Stability a Characteristic of our Work.
By George J. Butler
We often hear it remarked in reference to the religious movement in which we are engaged. Oh! this will all blow over in a little while, or something similar to it, as though this work lacked stability. Now we are free to admit that permanence and strength are good evidences of vitality and of the truthfulness of any position. And no doubt we can tell very much about a cause, and whether it is worthy of our confidence, by first ascertaining whether it is based upon such principles as evidence, strength, and durability, or whether fluctuation and change characterize its growth and existence. Truth is eternal. Its pillars are firm as the everlasting hills. But error is ever changeable in form, even though hoary with age. We have no objection to being tested by this standard. If this cause has merely exhibited a mushroom growth, with nothing substantial about it, then nobody should link his eternal destiny to it. If our positions upon points of faith have ever been changing like the shifting sand, this would be a suspicious circumstance. If our efforts have been mainly to get up something sensational in character, that would catch the passing popular breeze, and then to drop it for something else of a similar nature; then we are unworthy of confidence. This is an age of the world when there are plenty of such efforts as I have mentioned. One can hardly turn his eye without seeing them. But those are not characteristic of truth, or of God's work, but rather of man-made theories, pushed forward by mere human agencies. God's work starts out perhaps in the greatest unpopularity, when it seems like certain ruin of reputation or life to be identified with the movement. Battling with hydraheaded wrong and error, fighting its way, inch by inch, against stubborn opposition, it stands at last justified before the world as founded upon God's eternal truth. It lays its plans, not to catch the passing breath of popular favor, but because they are right and according to sound principle and policy, regardless of what men may say about them. This battle has been fought over and over in the world. And it is in this school where the world's real heroes are. They are not made as the children of fortune, sharing her favor, but ever trained in the school of adversity and discouragement. After success has crowned their efforts, enough can always be found to shout their praises; but very few to share their labors when the battle is hottest. Every great movement of reform from the darkness of heathenism and papacy has witnessed the repetition of this struggle. Truth starts out unpopular. We claim to be engaged in a work of real reform from the darkness of papal apostasy. The great work of reformation of the last few centuries has shed light in many directions. And yet there is error to meet, and its chains must be broken before Christ's church shall stand without spot or wrinkle, prepared for his coming, full and complete as the church he left when he ascended on high. We claim further that there has never been a religious movement more free from the merely sensational and fluctuating, than the one in which we are engaged. For some twenty-five years this movement has been in progress, meeting the united opposition of the leading churches of our land, and many times the most bitter and prejudiced statements concerning it. Its leading positions are all unpopular. The advent of the Saviour near has been a very unpopular position ever since the great disappointment of 1844. Our views on the life and death question have the popular sentiment of the religious world to contend against. While the seventh-day Sabbath arouses more opposition perhaps on account of its inconvenience than either of the others. And other views of less prominence are equally unpopular. There is nothing captivating to the popular heart about them. They tend to cut every one right off from those things that are esteemed highly by the world-loving throng. And yet this movement has gained strength every year in spite of this, and of a thousand other difficulties unknown to the outside world. We claim that there is no other religious movement in our world better prepared to meet opposition than this. We are a thoroughly organized people, and our organization is not based upon mere appearances, but upon a solid foundation. Having struggled against all kinds of influences, within and without, and being now a unit, speaking the same thing from ocean to ocean, it is not a very easy thing to shake us to pieces. It has been tried many times and failed. Not a single theological position have our people, as a whole, ever accepted that they have been obliged to give up. How different from the course of every other people who have sailed under the same name. These positions are becoming brighter and clearer every day. This is a very gratifying feature of our work to those who have been toiling against opposition and opprobrium for years in the face of the whole religious world, to look back over a struggle of a quarter of a century's duration and see how God has kept us on the path of truth. It looks as though God's hand was leading out. No man can say that these positions which were taken in discouragement and apparent weakness, and great unpopularity, are not mightily stirring the public mind now in contrast with what seemed possible then. Openings are seen even this year as never before. Other nations and tongues are pleading for light on these points, and never had we greater encouragement to hope for good results. The means and institutions supporting this movement are also of the most stable character. We have a Publishing Association, commenced in weakness, now owning a capital of nearly $70,000, free from debt, and capable of flooding the land with our books, pamphlets, tracts, and periodicals. The founding and management of this has cost toil and energy, but it is a fixed fact, and one which argues strongly for future success. Our Tract and Missionary Societies in process of organization will be able to scatter our publications in every nook and corner of our land, and make all our members unite in one system. This is no ephemeral growth, gotten up for show, but something promising real work and real success. It will show, when fully completed, that we are in earnest to bring our views before all the people of our land. And what could otherwise be expected of a people who believe they have a message to test the world. We could not do otherwise and be consistent. There is labor in getting such a system into working order as any one can imagine who considers that the organization extends, more or less, over all the northern States where we have churches. To bring all these into harmony of working is a great undertaking. With a tract fund of from $6000 to $10,000, and with the willing contributions of thousands more, success may be most reasonably expected. Our Systematic Benevolence for the support of our ministry is another institution peculiar to our people, and one greatly prized by us because it has been found to work so admirably. It consists of a system of giving in proportion to the amount of property, for the success of the cause, voluntarily adopted generally by our people. There is no compulsion about it. We find it abundant for the support of the object in view. Where can another people be found who have voluntarily adopted such a plan and practiced upon it for years? Cannot every one see that such a result as this is evidence of the strongest kind in favor of permanent prosperity. Surely such a result would not be expected of a work merely transient in its nature. So of the Health Reform and Institute. These have come up against the greatest obstacles, involving denial of appetite, one of the hardest things poor nature has to practice, and yet one of the most important for men's temporal well-being. The Bible is full of instruction upon the subject of Christian temperance. And the last days are pointed out as being perilous in the extreme on account of gluttony, or surfeiting, and drunkenness. Here is an important reform to be carried out in the last days, whether people believe it or not; for the church of God who are translated will not be found destroying themselves and benumbing their noblest powers of mind when ready for the touch of immortality. We are glad to say that this reform is making progress among us. It is laid in the very principles of nature, in living, and in treating the sick, and therefore not fluctuating or changeable. Our proposed school, in process of establishment, will also be founded in stability. Our main reason for its formation is that we may have a place where our young people may be taught with more thoroughness, and less of the artificial and showy, than in any place we can now find, and where those influences which poison the fountains of morality and religion may be counteracted. These reasons and the additional one of having a place where the important truths for this time may be taught are the great reasons we have for its establishment. We appeal to an intelligent public if in all these means which we are using there is anything of the merely sensational introduced. Are they not laid in common sense, in wisdom and stability? They are not designed for mere show and to captivate the passing popular favor. But they are just what an earnest people, with the fear of God before them, and the good-will of their fellow-men in their hearts, and a message of the greatest magnitude committed to them, would adopt to move the world. Fanatics do not pursue such a course, they do not create such institutions. And whatever people may think of the doctrines we teach, or of our ultimate motives in teaching them, it must be admitted that the means we are using for their promulgation and the principles we are acting upon, are stable, sensible, and consistent with truth. And the more our principles are examined and our theories investigated, with an unprejudiced mind, the more certainly will it be found that the doctrines and means are a part of one whole, well calculated to do the work we claim to be doing: the promulgation of a great system of truth calculated to test the world.