Awake!, January 8, 1948
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MAGNA CARTA MYTH
Why not a Bill of Rights to which to anchor liberties, instead of an impotent Magna Carta?
World Blackness Shattered by Song!
Report of a Theocratic assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses
Cutting the Cost of Heating Homes
Experiments in sun-heat, earth-heat, air-heat and radiant heat
The Fight for Free Medical Care
Arguments pro and con
JANUARY 8, 1948 SEMIMONTHLY
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CONTENTS
Magna Carta Myth
Origin of Magna Carta
Charter Fails Cause of Freedom
Freedom Denied in Quebec
Why Not a Bill of Rights?
Write Letters! Letters! Letters!
WII, Cn't C?
World Blackness Shattered by Song I
Making Friends with Mammon
“The Signal to the Peoples*’
and a Resolution
“Why We Are So Different”
Cutting the Cost of Heating Homes
Radiant Heating
Earth-Heat Air-Heat, Sun-IIeat
The I'ight for Free Medical Care
Oppo?/tion by AMA
Arguments for Free Medical Care
Pointy to Consider
“Thy Word Is Truth”
Watch .That Tongue!
Religions ’Flies in the Ointment
Disillusioned War Veterans
Watching the World
Brooklyn, N. Y., January 8, 1948
Volume XXIX
Number 1
MAGNA CARTA MYTH
44T ET us never forget that we already possess in this country the rights affirmed in Magna Carta on the 19th day of June, 1215.” Thus rhetorically spoke the Honourable Ian Mackenzie, lawyer-member of the Canadian Cabinet to the House of Commons of Canada in 1947. This was his reason for opposing a move in the Canadian Parliament for a written bill of rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, press and worship to Canadians. His statement contradicted Professor A. F. Pollard, of Oxford University, in his book Factors in Modern History. He wrote that the belief that the Magna Carta is a security of the people’s liberty is a mistake, in these positive words: "... the modern conception of Magna Carta is, in fact, a myth invented in the seventeenth century,”
On such a vital matter as freedom of speech, press and worship of the subjects of the British king, such conflict of opinion between these two authorities drives the vigilant and cautious person to ask: Are those precious rights actually secure? What is the Magna Carta? Why was it brought forth? What is its purpose? Of what benefit is it to the common people? What liberties has it actually protected? Has it been an effective restraint against tyranny? Is it any restraint at all against the present rulers of the British Commonwealth of Nations to protect the people against encroachment of their rights? Is it an integral part of the British constitution? Does it actually protect freedom of speech, press and worship, as does the Constitution of the United States? What is the truth!
Why not release the bulldog?
If it does not protect the liberty of the people, then is there need for security! Should the people of the British Commonwealth of Nations take steps to secure their liberties in the same manner as have people of the United States! How can they be protected! The propounding of these probing questions constrains the inquiring mind to review the history of the Magna Carta and appraise the present condition of freedom of the people in the British Empire.
Origin of Magna Carta
The name Magna' Carta actually means Great Charter. The two Latin words refer to the charter of liberties wrung from evil King John at Runny-mede, England, A.D. 1215. It was a contract or agreement whereby the king bound his government to abide by certain principles in ruling the people of England.
What precipitated the Magna Carta was the villainy and rascality of John Lackland, king of England. He was tyrannous, treacherous, murderous and greedy. Shortly prior to 1215 his wars had drained the treasury. Desperate for money, he intensified his demands for revenue by invasions of the, people’s homes and property to collect them, which outraged the nation to the point of rebellion. Imagine coming home at night to find your family destitute because the tax collector had ravished your house and taken furniture and clothing, without previous warning! Or that your farmhouse and barn had been burnt because the king wanted a place to shoot grouse! How would you feel if, for some minor infraction of a small law, you were fined ten thousand dollars and sent to prison for five years! It is a fact that the greedy king imprisoned and tortured men to get their wealth. The king’s agents would often seize all the farm carts and animals just at harvest time in order to mulct large payments from the farmers at the time these things were most needed. Men starved that beasts of the forest could increase for the royal amusement. These are but typical of the cruel and studied injustices of that unhappy period.
“How,” you ask, “could such things possibly happen! Did they not have any laws or courts to protect people from such violent misdeeds!” There were laws and customs of a sort, with courts,-but they were merely traditional. Nothing was written. The king would not adhere to laws. They were so indefinite that no one could prove him wrong.
The barons, goaded into action by these outrages, took steps to protect the nation (especially themselves) from John’s injustices. They formed armies and were ready for civil war. John was weakened by his wars. Broke, he was in no position at that time to fight. So he capitulated to the aroused barons. As a condition of the withdrawal of their' armies, they demanded that John sign a prepared statement of the laws and customs by which he must thenceforth abide. What he signed became the Magna Carta.
Law Put into Writing
The Charter set forth the law in black and white, a definition of where King John’s and the barons’ rights began and ended. It restrained his greedy tax gathering and arbitrary multiplying fines due. The king and his corrupt officials could.no longer plead ignorance of their real duties, but could break the law only by force. They could not pretend they were violating the law in ignorance.
The law, by being written, was made definite. There could be no argument about what it said. The king and his officers were subject to it the same as everyone else. In that crude age, when absolute rulers’ motto was “The king can do no wrong?’ the idea of forcing a king to himself abide by law was revolutionary.
The tyrant’s arms, the barons thought, were pinned with a pen.
