M. W. HOWARD by M. W. Howard

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 8, 1870

M. W. HOWARD

By M. W. Howard

Jottings:

RECENTLY a cheerful-looking book fell in my way, with the inviting and endearing title, “The Second Coming of Christ.” Notwithstanding the source whence it emanated, in good faith I commenced reading, little dreaming that the effrontery I found was possible; the whole drift being to make that “coming” spiritual and figurative. Patiently, however, I continued to read; for nearly all the Scripture texts concerning that coming were cited, and I was nearly half through the book before I fully comprehended that such outrageous perversions were being candidly set forth; but was constantly expecting that by some master-stroke of irony the tables would be turned, and the whole be vindicated in its true light. But not so.

As a proof, illustration, or argument (I scarcely know which), of his position, the following was given, which induced the query in my mind, “Did the writer regard Christ’s first coming figurative because of the long expectation on the part of those who were awaiting it?” I saw no reason why one coming might not as well be figurative on that ground, as the other!! But to the quotation: “As the patriarchs and Jews of old, after the Messiah was promised, were constantly expecting his first coming—almost every generation—till he did appear; and many modes of prophetic expression in Scripture which speak of things being to come, as if they were present, or just at hand, gave them some reason for this expectation. So the Christians of the first age did generally expect the second coming of Christ to Judgment, and to the resurrection of the dead, in the very age wherein he was foretold.”

Now, granting all this, I fail to see wherein this expectation argues against the literalness of the coming in one case more than in the other. Certainly not in the latter. And neither the author, nor any one else, could for a moment so view it, save in a misguided zeal to establish the latter as figurative.

The well-known rule of interpretation was admitted, that “To prophetic language it belonged to set things far distant as if they were before the eyes, or near at hand—future events passing before prophetic vision, like a landscape. The order of the images being distinctly marked; but the times not designated. The proper order of the events be stated clearly, but the exact time God does not as yet intend to make known.”

The book completed, I laid it aside with a decided feeling of relief that the self-imposed task was done; and fully conscious that its contents could only mislead, for nothing was definite from its standpoint. There was some good sense in it, however, if it had been differently applied. As an instance, the following paragraph on double sense: “There is no limit to the second sense of the Scripture. The man who adopts it, is cast at once upon a boundless ocean, without rudder or compass. He must be himself inspired, to know with any certainty whether his interpretations are correct. And as we have no such guaranty of inspiration, we must hold to the laws of language, as the indispensable means of investigating and determining the true sense.”

I very much wished he had followed his own good rule; his book would then have been far more readable, and himself a wiser man from the writing of it, and the investigation of Scripture called forth.

M. W. HOWARD

Malone, N. Y., Sept., 1870.