Light Become Darkness by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 3, 1872

Light Become Darkness.

By John Norton Loughborough

“If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.” Matt. 6:23.

From this scripture we would understand, that a person who has had light, but through failing to carry out the truth has so far incurred the displeasure of God that he no longer enjoys his presence and Spirit, will go into very great darkness when he leaves the humble truth. To what ridiculous lengths of folly and error he will go. The truth of this is even now forcibly impressed upon my mind by a circumstance which has happened recently in this city.

There is, in the west part of this city, near Lone Mountain, a Catholic priest, who, a few years since, was an intelligent, talented, zealous minister of the Methodist church. For some reason, he gave up the good old Methodist doctrine of justification, and ceased the work of pointing sinners to the Lamb of God, to whom they could go directly for themselves; and through vainglory, pride, flattery, selfish ambition, or some other cause—perhaps the last-named—he has engaged in the work of teaching sinners to do penance and come to the priest with a bit of money in their hand to confess to the priest, he in turn to the bishop, the bishop to the pope, and the pope alone to Christ. And as Christ and the pope are claimed to be one consistory with God, if the pope should say, “I absolve you,” “God would be obliged to submit, and the sinner’s guilt is absolved.”

But then, what about this money consideration for pardon of sins! The idea of buying salvation was fully exploded by Luther when he wrote so strongly and logically against it; when, as seen in the dream of Frederic, Elector of Saxony, this “monk wrote with the quill of a Bohemian goose,” and the stem of his pen was so long that it “reached from Wittenberg to Rome and knocked the tiara off of the pope’s head.” Since Luther struck so effective a blow, and others have followed up so earnestly in the work, we no longer find lists of prices for absolving from certain sins; but, it is claimed that the money the penitent brings is only a trespass-offering, which is put into the treasury of the church. The priest, of course, when his penitent is gone, puts his hand into the box and takes it out; so what difference from the old plan, only in form?

But to come to the real point of consummate folly! A few days since, Bro. Diggins, of this city, who resides near where the above-named priest holds forth, passed their church on his way to our meeting. He saw persons coming from every direction, from the city and from the country, bearing pictures in frames and out of frames, of every description—sacred, secular, and of all kinds. He supposed, of course, that they were preparing to hold a fair in their church, and were going to sell these pictures. On accosting one of them with an inquiry, he was told that they were carrying these pictures there to be blessed by this Catholic priest, who was once a Methodist minister.

What nonsense, to suppose that the blessing of a finite man placed upon lifeless wood, paper, and glass, will cause that picture to be a safe protection against damage by earthquakes, fire, flood, and keep the devil out of the house. The poor Catholic member is left to drink his whisky, swear, get angry, and let the devil into his heart, with no proper instruction that his great effort must be to overcome, or the devil will be in his heart, and as matter of course go with him everywhere.

Learning of this great picture-blessing excitement, I could but think of the text at the head of this article, and of these words of Jeremiah: “They have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them.”

J. N. Loughborough.