If It Had Been Different, What Then? by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 31, 1874

If It Had Been Different, What Then?

By Dudley Marvin Canright

See how great men are often puffed up by their greatness and use their power for injustice and tyranny. Alexander the Great frequently put to death his best friends in his fits of drunkenness. Whole cities were given up to destruction merely to gratify the spite of some of his favorites. The basest persons were exalted to the highest honors simply to please his fancy.

What if the infinite Creator should use his almighty power in a similar manner!! What uncertainty, what fear, what terror, it would spread throughout the universe! No being, however pure, holy, or exalted, could feel secure for a moment. How thankful we ought to be that, notwithstanding all the power, and honor, and glory of our God, he is still just and righteous in all his ways. Nay, more; from his high and lofty throne of exceeding glory, he is ever ready to listen to the cry of the most humble of his creatures. O my soul, how grateful we should be for such a God! How corrupt and wicked the heart that will not obey and love him!

What if God had made the conditions of admittance into his kingdom different from what they are? What if he had, like some earthly kings, required strength, beauty, and physical perfection, as a condition of his favor? What if he had required great talents and mental abilities as a condition of eternal life? What if he had demanded a hundred thousand dollars as the price of immortality? These are frequently and almost always the conditions which gain the favors and rewards of earthly kings. All, or any, of these tests would have rendered hopeless the cases of most of us.

But, blessed be God, the conditions of salvation are such as to give an equal chance to the poor and to the rich, to the simple and to the wise, to the weak and to the strong,—conditions with which all are able to comply if they only will. All we have to do is to put away our sins, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and give to our blessed God the love and devotion of our hearts. And why should these things be thought hard by us? Alas! what a proof of the corruption of the human heart is found in the fact that it will not submit to such terms as these, but even hates the merciful God who offers them.

Reader, are you thankful for such a God, for such a gospel? If not, why? Would you have the conditions of salvation different from what they are? Would you love a different God? Lay these questions to your heart, my friend, and may the Spirit of God press them upon your soul.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Watsonville, Cal., Feb. 14, 1874.