PARALYZED

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 6, 1879

A BROTHER in Vermont has sent us a copy of the St. Albans Weekly Messenger of Jan. 3, 1879, containing a sermon on the second coming of Christ by Chas. A. Huntington, of Johnson, Vt.

He holds that “the second coming of Christ is his return in the spirit,” and that “the end of the world and the day of Judgment for each individual soul is the day of the death of the body.” The reader can easily imagine what kind of views and interpretations of Scripture must necessarily go with this position.

But what impressed us most in the sermon was the peculiar condition into which he had to bring himself in order to come to his conclusions. It is a study for any one’s curiosity. He describes it as follows:

I desire to look through all material signs, and apprehend the thing signified. I desire to go beyond the shadow in search of the substance. I desire to shut the eye, to close the ear, and for the moment paralyze all bodily sense, that I may take account of the relation and the destiny of my immaterial self—that immortal substance of which the body is but the shadow, and of which these senses are but the transitory instruments of its outer manifestations.

There are certain channels through which God has ordained that we shall receive intelligence, and there is not a thought, idea, or conception possible that does not come through some one of them. Yet Mr. H. would close up all these, and completely paralyze himself, and then undertake to reach the truth on this most important and momentous subject.

And as we read the sermon, it becomes very evident that all sense of obligation to be governed by what the Bible says on this subject is completely paralyzed in him. Speaking of that decisive testimony of the angels in Acts 1:11: “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven,” he simply says, “I do not think this is a promise to return in the flesh.” Why did he not put it in plain terms, and say, “True, the Bible says that the same Jesus shall come again in the same manner that he went into Heaven; but I don’t believe it!” Then the real infidelity of his heart would have stood forth in its proper light.

We are sorry to see that his sense of the importance of speaking truthfully is also paralyzed; for he sends the old lie about ascension-robes waddling down out of his pulpit, clad in clerical garb.

He speaks of his “immaterial self.” Immateriality is essentially, philosophically, and absolutely nothing. But in the very next breath he proclaims it an “immortal substance.” Did any one ever hear of an immaterial substance? But the words next uttered mix it up still worse; for he declares the body, which is in reality substance, only a shadow. If there can be worse contradiction of terms in fewer words, we would like to see it. Let not paralysis try to teach about the coming of Christ.