, it is
not Christianity.
(viii.) Nor is Christianity committed to the further
libel that human nature, because of Adam, is
totally depraved. This dreadful notion used to
be supported, after the true Russellite fashion of
treating the Bible, by quoting Isa. i. 6 utterly
regardless of the plain avowal of the opening words
of that chapter that it was a ' vision concerning
Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah to
Hezekiah.' It is pitiful to think how in days gone
by these two, ' original sin ' and ' total depravity/
have been presented to the world of mankind as
the very starting-point of the Gospel in spite of
the plain truth which every man at once thoughtful
and honest must see, viz. that ' original ' sin is
unthinkable, that heredity works just as fully for
good as for evil. What Russellism seeks to do is
to rivet these never-God-intended fetters afresh
upon the conscience of humanity. Happily, it
will not succeed, for the Church has learned better,
and is now teaching the world more truly wherein
the sinfulness of sin consists, and how, in the
natural results of heredity, to overcome the evil
with the good that Jesus brings us.
(ix.) Another falsity of Millennial Dawnism
relates to human mortality. There are abundant
reasons, though they cannot be here fully exhibited,
for pronouncing its doctrine of human nature trebly
untrue. We know well that physical death was
in the world long before any moral evil had come to
pass. We know from the Bible itself and especially
from the doctrine of Jesus, as also of Paul and John
248 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
that physical death is not either the intended or the
actual significance of the words, ' Thou shalt surely
die/ in the Genesis representation. We know well
that the Bible does not countenance the Russellite
dogma that human death means utter extinction.
Nor does either science or philosophy compel us
to think so. For verbal confusion, as well as for
flat self-contradiction, the following morsel of Rus-
sellism would be hard to beat :
Mankind received the spirit of life from God, the fountain
of life, through Father Adam. Adam forfeited his right
to the power or spirit of life by disobedience, and gradually
relinquished his hold upon it dying slowly for nine hundred
and thirty years. Then the body returned to the dust as
it was before creation, and the spirit of life, the privilege
of living, the power or permission of living, returned to God
who gave that privilege of power (Eccles. xii. 7). Nothing
in this text implies that the spirit of life wings its way back
to God, as some would represent. For the spirit of life
is not an intelligence nor a person, but merely a power or
privilege which has been forfeited, and hence reverts to the
original giver of that privilege.
Here, apart from the absurdity of regarding the
entity of personal life as a ' privilege ' to return to a
contingent giver, we are solemnly assured that this
' privilege ' does not ' wing its way back,' but it
' returns ' or ' reverts.' The distinction is worthy
of Russell ism.
(x.) But that is not all. The Millennial doctrine
here is that there is to be at the Millennium that
is, there was in 1914 a ' first resurrection ' of all
the faithful Russellites to participate in veritable
immortality, and be as Christ is. But another
' resurrection ' is to begin now or rather began in
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 249
1914 and go steadily on until 2914, of all the
50,000,000,000 human beings who have, according
to Pastor Russell's calculations, already lived here
and died. But ordinary minds must certainly pause
at this point. If death be, as we are again and again
assured, litter extinction, so that after death there
is nothing left, how on any lines of common sense,
let alone science or theology, can nothing rise again ?
The resurrection of nothing surely must be nothing.
But the resurrection of nothing into something is a
trifling miracle to Russellism. Just as, to suit its
convenience, the Apostolic ' restoration of all things '
in Acts iii. 21 is transformed into the ' restitution
of all things to the exact condition in which Adam
was before he fell,' so here, the New Testament
term ' resurrection,' whether applied to Christ or
to humanity, is claimed to be a re-creation of all
the personalities of the dead. Though even that
is manifestly untrue. For if these personalities
have veritably been nothing, it is not a case of
re-creation at all. It is simply that, to suit the
exigencies of Russellism, we are called upon to
think of God as creating 50,000,000,000 new per-
sonalities, in order that they may enter upon the
rewards or punishments due to personalities of
that number, with whom they had really nothing
whatever to do. This notion may be safely left
without comment, though we will presently consider
what Russellism proposes to do with the new per-
sonalities which have been thus created. We may
simply say here, by anticipation, that if the Bible
is to be our guide, it knows nothing either of the
extinction of mortals at death, or of the annihilation
of the impenitent after death. Conditionalism,
250 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
equally with Universalism, has been fairly tried in
the balances of honest and scholarly exegesis, and
found wanting.
