A Few Questions for the Candid.
By A. S. HUTCHINS
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” BIBLE truth enlightens the understanding, refines the taste, sanctifies the judgment, and draws the soul upward to God, as though attracted by a holy magnet. The truth received into the heart, and reduced to practice in the life, never fails to make its receiver a better person: and to such, eternal life will finally be granted. But error perverts the judgment, stupefies the understanding, hardens the heart, and leads away from God and his truth. We have long believed, that in the providence of God, his people were being gathered into the unity of the faith, preparatory to translation into the everlasting kingdom of his dear Son. One important means for the accomplishment of this object, we believe to be the gifts of the Spirit. That these gifts have in a very important manner been developed in our midst for a series of years, through the visions, we doubt not. If we can trust our senses, if we can believe what we ourselves have heard, and have seen, and have experienced, in our own hearts, on this point, for fourteen years, then we may say, we believe Sister White's visions are from the Lord. But we hear a voice saying that they are "not of God." Men's tongues, and pens are busily engaged to prove them false, and that they are a gross imposition upon those who receive them. But who are these men? Are they the best acquainted with sister W., and with her daily walk, both in her public and private life? Are they the most meek and heavenly-minded men? Are they under a greater degree of the influence of the Holy Spirit, than those who respect and acknowledge the visions as of heavenly origin? Is God in his infinite wisdom leading out, and urging on these people in their tirade upon the visions? If this is of the Lord, why do not the most spiritual see and recognize his hand in the matter? Why all this rejoicing in the ranks of our bitterest enemies on the question of the holy Sabbath? Why does this mixed multitude of professed Sabbath-keepers, and virulent no-Sabbath men, rejoice and dance together now? Truly Pilate and Herod have again made friends. Finally if these men are doing the will of God, why is it that they have renounced almost every cardinal point of present truth? Is it because the truth has kept such bad company that the whole must now be rejected? Dear brethren and sisters, let us mark well the course of men who have gone off in a raid upon the visions; let us notice well the result of the present undertaking, and again learn the difference between those who receive, and those who reject the visions? Are any shaken at all, read the answers to objections to the visions, now being published in the Review. We say again to all, Read them.