The so-called “Great Charter of liberties” was no sooner sealed and the armies of the barons dispersed than the king set out to sabotage it. With an army of foreign mercenary minions he began to lay waste the land of some of the leading barons. Nor was he alone. Pope Innocent III arrayed himself on the king’s side against the Magna Carta and joined the king’s hirelings. He denounced it in a papal bull saying: “We utterly reprobate and condemn any agreement of this kind forbidding under ban of our anathema the aforesaid king to presume to observe it, and the barons and their accomplices to exact its performance, declaring void and utterly abolishing both the Charter itself and the _ obligations and safeguards made for its enforcement.” The death of King John about a year after the signing of the Charter ended the struggle to destroy it. So it remained as part of the law of the land. Magna Carta has since become one of the most famous documents of world democracy. In the United States of America many states borrowed from Magna Carta. Frequently excerpts of it appear in their constitutions. In British lands it is held almost in awe. In the field of individual rights Magna Carta has been a charm against tyranny looked to for protection of the people for over seven hundred years. Outraged citizens have always cited it for protection, saying, “Don’t forget that I have my rights. We still have the Magna Carta in this country.”
The Magna Carta has given little, if any, aid to the people. The facts show that the bulwark which the people saw in the Magna Carta was a mere phantasm. It faded and disappeared like fleeting smoke in the wind and the ephemeral fog before the sun. It has been a mere gossamer shield of the people’s liberty. Let us examine some of the terms of the Magna Carta in the light of history.
Typical of these fallacies is the idea that Magna Carta made all citizens free and equal before the law. Sir Edward Creasy, in his English Constitution, makes a very broad claim that the effect of the Charter was “to give and to guar- ■ antee full protection for property and person to every human being that breathes English air”. Can this be true? Nothing could be farther from the truth I The provisions of the Charter dealt almost entirely with the rights of "freemen”, who were the barons. The term “freemen” did not have its modern significance. It embraced less than one quarter of the population. The remainder were not freemen, but "villeins”, hapless serfs who were merely chattels attached to the land, the common people. This unfortunate class had no more rights than cattle. Under the Magna Carta they could not even move off the land of their owner. To pretend, therefore, that “full protection of person and property” was guaranteed to all is to skate lackadaisically over the indisputable facts. The principle of due process of law for all people of the realm was not even within the conception of the barons who drafted John’s Charter.
Professor McKechnie, an authority on constitutional law, declares that it has not been its actual legal provisions that has enabled Magna Carta to play its leading role. But he says in the moral value its name and reputation have provided much. “In many a time of national crisis, Magna Carta has been appealed to as a fundamental law too sacred to be altered ... It is no disparagement of Magna Carta, then, to confess that part of its power has been read into it by later generations, and lies in the halo, almost of romance, that has gathered around it in the course of centuries. It became a battle cry for future ages, a banner, a rallying point, a stimulus to the imagination.”
It was in the seventeenth century, during the struggle between Parliament and the despotic King Charles I, that Magna Carta gained its greatest fame and sentimental attachment. Cromwell’s parliamentary supporters argued that Charles could not lawfully impose taxes without the consent of Parliament, citing Magna Carta in support of their claim. It was in such times of political crisis that the name of the Great Charter of liberties and its resounding clauses provided rallying point for liberal people battling against despotism.
It was during this turbulent period that the terms of the Magna Carta were extended to cover all the subjects—the common man as well as the magnate of the realm. This extension wTas attained through the Petition of Right promulgated in 1628. The deficiencies of the Great Charter were partly filled by the further Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.
Charter Fails Cause of Freedom
While these roseate views are held by the gullible, informed people are more accurate in their analysis of the scope of protection in the Magna Carta. Professor Pollard shows dearly the Magna Carta is not a modern-day guarantee of civil liberties. Those who envisage it as a bulwark protecting individual rights, such as freedom of speech, press and worship, behold an apparition. It is only because the imagination of . wishful thinkers of later times enshrined the Charter as a guarantee of liberty that the myth of security of individual rights in it has become so readily accepted. Professor Pollard and other realists have a much more solid foundation for their views than has the inflated rhetoric of those who have placed around this ancient document an idealistic nimbus. To argue that due process of law, equal protection, free speech and freedom of worship are guaranteed to the subjects of the British king by the Great Charter is a legal misrepresentation, a fraud.
Freedom of speech, assembly and worship were not even remote dreams in the
days of King John. They are, moreover, not today given any specific protection under English law. It is true that some of the gaps of the Magna Carta in this respect were filled bv the so-called Bill of Rights of 1689. The Bill of Rights stated that it was a declaration of the “true, ancient and indubitable rights of the people of this realm”; but the facts of history prove that such rights were repeatedly emasculated by inroads and incursions upon the people’s liberty in the courts. That such afforded no strong instruments for the British courts to use is attested by the impotent “hands-off” policy of the courts in respect to the measures of the government used to prohibit freedom of speech and worship.
At one time there was a fine for failure to attend the established church at least once a month. Under the Conventicle Act of 1664 it became a crime for more than five persons to meet for worship other than according to the ritual of the Church of England. Under this Act the police locked the church of the famous Quaker, William Penn; so he preached to the congregation in the street. For this he was arrested and charged with rioting. At his trial the judges would not allow him to speak to the jury and, when he protested, cast him into a dungeon. The jury refused to convict him after being ordered to do so by the court. For this they were imprisoned for two days without food or water to force them to return the desired verdict. But they refused to deny what they knew to be right, and these jurymen then were fined 40 marks each and committed to prison. Imagine putting the jury in jail for acquitting the prisoner!
The fight for freedom of worship resulted not only in imprisonment, but torture and death were often the portion of those who disagreed with the state church. They were heretics. The penalty for heresy was burning at the stake. Even to the early seventeenth century—
awakei
mind you, after the Magna Carta—this horrible torture was the price paid by many who desired to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. We are told by Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; “It was enacted, among other things, that whoever read the Scriptures in English should forfeit land, chattels, goods and life; and be condemned as heretics to God, enemies to the Crown, and traitors to the kingdom; that they should not have the benefit of any sanctuary; and that, if they continued obstinate, or relapsed after being pardoned, they should first be hanged for treason against the king, and then burned for heresy against God.” Where was the security of the Magna Carta? It was to them an illusion, as it has been to all minorities since 1215.