V. CHRIST'S ATONEMENT
In so sacred and delicate a matter as the true
significance of the death of Jesus upon Calvary, on
which whole libraries rather than many volumes have
been written, it might easily have been forgiven if
Russellism had reverently and modestly suggested
some special conceptions of its own. But there are
limits even to the liberty which Christian free- thought
allows. At least the facts alleged should be true,
and the inferences should not contradict either
reason or Scripture. Unfortunately, Russellism
is equally false in its representations of fact and
irrational as well as unscriptural in its inferences.
It must, however, be said in passing, < that in
order to appreciate these, its manifest errors,
we are by no means driven to endorse all that is
said by some of its opponents. When, for instance,
an American Pastor, after seeking to harrow human
feeling to the utmost by attempting to describe the
physical agonies of crucifixion, adds the following,
one has to realize painfully for the thousandth
time how much need Christianity has to cry, ' Save
me from my friends ! ' In defence of the ' orthodox '
theory of the Atonement we are told :
It was not the smiting of man but the smiting of God that
agonized Him. God looked upon Him, and saw Him
as the concrete representative of the sin of the world, and
smote Him as such. He smote not with the hammer and
nails. He smote with that blow of blows the hiding of
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 25!
His face. He turned His back upon Him. He forsook
Him utterly. Out of the whelming depths of that separation
came the cry of the forsaken. The value of the agony was
infinite. It was the equivalent for infinite punishment
of sin, and by so much demonstrates that the punishment
for sin must be infinite, that the sinner who gets underneath
the punishment of sin will be underneath it for ever. *
Such words may be sincerely meant, but they may
well make many converts for Russellism, and many
more for Agnosticism. Concerning such deliver-
ances in the name of Christianity we shall wisely
echo the deliberate words of the late Archbishop
Magee concerning the doctrine of the creeds of the
Church Catholic ' They teach an Atonement, but
theory of Atonement, God be praised, they give us
none.'
But Millennial Dawnism has no hesitation in
giving us one. In this, as in all its dogmas, it
speaks as an oracle divine.
Our Redeemer purchased the spirit of life-rights which
Father Adam had forfeited for himself 'and all his family.
The sacrifice which Christ gave on behalf of all was for
original sin, Adamic sin and its hereditary weakness in
us, Adam's children. Our Lord gave no ransom price for
any wilful sin on our part, and hence if we sin wilfully
there is no remaining portion of the original merit to apply
on account of our wilful transgressions. We should be
obliged to pay the penalty of our wilful sins.
There is no need to quote more. Whether this kind
of doctrine is likely to draw the men of this age to
believe in and turn to the love of God in the Gospel
of Jesus, may be sorrowfully left to answer itself.
1 Millennial Dawnism the Blasphemous Religion, by Dr. I. M. Halde-
man (C. Cook, New York), pp. 15, 16.
252 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
But this remains, that whatever other theory of the
Atonement may be more or less true, this is altogether
false. There is, alike in the teaching of Jesus and
the Apostles, no ' purchase ' of life-rights ; no
sacrifice for original sin. There is no sin anywhere
which is not ' wilful ' ; so that if Christ's self-sacri-
fice has nothing to do with that, then there is no
relation at all between human sinfulness and the
tragedy of Calvary. The more extended doctrine
of Russellism that Jesus died in order to buy back
the human race from physical death, so that all
men might be by restitution enabled to have another
chance of immortality, is but part of the weird
nightmare of Millennial Dawnism, and nothing
more.
VI. WHAT DOES SALVATION MEAN ?
The general statement of the New Testament,
so far as it can be put into one word, is that ' God
sent not His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be
saved.' What is this salvation of the world ?
