p. 75 | Spirit of Persecution by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 21, 1871

Spirit of Persecution.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

WE think that the Bible most clearly shows that our government will yet in some form oppress the people of God. If we read aright, a spirit of this kind is fast growing among the leading religious sects. At a recent meeting in honor of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, a reverend speaker said thus:

“God forbid that our own religious freedom should ever be described as Gibbon described that of the age of Antoninus, from which he dates the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: ‘The various modes of worship (says he) which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally false; and by the magistrates as equally useful.’ And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. Such a spirit of toleration—such religious liberty as that—even in an age of paganism, gradually led to the overthrow of the great empire of the Old World. What else but overthrow can it accomplish in a Christian age for the great republic of the New World?”

Rev. Dr. Bellows spoke in the same strain at a recent dinner in New York. He said:

“I am not a bit ashamed of their acrimony; for it was always in behalf of truth and virtue. I am not a bit ashamed of their narrowness. I am not a bit ashamed of their persecuting spirit, if you dare to call it by that language, as anything against them. They had that sort of sincerity and conviction of soul that made them feel they were the spokesmen of Almighty God, and very little patience had they with the sins and errors about them; and if they had been of that sort of liberal belief that is about as sure of one thing as another, and about as liberal of folly and sin as of religion and virtue, we should have no country to boast of whatever.”

Straws show which way the wind blows.

D. M. CANRIGHT.