The Change by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 16, 1870

The Change.

By John Norton Loughborough

The time was, when, if means were needed to carry on the work of the gospel in the earth, an appeal to men's consciences in view of what Christ had done for them, would move them. This was the primitive method. See 2 Cor. 8: 5-12; and chap. 9. Now if means are wanted an appeal is made to the appetites; and money is thus drawn from those who otherwise would do nothing.

I saw in the REVIEW, not long since, a question asked and answered concerning the “bottles of Bourbon (whisky)” that were distributed from a Christmas-tree in Iowa. It brings to mind a circumstance that occurred at a donation party in this county, in a place where we have labored. What I am about to state was related to me by the man who made and sold “egg nogg, with liquor in it.”

It seems the party was being held in the ball-room of a hotel. Various operations had been established to get money. Some would keep going down into the bar-room to get liquors. Finally a man proposed that they make the “egg nogg” and sell it, that “it would bring in more money,” and as they were “determined to have the liquor” it would “not be so strong as they were getting in the bar-room.” Mr. —— says he did not suppose when he made the proposition that it would be tolerated, although he did not think it much worse than some other resorts they had to get money. He says he wanted to test the matter, and see what would be done to get money. He says he knows he sold this under the eye of the minister, with no reproof from him.

I have before me a copy of “The Advocate,” a Methodist paper of San Francisco, in which a writer styling himself “A Methodist,” after speaking of a festival held in one of the mining districts, says, “Now the question is, How much longer shall the Methodist Church on the Pacific coast be cursed by these dancing festivals? Shall earnest piety have no place of shelter? When our church opens wide the door to the worst forms of worldly frivolity, and with gambling and dancing supports the ministrations at the altars, where will one who desires a sanctuary from these vicious influences flee?”

Again he says, “I learn that an officer of that church danced, and justified himself by saying that his pastor was there! He even gloried in a superior illumination—‘He would not go to Heaven with a long face!’ Shade of Wesley! A dancing class-leader in the Methodist Episcopal church! Tell it not in Gath, lest the enemies of God rejoice.”

In this same article this “Methodist,” after reading the notice of this three-evening festival which was to close with a dance each evening, says, “I felt that I must be behind the age; that while I have been poring over the anticipated works of Wesley and Fletcher, and that still more antiquated book, the Bible, a new era has burst upon the world with its superior illuminations. The religious life has been released from its trammels, and we may now (when a pastor's salary is concerned) dance for the glory of God! Had Bishop Asbury, that venerable old representative of the dotages of religion, been properly illuminated, he need not have ridden in that old turn-out which cost the enormous sum of thirty-four dollars. This, instead of being episcopal humility and self-sacrifice, would be an asceticism worthy of the dark ages. The fathers of Methodism need not have turned their old rusty coats several times to present as decent an appearance as their circumstances would admit. Paul, if he had had the inspiration of this age, would never have worked with his hands in Corinth, Ephesus and Thessalonica to earn his bread while he preached the gospel without charge, as he says, ‘but we suffer all things, lest we hinder the gospel of Christ.’ We will preach for the Lord, and the world will dance for us; this is to be the order of the day! This will furnish a sphere also in which even that bashful professor who can neither talk nor pray in our social meetings, can have a chance to work for eternal life. So all the brains and heels of the church can be employed in advancing its interests. The saints will hold up their pastor's hands in prayer, and those whose evidences are not very bright, can clothe him and his family, providing that food which gives blood to the brain and vigor to the arm to fight manfully the battles of the Lord in this benighted place. Sermons will be more earnest and Christ-like when there is bread in the larder and the money jingles in the pocket.”

Such things clearly indicate the age in which we are living as the one marked by Paul in which men should be “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” May we discern this time, and may our lives be those of earnestness, devotion, and sacrifice, such as the times demand.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.