"Arise , go up to Bethel ........"

We too , have need to go up to Bethel . As a nation we have had our own Bethel experiences in the past . Many a time the Lord has appeared to us in the riches of His mercy and saving power , and we have responded to these manifestations of His grace by entering  into covenant with Him , and pledgeing ourselves to loyalty to His name . Especially may we say that this is the case with those tumultuous years of war . The Lord revealed Himself on our behalf in the day of our distress , and enabled us to prevail over our enemies . In those days there were many fair promises of reformation and new obedience . The experience of suffering had brought to light many things in our national life that called for repentance , and there were resolutions of amendment , and visions of a regenerated social order when the day of trial should have passed away . Multitudes of men and women raised an altar to the living God , and vowed that they would live a new life in the time to come . Now the war is over , but these vows are unfulfilled . God's altar is forsaken , and the nation is far removed from Bethel . The same influences that were operative in the case of Jacob lie behind the present disloyalty to God . To begin with , there has swept over the land a devouring tide of worldliness . The vision which fills the eyes of the majority of men in these days has no place for the shining ladder that stretched from earth to heaven ; it consists rather of the good things of this present world . In many homes there is no altar to the living God , and the generation that is rising up too often laughs at parental control , and acknowledges no law but its own inclination . And most ominous of all , there is a decreasing decay of the sense of religious responsibility . The authority of Holy Scripture is , to a large extent , disowned . The truth of the evangel is not enthroned in the hearts of the people , and the ordinances of the Lord's house are suffering neglect . It would be  an unfeigned joy to be able to write in a more hopeful strain of the religious condition of our country , but the facts are unchallengeable , and it ids worse than useless to indulge in the fatuities of a baseless optimism .Beyond question , there is a need to return to Bethel
     it need not be said that the call we are considering has its special appeal to the individual Christian . There are many who have at one time or another have seen the heavens opened , as Jacob did , but who have failed to make their abode in Bethel . In the morning of life , perhaps , they had a vision of Christ as a way unto the Father , and experienced the transforming power of His grace in their heart and life . Or , it may be , they cried unto the Lord in the night of lonliness and distress , and He listened to the voice of their supplications , and delivered them out of their troubles . But they too , journeyed " unto the land of the east "and in the pressures of life's cares and preoccupations failed to carry out the promise of their youth . There are many Christians from whom the warmth and the glow of their early experience has long since faded . They attend to the duties of religion , and cling to the profession of Christ's name , but they have left their first love , and the splendour of the morning has given place to a dimness which lacks even the radiance of "the light of the common day " They have lost their boldness toward God , their freedom of access , their clearness of hope , their delight in prayer , their power in service . To them , surely the call of the Lord is ,,"Arise , go up tp Bethel , and dwell there ." They are summoned to fulfil their vows  and make a fresh beginning in the Christian life .    Alexander Stewart