p. 179 | A Bad Spirit! Has he?

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 28, 1858

A Bad Spirit! Has he?

WHAT makes you think so, friend? What evidence have you that he has a bad spirit? Because he renounces sin? lifts the sledge-hammer of denunciation against every opposing obstacle to truth, righteousness, love and salvation? Is this your plea? A bad spirit because he dares be singular, obey God rather than man, strike a death blow if possible, to popular sins—sins at which others wink, cover up, pass by. The Scribes and Pharisees accused Christ of having a bad spirit, even that of a devil, of Beelzebub the prince of devils. What for? Because he dared be singular, raise his arm of holy indignation against popular sins, the sin of oppression and hypocrisy, all sin.

These self righteous Pharisees in their long robes could not endure sound doctrine. His cutting reproofs, came too near home.

When Christ probed the heart, saying: 'Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you; this people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.'

'Let them alone, they be blind leaders of the blind; and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' Again, 'How can ye, being evil, speak good things.'

'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!' What? 'O, he has a bad spirit—how denunciatory.' 'He casteth not out devils but by the prince of devils.' John the Baptist doubtless was accused of having a bad spirit when he laid the ax at the root, and said to the Pharisees and Sadducees, coming to his baptism: 'O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance.' Matt. iii, 7: 8. The martyr Stephen, moreover, must have had a very bad spirit on the same principle in his last faithful appeal to his murderers, when he said, 'ye stiff necked and uncircumcised, in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do ye.' Acts vii. 51. What a dreadful bad spirit Paul must have had, when he said to Elymas the sorcerer: 'O full of all subtilty, and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?' Acts xiii. 10.

How now? any of this same bad spirit abroad? The Lord send us more of it. Let any true, whole hearted, godly, uncompromising servant of the Most High, face the modern Pharisee and Saducee—rise up boldly against a time-serving, man-fearing policy, stand for God, the right, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine, stem the mighty current of popular iniquity, come life or come death. — Golden Rule.