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Blind Religion

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

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 44, No. 17.

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Blind Religion.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

—WHAT constitutes the real distinction between paganism and Christianity? The answer is, Paganism is blind; its votaries have no light; while Christianity has the true light of revelation. The religious instinct in the heathen is the same that it is in those who have the light of revelation. The light, then, is what makes the vast difference. If this is so, how important that we have the light; and having the light, how important that we make use of it.
Yet with those who have the light of revelation within their reach—who have the Bible in their hands, or upon the shelf—there is a vast difference in how they treat it and what value they put upon it. Some having learned something of the revelation of a Saviour to mankind, seem content to enjoy what they have learned. Emotion to them is religion; and instead of diligently inquiring the path of duty in the word of God, they depend upon their impulses to lead them, and honor these impulses as the teachings of the Spirit of God. Talk to them of duty, as revealed in the word of God, and they set it aside, because the Spirit has not taught them this. Now of what use is the Bible, if the Spirit is doing all the teaching without it? Is not the light revealed to us in the Bible by which we are to try the spirits, whether they be of God? If so, these have reversed the process, and propose to try the teachings of the Bible by the Spirit.
We would not undervalue the aid of the Spirit of God. We must have it, or we cannot be the Lord’s. But as light and heat are combined in the rays of the sun, so should the light of revelation combine with religious emotions. It is the light of the Bible that makes the difference between the blind religion of the heathen and the pure religion of Christianity. “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.” In so far as the light of revelation is not followed, just so far is our religion blind.
R. F. COTTRELL.