MAKING OF NONE EFFECT by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 32.

MAKING OF NONE EFFECT.

By Editor

DR. WILLIAM HAYES WARD, editor of the Independent, in a recent editorial, writes on “The Heart of Christianity,” but leaves it heartless. He tells us truly that “Christianity must be a spiritual and not a formal, ceremonial religion. As it is not national, but individual, as it is not priestly but spiritual.” But he rules out of Christianity that which the wisdom of God has put into it. He says:—

Christianity may use days, places, and rites, but they are no part of essential Christianity. Christianity finds use for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is not a part of Christianity. Christianity honors the church, but can exist without the church. . . . It is interesting, but not important, that He [Christ] came as a child. Paul never speaks of the virgin-birth, perhaps never heard of it [See Rom. 1: 3; Gal. 4:4], as the Gospels had not been written in his time. . . . A belief in the future life, and so in Christ’s resurrection, is not absolutely essential to Christian character, which, as we have seen, is the really essential thing in Christianity, for only the life of love is essential. It was in a flash of excessive and mistaken oratorical fervor that Paul exclaimed, “What advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”

And we remark that these outward forms and observances are not essential to the poor heathen who has not been enlightened by them. The Lord takes into account the light we have. But to him who knows them, to him to whom God has revealed them, they are tests of his life and love, and channels of God’s blessings. The words of Jesus are, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” And the Sabbath is commanded. The real essential of faith is life. Without life there is no power, no love. How can one believe in God at all and not grasp His absolute sempiternity? When Jesus Christ came as He came, it was so needed. God bestows His gifts in “all wisdom and prudence.” It is such reasoning as this in which Dr. Ward indulges that makes of none effect the loving commands of God and the Gospel of life. It makes of love an abstract sensuousness, instead of a mighty concrete force. It makes of life a mere existence instead of the power of God which lifts above sin and death.