ABOUT SHAKING REEDS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 28, 1881

ABOUT SHAKING REEDS.

"What went ye out to see? A reed shaken by the wind?" The lesson which may be drawn from these questions, if we read them aright, is an important one, and one which needs very much to be studied in these days of loose beliefs and uncertain faith. A reed shaken by the wind is a very unstable and unreliable thing, upon which no dependence can be placed.

A belief is worth nothing if it be not full and certain. Doubt is inconsistent with faith in anything. To doubt a doctrine or dogma is essentially to disbelieve it. There are no may-be-so's concerning God's truth. There is no half-way business about it—no halting this side of an entirety. We must accept a statement of Christian truth in its wholeness, or it is no valid acceptance.

Do I say I believe in immersion as Christ's baptism, and couple it with the expression of a doubt or an admission that there may be some other way? Then I do not believe it; it is simply an apprehension that it may be the true way.

On the other hand, I am as sure that immersion is Christ's mode of baptism as if God had spoken it to me face to face. I have not a shadow of doubt about it. It is therefore belief, because it is perfect. Do we have any doubts that Christ is the son of God? That he has made a vicarious atonement for all who in full faith put their trust in Him? If we have, we are but "reeds shaken in the wind." We have no abiding belief to which to cling. Do we belong to a church, and have any doubts as to its being the very best existing embodiment of Christianity and of church polity? If we have, it is not the place for us. Our doubts destroy our belief in it as such embodiment. There are too many "reeds," both in our pulpits and in our pews—men who permit the "little foxes" of doubt "to spoil the vines"—men driven about by every wind of doctrine—drifting hither and thither on every wayward current. Our belief should be equivalent to knowledge; it should be so strong, so intelligent, so well fortified on every hand that we should be able to say "I know" not only "in whom" but in what I believe. That is the only belief worth having—the only true belief we can have.—Standard.