p. 20 | The Way of Truth

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 5, 1870

The Way of Truth.

TRUTH encounters no greater obstacle than the disposition which exists in men to come to a complete halt after taking a few advance steps, and, conceiving that they have all the truth, refuse to go beyond the instructions of their teachers, or the instruments of their reformation. Some, all along, have seen the evil and the danger, and earnestly exhorted their brethren to guard against it. Truth is progressive, and no bounds must be set in the way of its onward development. To place bounds and set stakes, is the same as it would be for a traveler to throw up a barricade directly across his path, to prevent further progress toward the place to which he was journeying.

A worthy example in this respect is found in John Robinson, pastor of the congregation of pilgrims in Leyden, Holland, in 1620. In his farewell discourse to them, as some of their number were about to depart to establish themselves in the wilds of America, he uttered the noble sentiments which we present below. Well would it have been for the descendants of the pilgrim fathers, if they had followed his wise counsel. Then they would not have been found to-day so far back on the track of truth, and so stagnant in spiritual things.

An account of the farewell meeting is given in Martyn's History of the Great Reformation, vol. v., pp. 69–73, from which we make the following extract:

“Robinson gave the departing members of his exiled flock ‘a farewell, breathing a freedom of opinion and an independence of authority, such as then was hardly known in the world;’ and this he intermixed with practical directions for the future guidance of the pilgrim voyagers. He chose that beautiful text in Ezra, ‘And there, at the river by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before God, and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all our substance.’”

“Unhappily ‘but a brief outline of that remarkable sermon has been preserved. We would gladly give whole shoals of printed discourses in exchange for that one homily. While, however, the larger part is lost in the long silence of the past, the fragments of this great man's farewell utterances are gathered up and preserved among our richest relics.’”

“Never was there a more affecting occasion. A Christian congregation, welded together alike by a common faith and a common misfortune, was about to be rent asunder. Some of their number thrice exiled, were soon to essay the settlement of an unknown and legendary wilderness. These dear wanderers they might never see again with their mortal eyes; and even should they meet them once more on the shores of time, years must intervene before the greeting. Strange thoughts and anxious, chased each other across the troubled mirror of each countenance. All eyes were dim with tears; all hands were clasped; the pastor's heart was full. Amidst the painful silence, broken by a frequent sob, the low, sweet voice of Robinson was heard quivering upon the sympathetic air:

““Brethren, we are now ere long to part asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether I shall live ever to see your faces more. But whether the Lord hath appointed it or not, I charge you before God, and his blessed angels, to follow me no farther than I have followed Christ. If God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it, as ever you were to receive any truth of my ministry; for I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word. Miserably do I bewail the state and condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion, and will go no farther than the instruments of their reformation.

“Remember your church covenant, in which you have agreed to walk in all the ways of the Lord, made or to be made known unto you. Remember your promise and covenant with God and with one another, to receive whatever light and truth shall be made known to you from his written word; but withal, take heed, I beseech you, what you receive for truth, and compare it and weigh it with other scriptures of truth before you accept it; for it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.”

In giving us a delineation of the character of this eminently pious and good man, Stoughton says: “He was no friend of stagnant Christianity, but in all his voyaging after truth he clung to his Bible anchorage. Inside of that, he saw ample room for the completest development. ‘The Bible, not the fathers, formed his text book; he discerned there the depths of truth and glory, into which he was persuaded that thoughtful minds might plunge farther and farther, as time rolled on. The Bible was to him like the universe, a system unchangeable in its great facts and fundamental principles, but ever opening wider and wider upon devout and studious intellects. He knew there would be no change in God's word, no addition to, or subtraction from, its contents; but he looked for beautiful and improving changes in men's views—for broader, clearer, and grander conceptions of God's truth.’”

We who live down in these closing days of the gospel age, amid the blazing light that now shines from the word of God, can appreciate this man's position,

and see the force and beauty of his conceptions of truth, when more than two hundred years ago, he exclaimed, “I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word;” and when he said that it was not possible that they could come at once from such thick antichristian darkness to full perfection of knowledge, and when he told them to compare everything closely with the Bible and take that alone as authority. Let us rejoice that a few have been found willing to take their stand upon such sound principles, so that the light has not been hidden in obscurity, but the truth has ever found a path and a people among mankind. And let us hold ourselves in this position, ready for more light whenever and in whatever way it may please God to bring it out, ready to receive truth not into the intellect merely, but into the good soil of prepared and disciplined hearts, where it may speedily bring forth a hundredfold.