Correct Discipline

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1873

Correct Discipline.

DISCIPLINE has been called the right arm of the church. It may be so, but if that arm is raised only to smite, it had better be cut off and cast into the sea. Discipline should be rather the hand of the mother protecting the tempted, supporting the weak, leading home the erring, wiping away the tears of the penitent, lest he be swallowed up with over-much sorrow, or lifted much in prayer in behalf of all these classes. Discipline in the army does not simply shoot deserters; it seeks to train to good soldiership, so pervading and controlling the details of camp and field, as to reduce to a minimum all motive to desertion. It is possible for church discipline to be so managed as to transform its membership into very Ishmaelites.

As every private Christian is forbidden to attempt to restore a weak brother unless he himself has the spirit of Christ, and remembers his own liability to fall under temptation, so the church is equally forbidden to attempt any labor except on the same conditions. But how often is what claims to be discipline the most carnal thing that gets into a church, zeal for one's own notion being mistaken for signal zeal for the Lord of Hosts; or personal passion using Christ's church as an instrument of vengeance against its victim.—Sel.