"Call to Remembrance the Former Days."
By Editor
It is good to obey this injunction of the Apostle, and call to remembrance past experience in the Advent cause. Those who believe it to be the cause of God, should not reject the means that has made it a separate cause. Those who talk much of standing on the "original faith," should be the last to trample under-foot that faith they have boldly defended, at the origin of the Advent cause. The original Advent faith is not merely to believe in the literal coming of Christ, the resurrection and the restitution of all things at some future period, of which we can know but little or nothing about. Thousands believed all this, and believe it still, who are not, and have not been, connected with the Advent cause. We say that the original faith is that which has made us a separate people. If we had never heard the judgment hour cry, which was based on definite time, we never should have been led to bear a testimony which, being rejected by our own brethren, made it necessary for us to separate from the churches. If the Advent people had closed their ears to the cry of the second angel, [Rev. xiv, 8,] they would, as a general thing, have remained in the churches to this day and would now be Baptists, Methodists, Christians, &c. And where would be the Advent cause, as it is called by some who reject the very means that has made it a separate cause? It would not be in existence. That this may appear in its true light, please look at those Ministers and church members who went with us till the cry "Babylon is fallen" was given, or to those who have since returned to the churches. Some of them may take an Advent paper, but who believes they stand on the original Advent faith? No one. They have lost their faith, and now perhaps, preach, or hear those preach who teach the world's conversion prior to the Second Advent. And if the Advent people who are now a separate people, had not heeded the cry of the second angel, but had remained in the different churches they would, probably, have no more interest in the coming of the Lord, than those now have who staid in the churches. We say that the Advent cause owes its very existence to the first and second angel's messages of Rev. xiv. Then why talk of the Advent cause being the cause of God, and at the same time call the means that gave it birth a mistake, some say, a lie, false excitement, or the work of man. Such had better, like consistent, honest men, retrace their steps, and go back to their former brethren in the churches, who were not led to take those steps in the Advent cause, which they attribute to an evil influence. We think that such a course would look far more consistent, and be less displeasing to God, than to profess great interest in the Advent cause and at the same time trample down the very means that has given it an existence. "I would," says the True Witness to the Laodicean church, "thou wert cold or hot." Rev. iii, 15. The following letter will show the position of the Editor of the "Advent Herald" in 1844, who was one of the last to speak in defence of the work of the second angel's message.