Religious persecution reached its height, after-the promulgation of the Charter, during the reign of “Bloody Mary” Tudor. This fanatical daughter of the papacy tried by torture, fire and gibbet to drive the English people back to the Vatican. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs lists more than 250 victims of this grisly practice during a four-year period. All these outrages occurred under the law of the land which Magna Carta ‘guaranteed to preserve’!
The claim of freedom of the press under the Magna Carta receives no support from history. This was long denied in England, even after it was permitted in other parts of Europe. The earliest copies of Tyndale’s English Bible had to be printed in Flanders and smuggled into England in flour barrels. A statute of Henry VIII made it an offense for women and artificers to read the New Testament in English. Presumably it would be lawful if they read it in French or Latin. Noblewomen and the Lord Chancellor were magnanimously excepted from this law.
A further limitation of the freedom of the press was the Licensing Act of the days of Charles II whereby nothing
JZW.4BY S, 194S could be printed without the approval of the censor, the local bishop. William Penn once spent seven months in the Tower of London for one of his Biblical pamphlets, printed without license under this act. On one occasion a censor approved for printing a book that the British Parliament had already ordered to be burned.
Invasions of free speech occurred in the form of prosecutions for sedition and seditious libel. These were often for the most innocuous criticisms of the rulers. According to English law, sedition could mean almost any statement that disagreed with the government. Take the case of Wraynham, who said of King James I: “He is but a man, and so may err.” The judge decided it was a great scandal in that it implied error to the king. He was convicted of seditious libel, fined one thousand pounds, made to ride with his head to his horse’s tail, and had his ears cut off. Magna Carta did not give him free speech!
Another outstanding example of attacks on free discussion was the prosecution of Leigh Hunt during the Napoleonic wars. At that time discipline in the British Army was based on the most brutal floggings, which could be administered to a soldier on very slight provocation. One man had been sentenced to a thousand lashes—such a penalty could mean that the victim was lashed to death. Hunt wrote an article criticizing the savagery of this inhuman practice. He was charged with seditious libel. The judge, Lord Ellenborough, urged the jury to convict him. But this they refused to do. The principles of injustice laid down by this same judge are still standard English references. It follows that almost any Britisher undertaking to criticize the government could still be convicted under the same law. This should make it clear that the people of the British Commonwealth do not have an unwritten, or common-law, right to freedom of the press and speech!
On this point a scholarly English judge, Sir James F. Stephen, in his book History of Criminal Law, has said: “The public at large understands freedom of the press as meaning the right of unrestricted discussion of public affairs, carrying with it the right of finding fault with public personages of whose conduct the writer might disapprove. It seems to me from the history just given that this was absolutely opposed to the law and I think the rhetoric commonly used about liberty of the press derived some part of its energy and vivacity from the consciousness which the lawyers who used it must have had of the insecurity of its legal foundation.” It is clear from the words of this eminent lawyer that liberty of the press and speech is not a part of the law of England.
Freedom Denied in Quebec
The proof of the present insecurity of the subjects of the British king recently has piled as high as a beacon light in the Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada. In that priest-ridden province from 1944 to 1947 Jehovah’s witnesses have been persecuted in the same manner as were the liberty lovers of England in medieval times and early Christians in Rome. In the Province of Quebec some 1,500 prosecutions have been launched and pressed against these Christian missionary evangelists because they have persisted in preaching the gospel from door to door and publicly as did Christ Jesus and His disciples. Their primitive preaching resulted in scores of sedition cases because they distributed leaflets complaining against unlawfully enforcing by-laws and statutes not applicable to their preaching work by Quebec officials. Indeed many hundreds of cases have been falsely made against these Christian ministers under by-laws charging them with peddling without a license and distributing literature without a permit. Hundreds of men and women, faithful Christian missionaries, have been forced to spend days and nights in filthy jails. They have obtained their releases only at a high premium. They found that when they regained their freedom they were hounded and arrested under the same charges because they refused to stop preaching or leave the province. The history of these modern-day persecutions in the benighted Province of Quebec has heretofore been related in the columns of this magazine. {Awake! December 8, 1946, page 21)
Freedom by Tolerance, Not by Right
It is true that the subjects of the British king have, in general and especially in the British Isles, enjoyed much freedom of speech and worship. Such freedoms they have enjoyed not as a matter of right but purely by tolerance of Parliament and others. In spite of the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights of 1689, intended to augment the Great Charter, they have no specific legal guarantee against encroachments by Parliament, to which they can appeal when haled into court, whereby they can claim such rights. The Bill of Rights does not mention the freedoms by name. Also, it does not explicitly or implicitly forbid Parliament from encroaching upon freedoms of speech, press and worship. If oppressive politicians and officials choose to abrogate fundamental liberties through an' act of Parliament or a local by-law. the people are defenseless. The Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights of 1689 cannot be appealed to. They are not effective. Britain is no longer an absolute monarchy, but, since the seventeenth century, is a limited monarchy with Parliament assuming full power of government. Under this changed condition the Magna Carta is wholly inoperative, because its restraints are limited to the king, who no longer exercises real power, being a mere figurehead. The Charter does not reach the present absolute powers of Parliament.
Neither the Petition of Right of 1628, the mirror which reflected the nebulous rights of the Charter upon the common people, nor the Bill of Rights protects the people’s liberties of press, worship and speech against the supreme power of Parliament in England, or the colonies, or in the dominions or in the commonwealths.
