RANDOM THOUGHTS by A. C. Hudson

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 1, 1860

RANDOM THOUGHTS.

By A. C. Hudson

“My head is sick, my heart is faint With every day's report of wrongs And outrages and human woes.”

OH! there is so much of the world, world, world, in the thoughts of the professed followers of the meek and lowly Jesus that it is no wonder the masses are led captive by Satan at his will.

When such men as Pomeroy, Porter and Onderdonk commit such crimes as they have; when such men as “Bethume, Cox, Murry, Adams, and Parker assemble at a fashionable rumselling hotel to feast, crack jokes, toast each other and make great swelling speeches; when the M. E. Church fellowships slavery, so also the American Board, and the American Tract Society refuses to publish anything against it; when in the midst of a revival prayer-meeting there can be nothing said of the poor slave or the near approach of the Saviour, the Christian's hope; when quarreling occurs in an assembly of revival ministers, and the lie is given as has been done by those who are most active in the recent revival in Ireland; when such things are too numerous to be mentioned and are enacted all over the world by the intelligent and the professed Christian, does it look as if the religion of Jesus is sufficient to renovate the world? Does it look as if the millenium is now at the door—just ready to enter as the popular belief of the churches say it is? Where is truth and equity and justice and righteousness, to say nothing of mercy and peace? It

seems as if “the heavens were about to fall because justice is not done.” It seems as if a horrid jargon must ascend into the ears of the Lord, such as provoked his judgments by the flood, the confusion of languages, the destruction of Sodom, of Egypt, the Canaanites, the dispersion of the Israelites, the destruction of Babylon, Nineveh, Persia, Greece, Tyre, Jerusalem, the subversion of the Roman empire and the French Reign of Terror.

Is not the great boast of the age “improvement and advancement” a boast of being rich and increased in goods and in need of nothing, when the fact is we are miserable and poor and blind and naked and in need of all things? Are the common people who presume to pass judgment upon passing events capable of so doing, when the most profound historians declare themselves incapable of so doing? Are they not more incompetent to the task than a private soldier in a slight skirmish in the morning to pronounce the decisions of the day? It is true the Christian may go to the word of inspiration where he learns that the stone that was cut out of the mountain without hands eventually fills the whole earth. He knows too that if he does the commands he shall have right to the tree of life and shall enter the city.

But is it not to be done in a different manner from that which Porter and Pomeroy and Onderdonk and the Irish delegation and their coadjutors, to say nothing of those who sincerely inquire “Lord what shall we do that we may work the works of God,” have been accustomed to expect?

It seems to me too from the present prospects that the return of the Jews and the conversion of the world are quite as unlikely to occur as the immediate resurrection of the dead and the return of the Saviour. This we do know if we have ever tried to live Christian lives, that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution; that broad is the road that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in thereat, because straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth to life and few there be who find it; that the kingdom of heaven is like treasure in a field, the which when it was found was hid, and for joy the finder went and sold all he had and bought the field; and like a goodly pearl which the merchant man bought with all his possessions.

The prevailing sentiment of the churches seems to be that the narrow way has grown and will continue to grow broad till all the world will walk in it. As Dr. Bushnell said in a recent farewell sermon, “That the great problem now for Christianity to solve is not how it shall meet persecution, but how it will amidst refinement and popularity and opulence maintain the simplicity and spirituality of the gospel.”

I ask if Mr. Bushnell thought of the sum of all villainies when he breathed that remark, or if he recollected how the poor are banished from worshiping with the wealthy in palace churches? Did it ever occur to him that the proposed monument to John Wesley resembled the garnishing of the sepulchres of the prophets to which the Saviour referred when he said “Fill ye up the measure of your iniquities?” Thus much I had written and was going to speak of the children of Abraham who are heirs of faith, whose lives are devoted to what some would call a chimera; of those who have devoted their lives to tell of a risen Saviour, and whose money has not been spared, who have foregone friends and friendships that they might better accomplish the work; of the faintness that would come over them when their hope is deferred and they are told that there is no such thing as miracles; that the Bible is only a history containing stories contrary to reason and sound sense, and effete so far as it is to be a guide and compass over life's dark sea; that the pretended miracles can either be accounted for on scientific principles or are perfect hoaxes; that the history of the race is all a fable; that the histories of China and Egypt as ascertained by learned research extend far back of the Mosaic period of the creation; and this assertion said to be corroborated by geological discoveries. And then memory flies back to a statement in the American Baptist that “there is a well in Italy dug through a layer of clay and then of chalk when a surface mold was reached containing grass and trees and implements of husbandry, below which was clay and sand, before water was found,” or some such account; or to another found I believe in the back part of Sanders' Fifth Reader (old series), of the ruins in Central America, of the slow progress of accumulating soil in arid regions at a great height, and of the depth of soil on those towers and of the age of mouldering trees on them. And then these running, rambling thoughts are followed up by being told that Abbot in a lecture delivered recently said that one George R. Giddings an accomplished Egyptian scholar after spending twenty years of research among Egyptian hieroglyphics, asserts the existence of Egypt as a refined and popular kingdom thousands of years before the Abrahamic period; and that geologists affirm the impossibility of a flood ever having occurred in the region of the Euphrates. And then to hear it said that the revelations were communicated by spirits through men that were ahead of their time or age; that Jesus Christ was only a man much ahead of the age in which he lived; and that there are seers in our days as well as of old; and that A. J. Davis is one of their chief ones; and that spirits have been consulted as to the manner of obtaining light from water, and that it is by their aid that the method has at length been discovered; that there is no God but the God of nature, that nature is God and that it is as appropriate to pray to a lily as to the Mosaic God; that a man prays when he comes home weary and chafed from his daily toil and scolds his wife, and that a woman prays when she cries, besides many other such assumptions.—How at all this the head reels and the heart sickens. At such a time how pertinent these lines of Young: Religion, providence, an after state, Here is firm footing, here is solid rock. All else is sea, becalms and then devours. His hand the good man fastens on the skies, And bids earth roll nor heeds its idle whirl.

The Christian can fly to the law and to the testimony and say if they speak not according to these words it is because there is no light in them.

How precious is the sixth Psalm. How precious are the ten commandments. How precious is the blood of Jesus. How precious is the transforming influence of his example. The Christian knows it is not a chimera. He knows in whom he has believed, and that he is able to keep that he has committed to his care; and he says, How sweet are thy words! They are sweeter than honey to my taste, infinitely sweeter. How precious is the sum of them. They calm the troubled soul and give the wounded conscience peace.