SUPERFICIAL RELIGION by Albert Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 10, 1878

SUPERFICIAL RELIGION.

By Albert Stone

The religion of the present is sadly superficial. A mere surface work seems quite satisfactory to a large class of church members. Efforts to mend this state of things seem quite unavailing. Christians of fifty years ago would not have fellow-shipped the religion of the present time. And yet things are every day getting worse.

Skepticism and doubt in regard to fundamental points of divine revelation have already become quite common with those who claim to be the disciples of Christ. The sciences are perverted and wrested from their true position as an ally of the Bible, and insidiously converted into an ally of deception and falsehood.

Clergymen and laymen are daily to be met who give their influence to this state of things. They indorse the infidel and spiritualistic notion that the six days of creation represent so many indefinite periods of great length, that the earth is older and has been inhabited much longer than the Bible account would indicate. The facts of natural history, physiology, and of the sciences generally, are perverted and made to testify against God and the Bible. These infidel teachings, by those in whom the people have confidence as ministers of Christ, are sufficient, in the minds of many, to lessen, at first, and finally to destroy, the authority of the Scriptures.

Unbelief has been doing a cruel work in all time; but never were its efforts more powerful, or directed with a surer aim than now. Never, unless it were in the days of Noah and of Christ, were the moral sensibilities of men so benumbed, their perceptions so dull, as at the present time. If we would see infidelity in its full strength, possessing facilities for doing its own proper work which Voltaire or Thomas Paine never possessed, we may pass by its more palpable manifestations as seen in the open profession of pantheism or deism, and search in circles of refinement, in organizations professedly of a religious character.

Comparatively little is to be feared from outside infidelity: it is the infidelity that comes into the sanctuary in a religious garb, and invades the sacred precincts of the house of God; that assumes the livery of the court of Heaven to serve the devil in; that comes in the name of Christ with a message from fallen angels,—it is this that is leading more souls to ruin than all the infidelity beside, if we except spiritualism.

Indeed, infidelity in its most forbidding forms meets with little opposition from the current religion of the day. The men who sigh and cry over this state of things are few and far between. Primitive holiness is little sought for, and the precepts of Christ, and the examples of holy men of old, are not heeded. The truth for the time is ignored; blindness has happened to Israel; yet they say, We see: they are deaf, yet they say, We hear: they are dead, yet they say, We live. God's judgments are many and great in the land, yet the people turn not to Him that smites them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts.

Their silver has become dross; their wine is mixed with water; their religion is more of the intellect than of the heart, and seeks more earnestly the friendship of the world than the friendship of God. It is ready to exchange truth for error, or to compromise with the spirit and practice of the world.

Such religion is the enemy of God and man. Satan is well pleased with it, and it is one of his chief agents in his warfare against Heaven. It is the devil's bait to catch souls. It is his stool-pigeon to decoy the flock. The only remedy is to receive the whole truth and practice it. Has God a special truth for this generation? So we read, and so we believe. God has set his seal to this one thing; namely, that he has held the advent doctrine in reserve, in all past time, for the special benefit of this generation. All the Bible specifications meet in the present proclamation. It answers in every particular to the prophetic record. Unbelief may blind the eyes and harden the heart, but it cannot avert the fact that the Lord is soon to come.

To-day all classes of men are being earnestly entreated and faithfully warned. To-day unbelief and false religion lead many to reject the truth. To-morrow, unavailing tears of regret may be shed for these things. Think of the bitterness of such tears, and take timely measures to prevent them. ALBERT STONE.