The unwritten constitution of the British Empire is not available. It, like the Magna Carta, is a will-o’-the-wisp. It is doubtful if the British unwritten constitution can be said to protect anything. Of it.Professor Pollard, of Oxford University, remarks: “The British Constitution is a miscellaneous, uncollected undigested mass, of statutes, legal decisions, and vague understandings or misunderstandings some of which have never been put down in writing.” This indefinite constitution leaving undefended the basic human liberties, free press, assembly and worship, places the modern-day rights of the British peoples in much the same position as the medieval barons of England were prior to Magna Carta.
At the present time the fundamental freedoms of the people are undoubtedly endangered throughout the whole world. The totalitarian spirit increases despite the peace of the postwar era. More restrictions continue to be placed upon the people’s liberty. The subjects of the British king are liberty-loving people. They treasure the right of free thought and free expression. Fresh in their minds are the promises of free speech, free press and freedom of worship which were made by their leaders during wartime. Are these promises likely to be fulfilled in the postwar crisis? Will liberties based only on tolerance provide sufficiently strong anchorage against the storms and cross-currents of this day?
Why Not a Bill of Rights?
Since there is grave doubt about the security of liberties of the king's subjects, why not have these basic human rights and personal liberties anchored to something solid, firmly imbedded in the constitution of the country? This can be done only by reducing the vague traditions to statutory declarations of human rights. Should not the people of Britain, its colonies and its dominions wring from the unlimited and unrestrained politicians in Parliament a modern-day Magna Carta? Even as the barons found it necessary to have their misty rights under the king and vague traditions of the land reduced to writing in the Magna Carta, so also it appears imperatively necessary that the people of the British Empire secure from their parliaments a plain, written, understandable statement of their freedoms of conscience, thought, speech, press and worship.
It is not a sufficient answer to say that the people may change the government by electing a new parliament at the polls. Elections are not held frequently enough to protect the people. Moreover, it is usually minorities whose rights are more often denied. Minorities have no power in the election. To win at the polls a majority is required. The very purpose of the bill of rights is to protect minorities—not relegating them to the polls— so that a power-seeking government cannot by step-to-step encroachments stalk upon the liberties of all the people and destroy them. This harks back to the turbulent days of the post-revolutionary period of the American colonies, when the United States Constitution was in its nascent stage. Thomas Jefferson, fighter for freedom of the people, said: “A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference.”
When the fundamental rights of the people are legally declared by Parliament to be beyond their reach by law in a written document, then they can be raised up as a barrier to such laws in the courts. The judges will then be in position to declare invalid any law or bylaw that abridges or deprives the people of these rights.
Write Letters! Letters! Letters!
The subjects of the British king throughout the whole world ean help themselves establish a precedent for a demand for a bill of rights in every colony and dominion of the Empire through their backing the present move in Canada for a written bill of rights. The need of assistance by everyone, throughout the earth, whether he be a British subject or not, by writing letters in favor of the bill of rights is immediate. The demand for a Canadian written bill of rights will again be brought before the Dominion Parliament of Canada at Ottawa in January, 1948. The move is wholeheartedly supported by thousands of Canadian citizens, alert and thoughtful lawyers, doctors, other professional men and leaders of communities throughout all of Canada. They and thousands of other citizens of Canada have joined enthusiastically in such demand for a written bill of rights. .Regardless of whether you live in Canada or any other colony or dominion of the British Empire, you can aid in this campaign by writing the Prime Minister of Canada, a member of Parliament, endorsing the move for a bill of rights, stating your reasons why you think it should be enacted by the Dominion Parliament Subjects of the British king residing in the British Isles and the colonies and dominions (other than Canada) scattered around the earth also can write the Colonial Secretary (or, if he lives in a Dominion, then to the Dominion Secretary) at London or the Governor-General of the dominion or colony in which they reside, protesting against the deprivation of civil rights in Canada and recommending the passage of a bill of rights now pending before Parliament at Ottawa. Ask that the letter of protest be forwarded to the appropriate authority in Canada having jurisdiction.
The .privilege of help, as indicated dbove, is not limited to Britishers. It extends to all interested ones in all countries. Persons residing outside of the British Empire, in the United States or any other country, can, in addition to writing the Prime Minister of Canada at Ottawa, write a similar letter to the Canadian minister or ambassador in the capital city of the country where they reside. Thus, all liberty-loving persons throughout the whole earth may have, if they wish, a part in the rally for free speech, press and worship in the Dominion of Canada. By so doing you who write will contribute your part to block the stream of tyranny and tide of oppression that threatens to spread from the Province of Quebec into other colonies and dominions of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
Wil, Cn’t U?
<t Under the above title the following" appeared in the August issue of The Curtis Courier: “Armed with his trusty editorial scissors, the Pittsburgh typographer, Eddie Stuart, snipped this nut of some paper: Meh hs bn wrttn abt refmd spllng as a savr of spc. Possbly ths wld b a gd pin, Bt it wld b a bttr pin if it wr carrd frthr. If a systm of abbrvtns wr adptd as meh as 49 pct of spe eld be savd. It wldn’t b so hrd as u mght thnk, U cn read ths, en't u?7r And, incidentally, from this Bible scholars can see how the ancient Hebrews could easily read their Bible manuscripts, despite the absence of written vowels.
melodious
news travels on the
Song of Praise” Assembly of Jehovah's witnesses, held at Philadelphia^ Pennsylvania^ November noteworthy singing of the song that dispels darkness
Vt notes of song. It overflows the heart and bubbles from the lips in a spontaneous joy that soars beyond the power of spoken words, to find its full expression in unrestrained singing. And the song’s outburst comes with a power that shatters world blackness! Strange singing, that! It could hardly be the restful folk songs or sentimental ballads of our day. Nor is it the crashing chords or thundering tones of grand opera, with its intermingling of lilting arias and surging marches and tempestuous dramatics, beautiful musically but whose words reek with demon mythology and whose composers are pedestaled and worshiped. Ah! perhaps the strident and raucous blasts of the world’s jarring jazz and swing, with their accompanying upheavals of words overloaded with lustful meaning? Shattering it certainly is, but only to the nerves. No, none of these links words and notes with force sufficient to shatter world blackness. The songs that muster such enlightening power are those, whose lyrics proclaim good news to men and praise to God.