In spite of all the doctrinal differences which exist
between the churches, there can be no doubt that
the real consensus of their answer to this question
to-day would be that ' Salvation ' means, in Christian
language, the being saved from sin, with all its
consequences both now and hereafter, into loving
and obedient fellowship with the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, as also into all those human
relationships which He approves. That remains as the
ideal, whatever means of bringing it to pass may be
deemed truest and best. How, then, does Millennial
WHY NOT 'RUSSELLISM'? 253
Dawnism stand when tested by such a standard ? In
spite of all the multitude of words throughout these
three thousand pages, it is difficult indeed to say.
There are many references to being ' faithful to
the Lord ' and to the ' giving up of the will in
self-sacrifice ' as being the ' elect ' ; also many in-
dictments of social and national evils, all of which
are good in their place. But concerning that per-
sonal experience which the New Testament speaks
of as ' having passed from death unto life/ and which
it everywhere represents as the ' eternal life '
the very pith and marrow of the Gospel promise,
the soul and substance of that character transfor-
mation which it calls ' holiness ' Russellism has next
to nothing to say. ' Death/ to it, is simply and
always nothing but the utter cessation of physical
existence. ' Eternal life ' is to it nothing more than
a synonym for everlasting existence. Salvation is
represented as either the becoming now one of the
elect, the ' little flock ' who, when the Millennium
comes, are to rule the world in righteousness with
Christ, and then to live for ever ; or else it consists
in giving the chance of a prolonged existence on this
planet to millions of newly created personalities
who during the Millennium are to have new bodies
and a fresh trial. What salvation, therefore,
means now is that there has been going on a process
of selection of course, around Pastor Russell
and his co-workers as the chief priests, for according
to his avowals all others have been in error which
has resulted in a ' little flock ' who are now with
Christ, regenerating human society until 2914.
It is impossible without vast space to note one
by one all the false and foolish fantasies which
254 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
flow like an unceasing river of words from the pens
of the writers of these volumes, especially for the
subject of this moment the last volume, entitled
The New Creation. But so far as it can be fairly
and briefly expressed in his own words, we have it
thus. For four thousand years men were left to
death and their own devices, but ' the Gospel age '
began when Jesus came at first, or in A.D. 30.
It would not even then have been due time, except for
the divine purpose to call and gather and polish and make
ready the elect Church to share with the Redeemer in the great
Millennial work of blessing the world. . . . God, foreseeing
that it would require this entire Gospel age for this election,
sent His Son for the redemptive work just long enough in
advance to accomplish it. None can be called while still
under condemnation on account of Adam's sin. True, our
Lord said to the Pharisees ' I am not come to call the
righteous but sinners to repentance.' But we are to recog-
nize a great difference between calling men to repentance,
and calling them to the high calling of the divine nature
and joint heirship with Christ. No sinners are called
to this ; hence it is that we, being by nature ' children of
wrath,' all require first to be justified freely by the precious
blood of Christ. The close of this call or ' day of salvation '
or acceptable time will come no less certainly than it began.
A definite positive number were ordained of God to con-
stitute the New Creation, and so soon as that number shall
be completed, the work of this Gospel age will be finished.
The Scriptures hold out the thought that for this limited
elect number of the Royal Priesthood a crown apiece has
been provided ; and that as each accepts the Lord's call and
makes his consecration under it, one of the crowns is set
apart for him. To our understanding the general call to
this joint heirship with our Redeemer as members of the
New Creation of God, ceased in 1881.
One cannot but get nauseated with page after page
of this kind of talk ; but it is necessary to speak
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM \? 255
plainly concerning it for the sake of truth and
humanity, no less than of the Christian faith. The
assumption is that all who accept Russellism, and,
according to its ideals, consecrate themselves, do
now constitute this Royal Priesthood, and show
all the signs of superior character which may reason-
ably be expected therefrom. Then, is this true as
a matter of fact? Professor Seeley speaks in his
Ecce Homo of the true type of Christian character
as issuing in a ' higher-toned goodness ' or holiness
a character of such elevation that his mere presence has
shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been
felt at times like the presence of God Himself.
