HOW TO HAVE FAITH AND HOW TO HAVE DOUBTS by Dudley Marvin Canright

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

HOW TO HAVE FAITH AND HOW TO HAVE DOUBTS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

If you want faith, talk faith, act faith, and cherish it in your heart and thoughts. Do this, and you will have faith. If you want doubts, unbelief, and darkness, just talk it out a little while; pick up things that look dark to you and present them to some one for an answer. When they try to explain it, do you raise objections to their answers, and argue the point, whether their answer is really clear to you or not. Talk out doubts and objections just to see others try to answer them, then show your superior wisdom and sagacity by raising objections to what they say. Do this, and you will soon really have the doubts which before you only pretended to have. I have seen this till I know that it is so.

I know of some persons who are always boasting of their openness, frankness, &c. Say they, “I am no hypocrite anyway, I always speak right out just as I think.” My friend, you are deceived by the Devil: You are a hypocrite and a deceiver. You profess to be a friend to God, to the cause, and to the brethren, while the fact is you are a terrible enemy to each—a masked battery in the service of Satan.

Satan prizes your services higher than he does those of a score of openly professed infidels. You make your profession of frankness, &c., a cover from which to cast hailstones, firebrands, and death, among the unsuspecting flock of Christ. Hear one of this class talk: “Now, brethren, I love this cause, you know I do. It is dearer to me than my life. I would sacrifice everything for it. I would rather die than injure it. God knows my heart. I want to go this way, but I must see my way clear, I must know the why of these things. I can’t go a step till I do. If I am wrong I want to know it. I will thank any one to tell me of my wrongs. And if my brethren are wrong, I want them to know it. Now, I shall speak plain, and just as I feel.” Then he will pour forth a torrent of darkness, fault-finding, evil surmisings, and spiritual death upon the unsuspecting lambs of Christ. See the fruits. They are terrible. Such an one no hypocrite? God pity him. He knows not what manner of spirit he is of. Any one can talk doubts and raise objections and make trouble. The child of God alone will talk faith, cheer the halting, encourage the fainting, and give light and joy. God gives us just what we live for.

D. M. CANRIGHT.