AN INTERVIEW by C. W. Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 30, 1877

AN INTERVIEW.

By C. W. Stone

One afternoon a Catholic lady came into our tent at Danvers, and sat down for a few minutes’ talk. She was Irish, and apparently possessed of more than the average of natural intelligence of her class. After a few moments’ conversation, she was invited to come to hear the lectures. She replied that she lived fifteen miles away, and that she should not come to hear even if she lived close by. This led to the discovery that she was a Catholic, and we took occasion to ask her a few questions. She said she did not believe the Bible, for that had passed through the hands of men. She went by the word of God. The Bible has passed through the hands of the printers, and we can not tell what part of it is true, and what is false; but the word of God is a safe guide.

We tried to find out where she found the word of God, and soon learned that it comes in its purity from the “one church,” “the church that Christ left,” and is handed down from the pope, and dealt out by the priests. I thought I could discern the echo of that blasphemous cry of “infallibility,” that rang out from Rome not long ago; and I was reminded of what Paul said concerning this same power,—“he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” Thus he teaches men that they are not capable of reading the Bible understandingly, and selecting the truths from the errors it contains; therefore they must get all their Bible, or word of God, from the priests; and having the implicit confidence of his ignorant followers, the pope has long had the track laid on which to issue his infallible (!) mandates and dogmas. And he is not content with giving his own interpretations merely of the written word, but he “exalteth himself above all that is called God,” assumes the legislative seat of the world, and thinks to change the law of the Creator. See 2 Thess. 2:4; Dan. 7:25.

“How foolish,” cry a host of Protestants, “thus to follow the leadings of a wicked church, or bow to the laws of the pope of Rome!” Certainly, we say; and we add, How inconsistent for these same Protestants to bow to one of the chief institutions of this church,—the first-day Sabbath, while they stand with their feet upon the down-trodden Sabbath of the Lord! And the Catholics boast of it. They advertise in their catechisms as the badge of their authority their power to change the Sabbath from the seventh day of the week to the first.

After some further talk, we asked the lady again to come and hear; and she said she would if she were near enough, but added that she should never change her faith whatever she might hear. “The Catholic Church that was established by Christ is united, while the Protestants are all divided. Go to the Methodists, and you hear one thing; to the Baptists, and you hear a different thing; and so on through the list,” said she. Thought I, What hope is there of those whose ears are closed to reason? But the mother church is not so blind but that she can see Babylon in her daughters. Confusion is engraved upon the face of Protestantism.

I told her that we have in our church several who were once stanch Catholics. With a look of intense scorn she arose to go, and said, “No one who was ever a good Catholic, and attended church, has ever backslidden like that.” I assured her that it was true, and that a young man who was two years ago French Catholic from France, was now preaching our views to Catholics and Protestants in America. Said she, “He had better not come to Lynn, if he knows when he is safe.”

How quick, had she the power, would the papacy revive the Inquisition, and deluge the soil with the blood of saints! And how quickly, when her image is formed by Protestant America, will the slumbering elements of society spring to activity, ready to re-enact the scenes of former religious oppression! But the servants of the living God, who have his seal in their foreheads, need not fear. At that time they “shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.”

How glorious is the light of truth. Let us thank God for it, and walk in it; and at last we shall come to Zion with the redeemed, with songs and everlasting joy. C. W. Stone.