Contrasts and Counterfeits by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 30, 1908

Contrasts and Counterfeits

By C. M. S.

—No. 6

BECAUSE the nation has been declared Christian; because a majority of the House of Representatives has declared for the restoration of the religious motto on our coinage; and because there is a large formal profession of belief in God, many are deluded into the belief that the cause of true religion is making substantial progress in this country; that infidelity is losing ground; that a glorious age is dawning, when truth will, in the natural course of events, supplant and suppress error and falsehood. In a sermon on the resurrection, published in the Christian Herald of April 15, Rev. C. T. Brady says:—

There are very few absolute atheists in the world. They are a negligible quantity, even in this day of skepticism and indifference. Mankind believes and always has believed in God. Also, there has always been some kind of moral law in human hearts, older far than the decalogue, and varying with race, and place, and time.

It is a fact, however, that absolute, out-and-out atheism has never been able to accomplish a tithe of the harm to the church of God that has been accomplished, and is now being accomplished, by theological skeptics, who, under the title of pastors and reverends dispense doubt and darkness from the pulpits of the land. On the plea of bringing God nearer to man, they have peopled the

earth with more gods than the Hindu worships. On the plea of making Bible truths more spiritual, they have blunted the edge of every great truth, and cast prophecy to the winds. Avowed atheism has never been able to get at the people, and attack their belief in the verities of the Word to any such extent as the skepticism of the pulpit is doing it now.

The above quotation also has in it the seeds of the now fashionable doctrine that man has within him that which is building him up into divinity. The fact, however, is that the only moral law is God's great “ten words,” and the flood is the best answer to the assertion that human hearts have always been abiding places for moral law. That great punishment came because God saw that the imagination of men's hearts was “only evil continually.” The moral law goes back of its enunciation on Sinai. Death's reign “from Adam to Moses” proves the existence of the law during that period. “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” “Sin is the transgression of the law.” The fact of sin itself proves the existence of righteousness, but the only standard of righteousness is the moral law. As long as men have been sinning, they have been breaking God's law, and, incidentally, proving its existence. The law of God was known to, and kept by, Abraham and his house; and his generation long antedated the publication of the law of God on Sinai.

Men have not within them the power of their own salvation; for “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” The moral law is not inherent in the human heart; for “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jer. 17:9. “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Ps. 14:3. The world is not advancing in the matter of belief in the true God, or in a belief in the truth of his Word; and the Saviour's question, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” indicates what the true condition of these days will be. Infidelity in the pulpit and a belief in man's ability to save himself, are doing a fearfully destructive work in the world to-day. There is need for the apostle's admonition: “Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. . . . Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” Much of the professed belief of to-day is a counterfeit belief, and the god of such a believer is a counterfeit god, created in the imagination of the worshiper. Such belief and such worship are the culminating deception of the wily enemy of souls, and are closing the door of salvation to thousands who have not learned to love the truth for the truth's sake.

C. M. S.