How they View It by J. O. Corliss

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1875

How they View It.

By J. O. Corliss

THE San Francisco Weekly Post, summing up the labors of Moody and Sankey in London, quotes what the rector of one of the largest city parishes says about the attempt to bring in the working classes, which was made the special work of one week: “Only about one-fifth of the hall was filled. I watched the people as they came out, and saw but very few of the working class. I have questioned people of all classes who have attended these services and their experience has been the same. . . . This religion of mere emotion and sensationalism, with its antinomian theories, its instantaneous conversions, its arbitrary divisions of the converted and unconverted, its preaching of terror and damnation, its test question, ‘Are you saved?’ and its confessional in the guise of an ‘inquiry room,’ is only attractive to those who approach it with a foregone conclusion.”

“To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” When men depart from the primitive method of preaching “the word” and resort to sensationalism and animal magnetism to bring people to the service of God, they will ever make a signal failure. A few may be moved upon fitfully by such operations, but the mass turn away from them with loathing, and ask for something more substantial. “Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” is the only preaching that will permanently affect the heart. J. O. Corliss.