DODGING by Editor

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

DODGING.

By Editor

The following is the effort of the Voice of the West to dodge a paragraph on definite time which appeared in REVIEW No. 7, present volume.

“A correspondent of The Advent Herald having asserted that we have ceased to advocate ‘68 time, as it is called, the editor of THE ADVENT REVIEW takes the cue, and declares the same to its readers. Our readers will not need a contradiction of such misrepresentations. But when THE REVIEW commences to lecture us about ‘acknowledging our error’ (which is yet to be proved), we think it decidedly out of character. It would be well to remember a certain adage about ‘glass-houses.’ Whatever errors the future may prove us to have held, we trust we may never resort to ‘suppression,’ or worse, but acknowledge them in a noble and Christian manner.”

The paragraph alluded to stated that the Voice, having once committed itself upon the 1868 time, had now ceased to advocate it. This is passed over with simply a fling about “misrepresentation.” Is it a misrepresentation? If the Voice is now advocating the ’68 time its readers ought certainly to know it. Why, then, are they not now able to discover anything in its columns in defence of this date? It is simply a matter of observation. Then where is the misrepresentation? Or will the Voice deny that it has ever advocated the ’68 time?

Again it speaks of our “lecturing” it about “acknowledging its errors”; is it a consciousness of error that leads it to manifest such sensitiveness here? We have given it no lecture on acknowledging its error. We only said, in substance, If the ’68 time is correct, and they have confidence in their position, why are they not zealously advocating it, more especially as the year is rapidly drawing to its close? But if they have become convinced that it is not correct, and if this is the reason they have ceased to advocate it (and we can conceive of no other), then why do they not acknowledge it? All our “lecture,” therefore, was simply a call upon the Voice to make its course appear consistent.

It then endeavors to draw a morsel of comfort from the renegade lie about “suppression.” Our opponents are requested to point out a single position we have ever held the evidence of which we have at any time tried to suppress. This matter will be set right in the forthcoming work in answer to objections against the visions.

The Voice trusts it may “acknowledge in a noble and Christian manner” “whatever errors the future may prove it to have held.” We shall see.