SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS by Elder G. E. Fifield

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 5, 1892

SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS.

By Elder G. E. Fifield

BY ELDER G. E. FIFIELD.

THE spiritual, and on some points it would seem even the intellectual, blindness of the popular clergy is a matter of marvel. Surely that is fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet. Wherefore saith the Lord: "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men; therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid."

Last evening the writer attended one of a series of meetings of a missionary conference, holding in the First Baptist Church of Springfield, Mass. The meeting was one of more than ordinary interest, and a deep spirit of earnestness seemed to pervade the whole service. Dr. Gordon, of Boston, first spoke, showing that modern missions had from their very beginning been under the special guardian care of the Holy Spirit, even as were the first missionary efforts of the early church. He said the record of the founding of modern missions was only one of the latest chapters in the Acts of the Apostles. After this the audience joined in silent prayer for a few minutes, during which a number of young men went forward and voluntarily consecrated their lives to the work of missions.

After this Dr. R. S. MacArthur, of the Calvary Baptist Church of New York City, gave the principal address of the evening, on the subject of "Our Present Duty in Relation to the Work of Missions." The speech was a master effort from beginning to end. The writer was thrilled with its truth and apparent earnestness. The duty in maintaining in all their mission work the distinctive doctrines which had made the Baptists a separate denomination, was earnestly urged. Among these distinctively Baptist doctrines were enumerated the following: The word of God as the all-sufficient guide to faith and practice. A baptism which must be preceded by repentance—a baptism which really means a death to the world and a resurrection to a new life, and which is, therefore, the only possible door of entrance into the church; and last, but not least, the doctrine of the total separation of Church and State. This last the speaker said the Baptist denomination had given to the world. "Nevertheless," he said, "there is at the present time a great reaction against this doctrine."

Many influences are at work in our land which constantly tend to bring Church and State nearer together. We may, in the near future, have to stand up again for this doctrine, as did the Baptist of old.

Then most earnestly and eloquently the reverend doctor exhorted the congregation if such necessity did come, to stand up nobly and manfully for the doctrine of soul liberty. Imagine my surprise, after listening to these words from Dr. MacArthur only last evening, to discover this morning an extract from a recent Examiner, the Baptist organ of New York City, which reads as follows:—

A mass meeting, as previously announced, was held in the Calvary Baptist Church of this city on Friday evening last, to give expression to the approval with which Christian people everywhere received the action of Congress in regard to the Sunday closing of the World's Fair. The meeting was presided over by Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, the president of

the American Sabbath Union, an organization which has played a leading part in bringing public opinion to bear on Congress, and in persuading, or, to be more accurate, in compelling, that body to make the appropriation of $2,500,000 conditional on the observance of the Christian Sabbath. The speakers included several prominent men of various denominations in New York, among them Dr. R. S. MacArthur and Major General O. O. Howard.

So it seems that this very man who sees that there are influences at work toward a union of Church and State in this land, and who exhorts others to stand manfully against them,—this very man has not only not stood manfully against them, but he has opened his church for a mass meeting in their favor.

This mass meeting was presided over by Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, the president of the American Sabbath Union, who is himself at the very head of the allied forces of these who are fighting for a union of Church and State and a subversion of our Constitution. Dr. MacArthur himself was one of the prominent speakers in this mass meeting, in support of the object for which it was called. This is the more remarkable when we remember that this very guarantee of liberty in our Constitution, for the subversion of which this mass meeting was called, was the result of the heroic work of the early Baptists in favor of liberty; and that one of the reasons why Roger Williams was so cruelly banished in the dead of winter from the colony of Massachusetts, was because that, as a Baptist, he taught the total separation of Church and State, and denied to the theocratic magistrates the right to enforce Sunday laws. Banished thus from Massachusetts, then under the rule of the theocracy, Roger Williams became the founder of Providence, which was the city of refuge for all persecuted sects; he also was the leader and founder of the Baptist Church in America.

How can Dr. MacArthur imagine he is standing by the early principles of the Baptist Church when he thus espouses the very principle for the protesting against which the early Baptists were banished? And why this inconsistency and blindness? Why but that the Baptist Church has not made the word of God its all-sufficient guide to faith and practice? Why but that it has taken into its creed and religious practice an institution that not only is not founded on the word of God, but that, while resting solely upon human tradition, is in open opposition and defiance to that word? If this man-made institution is not preserved in a mock sanctity which God never gave to it, but which comes first from the Roman Catholic Church, and, secondly, as a heritage from the gloomy theology of a Puritan ancestry, they fear that the church will be disabled, and the nation go to ruin. And for this they abandon, while professing to reëspouse, the very principle for which their fathers toiled and suffered. Surely, as the text saith, their blindness is because that even their fear toward God has come to be taught by the precepts of men.