Guilty Silence | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 3, 1874

Guilty Silence.

CLAMOROUS evils arrest attention and arouse resistance. A tornado or great fire which destroys property and life in comparatively small places, causes more popular sensation than the subtle malaria which by day and by night poisons the blood and prepares the graves of whole communities. If the pulpit is silent when God calls upon ministers to “cry aloud and spare not,” is it not an official partaker of other men's sins which it does not rebuke? If magistrates fail to execute judgment, and violence and corruption quietly stalk in brazen impunity before the awful form of justice, are they not even more guilty than the criminals whom they shield from outraged law?

A very profane man once complimented his minister for not saying a word to him when he had blasphemed God in his presence! Was that a time and a place for such a man to be silent? If the officers of a church neglect to preserve the faith and discipline which they are set to defend, if the ordinances are profaned by ungodly professors, and if notorious wickedness is silently passed over in the cases of wealthy and prominent offenders, is the public scandal less because of the cowardice of those who dare not use the power of the keys?

The applications of this truth are almost endless. In our time, nothing is more needed than a calm, outspoken, and resolute stand upon Christian principles against all that tends to weaken the power of conscience. Compromises in these fields are weaknesses. Silence is but another name for apathy. Power is with those who plant themselves firmly upon the rock of unchanging truth and eternal righteousness.—Sel.