p. 6 | PESSIMIST | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1903

PESSIMIST

MANY people there are (and not a few of them are people professing holiness) who seem to be possessed of a specially detective instinct that enables them to discern and advertise a pessimist at long or short range, and at quickest sight. Let any one assume to point out palpable evils inside the so-called church, or outside; let him call attention to vicious and mischievous consequences that are likely to follow the bad lives of wrong-doers; let him lift up a warning voice against dangers that threaten the social state or the spiritual life of the church; and straightway resounds the cry of “Pessimist.” Proofs of existing or coming evils may be placed in plain array before every eye; facts may be offered that no human notice can evade or human candor deny; but these incidents count for little with these sharp-scented detectives, for proof as plain as day can be easily overborne by the stigma of an offensive name, and facts tho stubborn as Gibraltar can quickly be put to rout by the man-dog cry of “Pessimist!”

But events may prove that the game is not wholly ended when evils are pointed out by honest and observant chroniclers of passing events, while their notices of evil or warning of peril are attempted to be shouted down by resonant outcries of “Pessimism!” For sure it is that things that were true before the maudlin cry of “Pessimism” was raised, are true still; and facts that are facts at the first, will continue still to be facts, however loudly or lustily may be lifted up the cry of “Pessimist!” The man at midnight who lifts up in the deserted street the cry of “Fire!” when discovering a dwelling in flames, may be berated as a “pessimist;” but the fire burns on. The fact of the midnight conflagration does not cease to be a fact because the alarmist may be called by an odious name. The man on horseback, courier of the rushing flood at Johnstown, might have been called—possibly was called—a disturber, and a “pessimist!” But the flood was a fact! Despite contemptuous speeches, the mad waters swept on, and a drowned city lay in the wake!

Wise men, sagacious men, such as are skilled in both church and statecraft, speak of coming evils in both Church and State, and of their own forebodings in relation thereto. Nor are the coming evils that have called up their forebodings unreal or imaginary. On the contrary, the evils they foresee and forebode are facts! How foolish to decry such skilled observers of the signs of the times, in either Church or State, as “pessimists!” Truth is, there is nothing either morbid or morose in seeing evils as they arise, and forewarning against them. It is a morbid habit, rather, to ignore them or to seek to fortify against them, by affecting optimism. Pessimists in a bad sense there may be; at any rate there are those who will be denounced as pessimists. Such people will be rated as pessimists, and denounced as such, because they will persist in believing, and saying, that facts are facts. But grace can fortify against such reproach. Thank God.—Church Herald.