Is this, then, the manifest hall-mark of Millennial
Dawnism ? It is difficult to justify a general con-
demnation, but at least this must be said, that no
such special traits of character have earned the
notice of either Church or world, in regard to the
followers of Pastor Russell. Nor certainly, with
the facts already mentioned before us, unanswered
and unanswerable, can we recognize such superiority
in the leader himself. Dr. Torrey, indeed, who is
fairly well known as an earnest evangelist, has
publicly declared :
We have never known one single person who was thor-
oughly surrendered to God and an earnest student of the
Word who has been led astray by Russellism. We have
known many Russellites ; we have never known one who
was a well-balanced Christian. Every leader among them
that we have known (and we have known not a few) has
been crooked in his personal morals, in his business, or
in his home life. This is not to be wondered at when the
leader's business and domestic record is known.
RU3SBU.I3M 7
256 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
All through these volumes there runs an acid stream
of invective against all ordinary Christian churches,
both ancient and modern. As above mentioned,
special condemnation is poured out upon Christen-
dom in general, which is said to be definitely the
intended Babylon of the Apocalypse. But there is
no more warrant in fact than in Scripture for such
identification ; nor for the unmeasured indictment
brought against all forms of Christianity as being
blind leaders of the blind. No, nor for the attempt
to pour scorn upon Christian Foreign Missions in
general by reason of an alleged tour of investigation,
extending over one hundred and sixteen days, in
1911. It is beyond our scope to investigate here the
report connected with this tour, but it has been done
by Mr. C. Cook with sufficient thoroughness to show
the nature of such a pretentious performance. 1 This
careful and thorough critic seems to be quite war-
ranted in his summary that
If the report were to be read only by thoughtful persons,
it would serve no other end than to bring disdain upon the
men whose names are signed to it. Unfortunately, Russell
has made sure that it shall be read by millions of people,
most of whom know little about geography, history, or
missions.
VII.- As TO THE MILLENNIUM
It is impossible, however, to separate the Russellite
conception of salvation from its Millennial scheme.
With a brief but plain and careful summary of this
we will, therefore, close our present scrutiny.
We have already seen that there is not only no
1 See All About One Russell, C. Cook, Nassau Street, New York.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 257
warrant in science or in history for taking the early
chapters of the Bible as literal history and their
figures as mathematically exact, but that all we
know now to be true in science and history is opposed
to our doing so. Seeing, therefore, that the whole
complex scheme of Russellism as regards its Millennial
doctrines ultimately depends upon such mathematical
exactness in the Hebrew records, the whole structure
of Russellism falls to pieces. It is seen to be nothing
more than fantastic religious imagination whether
more or less sincere resting on an entire delusion.
Its assumptions being quite untrustworthy, there is
no single instance in which its interpretations of the
past, or its predictions for the future, have found
verification in fact. The whole conglomeration of
these six volumes does but exhibit as flimsy and
unjustifiable a web of religious phantasy equally
untrue and misleading as Mrs. Eddy's pretentious
work above mentioned does in regard to science
and philosophy. The alleged ' key/ in both cases
alike, no more unlocks the sacred mysteries of
Holy Writ than the sword of Alexander untied the
Gordian knot. The following is a fair specimen
of the method adopted, and its results. This is
supposed to be an exposition of Christ's words
in Matt. xxiv. 32, 35 ' Now learn a parable of the
fig-tree. . . . This generation shall not pass away
until all this happens.'
A generation might be reckoned as equivalent to a century
(practically the present limit) or one hundred and twenty
years, Moses' life-time and the Scripture limit (Gen. vi.
3). Reckoning a hundred years from 1780, the date
of the first sign, the limit would reach to 1880 ; and to our
understanding every item predicted had begun to be
258 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
fulfilled at that date the harvest or gathering time begin-
ning October, 1874 ; the organization of the Kingdom ;
the taking by our Lord of His great power as the King in
April, 1878 ; and the time of trouble or day of wrath which
began October, 1874, and will end October, 1914 ; and the
sprouting of the fig-tree.
Those who choose might without inconsistency say that
the century or generation might as properly reckon from
the last sign, the falling of the stars, as from the first, the
darkening of the sun and moon, and a century beginning
1833 would be still far from run out. Many are living
who witnessed the star-falling sign.
Unfortunately for this brilliant exegesis there was
another ' star-falling sign ' in 1866, which myriads
in this country witnessed with intensest interest.
