ADULTERATION by George B. Thompson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jun 27, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 26.

ADULTERATION.

By George B. Thompson

MEN in general detest adulteration. They do not like to be deceived. If they purchase goods, they wish them to be free from all foreign substances. The milkman is watched to see that he adds no water to his milk. If a garment is warranted "all wool," no cotton is desired in it. Pure groceries are sought after, and the adulterated articles are shunned.

Yet this is an age of deception. Do the best you can, still you are apt to be deceived. Deceivers lurk on every hand, ready to humbug you and betray your confidence. What we thought was pure, on further investigation, proves to be base. The thread of adulteration can be traced in nearly all transactions of the business and social world.

But it is of religious things that I wish to speak particularly. If anything should be pure, it should be religion, and the genuine article is. But there are "lo here's" and "lo there's." Every wind of doctrine is blowing, and we need carefully and prayerfully to scrutinize that which comes to us claiming to be divine. Thank the Lord, there is a detector. Says the apostle, "As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby." 1 Peter 2:2. Or, as Rotherham’s translation reads, "the unadulterated word." God’s Word is free from all adulteration. "Every word of God is pure." Prov. 30:5. The Bible, as it reads, is the test of all opinions and creeds. It is not diluted from the pump of mortal reason; it is uncontaminated by human analysis.

But we need to watch lest we receive error. That pagan maxim, "Whatever is, is right," receives considerable recognition. Long established precedents are frequently cited in proof that a certain practise is right. Customs, venerable with age, abound on every hand. It is unsafe to accept, without investigation, all these. To do so is but to stop the sun of progress in the heavens. It is well to look for adulterations. Age can never make right that which is wrong. Satan is old, but he is Satan still. Says Gibbon:—

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven arrayed in her native purity; a more melancholy duty is imposed upon the historian; he must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

It is not enough to ask, Does a certain thing exist? but, By what right does it exist? Is it founded upon the Bible? or can its lineage be traced back to the bogs of superstition and tradition? If God did not establish the practise, surely man did, and a religious practise having for its basis the precept of a man, even tho he be a pope, is vain.

Things have come down to us in religious practises that are adulterations of the divine Word. In Killen’s "Ancient Church" (preface) it is said:—

In the interval between the days of the apostles and the conversion of Constantine, the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect. The bishop of Rome—a personage unknown to the writers of the New Testament—meanwhile rose in prominence, and at length took precedence of all other churchmen. Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions.

Some of these things which "crept" in and claimed the rank of divine institutions are still here. They are adulterations, and should be sought for and put away. One of these is the observance of Sunday instead of the seventh day, the Bible Sabbath. This is a spurious rite, even tho it claims to be divine. It has no foundation in the Word of God. The great detector shows it to be a usurper. Dr. Scott, the noted commentator, says:—

The change from the seventh to the first appears to have been gradually and silently introduced by example rather than by express precept.—Comment on Acts 20:7.

He admits that it is one of the things which "crept silently" into use, that it was never commanded by the Lord of Life. Again, the Christian at Work, 1884, says:—

We hear less than we used to about the apostolic origin of the present Sunday observance, and for the reason that, while the Sabbath and Sabbath rest are woven into the warp and woof of Scripture, it is now seen, as it is admitted, that we must go to later than apostolic times for the establishment of Sunday observance.

The Word of God tells us plainly that the "seventh day is the Sabbath." The law, spoken amid the grandeurs of Sinai, has never been changed. It reads the same in the Bible now as then, and the words mean the same. They have lost none of their power. Reader, a human adulteration has "crept in" here. What do you propose to do about it? Will you exchange the spurious for the genuine? "Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." Matt. 15:13. Rome, N. Y. G. B. THOMPSON.