p. 259 | Duties and Rights by John Harvey Kellogg

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 24, 1875

Duties and Rights.

By John Harvey Kellogg

THERE is an excellent idea brought out in the following extract from an article in the Examiner and Chronicle. They who are jealous of their rights often overlook their duties, upon which all rights are founded. A man engaged in treason has no rights under the government against which he is waging war. He has forfeited them all. An unqualified return to duty is the only way to have rights restored to him, and a steadfast adherance to and continuance in duty is the way to have those rights secured. Whenever again he chooses his own way, and refuses to submit to the constituted authority, his rights cease. Paul says we are the house of the Son of God "if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." Heb. 3 : 6. And Peter speaking to them "who have obtained like precious faith with us" exhorts them to build upon their faith, all the Christain graces, saying, "He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins." But these things must be in us and abound, and we must give diligence to make our calling and election sure.

We often hear people confessing that they do not live up to their privileges. Now the truth is that privileges are much like rights in this respect—they seldom go before duties.

It is our duty to live for that which it is our privilege to enjoy. The confession is really an evasion—an emollient to the feelings. Whenever we fully discharge our duty we shall have no reason to complain of a loss in respect to privileges. Our own hearts and lives need to be watched with jealous care.

The deception in this method of expression is this: it is considered that in regard to privileges we have an option; in regard to duties we have no option, no choice; they are imperative. But if privileges are enjoyed through duties discharged, then there is in reality no such distinction, and strict honesty would lead to a stronger and more humiliating confession.

J. H. W.

“MORE OF DUTY—LESS OF RIGHTS.

“If Christians would consistently restrict themselves to thinking of duty, and refuse to indulge themselves in thinking of rights with regard to the Lord’s Supper, there would speedily come an end to controversies on the subject of “close” and “open” communion. There is just one command bearing on the point: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Let us all attend to obeying. That will solve the problem at once. The commands of Christ are all of them equally binding, and equally binding upon all. In a true and in a very solemn sense the command “Do this in remembrance of me” is binding upon every sinner as much as upon any Christian, and as much as the command Repent. But there is a natural order of obedience. It is obviously the intention of Christ that all communicants of the Supper shall first have repented. But quite as obviously it is Christ’s intention that all communicants of the Supper shall first have been baptized. If I think I have been baptized, that does not fulfill the purpose of Christ unless my thought corresponds with the fact. My thought, however mistaken, may indeed make it my individual duty to act accordingly, and, though unbaptized, obey the ordinance of the Supper. But if your thought is different and more just, perhaps, than mine, you certainly have no duty to encourage me in my mistake, either by word or by deed. Nay, it is then your duty to disturb my false persuasion, or persuasion believed by you to be false, in every suitable way of moral influence.”