So that if 1833 is ruled out, Russellism can still run
for another port of refuge to 1866 and the century
following. But all such double-shuffles will not
avail to save the credit of Millennial Dawnism,
for throughout these volumes, again and again, the
whole scheme is definitely committed to a series
of events which were predictions at the time they
were first printed, but now are proved delusions.
To state the case with final succinctness, we will
begin with what is declared to be the exact six-
thousandth year from the creation of Adam and Eve,
viz. 1872. Concerning this it is only required to say,
however gently, with blunt plainness, that it is a pure
figment of Pastor Russell's imagination without any
sober warrant whatever. Simply to affirm that
The Bible, our God-provided history of the first three
thousand years, is the only work in the world which, begin-
ning with Adam, the first man mentioned in history,
furnishes us a clear and connected history down to a period
where secular history is well authenticated,
is but to set up a pious tradition against that modern
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 259
knowledge which can no more be dismissed as false
than to-day's astronomy can be put away for that of
the early Christians. It is also to degrade the Bible
from a true and valid record of God's progressive
revelation of Himself to men, into a mere bewildering
collection of arithmetical puzzles. No schoolmaster
living has the right or duty to tell his young pupils
to-day that it is just six thousand and forty-four
years since Adam and Eve were suddenly created,
absolutely perfect beings, in the Garden of Eden.
And what the children may not learn, grown people
ought not to be continually saying. We come next
to 1874, the great year of all years for Millennial
Dawnism. There is no need for repeated quotation.
All through these volumes it is reiterated that Christ
did definitely come for the second time in that year.
, Then also began the times of ' restitution,' so that
since October, 1874, we have entered upon the
great antitypical Jubilee period ; which is to last
until 2875. Jesus Himself has been invisibly present
in the world ever since. So then, before 1874
there was no presence of Christ with His Church
in any way or degree. Has, then, anything happened
in Christendom to signify so great difference as the
presence or absence of the living Christ with His
Church on earth? Nothing whatever. The dilemma,
therefore, faces us, either Christ's presence on earth
with His people makes no difference at all ; or Rus-
sellism is false. The plain truth being, of course,
that there is no valid ground whatever for such a'
Russellite assertion.
Let us pass on to 1878. In this year, according
to Millennial Dawnism, four definite events took
place, (i.) It marked the date at which ' the dead
260 WHY NOT 'RUSSELLISM'?
in Christ ' did ' rise first.' So then, in that year all
the Apostles and faithful saints of the entire age
who had, according to Russellism, long been extinct
utterly were created afresh, glorified, and put in
possession of spiritual bodies, i.e. changed into
spirit beings like their Lord, (ii.) The time of
Israel's rejection, which ' we know even to the
very day,' ended, and they entered once more
into divine favour, (iii.) All nominal church systems
i.e. all except Russellism were ' spewed out,'
and ceased to be in any degree recognized by God.
(iv.) The end of the Gospel age began by the pre-
paration of woes for all Christendom. Now what
is the truth in regard to all these items ? This,
that they are all pure fictions, and deserve no
notice from any man of Christian faith and sense.
In 1881 the time of special favour to the Gentiles
closed ; Babylon, i.e. Christendom, began to fall ;
days of vengeance began, and ' a time of trouble
such as was not since there was a nation ' commenced.
Have there been any facts to confirm these ' predic-
tions ' ? None whatever ; save to the Russellite mind.
Between 1910 and 1912 there were to be serious
times of trouble, culminating with 1914, which was
to be the great year in which in October the
Lord would set up His kingdom in power. What
happened in 1914 we are not likely to forget. And
some Russellites may be found hardy enough to
claim that the time of trouble which then began
confirmed their predictions. But what are the
facts? There is no need to repeat what we have
already so plainly quoted from these volumes in
this regard, beyond the reminder that the statements
are unmistakable. It was
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 261
an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms
of this world and the full establishment of the kingdom of
God will be accomplished at the end of A.D. 1914.
The battle of the great day of God will end in 1914 with
the complete overthrow of earth's present rulership.
The Gentile kingdoms will be ground to powder, and utterly
removed, no place being found for them, in 1914. Babylon
Christendom will be utterly overthrown and her influence
over the world broken.
In 1914 the Gentiles will all be overturned and Christ's
kingdom fully established.
