p. 60 | TO CORRESPONDENTS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 20, 1879

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

ED. REVIEW: The statement is made by one A. T. Gill, that a S. D. Adventist held a tent meeting in Delhi, Michigan, last season, and held a discussion in the Presbyterian church for three successive evenings with a young student by the name of Wm. Rise, and that in the last evening he admitted that Mr. Rise was more than a match for him on a scriptural discussion. Who was that Adventist?

E. R. ELLENWOOD.

ANS. No S. D. Adventist that we know of ever held a tent-meeting in Delhi, certainly no one the past season. Brn. D. H. Lamson and M. E. Cornell held a meeting in Delta Oct. 21 to Dec. 13, 1870, but there was no discussion, nor any of the circumstances mentioned above. Pass it over to Rev. 22:15.

Will you explain Mark 7:15, 18, 19, and harmonize with it the custom of S. D. Adventists in making the use of tobacco a test of fellowship. E. R. J.

ANS. We presume our correspondent asks this at the suggestion of some inveterate tobacco-user, who would fain sustain himself in his filthy and degrading habit by a perversion of the words of the Lord of temperance and purity himself. But these words are against him. They cannot be even perverted to the support of such a practice. If a person is disposed to give a rigidly literal interpretation to the words which speak of those things which enter into a man, let him interpret verse 20 in the same way: “That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.” Does not the tobacco-user see that he cannot use this text? Does he not see that it is not half so good a text for tobacco as it is for whisky? For is not the tobacco mostly ejected from the mouth? Is any one so besotted as to swallow it? Does it not, then, come out of the man? And according to his fearfully literal construction, is he not defiled thereby?

If an explanation of the passage is required it is only necessary to say that Christ is evidently rebuking the ceremonial scrupulousness of the Jews, who were continually washing their hands, cups, and platters, and straining out gnats, lest they should partake of some visible or invisible mite, as food, which might be unclean according to the ceremonial law. And while they were so scrupulous in this respect, their hearts were full of evil thoughts, thefts, covetousness, etc. Christ says that it is by these they were defiled, not by the former.