p. 148 | SANCTIFIED LITERATURE by Earnest Christian

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 25, 1868

SANCTIFIED LITERATURE.

By Earnest Christian

“Give attendance to reading,” was the counsel of a great apostle to his son in the Gospel; (see 1 Tim. iv, 13,) and this valuable counsel is applicable to every intelligent human being. It is by reading that we shall hold converse with the good and the great of present and past ages. To read as extensively and carefully as we can without encroaching on any of the other imperative obligations of life, is evidently a Christian duty. Every person should seek wisdom in every lawful way, and with all commendable zeal and earnestness. With a correct moral state of the heart for a proper basis, mental pleasures will ever keep pace with mental culture. We say, with a correct moral state of the heart for a basis, and we cannot lay too great stress on this, for experience and observation show that mental cultivation coupled with moral corruption, only enhances man’s guilt, and increases his misery.

To store the human mind with much knowledge of the sciences and arts, law, medicine, history, etc., while the heart remains corrupt, “sold under sin,” is to place many sharp, pointed, and polished instruments in very unsafe hands, where they may be used in the perpetration of a vast amount of evil. “He that hath a froward heart findeth no good; and he that hath a perverse tongue falleth into mischief;” and “a wicked man taketh a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways of judgment.” (See Prov. xvii, 20 and 23.) Again it is said that the carnal mind is enmity to God, that it is not subject to his law, and cannot be. (Rom. viii, 7.) Hence we discover the very great importance of diffusing among the masses everywhere a sanctified literature—a literature that shall aim at the correction of the evils of the heart as well as the information and development of the mind. Abstract mental development produces a polished worker of iniquity. Abstract culture of the heart can eventuate at best in only an ignorant Christian, and one who is therefore very liable to be imposed upon by the crafty sons of Belial, to drink in error, and run into fanaticism. How important therefore is it to aim to secure the just sympathy of all the component parts of man’s compound being! The Bible proposes this. The Christian scheme seeks the trifold culture of man—the proper development of his whole being, moral, mental and physical. It is therefore as verily a man’s duty

to study, read, cultivate his memory, and strive to improve his mind, as it is his duty to pray and lead a Christian life—indeed, these things constitute an important part of the Christian life, and he is not a Christian who purposely ignores or carelessly neglects them.

The diffusion of scientific literature among the masses prepares the way for righteous civil government, and for the greatest prosperity of the church of God. “Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times and strength of salvation.” (Isa. xxxiii, 6.) Ignorance is a great enemy of righteousness and of peace, and is a most prolific cause of confusion and misery. God complained of backslidden and wretched Israel, saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee.” (Hosea iv, 6.)

Man must, necessarily, spend his energies in gathering unto himself true wisdom, or he will inevitably perish in his own ignorance and folly. He cannot escape. He will be “destroyed for lack of knowledge;” or, as Job expresses it, “In the greatness of his folly shall he go astray.”

In the light of these great, general, and fundamental truths, the solemn obligation, the imperative duty of the church of God is truly apparent. It is her duty to scatter broadcast through the land, o’er the earth, a sanctified literature—a literature that shall not only be free from error and from sin, but shall be all ablaze with the sublime truths of Divine revelation. This duty is on her, and she cannot shake it off. God will hold her responsible to himself for the full and faithful discharge thereof. A church in these days that does not spend its energies to enlighten mankind by means of the printing press, as well as orally by pulpit instruction, does not deserve to be called a church of Christ, and if it has any light within its pale, it will soon go out, and dense darkness will take its place.

The emissaries of Satan are doing all they possibly can, by means of the thousand-tongued printing press, to scatter the seeds of moral desolation and death everywhere throughout the breadth and length of the land. They appear in the form of novels, licentious tales, obscene books, pamphlets, and papers; also in periodicals professedly devoted to the promulgation of Bible truth, but which are thoroughly impregnated with deadly theological errors—errors that will insure the damnation of all those who embrace them. This pernicious literature is thrust upon the people—in all possible ways, and in all possible places. And the very worst feature in this case is, that many prominent (and many who are not so prominent) ministers and members of the larger Protestant denominations, as well as Catholics, are actually engaged in the spread of the soul-damning publications. Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular of Protestant preachers in America, writes a popular novel, and for a large sum of money allows it to be published in a paper devoted to the pampering of the corrupted tastes of lost sinners; and then with his clerical robes still wrapped around him, allows it to be dramatized and acted in the principal theaters of the country, thus lending his great influence to aid on the work of soul destruction, while he still claims to be minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then to cap the climax of this absurdity and wickedness the book is advertised for pay, and offered as a premium for subscribers, by some of the principal religious papers of the country! Various other novels much more vicious in their nature and tendency, are unblushingly advertised in these same papers,—religious papers (?), as if there was no sin in such advertisements.