To man’s knowledge the first song ever sung was one of praise to God, a duet of indescribable beauty by the “morning stars” when Jehovah “laid the foundations of the earth”. (Job 38:4-7) Since that time many earthly singers praised God in Bong. Why, the one book’ of Psalms alone contains 150 praise-songs!
Singing out Bible truths dispels the darkness of this world under Satan by making known Jehovah God the Father of lights and Christ Jesus the light of thepew world. (James 1:17; John 8:12) Isaiah 60:1-3 reads: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee. For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah will arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And nations shall come to thy light.” {Am. Stan. Ver.) The light now come is Christ Jesus and His kingdom, and the songs that shatter the blackness of this dark world are those that reflect this light. With dazzling brilliance was it reflected at the “Song of Praise” Assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses, held at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 21-23, 1947.
Space does not permit a view of all the rays of light that were flushed out during those three days, so we content ourselves with the high lights only. The four discourses of the afternoon of November 21 and the initial one that evening beamed out with steady strength on how the enlightening song of praise was spreading throughout all nations and being sung in an organized way, confessing that Christ is the king established in heaven, and that by such public confession the singers of the song gain salvation and prove true love for their neighbors. But with the clock's hands pointing to 7:30 p.m., the light
Hazed with increased intensity. Then it was that the president of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, N. H. Knorr, launched a discussion on “Gaining Entrance into Permanent Dwellings" that did not eome to a halt till after 9:00 pan.
Making Friend* with Mammon
Welcome light was shed on Jesus’ parable of the unjust steward, recorded at Luke 16:1-13. The principle Jesus developed through the parable is, in His own words: “Make friends for yourselves with your ill-gotten wealth, so that when it fails [or, so that when you die], they may take you into the eternal dwellings." (Vs. 9, An Amer. Trans.; Moffatt) Right use of money and material possessions would make God and Christ one's friends, with the good effects that when either material wealth fails to save or death overtakes one the generous giver will be received by God and Christ into permanent dwellings. Hence even material wealth can be made to sing praise as you “honour the Lord with thy substance", and right use of material things can open the way for the song of praise to expand into all nations and swell in volume! The speaker proceeded to cite a specific illustration.
He reminded his more than 15,000 hearers of the convention last August in California, where he had told of arrangements to send food to Europe for Jehovah’s witnesses in need there, and when he expressed hope that $100,000 could he raised within the next six weeks. Well, it was with thrill and amazement that his audience heard his report that in a wave of generosity Jehovah’s witnesses in the United States and Canada had flooded in contributions totaling over $310,000! What a pool of material wealth out of which to channel aid to needy brethren! Surely a wise use of money that will knit even closer unity among the Witnesses the world over, and a use of the unrighteous mammon that will strengthen their tie of friendship with God and Christ I
Already the Society’s president has placed an order with the CARE organization, the biggest order that organization has up to this time received from an individual. Food packages to the number of 25,583, of 21 j pounds each, are to be distributed as follows: Germany, 20,000; Austria, Hungary and England each, 1,000; Rumania and Poland each, 500; France, Netherlands, Finland and Czechoslovakia each, 300; Italy, 200; Greece, 100; Belgium, 65; Bulgaria, 18. This means that in some of these nations, such as Germany and Bulgaria, every one of Jehovah’s witnesses whose address the Society has will receive a food package. Other countries not so hard hit by hunger will have packages for all the full-time pioneer ministers of the gospel and specially needy part-time publishers. These food supplies were to have been shipped around December 1. Additional shipments of food will be made later, and all of the $310,996.15 contributed to relieve the wants of Jehovah’s witnesses in Europe will ultimately be spent for that purpose.
And to top all this wise use of material wealth, the president announced a clothing drive among all of Jehovah’s witnesses and persons of good-will in the United States, to be completed during December, and which clothing will be distributed free to Jehovah’s witnesses in parts of Europe! How all this bounty will make the hearts of the Witnesses in Europe sing, and, physically warmed and strengthened by the material blessings, the song of praise to Jehovah that rings in their heart will pour out of their lips and into hearing ears of good-will persons! Thus will all efforts work toward spreading the song of praise.
Yearbook and Calendar Released
But still other grand news for the audience this night, even though it already be limp from surprises and thrills and bursting applauses. The president gave some figures for singing in the field service during the 1947 service year: world-wide there was in the field each month an average of 181,071 publishers of the Kingdom, and in the peak month 207,552 reported activity; they placed 20,472,739 Bibles, books and booklets; put in 43,842,305 hours preaching from door to door, in the homes and on the streets; 12,049,344 copies of the Watch-toiver and Awake! magazines distributed by the publishers (in addition to the even larger number mailed direct to subscribers) ; and these singers of the song of praise to God made 11,710,832 revisits on persons showing interest at the initial call. All this activity, in addition to time and energy, called for the expenditure of much money and material wealth; but in expending it they were spreading abroad the song of praise and making fast the ties of friendship between them and God and Christ. They will gain entrance into permanent dwellings by so doing, and as the talk striking this keynote closed it hit a resounding finale: release of the 1948 Yearbook of Jehovah's witnesses and the 1948 calendar specially prepared for Jehovah’s singers!
