PRINCIPLE AND FEELING by J. Y. Dobbins

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 8, 1881

PRINCIPLE AND FEELING.

By J. Y. Dobbins

“FEELING is the most irregular element and least trustworthy test. It belongs to the passive part of our nature ; principle to the active part. Feeling depends on a sensitive surface ; principle on depths of moral purity. Feeling changes with temperament, with states of health and nerves, with a thousand fickle influences ; principle is independent of all physical or alterable circumstances, moves straight on, through all moods and climates, sails by fixed stars, and is the same secure and glorious thing, through all the shifting seasons, though the mountains of prosperity be torn up and cast into the sea.” So wrote F. D. Huntington, and the statement is worthy of the careful attention of all Christians, not alone for the vigorous and beautiful language in which it is clothed, but for its own value. Religion is first, last, and always, a body of principles, not of emotions necessarily. We must attend with great care to the principles of our blessed religion, and the emotions will take care of themselves. Clear convictions of God, of salvation through his Son, and the resultant duties to us—these must be the foundation of that religious life which endures ; mere feeling cannot sustain it.—J. Y. Dobbins.