Again, how few and feeble are the utterances of most of the religious periodicals of our time against some of the most crying evils of the land! What shall we think of those periodicals devoted to the spread of holiness, professedly so devoted, that never in the days of slavery, uttered one rebuke to the cruel slave-holder, or one pleading word for the poor slave? for it was not a proper place to introduce such topics! We venture to suggest that an effeminate, sentimental holiness that does not reprove sin, is not the holiness of Jesus, for he testified against the world that the works thereof were evil, and he was hated of the world for his testimony.

We believe that the abominable liquor traffic could be put down, and a stringent prohibitory liquor law be enacted, if the religious periodical press would speak out constantly, fearlessly, and faithfully, as the vast importance of the subject demands. In that case a correct public sentiment would be created that would brand the nefarious traffic with that infamy which it so richly deserves, and send every drunkard-maker immediately to prison as among the worst of criminals, or into some better employment than breaking the hearts of devoted wives, and robbing innocent children of a father’s care and protection.

The various secret orders of the day are wholly incompatible with the plainest principles and precepts of the religion of Jesus, and with those free and open institutions which must of necessity characterize a Christian Republic, and are fraught (especially the larger and more darkly-mystic orders) with danger to our free institutions; yet how few and tame are the utterances against them! A few papers published by some of the minor sects are beginning to see the growing evil, and to lift up their warning voice against it. All honor to whom honor is due. But the organs of the great leading denominations of this country, are almost all of them, entirely silent on this subject. Why is this? The reason is plain and painful;—painful to the enlightened tender heart of the true Christian—too many ministers and members are beguiled into these dark institutions by their mystic witchery. As though a man could take a most horrid oath to keep the secrets of a dark and mystic brotherhood before he knows what these secrets are, and yet be guiltless before God. Said Jesus, “Ye love darkness rather than light, because your deeds are evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”—(John iii, 19–21.)

Again, the very common practice of selling or renting the seats in temples erected for the worship of God, and the costly and extravagant manner in which such temples are too often built and ornamented; the pompous and formal worship which is carried on within them; hiring, perhaps at a great price, a few giddy and thoughtless sinners to be the sole conductors of a very important part of religious worship, thus striving to worship God by proxy. Readings from Sabbath to Sabbath in a dry and artistic manner, instead of preaching with a heart yearning with love for souls; administering the solemn ordinances of the Christian religion to those who dress as gay and fashionably as the proud worldling, with ornaments hanging from their ears, placed there at the price of self-torture, to say nothing of the sacrifice of moral principle, the costume of communicants on holy communion days, as well as at all other times, showing no difference between them and the gay votaries of fashion. The very common use by professors of religion—aye, and ministers too, of that poisonous and filthy weed, tobacco, in the various forms: of cigar, pipe, quid, and snuff-box, as though this costly and filthy practice was consonant with the pure and self-denying principles of Christianity. The growing of hops, corn, rye, barley, etc., on purpose to feed the distillery; and various other evil things, too numerous to be mentioned in detail, that are either winked at or openly encouraged by most of the religious bodies of the land—especially the larger and more popular ones. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord; and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” Jer. v, 9.

It is the legitimate province of a sanctified literature—a literature set apart exclusively for the promotion of truth and righteousness—to earnestly oppose all of these evils by name, to warn the people most faithfully against them, and to inculcate, by irrefragable argument and most earnest persuasion, the opposite principles of immutable, eternal righteousness. And it is manifestly the solemn duty of all God’s people to sustain those publications that do this, in preference to all others, and to do all they are able to give them a rapid and wide circulation. Earnest Christian.