Signs of the Times by Chas. L. Boyd

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 1, 1873

“Signs of the Times.”

ADVENTISTS are often accused of lack of charity, and confronted with, “Men are growing wiser and better,” when they say that evil men and seducers are waxing worse and worse. The following, from the pen of Geo. D. Boardman, in Baptist Quarterly, pp. 182, 183, shows that they are not alone in their belief:—

“Look at our own age. It is pre-eminently the age of science; the age of astronomical exploration, geological investigation, of physiological inquest, of chemical analysis, of psychological inquiry; the age of the telescope, the microscope, the crucible, the balance, the consciousness turning on itself in self-scrutiny. And yet it is the age, pre-eminently, of skepticism. It is the age of rationalism, of the authority of reason, as distinguished from and opposed to the authority of Scripture and of the Giver of Scripture. There has never been a period in the history of the world when science was cultivated with such ardor and success as now; and there never has been a period when scientific men, as such, so universally disowned the authority of revelation, or so strenuously insisted on excluding from the universe the living, personal, ruling God. Well may James, in speaking of the wisdom of this world, describe it thus: ‘This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, psychical, devilish.’ It is earthborn, belonging to the sphere of the psyche, and such as the demons may have.” CHAS. L. BOYD.