Washington, DC, January 19-Pastor Russell preached at Washington Temple today his third sermon on Union Depot texts. Today's text was; "The Truth shall make you free." (John 8:32) He said:

Truth is the great Emancipator. All enslavers oppose the Truth, knowing its power on the minds of their victims. 'Me taskmasters of today would fain hide the truth from wage-slaves, but find it impossible-so great is the power of the press-and there are publishers who have not sold their moral sense for sordid gain. When chattel slavery prevailed, the master found it advantageous to educate his slaves and thus increase their value, but disadvantageous to instruct them along the lines of human rights. The feudatory lords were very willing that the common people consider them demigods, not subject to law as others.

The same principle apparently prompted the emperors to proclaim themselves, "pontifex maximus," and to encourage their people to worship them. The natural selfishness of man ever prompts him to take advantage of others; and ignorance has been the chain which has bound the masses.

The Bible has been the great Emancipator of slavesmental, moral and physical. It is the Torch of Liberty, lighted by Divine Providence. The Bible alone tells us that all humanity are of one blood, creatures of the same God, amenable to Him. While the Bible instructs that Kings and all in authority should be recognized, it also tells that the king is amenable to exactly the same laws as his most menial slave, and that if he violates these laws he is as sure to be punished. [HGL582] Moreover, the Bible points out that the present is related to the future life as cause to effect. It shows that every act, word and thought bears upon character-development, and prepares us for higher things in the life to come or gives us more difficulty in reaching perfection and everlasting life.

Looking into the past, we see Israel, sodden with fear of their Egyptian taskmasters, not daring to take steps for liberty. But after the Exodus, after God's Covenant with them at Sinai, they were a changed people. The hopes inspired by the Scriptures preserved them as a nation when contemporaneous civilization perished.

The Jews undoubtedly destroyed their own nationality. The Romans merely performed the funeral rites in destroying Jerusalem, A D 70. The Emperor evidently claimed that the Jewish religion must necessarily be at the foundation of their ungovernable character. Their liberty, used contrary to Divine instruction, led to discontent and anarchy.

The Message of Jesus and the Apostles attracted some "Israelites indeed," anxious to serve God. The early Christians courageously suffered persecution and carried the Gospel everywhere. The Roman emperors, Nero and Diocletian, perceived that Christians had a courage which they feared would be infectious, and persecuted them horribly. But the Master had freed them from fear of death.

Then came a long period of darkness, when the Scriptures were forgotten, and only the words of bishops were

heard-words misunderstood to be of Divine authority through Apostolic Succession. Next came centuries under control of creeds and church councils. Darkness, ignorance and superstition prevailed, although God had His witnesses throughout that long period.

Finally the Bible again emerged, when printing came into use. God's time had come for the Bible again to be the Torch of Liberty, and independence proportionately came forward. Today Britain, Germany, Scandinavia and America lead the world, because of the light from the Word of God.

The danger that the Jews encountered in the end of their Age confronts us. Not all receive the Truth in the love of it. Not all, therefore, are sanctified by it. Few have turned to the Lord, to become followers ofJesus. Hence we are on the threshold of a great disintegration. Liberty is about to turn to license-anarchy; our civilization is about to be ruined, as was the Jewish polity, by liberty unrestrained by the Spirit of the Lord.

St. Paul declared that the Gospel had set him free from all other bondages but that he surrendered his liberty to Christ, to do, not his own will, but the will of his Redeemer. Forcefully he states that in so doing he became a bond-slave to Christ.

Blessed is the condition of those who gladly surrender all to become followers of the Lord! Such can rejoice, because they know that all things work together for their good to prepare them for the Heavenly glories.