Men and Things by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 7, 1871

Men and Things.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

WHAT MAKES THE MAN?

How we fret, chafe, and murmur, under trials! Yet they are just what we need to make us of any value. See that sturdy oak on yonder hill. What has made it so strong and mighty? The winds, the storms, and the tempests of a century have been the chief agents in making it thus. Sunshine and dew, and the gentle breeze, would never have developed this strength and majesty. So it is with us. The ups and downs, the adversities, and the hard knocks, of life are what develop our character and bring out the worth of the man. Let us thank God for them, and take courage. Read the following and lay it to heart:—

“THE THINGS THAT MAKE THE MAN.—It is not the best things—that is the things which we call best—that make men; it is not the calm experiences of life; it is life's rugged experiences, its tempests, its trials. The discipline of life is here good and there evil, here trouble and there joy, here rudeness and there smoothness, one working with the other, and the alternations of the one and the other, which necessitate adaptations, constitute a part of that education which makes man a man, in distinction from an animal, which has no education. The successful man invariably bears on his brow, the marks of the struggles which he has had to undergo.”

MODERN PREACHING.

Men everywhere are beginning to cry out against the sensational style of preaching which is coming so largely into use. There is no Christ nor salvation in it.

Dr. Thompson very pithily remarks in his new work, “The Theology of Christ,” that “preaching has run too much to the superficial, the fanciful, the sensational; men go to church that they may be pleased and excited, rather than instructed; for some transitory play upon the imagination and emotions, rather than the lasting conviction of the understanding.”

May God help the people to see and feel the need of a reform, and open their eyes to the truth.

CHARLES AND JOHN WESLEY BELIEVERS IN IMMERSION.

I find the following passage in Whitehead's Life of the Wesleys, p. 80: “Mr. Charles Wesley, as well as his brother John, was so fully convinced at this time that immersion was the ancient mode of baptizing, that he determined to adhere strictly to the rubric of the Church of England in relation to it, and not to baptize any child by sprinkling, unless it was sickly and weak. This occasioned some contention among his people, who were governed chiefly by their passions and a spirit of opposition. However, by perseverance and mild persuasion, he prevailed with some of them to consent to it; and about this time, he adds with apparent pleasure, ‘I baptized Mr. Colwell's child by true immersion, before a large congregation.’”

Would that they and their immediate followers had always as firmly persevered in this that they were so well convinced of. But the people were against it, and they yielded, and truth has suffered terribly in consequence.

ROMANISM IN THE CHURCHES.

Says the Liberal Christian: “There is a powerful element of Romanism in all the larger Protestant bodies. The clergymen do not teach to the people the Bible itself in its purity and simplicity, but they require them to receive instead, a system of clerical interpretations of the Bible. Their whole ecclesiastical system is based on the preposterous assumption that their opinions about the Bible and its teachings are identical with the teachings of the Bible itself.”

These obvious facts ought to teach men a little more modesty in defending their own doctrines and condemning all others. The doctrines of the Bible are one thing, and men's interpretation of them quite another.

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ASSUMED IN THE BIBLE.

When our opponents are pressed to give us a Bible declaration of the soul's immortality, they often try to evade the point thus: The Bible does nowhere directly assert nor argue that there is a God. This fact is so obvious and plain that it is everywhere assumed, taken for granted, without being directly asserted. This, all must admit. So, say they, it is with the soul's immortality. It is nowhere directly asserted, but is simply assumed to be true, as an obvious fact believed by all.

Does the reader see where the falsity of this argument lies? Look a moment, while the Bible does not directly assert and declare that there is a God, yet it does often and repeatedly speak of God, tell that he did this, that, and the other, thing. But is the same true of the immortality of the soul? Is there anything said about, or concerning, the immortality of the soul? Not one word. It is in no way referred to. It is not so much as even mentioned once. So we see that the cases are not at all parallel. To make them similar, the Bible should say something about the immortality of the soul, the same as it often refers to God. If it did this, we would believe the immortality of the soul, though it were not positively asserted to be so.

D. M. Canright.