Men and Things by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1872

Men and Things.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

HEAVEN NATURAL.

EVERYTHING that is of God, everything that is good, is simple, natural, and easy to understand: but men, especially theologians, are never content to leave things as God has made them. On no subject have men so taxed their imagination and the credulity of the people as in their descriptions of the future world. They have made it of immateriality, filled it with ether, and peopled it with spirits and with ghosts! All that is real, natural, and lovely, they have utterly banished from it. How refreshing now and then to find such sensible remarks as the following from Rev. W. H. H. Murry:—

“It is not peopled with ghosts and specters, shadows, and outlines of being, but with persons and forms palpable to the apprehension. Its multitudes are veritable, its society natural, its language audible, its companionships real, its loves distinct, its activities energetic, its life intelligent, its glory discernible. Its union is not that of sameness, but of variety brought into harmony by the great law of love; like notes, which, in themselves distinct and different, make, when combined, sweet music. Death will not level and annul those countless differences of mind and heart which makes us individual here. Heaven, in all the mode and manner of expression, will abound with personality. There will be choice, and preference, and degrees of affinity there. Each intellect will keep its natural bliss; each heart its elections. Groups there will be, and circles; faces known and unknown will pass us; acquaintance will thrive on intercourse, and love deepen with knowledge; and the great underlying laws of mind and heart prevail and dominate as they do here, save in this; that sin, and all the repellance and antagonism which it breeds, will be unknown, and holiness supply in perfect measure the opportunity and bond of brotherhood.”

FOR TALE-BEARERS.

See here, my sister, you who have always a very confidential word, spoken in a low tone, too about every sister you meet concerning some report about your brother or sister, here is a little scrap for you. This means you—you who are very ready to tell what you heard about this one or that, though you are very conscientious to say that you will not vouch for the truth of it, only you “heard so.” Poor hypocrite! the Judgment will show that you loved and helped to nurse lies:—

“—A good finished scandal, full-armed and equipped, such as circulates in the world, is rarely the production of a single individual, or even of a single coterie. It sees the light in one; is rocked and nurtured in another; is petted, developed, and attains its growth in a third; and receives its finishing touches only after passing through a multitude of hands.”

THE TRUE MAN.

Here is a very short description of a noble man, or a woman either:— “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”—Emerson.

METHODISM AND MASONRY.

We are glad to see our Methodist friends, some of them at least, waking up to the evils of Freemasonry as the following will show:—

“A number of petitioners requested the General Conference to require the members of the church to withdraw from all connection with Freemasonry, and to subject them to discipline if they refused. They thus state their reasons:

“Dear Brethren: We, your petitioners, being members of the church which you represent in your Quadrennial Assembly, beg to represent that many of the ministers and other members of our church are also members of Masonic lodges, and other secret combinations whose obligations and teachings are essentially and designedly anti-Christian; that Masonry, the parent and promoter of such combinations, professes to be a religion; has its priest, its ritual, its worship, and its laws, and professes to raise its members to holiness here and to Heaven hereafter; and all this while it rejects the only Saviour, Jesus Christ; that these ministers and other members of our church who adhere to Christ and his gospel alone, and have no fellowship with such unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them, feel much aggrieved by the contradictory and unholy connections here specified, and are becoming more and more dissatisfied therewith, and especially so with regard to ministers who have entered into such unholy and anti-Christian associations.”

“This petition was referred to the Committee on Revivals.”

INFIDELITY IN HIGH PLACES.

The great Dr. M. D’Aubigne in a late letter says:—

“There are now in Christendom two adversaries which menace the religion of the gospel: Romanism, on the one hand; Infidelity and Rationalism, on the other. The latter is in the midst of us, intra muros, and it shows itself with increasing energy. This system denies the supernatural; rejects the facts and the doctrines of Christianity—especially the fall of man and the divinity of Christ, and redemption by his blood, which Roman Catholicism itself upholds. There are now in Switzerland, in France, in Holland, in Germany, and in other countries, many Protestants, ministers, professors, sincere in their opinions, men of talent, who look upon the Lord Jesus as a simple man, possessing greater wisdom than other men; but whose resurrection is a fable, and who only rose again in the souls of his disciples.”

Yes, this refined skepticism and infidelity are rapidly spreading everywhere and infecting the church. It is a mighty proof that Babylon has fallen indeed. Jesus foresaw this when he said, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Very little, if he tarries much longer.

THE OTHER SIDE.

As soon as the truth on the Sabbath, the nature of man, &c., is presented in a place for a few days, a general cry goes up that the people must wait till the other side can be presented. Very generally, the man to do this is not soon nor easily found.

But stop a moment! Which side have these people been hearing all their lives? Verily, it has been no other than that same “other side.” They began to hear it on their mother’s knee, then in the Sunday-school, and they have read it in all their books; and, finally, what have these “heaps of teachers” been about for the last fifty years, if they have not been teaching them the “other side?”

Strange, isn’t it, that one man, a stranger, all alone, with everybody against him, with all the prejudices of the people to oppose, with all their worldly interests to overcome, can, in a few days, by plainly giving this “side of the question,” so overturn all these things that the ablest minister in all the region about must be sent for to re-give the other side again!

The fact is, the people have been hearing “the other side” all their lives, and now common justice would say that we should have a fair chance unmolested to give this side of the case. Yet we are glad to have the other side presented, and the oftener the better, as it will only expose its weakness.

D. M. Canright.