A PURPOSE FROM BENEATH

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 12, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 40.

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A PURPOSE FROM BENEATH.

If there is a system in the world which could truthfully be called anti-Christ, it is New Thought. The purpose of the Gospel is to convict men of sin, and release them from its bondage, and then clothe them with power and wisdom to bring that liberty to the acceptance of others. The true Christian can not settle down to a life of ease and comfort while he knows that his fellow-men are going on in the slavery of sin to a ruin that is certain to overtake them. He who is desirous of taking another’s life would not warn that other if he saw him going to his death. The ill-wisher would sit down in comfort and complacency. Not so with the man who is desirous of saving that same man’s life. He would hasten to warn him in the utmost earnestness. He would let nothing stand between him and the delivery of his warning message. It would be utterly impossible for him to sit down comfortably and know that friend was walking into the trap of death.
It is Satan’s business to prepare death-traps for souls, and his best helpers are they who can induce men to believe there is no danger in the course they are pursuing. Such helpers make his devices all the more certain. They are false sign-posts, pointing “safety,” where greatest dangers lie concealed. They are wreckers, building false beacons that lure life mariners to the rocks of eternal ruin.
A prominent New Thought journal says: “Let us be comfortable. Let us seek comfort. The one center toward which all men tend in their thoughts is comfort. . . . Many are questioning what New Thought stands for, and what it will do for them. The best possible answer is: It will make you comfortable.”
In that doctrine Satan can lull the world to sleep and captivate it at his will. And this, coupled with the self-sufficiency and self-salvation which that same system teaches, would obliterate Christ and His work and the reason for His work from the world entirely. That also is Satan’s purpose, and in the New Thought system that purpose is being wrought out in every soul that will yield to its seductive teachings.