One-Sided Religion by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 15, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 19.

One-Sided Religion.

By Editor

IN that most wonderful of all the Psalms the writer said: “Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.” Ps. 119:6. And again he said: “Great peace have they which love thy law; and nothing shall offend them.” Verse 165. The law of God is fundamental; if the foundation be well laid, the superstructure will be more easily constructed, and will be well proportioned. To have respect unto all the commandments of God is a rare thing among men. Very bad men will do some very good things, but a mixture of good and bad actions will never form a good character. Unto the time of Adam's fall he had acted only with reverence to God and to his authority, but one departure from the path of right ruined everything.

Looking at the multitude of denominations of professed Christians we find that, among them all, almost everything in the holy Scriptures is accepted; for the truth which one rejects, another receives; and so, in going the rounds, we shall find about all the truth somewhere. This is the bright side of the view. On the other side, every truth in the Bible is rejected by them; for that particular truth which one accepts, another rejects; and so amongst them all the whole truth of God is ignored. A well-balanced, whole-hearted Christian, having respect to every truth of the Bible, is not so readily found as many might suppose.

And some make a sweeping, wholesale riddance of much of the Bible, and build upon a foundation after their own hearts. The Romanists have forgotten their father Abraham, and virtually rejected Christ, and build their church on Peter and the virgin Mary. The “Disciples” follow hard after them, rejecting the Old Testament entirely, and even the words of Jesus, because they were all written and spoken before the day of Pentecost! As their teachers and their models they accept only the apostles, shutting their eyes to the apostolic observation that the church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner.” Eph. 2:20. Having only one side of the foundation, of necessity they have but a narrow, one-sided superstructure, quite different from the building which is “fitly framed together,” resting on “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

And so we might trace the defection from some truth in nearly every denomination in the land. As in old time, the priests are become “partial in the law.” Mal. 2:9. Jehovah did not give his precepts in just the proper form to suit somebody's opinions and predilections; and, in somebody's estimation there were incorporated some “non-essentials” in the gospel. It suits some people far better to be judges of the law than doers of it. James 4:11. But their judgment will one day be reversed; the law will be turned against them by the “one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy,” and they who have assumed to be judges of the law “shall be judged by the law.” Rom. 2:12; Eccl. 12:13, 14; James 2:11, 12.

A plausible plea may be put forth in behalf of the sincerity of these discriminators against the truth of God, but with that we are not dealing at present; we are but calling attention to the facts, the existence of which cannot be denied. We would suggest, however, that very few will be entitled to the benefit of that plea in the day of account, for there are very few who appear to feel the infinite importance of the message which the eternal One has sent to his creatures; very few who, laying aside all of self and self-will, “tremble at his word.” Isa. 66:1, 2. We have many times observed that people are not so tender in their regard for the Bible as they are for their opinions of the Bible. When have we been reminded of the words uttered by Gerret Smith, who said that he had noticed that people did not often study the Bible to learn what they ought to do; but they first decided what they wanted to do, and then studied the Bible to find something to justify themselves in their course! We do not say that people understand their motives in these things; many do not stop to consider the difference between the book and their opinions of the book; but we fear that “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men,” it will be found that selfishness is the spring of much that passes for piety and religion in this world.

We had no idea of penning all these reflections when we sat down to notice the remarks of a minister, which have just come to our hands. And toward him, individually, though unknown to us, we have only the very kindest feelings, because he is just feeling after the truth, and we cannot expect that he will have clear discernment of the relations or of the relative importance of different truths. Writing to an esteemed brother upon the subject of conditional immortality, he said:—

“The scriptural idea of the great truth of ‘eternal life only in Christ,’ has been brought into disrepute in this section, by being earnestly advocated by people who couple with it so many other notions relating to the seventh day, baptism, etc. It seems hard to present a special truth like this, without connecting it with some other pet idea more or less unscriptural.”

Now for every one who objects to our coupling the Sabbath and baptism with the doctrine of life only in Christ, we will produce ten who say they would not so seriously object to our views of the Sabbath, baptism, etc., if we did not couple with them the highly objectionable theories of the non-immortality of the soul, and the final destruction of the impenitent. We could please all classes by dropping everything and consenting to be nobodies!

The first, great, primary truth, underlying all other truths, is the law of God; and in this we find the seventh-day Sabbath. Because man violated the law and became a sinner, the gospel was introduced, of which baptism is a part. The Sabbath and baptism unscriptural notions! And this from a Presbyterian minister. What next will “theology” produce? We knew a somewhat well-known and very popular minister who, on the occasion of our preaching on baptism in the city of his residence, publicly expressed his thankfulness that, in his ministry of three years in that place, he had never preached on baptism. So far as we knew or could learn, he never preached on any other Bible doctrine. The opinions of the philosophers engrossed his attention. Philip (Acts 8), and Paul, and Silas (Acts 16) pursued a course far different from this. But Philip, and Paul, and Silas, and their co-laborers, were far behind “the advanced Christian thought” of the present age.

The subject of the non-immortality of the soul is important; it is practical just as far as it is made an antidote to the deceptions of Spiritualism. But some rob it of this characteristic, as this writer seems to. The following are his words:—

“I am in considerable uncertainty as to the actual state of the ‘dead in Christ.’ That they are in the full possession of all the blessings of the gospel, promised to the believer as the reward of grace, I cannot believe, for that is distinctly promised as something to be given at ‘the revelation of our Lord and Saviour.’ That they are utterly ‘non-existent’ I cannot believe, for that would, to my mind, destroy their identity.”

If the mind of God were as limited in power as the human mind, we have no doubt that the identity of all the dead would be lost; nay, more, the dead would all be utterly lost, for a resurrection of the dead is incomprehensible to us—entirely beyond the scope of our reason. We have heard philosophers declare in what identity consists, but we have never known one who could make good his declaration, because they all introduce something either unphilosophical or else defective in the knowledge of “the Scriptures and the power of God.” We suppose the writer here quoted means by “utterly non-existent,” to be utterly dead. We think they are dead, and without a resurrection they are “perished;” their faith and service would be “vain,” and of no “advantage.” 1 Cor. 15:16–32. As the Scriptures say, and as he quotes, these are the “dead in Christ;” and being so they “know not anything.” Eccl. 9:5. They have no remembrance of God, Ps. 6:5; they are in sheol, in the dark, and in the land of forgetfulness; 88:12; they “praise not the Lord;” 115:17; Isa. 38:18, 19, etc.

But if the dead are not utterly dead (which is to say, if death does not altogether mean death!), then who shall say that they may not or cannot come back and “rap” or “communicate” with their living friends? Where is the practical benefit of the doctrine, in that light? What is the use, then, of “coupling” it with such practical duties as the Sabbath, baptism, etc? Who will answer this?

The only answer that can be made to this question, is that the doctrine “vindicates the ways of God.” But we fail to see it. If the first death does not destroy consciousness; if there is something in man which has the power to survive it, how will it be known that it will not survive the second death also. Who, then, shall put any limit to the “forever and ever” in which that something may be tormented?

But if the “uncertainty” expressed admits in full the truthfulness of the texts above quoted; if the writer does not believe that the dead are sufficiently alive to know something, and that they exist only in the purpose of God “who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were,” Rom. 4:17, then we are in agreement with him; then his faith in the doctrine has reached a point where the wiles of Satan will not be able to assail him successfully. Anything short of this robs the resurrection of its glory, and the doctrine of “life only in Christ” of its certainty and power.