INIQUITY INCREASING by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 6, 1876

INIQUITY INCREASING.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The following solemn words are from the Interior. They set forth the very state of things which the Lord has foretold as a sign of the end. We see in this evidence that God's mercy will not long be continued to such a fearfully corrupt generation.

“It seems to be assumed, in all quarters, that the times are out of joint; that sin and folly prevail in high places as well as low; and that the very foundations of social order are in danger of being destroyed. This opinion finds constant expression through the pulpit and the press, in our seats of justice, and in our halls of legislation. With the increase of light and knowledge, which has marked the progress of the century, there has come an equal augmentation of all the forces and appliances of evil. It would seem that while the good are getting better, the bad are getting worse at each successive stage of the world's advancement, and if this be the law of its progress, it is difficult to see, on principles of human calculation, what the end will be. We are left, however, in no uncertainty as to final results; for we know that God is on the throne, and he has assured us in his word that the good shall at last triumph.”

“It cannot be denied that there is, in all parts of our land, and in all ranks of society an unusual prevalence of luxury and extravagance, violence and corruption, vice and crime, threatening the very existence of our free institutions. At such a spectacle many of our oldest and wisest men are filled with astonishment and misgiving as to the future. What these things mean, and what they portend, are problems which call for the thoughtful and prayerful consideration of all true patriots and Christians. . . . . . .

“To us it seems perfectly plain that the fearful domestic, social, and public evils of the times have grown out of a departure from the essential truths of God's word, and the obvious requirements of God's ordinances, on the part of the individual, the family and the nation. There has been a growing disregard for the old established principles of religion and morality, and with it a relaxation of the demands of conscience a connivance with sin and folly, a yielding toleration of error, a tacit conformity to the maxims of worldly wisdom, and an open or secret indulgence in a thousand practices condemned by the word of God. All this has come in a large measure from the prevailing skepticism, materialism, and atheism of the age. A whole generation has sprung up under this teaching, and we are beginning already to reap its harvests. Our people have drifted away from all the old landmarks. Under the popular watchword of progress, a good thing abused, they have been trying the experiment of countless innovations. They have gone after other gods, unknown to the fathers of our church and the founders of our republic.

“There has been a gradual, but now very wide departure from the great principles of virtue and integrity, of individual character and of public honor, on which our republican institutions were founded, and by which they were maintained through all our earlier history. It is the fashion now, in certain quarters, to decry the great principles of the German and Swiss Reformers, the French Huguenots, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, and the New England Pilgrims. But it is one of the best established facts in history, and one of the grandest, that these are the very principles on which the American Church and the American State were founded—the distinctive principle, on which their young and vigorous life was nourished up to greatness, which have given character to us as a people, and made the nation respected and honored in the eyes of mankind.

“For the first fifty years of our history there was comparatively little departure from the maxims of our fathers. The affairs of the nation were administered on the same principles of economy, frugality, honesty, public spirit, and patriotism, which had distinguished the career of all our early statesmen and patriots, but the last half century, especially the last quarter, with its influx of population, its accumulation of wealth, its lust of power, and its unparalleled splendor, has brought a woeful declension of moral character. Many among us have become so paganized and demoralized that they seem to be ashamed of our nation's religious origin and Christian character.

“The church itself, in many of its branches, has caught the prevailing spirit of worldliness, and, instead of rebuking the sins of the times, has been willing to join in the idolatry of wealth and fashion. We might almost take up the lamentation of the old prophet over the desolations of Jerusalem, and say, ‘Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.’

“If such be a true diagnosis of the prevailing malady, then the remedy is plain. It is in the line of reformation and return. If as a people we have been departing from the ordinances of God, and hewing out for ourselves broken cisterns which can hold no water, then our only remedy and our only salvation is in coming back to Him who is the fountain of living water—whose inspired word is the true source and standard of righteousness and peace to the individual and the nation. Our safety lies in the setting up of the old landmarks, in the restoration of first principles. When the prophets of God preached reformation in Israel, they called the people, not to a seeking after new inventions, but a return to the old paths.

“It is not in new departures from evangelical truth, not in empirical innovations, not in rationalistic speculations, not in the cold negations of atheism, materialism, and skepticism that our true strength lies. On the contrary, it is in a return and firm adherence to those old established principles of truth, equity, and liberty which have stood the test of ages, sustained the children of God through all generations, and carried the fruits of civilization around the globe—the principles of the American Revolution, of the Protestant Reformation, and of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

How our peace-and-safety preachers can much longer claim to see the dawn of the millennium through such increasing moral and spiritual darkness is hard to conceive.

D. M. CANRIGHT.