The Gospel Immutable by Hugh Miller Thompson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 1, 1875

The Gospel Immutable.

By Hugh Miller Thompson

God's church is a trustee, and its duty is to keep the gospel safely—to preserve it just as it came from God—to transmit its truth pure and unchanged to the world. We have to transmit this old, unchanging story of truth in an age which, above all other ages, is full of the desire to hear new things. There never was an age in which human opinion was so much adrift. We establish supposed facts, and cling to apparently unchanging principle to-day, which, to-morrow, we find all adrift again. Undoubtedly we make advances every day. We improve and push on, but there is constant changing, and our faith is shattered. Our truth and principles of to-day must accommodate themselves to new truths and different principles to-morrow.

Upon such a time we have drifted, and I do not complain of the times. God has permitted them, with all their tendencies. The philosophies of the past generation must pass away before the facts of this, and the facts of this generation will yield to the newer theories of the next, and they will drift down the current, ever giving place to others. Men may go on making their theories and putting them into books, but they will die, as theories and books have died before them. Until the last testimony is before the court, there can be no fixed theory. Human investigation is corrected by human investigation. Until you have the last fact in your science, your theory will fail. A single unknown fact may overturn it. We must hold ourselves ready to cast away at sight all our theories and conclusions and adopt new ones. But is this so in all departments of human knowledge? Whatever is established by human investigation is liable to be corrected by better investigation to-morrow. Your expression of a truth thus established can never be more than part of the truth—it may be only the shadow of it.

But shall what depends on God's revelation also submit to change, and become all adrift? Is that also unfixed and veering? In one respect, perhaps, it is. In itself it is fixed and unchangeable. But when man accepts the truth he does so according to his capacity. He may take less to-day, and more to-morrow. He may see only part of it at one time. So the truth inside him may change, but the truth outside him never does. One man sees the truth more strongly than another, but it is the same unchanging truth. Here the mistake arises of supposing that God's truth does or can change. The difference is in man himself. The enormous mountain range of God's truth is traversed by men who see only part at a time, and as they go on they see more and get other views. They think that it is the mountains that change, but all the change is in themselves.

God's revealed gospel is always the same story. Man receives it according to his powers of reception. It is great and universal. All men take it, for it fits all. It can have no change to suit the advances of the times. That sort of thing is sometimes preached from the pulpit. It is said that this old gospel must improve as men advance, that it must accommodate itself to the progress of the age. We admit that to one age one side of the gospel may be brightest and dearest, and in another age another side of the gospel may be most cherished. But this is not a change in the gospel—it is a change in the age—not a change in God's truth, but a change in man. The unchanging truth comes with a voice to every man, but it seems to vary in accordance with his capacity of hearing.—Hugh Miller Thompson.