Ascension Robes by W. C. G.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 22, 1870

“Ascension Robes.”

By W. C. G.

We are glad to find in the columns of the New York Independent of Feb. 17, a candid and honorable admission concerning the “ascension-robe” slander which the clergy and press every where have found so much delight in repeating. Mr. J. T. Dixon, of Rocky Hill, R. I., writes to the editor, as follows:

“In the notice of a new work on the ‘Coming of Christ in his Kingdom,’ in The Independent of last week, I read the statement that ‘gaping believers have prepared their ascension robes, ready to be donned at a moment’s warning on the appearance of the august and descending Personage.’ Will you be so kind as to announce in The Independent that the sum of one hundred dollars will be paid if proof positive can be produced that an ascension robe was ever ‘donned’ by any of the Second Adventists at any time. I, like others, have been misled by that slander.”

To this the editor makes the following reply:

“Mr. Dixon will observe that the writer of the notice in The Independent did not say that ascension robes had been ‘donned,’ but only that they had been ‘prepared ready to be donned.’ But we suspect that even this cannot be proved. The writer probably erred in assuming the truth of idle stories set afloat in a time of excitement to satirize the Second Adventists.”

The editors of the “American Cyclopedia” doubtless erred in the same manner, in placing a falsehood upon the record as a fact. And the enemy of truth has been delighted to see the wicked prejudice which this slander has created. If those who take such pains to circulate the lie would only prove equally anxious to contradict it when its falsity is demonstrated, we might give them credit for honesty, at least. W. C. G.