The second day of assembly, Saturday, November 22, early burst into high gear. At 8:30 a.m. a baptism talk was delivered, and thereafter 321 were immersed to symbolize their consecration to Jehovah God. New singers for the ranks to help rout the darkness that envelops this present evil world! Morning singing of the song of praise in the field gave way to afternoon discourses that admonished the singers to endure till the last stanza has been sung, to devote their life to it, to report their activity and be able to say to God when the work is completed, “I have done as thou hast commanded me.” (Ezekiel 9:11) Thus will true worship of God be promoted in this darksome earth. And as this activity is pursued, all should be tolerant of the human weaknesses of one another, was the Scriptural counsel of the talk that opened the evening session. Its close again lands us at the hour of 7:30, and again time for another discourse by the president of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
“The Signal to the Peoples"
and a Resolution
His words threw a strong shaft of light on Isaiah chapter 62. They dissolved past misunderstanding of the command to “lift up a standard for the people” (vs. 10), about which even Jehovah’s witnesses had been in the dark. Neither the flag or ensign of any earthly nation nor banner representing The Theocracy; not a flag or pennant of any kind; not even the standard of truth. The word “standard” is better given in modern versions of the Bible as “signal”; hence the title of the talk was “The Signal to the Peoples”.
The signal now raised up is Christ Jesus established in his throne, and to this signal the people must gather for salvation. Jehovah’s witnesses lift up this signal by declaring proof that the Kingdom is established, by pointing the people to the signs showing it is there on high, by causing the signal to be seen or discerned by the mind’s eye and thereby lifted up for those perceiving ones. With vigor the speaker showed how obstinate and rebellious nations had set up a competitive signal and fake savior in the form of the United Nations, to which makeshift they point the people and urge their support. This dim usurper of world rulership has no power to end darkness; it increases it by keeping the people in the dark about Christ’s kingdom as the only hope for the world. But with power to shatter blackness and enlighten human minds came the resolution adopted by the audience of more than 20,000, Because of its importance, it follows in full:
Resolution
Whereas the Holy Scriptures plainly teach and show that the “seven times” of uninterrupted Gentile domination of the earth would end in the year 1914 and that at such expiration'date the due time would have arrived for the Universal Sovereign, Jehovah God, to take His great power and reign as such, with Christ Jesus as His anointed King to represent Him in the throne and to rule in the midst of the enemies in heaven and in earth (Revelation 11:15-18) ; and
Whereas the world events from and after 1914, beginning with the first World War, fulfill the prophecies concerning the end of this world and thereby disclose themselves as the visible sign of the establishment of Jehovah’s kingdom by His Christ in that notable year (Matthew 24:3-15; Mark 13:3-14; Luke 21:7-26); and
Whereas the evidence continues to grow with the passing of time that Jehovah God has fset His King upon His holy hill of Zion’ and has thus set up His reigning Son as the royal Signal for the peoples of all nations, that they may assemble to the promised kingdom o^ God as mankind’s only means for New World unity, prosperity, abolition of war, justice for all, abundance of food, perfect health and life (Isaiah 11:10);. and therefore the kings, rulers and judges of the earth have good and sufficient reason for fearing Jehovah and kissing or doing homage to His reigning King and yielding over to Him their world power lest their continued resistance should result in their destruction (Psalm 2:6-12); but,
Whereas prior to the close of World War II the allied^nations drew up the Charter of an international organization known as “United Nations”, and successor to the former League of Nations; and on October 24, 1945, which was 31 years after the end of the Gentile Times, this United Nations world-security organization eame into existence by the sufficient number of ratifications and its Charter became thereby a part of the law of the nations of this world, and to date the United.
Nations organization has > grown to include 57 member nations, with a population of l',613r 802,000 inhabitants, with hundreds of religions, and embracing 35,562,000 square miles of earth's surface; and the religious clergy of Christendom put their trust in this political organization for world stability and peace and hold church masses for it and keep on praying for Almighty God to bless it, and the pope believes there should be church participation in the deliberations of the United Nations by having a religious spokesman who would receive a sort of honorary non-voting membership in the UN to take part in debates of the General Assembly; and the chief executive of the United States, possessor of the first atomic bomb, declares the United Nations to be not a “temporary expedient" but a “permanent partnership”; and
Whereas this continued conduct of political, commercial and religious rulers is a defiant repudiation of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty and an attempt to turn the peoples of the nations away from gathering around Jehovah’s royal Signal to the peoples, Christ Jesus the King;
Therefore we, Jehovah’s witnesses assembled in the “Song of Praise” convention at Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.A., this night of Saturday, November 22, 1947, do resolve and declare:
That we have gathered unitedly, regardless of race, nationality, language, color, or previous religious affiliation, to Jehovah’s enthroned King of the new world, Christ Jesus, who now stands on Mount Zion as a Signal to the peoples;
That we repudiate the United Nations as “mankind’s only hope” and regard it as a manifestation of the foretold “abomination of desolation” which Christendom has caused to stand in the “holy place” as a man-made standard to substitute for Jehovah’s exalted Signal (Matthew 24:15); and
That we will fearlessly and faithfully continue to lift up as the only hope Jehovah’s royal “Signal to the peoples” by singing its praises and by preaching, both publicly and from house to house, the rightful rule of His kingdom, thereby making it conspicuously known to all peoples of all nationalities that they top may gather to the great Signal and take their stand on the side of God’s kingdom of enduring peace, endless happiness and everlasting life.
