Your ShelfYour Projects

THE PROMOTER OF SIN

33%

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 29, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 50.

Read the full edition

THE PROMOTER OF SIN.

THE author of the "Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation" truly says: "All happy obedience must arise from affection, exercised toward the object obeyed. Obedience which arises from affection, blesses the spirit which yields it, if the conscience approve of the object obeyed, while, on the contrary, no being can be happy in obeying one whom he does not love. To obey a parent, or to obey God, from interested motives would be sin. The devil might be obeyed for the same reason. All enlightened minds agree to what the Bible confirms, and what reason can clearly perceive without argument, that love for God is essential to every act of religious duty. To tender obedience or homage to God, while we have no love for him in our hearts, would be dishonorable to the Maker, and doing violence to our own nature."
Than this we know of no paragraph in all literature that more clearly reveals the essential wickedness of all enforced conformity to religious duties, and therefore the wicked cruelty of all State interference in religious things. "No being can be happy in obeying one whom he does not love." Therefore for Governments to compel men to conform to duty toward God, while bearing in their hearts no love for him, is only to compel men to sin, because, saith the Scriptures, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." While for the State to offer inducements to men, that would lead them to conform to religious duties from interested motives, would also be sin. "To tender obedience or homage to God while we have no love for him in our hearts, would be dishonorable to the Maker, and doing violence to our own nature." Now such is precisely what the National Reform scheme proposes to do to the people of this nation. The National Reformers propose to compel men to tender obedience and homage to God, while they have no love for him in their hearts. Therefore the direct result of the triumph of National Reform principles will be to compel men to dishonor their Maker and do violence to their own natures, and thus vastly to increase the ratio of sin in the nation and hasten its destruction.