Every Reformer a Fanatic by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 20, 1914

Every Reformer a Fanatic

By F. M. W.

WITH but few exceptions every reformer, particularly in the province of religion, has been counted a fanatic by the people of the generation in which he lived. It has remained for later generations to view his work in the true perspective. It has been truthfully said that no historian can write a true history of his own day. In some measure his judgment will be swayed by his prejudices. His religious beliefs, his political affiliations, will influence his mind with respect to the great issues passing before him.

We look back upon the work of our blessed Master during his earthly ministry, upon the labors of the apostle Paul, upon the work done by Luther and Wesley and others, as in the order of the Lord; and yet in the days in which these great teachers lived they were counted by many as wild enthusiasts, as unreasonable and unreasoning men.

This thought is expressed by the editor of the Christian Work and Evangelist, in a recent number of that journal:—

Europe lay in the sleep of death religiously until three or four fanatics—Huss, Luther, Zwingli, and John Calvin—came along. These were all fanatics of the deepest dye. They were all crazy to their contemporaries. The epithets “wild,” “frenzied,” “dangerous men,” were constantly applied to them. Luther was continually referred to as “that mad friar” and “that mad priest.” Italy had settled into a complete indifference to religion until the fanatic friar with wild eyes and unresting zeal, Savonarola, marched through the streets of Florence rebuking the rich and mighty for their sins. He, too, was called “mad” because he disturbed the established order with revolutionary ideas. One has only to remember the religious history of England to see how the great revivals came when the great fanatics came, John Ball, John Wyclif, Oliver Cromwell, John Wesley; and there were those who called Dwight L. Moody and Joseph Parker fanatical. . . .

And who was the one great fanatic of history?—Jesus, the Christ. Every word he said was as a can of dynamite under the smug, established order. All Judea looked askance at him. He was pointed at by scribes and Pharisees as one whose ideas of the kingdom of God were those of a dreamer and an impracticable man. Even yet his words, if taken seriously, sound fanatical. . . . And in the last analysis Christ was finally put to death because he was a fanatic, dangerous to the public order.

And no sooner has Christ, the fanatic, gone, than there comes another. What a wild, crazy, fanatical man Paul was! How he uttered things that to practical men seemed foolish and of no relation to human life! We have direct testimony to the feeling for him in his day, for one practical gentleman said to him, “Much learning doth make thee mad.” Yes, he surely was mad. Were he here today, the peace societies and other reform agencies would have nothing to do with him because his extreme utterances would hurt their cause. Yet this fanatic has built the one great organization the world has yet seen, the church; has shaped the thought of every man who has ever thought in Christendom, and has done more to reform the world than all the reform societies of all ages put together.

Of the demand for this kind of fanatics in our own day the editor suggests in conclusion:—

Perhaps if some great fanatics should arise and attack our modern lust of pleasure, our sham religious life, our smug respectability, our sin underneath our fine clothes and good manners, there might be a real revival of religion which would not only save our souls, but purge our business, our social life, our politics, and our international relations of the rottenness and corruption at their heart.

Strange it is that we cannot learn from the experience of the past; that with our narrowed vision of today we fail to see the broader horizon of God’s providence stretching out before us. We fail to discover the bright jewels of truth amid the admixture of iron and clay and refuse. The gold is counted dross, the fine wheat chaff, the same as in the days of Paul and of Luther. May our eyes be anointed with the heavenly eyesalve that we may see clearly, and with our spirits attuned to the great harp of God, may we be enabled to catch every note of the divine harmony amid the jargon and confusion of this wicked world, and keep pace with the onward march of God’s truth and providences. F. M. W.