p. 192 | THE WRONG FOUNDATION

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 21, 1881

THE WRONG FOUNDATION.

THE Christian Register thinks that “something would be done towards preventing worldliness in the church, by sinking the theological doctrines and philosophical speculations further out of sight, and making personal purity, honesty in business, and philanthropy more specially the object of the labors of the pulpit and the people.”

Such teaching as this is specious, pleasing to the multitude, but by no means Scriptural or practical. Any form of life which is not based upon a clear outlining of the doctrines of the Bible, will prove to be defective. We are well aware that many have made the serious mistake of sacrificing correctness of life to an orthodox faith. But we think the opposite extreme is equally delusive. Faith without works is dead; and works without faith is a sham. They will begin and end in self, and make the doer a very good looking Pharisee. God forbid that we should ever try to separate good works from correct faith in the word of God. “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”