Men and Things by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 27, 1872

Men and Things.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

VULGARITY OF PRIDE.

Poor, foolish, vain woman, read this, and then throw off your trinkets and be counted as a sensible woman.

“Overdressing is vulgar, especially in women, for the glare of the sun-lit and eye lit street. Toilets, even when tasteful as to color and style, denote, if habitually rich and showy, mental vulgarity, their transparent design being by superficial, material means, to impress the beholder. The refined beholder is unfavorably impressed, suspecting such outward richness to be the mask of inward poverty. A prevalent fashion of costly dressing is a sign of general vulgarity. The finest type of ladyhood would recoil offended from her mirror at seeing herself besilked, and befeathered, and bejewelled, for a morning walk or drive. She will be as simply elegant in her attire, in-doors or out, as in her manners, and will not exhibit, either in the one or the other, the slightest effort to outvie her neighbors.—‘The Gentleman,’ Calvert.”

GUARD YOUR THOUGHTS.

Evil thoughts are the source of all bad actions. A man who can control his thoughts, can also control his actions. The thought is first entertained, the design formed in the mind, before the deed is committed. Thus Jesus taught: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,” etc. Matt. 15:19.

“It is not acts which blacken the soul; it is not conduct which destroys. These are but the holes which the worms, bred in the very fibre of the wood, have eaten. These are but the fruit and visible witness of a disease which holds the entire body in its power, making the veins its channels, every drop of blood its servant, every pulsation of the heart its slave. The thoughts destroy. The imagination puts the knife’s edge to the jugular vein of virtue, and lets the precious current out. You cannot reform a drunkard until you first reform his mind. What needs to be done is to have the craving for stimulants taken out of him. Over against his inordinate desire you must raise up some stronger repulsion which shall be more than a match for his appetite for liquor. This is the true philosophy in every branch of morals. You must change the man himself if you would change his habits. There is no life so hard as a religious life to a man without religion.—Rev. W. H. H. Murray.”

POOR OLD POPE. DAN. 7:26.

His race is about run, his end is at hand. Here is what a Catholic paper, The Tablet, says:

The Tablet’s New Year’s survey of the condition and prospects of the Holy See is not cheerful:

“Deserted by all the great powers of the earth, robbed of the patrimony of St. Peter, her Pontiff a prisoner in his own palace, her capital, with its incalculable wealth of art treasures, its churches, its glorious monuments, in the hands of ruthless despoilers who know no other law than that of their own passions—her most cherished religious orders persecuted, robbed of their own just and lawful possessions, ever used for beneficent and Christian purposes—the calm and hallowed retreats of learning and religion invaded by a lawless and godless soldier, some of them converted into stables for the horses of the royal freebooter of Savoy! Everywhere the powers of evil arrayed against the church, everywhere secret societies, burrowing like moles in the dark depths below the surface of society, undermining the very foundations of virtue and morality, exciting the unwise and unwary against religion, which they nickname superstition and tyranny—everywhere the spirit of revolt raising its hydra head, hissing forth blasphemy against God and his Christ, his mother, and his saints—everywhere the Church fighting single-handed and alone, the powers of earth and hell, in divers forms, holding aloft the banner of the cross, and wielding the spiritual weapons her God has given her, in defense of the faith once delivered to the saints, assailed on every side by an irreligious age.”

HOW TO GET THE DEVIL OUT OF THE BIBLE.

Some things in the Bible trouble certain men very much. They are anxious to make themselves and others believe that they are not really there. A personal devil is one of these things. The idea of such a being is very objectionable to some persons. In answer to a question on this point, Beecher says:—

“The Bible will need a deal of interpreting and adjusting to get all traces of a personal Satan out of it. Still it can be done. Decide first that the Bible does not teach his existence, and then, learned ingenuity can easily put him out of every verse where now he seems to be seen.”

Every candid reader must be satisfied that this is really the only way a man can satisfy himself that the existence of a personal devil is not taught in the Bible. This is the way in which men are able to prove so many things by the Scriptures. They first decide that a certain doctrine is true; then they go to the Holy Scriptures determined to find it in there and to prove it by them. A little ingenuity with considerable adjusting and interpreting will do the thing. This is the way Sunday-keeping, sprinkling, &c., are proved. But if it is the truth we want, we must let the Bible have its most natural and easy meaning, though it tears our theories all up heaps on heaps.

D. M. CANRIGHT.