Error Insidious by J. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 12, 1862

Error Insidious.

By J. Clarke

EVERYWHERE do we find error softly creeping along like the serpent among the flowers of Eden, and nowhere more dangerous than when reposing in the lines of the poet.

In the following extract we find the modern delusion of the millennium (the conversion of the world) alluded to in the third stanza; and what renders it more dangerous is, that the first two verses are beautiful and appropriate, and according to the truth; which is well calculated to give currency to error in the last verse.

Thus it is, error is so mixed up with the truth that unless one is alive and awake to the delusions of the age, he may be imposed upon at every turn in life, by the sugar-coated, gilded poisons of the times, which lurk in most of the popular worship, and teachings of this age.

Parents talk to the unsuspecting child, of a future, golden age of man; of an immortal soul independent of the resurrection; of an immaterial heaven, &c. The preacher preaches it, the church talks and prays it, the poet clothes it with beauty and wordy power, the vocalist sings it, the child breathes it from the moral atmosphere around; and, arriving at maturity, he finds that "endless torments," "deathless spirits," a "shadowy, immaterial future," and the future "conversion of the world," are, with the "first-day Sabbath," constituent parts of his belief; and unless there is honesty of heart beneath all this rubbish, when you take from him these long-cherished errors, you have demolished his fortress in which his soul trusted. But here are the verses:

"Hark! the cry of death is ringing, Wildly from the reeking plain; Guilty glory, too, is flinging, Proudly forth her vaunting strain. Thousands on the field are lying, Slaughtered in the useless strife; Wildly mingled, dead and dying, Show the waste of human life.

"Listen to the supplications Of the widowed ones of earth; Listen to the cry of nations, Ringing loudly, wildly forth; Nations bruised and crushed forever, By the iron heel of war. God of mercy wilt thou never Send deliverance from afar!

"Yes! a light is faintly beaming, Through the cloud that hovers o'er; Soon the radiance of its beaming, Full upon our land will pour. 'Tis the light that tells the dawning Of the bright millennial day, Heralding its blessed morning, With its peace-bestowing ray."

The lulling peace-and-safety song is here surely. J. CLARKE.