Surely we need no more. These declarations are
unmistakable, and no shuffle of words can alter
their significance. And the plain truth is that
every one of them is utterly falsified by facts. No
one of these things has happened, or shows at present
any likelihood of coming to pass. There are, for
sober and thoughtful men and women, no indications
whatever that the Millennium has begun ; that Satan
is bound, i.e. all evil restrained from misleading
men until 2914 ; Christendom is not destroyed ;
it is less likely to be destroyed than it has ever been
before ; the kingdoms of this world are not over-
thrown ; assuredly they are not become Christ's,
nor is His kingdom fully established ; the Jews
are not restored to their own land ; and there are
no indications whatever of the ' restitution ' of
Abraham, or the prophets, or Apostles, or any
other of the blessed dead.
In a word, there is no one single thing in which
the predictions of Russellism are fulfilled, any more
than there is any one single principle in which its
treatment of the Bible is justified.
This being the case in regard to the past, it seems
hardly worth while to consider its construction of
262 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
the future, whether near or far. But in order to
complete our painful survey, we will enumerate
the fictions with which that future is pictured by
Millennial Dawnism. It is no more than fanatic
fiction to say that Christ and the invisible elect,
whose numbers were finished in 1881, are now con-
verting the world to righteousness, any more than
they were before Russellism was heard of. It
is sheer delusion to assert that all the dead, who were
extinct, are now beginning to be created afresh with
a view to a second probation here on earth. There
are no sober grounds whatever for asserting that
these recreated dead are going, to the number of
50,000,000,000, to be tried during the next thousand
years ; or that at the end of that time they will be
severely tested ; or that those who pass the test
will be permitted to go on living here for ever, by
eating necessary food ; or that the true Church of
the elect the ' little flock ' whose limits in numbers
were divinely preordained will become divine,
as divine as Christ Himself, and become absolutely
as immortal as God Himself ; or that those who,
after the second trial during the Millennium, fail
to pass ' the test of justice ' will be annihilated.
It is not our duty here even to outline the true
Christian doctrine. That has been done elsewhere,
and it rests with each man to estimate it for himself.
The matter in hand here is to point out, without
either bitterness or hesitation, that all these things
which are reiterated through the three thousand
pages ol Pastor Russell's six volumes are utter
falsities, and constitute no true representation of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ to modern humanity.
263
VIII
CONCLUDING SUMMARY
It is more than possible that some readers of
these pages will be weary of the details of the
preceding scrutiny. When certain main fallacies
have been made plain beyond denial, it seems as
if the rest was as unnecessary as to slay the slain.
Assuredly there is for the writer neither pleasure nor
comfort in carrying through such an investigation.
But when a false and mischievous system is so
ingeniously constructed, and so energetically pro-
pagated under ^plausible and attractive conditions,
as to lead millions astray, it is not Christian charity
but unchristian cowardice, or selfish indolence, which
would allow such work to go on unchallenged.
Certainly that was not the method of Christ or His
Apostles. No doubt Paul received small thanks for
his letter to the Galatians. In all probability he
was called by many hard names for his pains. But
he did not hesitate to use much stronger language
than has been here employed, in characterizing the
doings of those who brought the Galatians ' a different
Gospel, which is not another Gospel ; only there are
some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel
of Christ.' And his ' anathema ' was but an echo of
some of his Master's stronger words to the ' blind
guides ' around Him.
That modern Russellism is one of the modern
religious cults to which, with all charity, no other
name can be truthfully applied, is shown by what we
264 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
have here examined. Much more than this might be
truthfully said concerning the practical and financial
side of Russellism, as has been witnessed in the legal
courts of America. But we are content to leave that
out of account, and on highest grounds of Christian
truth alone, protest against the fallacies and falsities
which characterize the preaching of Millennial Dawn-
ism to this generation.
Only two things need here be appended.
(i.) Although this criticism is only partial, it is
alike true and sufficient. Every statement admits
of being supported by exact words from the standard
volumes. To do more could only be to take each of
these six books, seriatim, page by page, and show its
untruth. It would be as easy as wearisome a task.
Enough has been done to guide all, save the wilfully
blind, to sound conclusions.
