TRADITION PREFERRED TO TRUTH.
By R. F. Cottrell
It is a remarkable trait of fallen humanity, that the traditions of men are preferred and adhered to with much greater tenacity than Heaven-born truth. Pure religion and undefiled is laid aside and forgotten, because men do not choose to retain the knowledge of God in their hearts, and superstitions as foolish and absurd as they are false, are chosen and retained. It is the next thing to an impossibility to persuade men to forsake meaningless, superstitious rites, learned from their fathers, and embrace in their stead the institutions and laws of revealed religion, every one of which commends itself to the good sense and sound judgment of every enlightened mind. It is strange that men should ever, from beginning to end, be so ready to forsake the truth and turn to fables—to leave the true God, the Maker of all things, and worship gods of their own foolish imaginations, and which their own fingers have made; and then in the madness of their folly, be ready to claim that their superstitious mummeries are the only true and acceptable worship of the true God—the first and best religion in the world. It seems easy for men to leave the truth for fables, but almost impossible to turn them back to the truth. This is illustrated in the history of our race from the time that Cain substituted his own religious invention in the place of what God had intended, down through the times of ancient Israel and the Christian Church to the present day. Men have very readily departed from the truth and true worship of God, to the making and worshiping of golden calves; but when convinced of their folly and madness so far as to make some feeble efforts at reformation, have yet been slow in breaking down the images of Baal, and cutting down and thoroughly grubbing up the groves, the monuments of their wickedness and folly. What are the rites and practices of the church, styled by herself, as well as by the book of Revelation, “the mother,” compared with those of the primitive Christian church? And the traditionary, superstitious mummeries of modern Jews are about as near to the true religion of their ancestors, as described in the books of the Old Testament which they profess to believe. Only think of Moses and the prophets, who forbade divinations, charms, and enchantments, arising in the morning and engaging in their devotions, wetting their hands several times with a very little water, and winding and unwinding, several times, a long strip of morocco about their hands and arms, as an amulet or charm to shield them from evil spirits and accidents through the day! Can any think they were guilty of such fooleries? Yet the sons of Abraham of to-day do such things; and doubtless they think, like poor, ignorant Catholics, that these baseless rites are the genuine, primitive practice of the oldest church in the world. What a crooked and rebellious race of mankind! How almost hopeless the task to reform and save such creatures as we are—so ready to forsake the true and right way of revelation, and embrace substitutes and superstitions, and adhere to them with a tenacity and zeal which almost precludes the possibility of our conversion. The wonder is not that there are few that be saved, but that any so lost and degraded by sin, can be saved. The only way open before us is to return to the fountain of living waters, the written word which God has given us, and no longer hew out to ourselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Let vain traditions go, and embrace and heartily obey the truth, and it is possible that we may yet be saved. Who will do so? Who will renounce the false traditions of men, and cleave to God alone and obey his word?
R. F. COTTRELL.