Revealed Religion

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 7, 1863

Revealed Religion.

O, WHAT is this world when we have turned away from the cross of Christ, and from the instruction which God has given us in his word? Man is seen upon the earth a strange being, playing a strange part, and encircled by mysteries. He has been created, he knows not by whom, or when, or for what purpose. He finds himself prone to evil by some mysterious law for which there is no explanation. He suffers, he knows not why. He lives, he knows not for what end; and when he dies he goes into another state, and he knows not whither or why. He can do nothing to stay the progress of the plague which sweeps away the race, and he can only stand and weep over the grave which he digs for his pale brother, and which he himself must soon enter. Revealed religion comes and tells him who made him, and why; explains the way in which the race sank into this melancholy condition, and how it may be recovered; proposes promises adapted to him as a rational being, reveals a brighter world, and explains to him how it may be his own. It originates no new form of disease, dips the arrow of death in no new poison, creates no new darkness around the grave, robs the sufferer of no new consolation, and creates no new danger. Then why, Oh! why should he go away?—Sel.