p. 233 | SINCERITY NOT ENOUGH

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 27, 1880

SINCERITY NOT ENOUGH.

The popular adage is, "It makes no difference what a man believes, just so he is sincere." Solomon had a different saying, viz: "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." The words of the wise man hold the truth; the popular adage teaches a hurtful lie. A man's sincerity will not save him from the evil consequences of believing a falsehood. To believe a lie in moral and spiritual things is hurtful to my soul's interests, however sincere I may be. In fact, the more sincere I am, the more I shall suffer.

Look at some analogies. A man trusts a rascal with his business. He believes him to be honest, and is perfectly sincere in that belief. But that sincerity did not save him from ruin. The dishonest employe smuggled money, and left his sincere employer bankrupt. We know the result, when the United States troops lately were made to believe a falsehood, and fell into an Indian ambuscade in Colorado. They were sincere but the massacre came.

A father believes certain associates fit company for his boy. Too late he sees that he believed a falsehood. He was sincere, but this does not save the boy from dissoluteness and libertinism. A pure woman believed the fair promises of the man who asked her to love. After blighting her faith and affections at the marriage altar she sees her trust was reposed in a villain. She was sincere, but of what avail now is her sincerity?

An emigrant from a different climate and latitude is told to sow certain seed at a certain season. He was mocked. Yet he was sincere. But the laws of the season are invariable, and do not turn back to save the sincere from the effects of blind credulity. A whole family in New Jersey were poisoned last summer by eating toadstools, which they sincerely believed to be mushrooms.

Now what shall we say? Shall we find it different in things moral and spiritual? If God has so ordered it that, in social life, in temporal things, in the physical world, the belief of a falsehood is hurtful, however sincere one may be, must we not conclude that it is so also in spiritual things? Our first mother believed a falsehood. She was sincere. Paul tells us she was deceived. See the result in the expulsion of the pair from Eden, in the curse fixed upon the apostate world. Did it make no difference what they believed, just so they were sincere? Paul persecuted the church "ignorantly," and was doubtless as sincere as after his conversion. But is there no difference between the red-handed, malice-bearing Saul of Tarsus and the zealous apostle to the Gentiles?

Christ told his disciples that some would think it doing God's service to kill them. What a difference between slaying a disciple of Christ and receiving him kindly in the name of his Master; yet there may be as great sincerity in the former case as in the latter. In the last day some will say: "Lord, Lord," and tell of their wonderful works in Christ's name. They are evidently sincere, nevertheless they must "depart;" Christ never knew them.

A question of greater moment was never asked than that of Pilate, "What is truth?" It is truth that saves, not sincerity. Christ's prayer was that might be sanctified through the truth, not through sincerity. The truth blesses; falsehood damns. The truth makes free; falsehood brings bonds and shackles. Avaunt, hateful error—that sincerity will answer for truth! God has not so spoken.—St. Louis Observer.