The Final Day
Sunday morning, November 23, the conventioners were, regaled by three stirring presentations. Mr. P. Chapman, Branch servant of the Society in Canada, spoke on “Singing Amid Tribulation”. His discourse sketched the onward march of Jehovah’s singers in the very dark province of Quebec, despite the hundreds of arrests, persecutions and prosecutions on false charges. Three years ago in Quebec City there were only three publishers; today there are 55 and they have their own Kingdom Hall. More than 110 full-time workers are busy in the province now. And when jailed for singing Jehovah’s praise, they sing there. He recounted an instance where a group of Witnesses were put in a cell, there they sang Kingdom songs, and the other prisoners applauded. They even requested a Bible lecture be given them, which was done I It reminds one of an experience of the apostle .Paul. His preaching riled religious racketeers, they had him imprisoned along with his coworker Silas, at midnight they sang God’s praises as the other prisoners listened, they experienced a miraculous deliverance, and the jailer and his household were baptized.—Acts 16:16-34.
This speaker gave way to the Society’s attorney, H. C. Covington, who loosed a barrage of proof that Jehovah’s witnesses, all of them, regardless of age or sex, were ministers of the gospel. He not only cited many Scriptural examples of youngsters serving as ministers, but pointed out that Calvin presided over a congregation when only twelve years old and that Benedict IX became pope at the tender age of twelve. Jehovah’s witnesses’ congregation is the people in their homes, and their pulpit is the doorstep and private home as well as the public platform. All of this proof was presented in courts relative to draft cases involving Jehovah’s witnesses that were improperly classified by draft boards that believe a minister must follow in the footsteps of religious clergy who practice ceremony and ritual and don flowing robes and reverse their collars, instead of following in the footsteps of Christ Jesus and preaching the gospel as He and His apostles did.
Succeeding this speaker before the microphone came F. W. Franz, the convention chairman and the Society’s vice-president. He pointed out that though the bulk of printing was done in America, that did not make the message American. No more so than the apostle Paul’s geographical location in Greece made his epistles written from there Grecian, or his letters penned from Rome Roman. The governing body, through whose services the Kingdom singers stand ‘/Organized for Theocratic Song”, is not to be located in a geographical sense either, but its members operate wherever they are'taken by their duties. Also remember, these earthly members of the governing body of the church change, but the one member that always remains is the Head One, Christ Jesus; and He is not geographically located anywhere on this earth, but abides in heaven. Organization is imperative; by it Jehovah’s ‘singers are as one, to make one sound in praising the Lord’. (2 Chronicles 5:13) The jangling discords and clashing sounds of many religious sects please not Jehovah.
Attendance swelled to 28,000- for the public talk by the president that Sunday afternoon, on “Permanent Governor of All Nations”. To properly cope with this subject it was necessary for Mr. Knorr to show the fallacies of the claims of the United Nations as being a permanent governor or bringer of peace and unity. Irresistibly the points piled higher and higher, till at the close it was apparent that only Christ and His kingdom Would bring permanent peace to persons of good-will from all nations. Audience agreement with the material and audience appreciation of the spirited delivery were manifested by repeated and vigorous applause. At the conclusion all present received free a copy of the new booklet, The Joy of All the People. Its contents had been previously presented by the president to audiences in many nations, both heathen and so-called "Christian” nations.
IVe Are So Different”
^The above words titled the closing talk of'the convention, delivered by the president Sunday evening. Space here allows only for sketchy coverage, but you can read its full substance in the January 1, 1948, Watchtower, Harking back to Judge Samuel’s words that rebellion and stubbornness are as witchcraft and idolatry (1 Samuel 15; 23), the speaker denounced this world as stubborn in chasing its own schemes. They tried a league of nations after World War I. It flopped. Now they try the same thing again. The world is just plain stubborn, idolizing its own will in this matter. Jehovah’s witnesses are different; they forget their own will and follow God’s will and support God’s kingdom under Christ. Because they do they are charged with sedition: They have been slandered as being Communists; but in Russia they are sent to work camps in Siberia. Why, if they are Communists? They have been labeled Nazis; but in Nazi Germany 10,000 of them spent long years in concentration camps, 2,000 of them not coming out alive. Why, if they are Nazis? But the world stubbornly sticks to this false name-calling.
The clergy hate Jehovah’s witnesses because the Witnesses are different from them. The Witnesses go from house to house, study with the people in their homes, preach on the street corners, dress like ordinary people, do not wallow in hocus-pocus rituals of ordination, but preach as ministers whether young or old, do not retire when they reach a certain age, do not quit when persecution blazes hotly against them, do not murder one another in wartime because they live in different nations, do not allow national, racial or language barriers to divide them, and with all their strength of body and mind and with all their material resources they preach the gospel of Christ’s established kingdom I In all these ways they are- different from the clergy of Christendom, and because the clergy suffer in comparison they venomously hate the Witnesses and oppose them. But Jehovah’s witnesses are glad they are different from this world’s clergy!
Closing his presentation, the Society’s president told of new arrangements to assist full-time workers to stay in the ministry. The requirement of hours spent in preaching was lowered from 150 a month to 120, with the quota put on a yearly basis. This will allow for some "tent-making” or secular work so that the general pioneer can pay his own way, and yet make the yearly quota of 1,400 hours. (Acts 18:3) This arrangement was welcomed with joyful applause. It will doubtless mean more pioneers, more singing, and more blackness shattered.
This will mean more opposition, for Jesus rightly said certain men love darkness more than light because their deeds are evil. (John 3:19-21) As the singing work advances the faces of such men “shall gather blackness” and they will react stormily against the singers. (Joel 2:6) But Jehovah’s witnesses will live up to their chosen yeartext during 1948; “I will sing praises unto thee among the nations.” (Psalm 57: 9, Am. Stan. Ker.) And after 1948, will their songs of praise cease to shatter world blackness? Never! for each one determines by the grace of God: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God as long as I breathe.”—Psalm 104:33, An American Translation.