(ii.) Unquestionably the whole matter turns upon
the treatment of the Bible. One final instance will
serve to illustrate.
We are not ignorant of the theory of a pre- Adamite man,
and the attempt thus to account for the different races of
the human family. But we stick to the Bible as God's
revelation, and hence superior to all human conjectures.
It declares the solidarity of the human family in no uncertain
terms, saying ' God made of one blood all nations of men '
(Acts xvii. 26). And again, that Adam was the first man
(i Cor. xv. 45, 47). Again, the story of the deluge is most
explicit to the effect that only eight human beings were
saved in the ark, and they all children of Noah, descended
from Adam.
It is this pitting of the Bible as a manual of anthro-
pology and science in general against modern
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 65
knowledge, which is not merely the radical error
of Russellism and some others but which holds
in the balances the fate of the Bible, and of Chris-
tianity, for the present and coming age. The
situation is really analogous to that which, on
another subject-phase of ' orthodoxy,' troubled
the minds of the earliest disciples. Then, thg
question was whether circumcision and Judaism
were essential to Christian faith. Now, it is whether
a verbally inspired and completely infallible Bible
is the sine qua non of Christ's kingdom. It is well,
therefore, to bear in mind what is recorded of the
Apostolic decision for that time.
The Apostles and the presbyters met to investigate this
question, and a keen controversy sprang up ; but Peter rose
and said to them, Brothers, you are well aware that from
the earliest days God chose that of you all I should be the
one by whom the Gentiles were to hear the word of the
Gospel and believe it. The God who reads the hearts of
all attested this by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He
gave it to us ; in cleansing their hearts by faith He made
not the slightest distinction between us and them. Well
now, why are you trying to impose a yoke on the neck of
the disciples which neither our fathers nor we ourselves are
able to bear ? No ; it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus
that we believe and are saved, in the same way as they are. *
The true kingdom of Christ will maintain its
hold upon humanity, and contribute more than any
other agency to the future wellbeing of humanity,
not by exalting the Bible into a fetish, nor by
extracting from it precise details of a theological
plan of salvation either for this century or for
eternity, and certainly not by making u into a
1 Acts xv. 7-11 (Moffatt).
266 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
complex mass of cryptic predictions ; but by coming
with Berean openness of mind to face ' whatsoever
things are true/ accepting from Jesus Himself,
as from One whom we have rational grounds for
trusting, the one great basal, final, sufficient revela-
tion of the actual and universal Fatherhood of
God with all that naturally and necessarily flows
from it. To be true to that will ensure the only
Millennium worth considering, and the only Heaven
worth hoping for. Dean Farrar's concluding sen-
tence in regard to the Book of Daniel has an appli-
cation as true as Christian to the wider themes of
the Bible and the world-outlook of to-day.
It is easy to record and to multiply elaborate guesses,
and to deceive ourselves with the merest pretence and
semblance of certainty. For reverent and severely honest
inquiries it seems safer and wiser to study and profit by
the great lessons and examples set before us in the Book of
Daniel, but, as regards many of its unsolved difficulties,
to obey the wise exhortation of the Rabbis ' Learn to say,
" I do not know." '
One critic has suggested that Russellism has done
good service in leading many people to read the
Bible afresh. But it must be frankly pointed out
that such reading is not necessarily an unmixed
good. The time has come, it has once more been
made vivid if not lurid to say that the mere read-
ing of the Bible is not only often useless, but some-
times wofully misleading and immeasurably harmful.
No other illustration is needed, alas, to-day than
that of the Kaiser, who has assured Europe, by
the mouth of Heir Stotte, that he ' reads the Bible
every day, has one always at his bedside, and goes
to it for direction whenever he needs guidance.'
So we must presume that he did so when he gave
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 267
permission if not command for the damnable
atrocities in Belgium, and for the methods which
issued in the wholesale and infernal murders of
innocent women and children on the Falaba, the
Lusitania, and the Sussex not to mention other
violations of truth and honour and chivalry which
rejoiced the heart of the German nation, but have
made its name stink throughout all civilization,
as it will do in all history. If these things are the
result of Bible-reading, then the world would be
well rid of such a habit altogether. Only too well we
know that all the religious fanatics who have made
Christianity a laughing-stock or an abhorrence to
mankind, have sought to justify their follies and
cruelties from the Bible. The time has indeed
come, therefore, to say plainly that it is not the
reading of the Bible ' through ' so many times, that
avails for good, or is needed in these our days, but
the true understanding of the Bible, on the lines
of rational treatment.
