Falling Behind by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 20, 1874

Falling Behind.

By Uriah Smith

THE popular churches hold up prominently before the people that their object and their mission is to evangelize the world. If this is a divinely appointed mission, and is ever to be fulfilled, these churches should be able to show an increase of membership relatively greater than the increase of population.

The facts in the case, however, seem to show just the reverse of this. D. Dorchester, in an article entitled, “Methodism in the Large Cities,” in the Methodist of Dec. 27, 1873, makes the following exhibit. He compares the number of Methodists with that of Presbyterians in sixteen given cities, and shows that in these cities there were in 1840, one Presbyterian to 32 inhabitants, one Methodist to 23. In 1850, it stood, Presbyterians 1 to 40, Methodists 1 to 33. In 1860, Presbyterians 1 to 50, Methodists 1 to 38. In 1870, Presbyterians 1 to 53, Methodists 1 to 41. Then the writer adds:—

“It will be seen that both denominations have fallen behind the population in each decade; but the Methodists relatively less than the Presbyterians.”

This may do very well for the Methodists as compared with other denominations. But how about the wider and more important comparison between the churches and the world? On this the real issue hinges. And if matters go on in this way, the population in the most enlightened portions of the globe all the while distancing in numbers the slowly growing membership of the churches, how long before all the world, with its civilized corruptions, and its heathen darkness, will be converted to God?

But the Bible gives us no such dark and discouraging problem to solve. We nowhere read that the gospel was designed to convert the whole world. It was to be preached for a witness to all nations, Matt. 24:14, and was to gather out a people for his name. Acts 15:14. And when this work is accomplished, as it will be when the limits that God fixed are reached, the present course of this world with all its crimes and evils will be arrested; the masses of the incorrigible will be given over to the destruction which they have willfully courted, and the redeemed be put into the possession of a new heavens and new earth, wherein the righteous and righteousness alone shall dwell. 2 Pet. 3:13. U. S.