Signs of Apostasy by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 5, 1873

Signs of Apostasy.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

HERE is a short paragraph from the Christian Union, showing that American Protestants are treading hard on the heels of the Europeans in going back to the world:—

“Another writes that he remembers the time when, to wear ordinary attire, or a beard, or to read a novel, or to go to a concert or ball or to a public dinner, or to play in a charade or at chess or billiards, was denounced as sinful. Now he experiences a change that suits him. He plays at billiards and charades with ministers’ families in ministers’ houses, and finds that beards, concerts, private plays, etc., are quite the fashion in religious circles as means of recreation and amusement.”

And here is still another, from Mr. Beecher, to the same effect:—

“On the corners of the streets in New York, in banks, and in business houses, I have been told, and have been afflicted by being told, in several instances by good men, men who were not scornful, who were not open-mouthed revilers, but who were religiously disposed, ‘Mr. Beecher, in business we do not think as well of a man who is a church member as we do of one who is not. We have learned by experience that men are more likely to be untruthful, and to deceive us, where they are in churches, than where they are out of churches.’ It has several times been said to me, that professors of religion were less to be depended upon under such and such temptations, than non-professors. I hope it was exaggerated. It has been accounted for on the ground that men have been so preached to about Heaven and immortality, and about what they owe to God and to Christ, that at last they have come to suppose that if they are Christians, and have spirituality, it is not so much matter about ethics or morality. It is said that church-people have taken the higher forms of life to be a substitute for the lower forms. . . .

“Consider how the whole course of business is tending toward this vast voluminous temptation to deceive—to deviate from the truth. It is one of the grand fundamental tendencies of our times to sacrifice truth in business; and I am one of those who believe that when this comes to pass the sill is rotten, and will not hold the superstructure. A nation of liars never could govern themselves nor achieve any eminence in patriotic virtue.”

D. M. CANRIGHT.