The writers of the six volumes we have had
sorrowfully to plod through, have read the Bible in
very deed. But to pass from out the bewildering
mixture of their twisted quotations, their childish
interpretations, their pitiful misrepresentations,
their narrow-minded worship of the letter, into
the natural and rational explanations afforded by
honest induction, is like coming out of the stifling
atmosphere of a conservatory for tropical plants,
into the invigorating freshness of the atmosphere of
a spring morning.
The crass literalism from which Russellism starts
would prove as fatal to the New Testament as to the
Old. When JQSUS said so emphatically :
268 WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ?
In most solemn truth I tell you that unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have in
yourselves no life at all. He who eats My flesh and drinks
My blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up at the
last day. For My flesh is food in very deed, and My blood
is drink indeed. 1
Taken with the literalness which Russellism and
some others insists upon in regard to the opening
chapters of Genesis, these words would put an end to
Christianity. Only too well we know what Romanism
and Sacerdotalism have done with them. Pastor
Russell smiles, and says truly enough that they
are symbolical. Then he turns and seeks to force
down the throat of modern men, as the condition of
a real Christianity, the absolutely literal acceptance
of the record of a man made in a moment out of
dust ; a woman made in a second out of a man's
rib ; a serpent that stood up and talked in human
speech ; a tree of knowledge to eat of which was a
curse ; and a God who went for a walk in the cool
of the evening because of the heat of the midday ;
and who did not know where Adam and Eve were
until they came out of hiding. This with all the
rest of the repellent fallacies we have had to exhibit
as the foundation of Christian faith and the
revelation of the love of the only and awful God, for
mankind ! Is it any wonder that in these days,
when, as he quotes, ' many run to and fro, and
knowledge is increased/ the men and women and
children who are faced with such pitiful misrepre-
sentation turn away in bewilderment, if not in
despair, from religion altogethe'r ?
No. Whatever be the potency for good of the
*John vi. 53-56.
WHY NOT ' RUSSELLISM ' ? 269
many and various agencies employed by the churches
in Christian efforts to teach and bless modern
humanity against which here nothing whatever
is said, so long as they are true to the Christ of the
New Testament the one thing which in all else,
and above all else, is needed for the Christian faith
which is to abide to-day and prevail to-morrow, is
what Jesus, and Paul, and John, and Philip, com-
bined to emphasize an understanding.
1 Have you understood all these things ? ' Jesus asked. 1
And the Spirit said to Philip, Go and join that chariot.
So Philip ran up and listened as the eunuch went on reading
the Prophet Isaiah. Tlien he said, Do you understand
what you are reading ? And the eunuch replied, Well, how
can I unless some one shows me the way ? 2
God be thanked, I speak with tongues more than any
of you. But for all that in the Church I would rather speak
five words with my understanding, that I might also open
the minds of others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. *
And even as they were relating these events, Jesus
Himself stood in their midst, and said to them, Peace
be with you. . . . Then He opened their minds, so that they
might understand the Scriptures. *
The appeal of these pages is, of course, to the
whole New Testament fairly interpreted by itself.
But if any one word may be emphasized more than
another, as containing when viewed in the light
of all the rest the whole truth in shortest compass,
it is that of John as he closes his protest against
the false prophets of his day :
And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given
us an understanding, so that we do know Him who is true ;
*Matt. xiii. 51. * Acts viii. 29-31. * i Cor. xiv. 18, 19.
4 Luke xxiv. 36, 45.
270 WHY NOT 'RUSSELLISM'?
and we are in Him who is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.
He is the true God ; He is life eternal. My dear children,
be on your guard against idols.
Millennial Dawnism is but one of many idols, alas,
which are set up for false worship to-day. The
only safeguard against them all is found in the
Apostolic counsel to the Ephesians of old :
Therefore do not be devoid of sense, but get to under-
stand what the Lord's will really is. 1
J Eph. v. 7.
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