TRUTH PLAINLY TOLD

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 10, 1867

TRUTH PLAINLY TOLD.

If we had painted the following “dark picture” of the present condition of the professed Church, it would doubtless have been looked upon by our opponents as a mere outburst of fanaticism, worthy of no special attention: but coming as it does from the able pen of the editor of The Morning Star, a believer in the conversion of the world, it must demand the attention of every thoughtful Christian reader; while Adventists will rejoice at such powerful testimony to the correctness of their views. Evidently these are the days just preceding the second advent, “when the love of many should wax cold”:—Voice of West.

“DISCOURAGING ASPECTS.”

“A glance at the moral, and religious condition of our country reveals many startling facts. It is not, however, to the ravages of intemperance, and to the alarming increase of vice and crime in all their forms, to which we wish to call attention, but to other things, which, if they do not constitute the most noticeable figures of the dark picture, do certainly give to it its shadings.

“There is manifestly in many portions of the country an increasing destitution of the means of grace. The tendencies of the age toward centralization are seen in things spiritual as well as in things temporal, and in comparison with the city the country has, in a religious point of view, declined in importance. In many communities, especially in New England, where thirty years ago there existed strong churches, there are now only weak ones, and where there were weak ones there are now none at all. Leading church members have either died or removed, and others have not come up to fill their places; or, in some instances, discord has crept in, producing its legitimate results, declension and death, and the pastor, either discouraged or enticed to the city, has abandoned the field. There are, consequently, large sections of country where no stated meeting is maintained, and where the luxury of listening to a gospel sermon is scarcely known. This aspect becomes darker and more discouraging when we consider the rich harvest yielded by these abandoned fields in former years. Some of them were the spiritual homes of able and useful ministers now filling prominent positions, while others have furnished the bone and sinew of the membership of churches in cities and

larger towns. Their contributions have also served to swell the funds in our mission treasuries. But these sources of supply are now cut off, and these fields once promising are now barren wastes.

“Turning from this discouraging feature, which is somewhat of a local character, there is another more generally prevalent and still more discouraging. It consists in the fact that the larger portion of the people, both in the city and in the country, habitually absent themselves from the house of God on the Sabbath. As numerous and as spacious as are our church edifices, they are greatly inadequate to accommodate the people who ought to be found in them every Sabbath. The masses seem to have little love or veneration for the institutions of the gospel, and the victims of prejudice, regarding everything that is sacred with a sort of repugnance, have settled down into a semi-infidel stupor from which it is by no means easy to arouse them. Living in the full light of the gospel day, and surrounded by its privileges, they are still in darkness and destitution, and their condition is becoming apparently worse and worse year by year. It is true that revivals appear to a greater or less extent in the churches, but their fruits are confined largely to members of the stated congregations and of Sabbath-schools. The multitude famishing for the bread and water of eternal life fail to be reached.

“Judging from representations contained in the letter of our English correspondent, published in our last issue, the state of things, in this particular, is even worse in England than among us. We are glad also to learn that Christians there are inquiring for its remedy, although their efforts have thus far been attended with little or no success. We also find the evil, as it exists among us, much easier to point out than to cure.”