Fast Times | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1858

Fast Times.

THE current religion does not fail to partake of the same character. There are fast churches, that make astonishing advances, unknown to any but themselves; outstripping all their sisters, and so elevated, that it is about impossible to find a minister suitable for them anywhere. Yet fast ministers are not wanting; but the misfortune is that the fast minister is often as far ahead of the church, as the church is of him.

Everything must be fast, new, dashing, marvelous. If one stops for usages, proprieties, even decencies; he is prosy, an old fogy, and a bore. Every thing, even within the precincts of the sanctuary, must conform to the hurry, rage, and turmoil without.

But a fast age may be too fast, and while religion will conform so far as it properly can to the spirit of the age, there is a point beyond which it will not, cannot go. Truth, right, principle, are ever the same, and these can never be sacrificed to any reckless innovation. We are not to settle back to an opposite extreme of defiance; but we should see in such times that our foundation is on the rock, and our course directed by the light from above.