Cutting the Cost of
HEATING HOMEsMi-^S
burden on the
THE problem of heating his dwell-■ ing place is one that has confronted man since the time he began .migrating toward the poles. Today the problem of adequately heating the great majority of homes has not yet been solved. Even in countries where there is an abundance of fuel the high cost of such rests as a heavy common people. Consequently much research and many experiments continue to be made in an effort to provide better methods and facilities for heating homes at a cheaper cost.
Heat is transmitted by one of three methods or by a combination of them: radiation, convection and conduction. When man took his bonfire indoors and put it in an open fireplace he began warming his household by radiation. In principle radiated heat follows the law of light radiation. The heat rays, flowing at the speed of light in a straight line, have a similar wave pattern, vary inversely as the square of the distance from their source, do not heat the air through which they pass, and are capable of being absorbed or reflected like visible light rays. Hence, when standing in front of a fireplace one is heated on only one side. By taking the fire out of the open hearth and enclosing it in a stove placed in the middle of the floor man found that he could heat the whole room. This was due to the fact that the air coming in contact with, the stove became heated, expanded., became lighter in weight, rose to the ceiling, and spread out to the far corners of the room. Such circulation or movement of hot currents of a gas or liquid is called connection. Heating by conduction occurs when heat travels up the handle of a spoon that is placed in a cup of hot tea. The fire inside the metal stove heats the outside surface by conduction. Various materials differ so greatly in their conductivity that some of them are used as insulation.
In addition to these fundamentals heating engineers have'studied the effect of humidity and the biological heat requirements of the human creature. Because dry air evaporates moisture from the skin, thus cooling the body, a relative humidity of 40 to 60 percent should be maintained. But in the winter if the walls and windows are too cold a high humidity causes condensation. As for the heat requirements, the body generates about as much as a 100-watt bulb and uses only about one-fifth of this amount to run its internal mechanism; so, if the balance is drawn off at the same rate that it is generated one feels comfortable.
These studies have revealed that the conventional methods of hom.e-hee.tmg leave much to be desired. The central heating system that circulates hot air, water or steam, while doing away with the necessity of having separate stoves in each room, still warms the rooms principally by convection. Scientific investigation, however, shows that radiation heating offers many advantages over convection heating; hence in recent years more and more interest has been shown in the former.
Radiant Heating
This method consists of heating the floors, walls and ceilings so that they throw out or raaiate their heat to those in the room from all sides and angles instead of from only one side as a fireplace does. Preferably copper tubing is placed in the doors and walls (iron piping has been used but is less satisfactory), through which hot water or steam is circulated from a conventional type of furnace. In regions where there is an abundance of cheap electricity, electric panels for walls and ceilings are available. Whereas hot-water and steam radiators give up only 30 percent of their heat by radiation and 70 percent by convection, the heated wall system radiates 60 percent of its heat and distributes the remainder by convention.
There are many advantages offered by radiant heating, among them lower cost of operation. By doing away with radiators more room is allowed, arrangement of furniture is simplified, and architectural advantages in the form of novel window construction are afforded. Also a uniform room temperature with a difference of only 2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit between floor level and ceiling is given by radiant heating, to compare with a 5- to 20-degree difference with convective heating.
The great advantage of radiant heating is found in its economy. As stated, heat rays pass through the air without warming it, and give up their energy upon the objects on which they fall. Hence, in a radiant-heated room where the thermometer reads only 65 degrees Fahrenheit a person feels far more comfortable than in a convective-heated room having a higher thermometer reading. Cold walls in a room draw heat from the body. Incidentally, breathing the codler atmosphere without a steam-heat smell makes one feel crisper and more alert, and when going out doors the actual temperature change is not so shocking, consequently there is less danger of sickness.
In actual saving it is estimated that as much as 33J percent less fuel is used with a radiant heating system. It is true that the initial cost of installation is high, at least 20 percent higher than other systems, but this is taken up in a period of four years by the fuel savings, provided care is taken both to install reflective type insulation rather than an absorbent type and to bond the plaster to concrete walls so that there is no unnecessary loss of heat. Indirect savings in washing, cleaning and repainting are made when there are no hot air currents surging up from radiators and registers that soil curtains, walls and draperies. The cost of installing an elaborate air-cooling system is also saved simply by circulating a coolant through the tubes during the summer.
Radiant heating, while coming to the fore in recent years, is not a new discovery. As long ago as the time of Christ copper tubing was used in warming the floors of the famous baths at Pompeii. Toward the close of the last century the radiant heating of homes in Europe and England began. The system is suitable for custom-built or prefabricated cottages, mansions, hospitals, factories, greenhouses, airport hangars, stores, . schools and swimming pools. Such institutions as the Bank of England, the Liverpool cathedral, Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, the British Embassy in‘Washington, the Johnson Wax building in frigid Racine, Wis., are all radiant heated. One corporation building in Illinois is heated by 180,000 gallons of hot water pumped through its 40 miles of tubing every hour. Airplane hangars with high ceilings and large doors located in Colorado, where the temperature drops to 30 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, have been heated more satisfactorily with radiant heat than by other means. Auxiliary installations under sidewalks and driveways turned on during snowstorms eliminate shoveling, in the northern latitudes. By the beginning of the last war there were 1,000 buildings in the United States heated by radiation; now there are over 5,000.
Experiments in home-heating are also being conducted along other lines, with the end in view of lowering costs by increasing efficiency. One of these ideas uses a central furnace to heat a compound made from fuel oil and • sand, called tetracresylsilicate, to a temperature of 550 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn is used not only to heat the home and water but also to do the cooking and run the refrigerator.
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