p. 68 | The Oneida Community by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1879

The Oneida Community.

By Editor

AN interesting bit of modern ecclesiastical history has recently come to light. The question has been discussed in the New York Independent of the origin of the Oneida Community. Mr. Noyes, the founder of the Community, volunteers some information from which we extract the following:—

"If it were proper for me to express my private opinion as to the pedigree of the Oneida Community (meaning by that the main human influence on my mind which was the antecedent of my conversion to Perfectionism), I should point to Andover as my birthplace. It was there that I got in love with the independent spirit of German hermeneutics. It was there that I learned from Moses Stuart that the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew relates wholly to events connected with the destruction of Jerusalem, from which I inferred that the Second Advent took place 1800 years ago. It was there that I learned from the same beloved instructor that the seventh chapter of Romans relates only to the experience of a carnal man under the law, and is no standard of Christian experience."

We have always respected the ability and learning of Prof. Stuart. In questions of fact, we refer to him with pleasure. His criticisms were learned and just, unless his theological opinions interfered. As a theologian he was probably as unsafe to follow as any man of ability of his generation.

It will be remembered that he had much to do with introducing novel views of the prophecies, to counteract the influence of Mr. Miller's lectures on the coming of Christ. His system of "hermeneutics" frittered away the book of Revelation, making it an epic poem,—an overwrought or semi-tragic account of things transpiring in the days of the writer, but not extending beyond his days.

Mr. Noyes graduated at Andover, and he claims that his theory of "perfectionism" as well as his "antinomianism," is the legitimate offspring of Andover theology, and especially of Prof. Stuart's views of Matt. 24 and the second advent. These speculative or mystical views of the advent, so widely introduced by Prof. Stuart, are yet spreading and becoming more popular as the prophecies are being preached, and as opposition to the truth grows among the proud and worldly. And as these views extend there will be a corresponding vagueness, or perhaps looseness, of belief and life, tending toward the position of Mr. Noyes and his Community, but showing itself mostly in the form of modern spiritualism.