Need of Doctrine | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1873

Need of Doctrine.

THE tendency of the so-called evangelical churches is more and more to avoid preaching doctrine, and cry down, as disturbers of the church, those who do. The result is becoming manifest. Their members are rapidly going into Spiritualism, Infidelity, or Romanism. Mr. Froude, the celebrated English historian, thus speaks of the evil:—

“Froude says that the Protestants of to-day are practically encouraging the growth of Romanism in our midst by a too feeble advocacy of their fundamental principles, or often a real ignoring of them. Doctrines in their plainness are seldom preached, and people will and must have something definite to believe. Romanism always gives this, never yields a point of belief. Protestants, on the other hand, are, to a great extent, either silent or apologetical, and those hungering for the bread of life too often find a diet of stones. Let us uphold our faith manfully, or surrender our claims to fight valiantly the battles of the Almighty.”

Here is another to the same effect:

[From the Boston Pilot—Roman Catholic.]

“We are frequently told of the onward march of progress, and of the destruction which it is destined to work in everything Catholic; but the observance—even this outward observance—of Christians, and other signs, betoken something different. We are reminded now of a sermon we heard preached by a Catholic priest on Christmas day. The world, said the preacher, knows how, three centuries ago, the ‘Reformers’ went into the churches, mutilating the statues, destroying the paintings, pulling down the altars, stripping the priests of their sacred vestments, changing the name of the Sunday, and calling it ‘The Sabbath,’ the name that properly belongs to Saturday, and abolishing by force the observance of any festival that would release the mind or uplift the heart of the pilgrim, weary with the cares of the world.

“How different is it to-day! The simple meeting-house which these ‘Reformers’ set up, as a protest against our magnificent churches, is passing away in fact and in name; and the descendants of the ‘Reformers’ borrow the forms of our architecture from those Catholic ages that they call ‘dark;’ they spend their wealth upon the construction of these churches, they embellish them with statuary and painting, and try to heighten the effect of their religious worship by elaborate music and all other sorts.”