p. 16 | What Did It Prove?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 8, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 41.

What Did It Prove?

In our News and Notes columns there is an item to which we call especial attention. It relates to the wounding of a gentleman, Mr. Kensit, who has felt himself called upon to work against the Ritualist, or High Church, movement in the Church of England. Doubtless he has presented strong arguments which have worried his hearers. Some, it seems, have become angry. One of them attempted to meet the gentleman’s arguments by throwing a chisel, and severely wounding Mr. Kensit. Now what did such kind of an argument as the throwing of a chisel prove? It did not prove that Mr. Kensit was wrong. It did not show any of his arguments to be defective or illogical, or any of his statements to be untrue. If it had killed him, it would only have emphasized the truth that he spoke. But the use of the chisel did prove something. It proved that the man that used it had no better weapon with which to meet his adversary; it proved that the user had no faith in God for his cause, or he would have been willing to have left it with God. In all ways it worked against the user and his cause, and made a deeper wound and will leave a deeper scar in his own character than it did in Mr. Kensit’s face. Of the same order as the chisel argument are the boycott argument, the various inquisition arguments, the “scab” argument, and many others. The advocates of truth can always afford to be fair, and leave results with God. It is the evil that “can not brook delay; the good can well afford to wait.”