p. 101 | No Change by Dudley Marvin Canright

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 23, 1864

No Change.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

It is wonderful how people will stick to names, and that, too, long after the peculiar traits and characteristics which gave rise to those names have ceased to exist. An established creed, so long as it retains its name, can also retain its followers, though it should change its principles and actions every year.

Thus there are thousands of Roman Catholics who would be ready to fight in an instant if you should say aught against Catholicism; but ask them what its doctrines are and they cannot tell you one. Yet the Catholic church is the church, and all the others are heretics.

This is coming to be the case with many Protestants who profess to be able to "give a reason for the hope that is within them," from the Bible, which is their "only guide." The Methodists, for example, are as much attached to Methodism as the Catholics to the pope. Why? Because, forsooth, their fathers, or Adam Clarke, or Wesley, were Methodists. Yet there is as much difference between a Methodist of to-day, and one in Wesley's time, as there is between a rotten apple and a sound one. The name is about all that indicates any connection between them.

I was struck with a description given of the primitive Methodists by Mr. Tobias Smallet, in his History of England, written about the time they began to attract public attention. He says: "The progress of reason and free cultivation of the human mind had not, however, entirely banished those ridiculous sects and schisms of which the kingdom had formerly been so productive. Imposture and fanaticism still hung upon the skirts of religion. Weak-minded men, seduced by the delusion of a superstition styled Methodism, raised upon the affectation of superior sanctity, and maintained by pretensions to divine illumination. Many thousands in the lower ranks of life were infected by this species of enthusiasm by the unwearied endeavors of a few obscure preachers, such as Whitefield, and the two Wesleys." P. 606.

Such was the description which a popular churchman gave of those zealous Christians. But I think a

historian would hardly give such an account of the Methodists at the present day. What! they a "ridiculous sect," "fanatics," "deluded by a superstition," and composed of only the "lower ranks of life!" Oh, no, that cannot be. Look at their richly-dressed members, talented ministers, and magnificent churches. Does that look like it? Not much. Who builds those churches? who pays the minister? In this city, this year, there are to be built three $16,000 churches, belonging to the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, some of them having a $1000 preacher. Now the largest subscriptions to pay all this with, stand against the names of several of the most notorious rascals in these parts, some of them giving as high as $1000. Does not this look like committing fornication with the rich men of the earth? Rev. xviii, 3. And will they not lament and howl when they see their darling destroyed? Verses 9-11.

The time has come of which John Wesley warned them; viz., when through building costly churches, and having high-salaried pastors, rich men should become necessary to them.

I was personally acquainted with a circumstance that happened but a short time since, in which one of the purse-righteous members committed a shameful outrage upon one of the poor brethren, when the latter demanded of the minister a church-trial. Said the minister, "You had better let Bro. T. — alone; he is a lion in the church!" The poor brother had to yield, because he had not the dimes to pay the pastor if the other were expelled. Nevertheless, these are Methodists, the disciples of Wesley and Whitefield. But it may be said of them as Christ said to the Jews, "If ye were Abraham's children ye would do the works of Abraham." One of the great principles of Wesley was to reform; but now the grand principle is, "No Change;" virtually saying to the world, "We have arrived at the summit of perfection. We hold all the truth, but no errors." But while they are thus boasting of sticking to the old paths, they are really changing every day, and wandering far from the old paths. I think that the following from Lorenzo Dow's Journal illustrates this point nicely:

"In England there is much more stress put upon forms, names, and traditions, than in America. You can scarcely give a greater offense than ask, 'Have you got any religion?' 'Got any religion? think I am a heathen? got my religion to seek at this time of day! I was always religious.' 'What is your religion?' 'It is the religion of my father, and he was of the religion of his father, the good old way—we don't change our religion.'

"Suppose a man has a horse that will run a race, win a prize, and is a valuable animal; he wills the horse to his son, and he to his son, and so on; but the horse dies; the grandson boasts, What! have not I got a good horse! I have; my grandfather raised him, willed him to my father, who gave him to me; and I can prove by the neighbors that he ran such a race, and won a prize; but on a close inspection it is found that only the bones remain. Look at the Congregationalists, Independents, Presbyterians, &c., and compare them now with the history of their ancestors, and a change will be visible. And unless people have recourse to their first principles, they will degenerate. Two or three centuries ago, perhaps, ancestors had religion, and were out of stigma called a name that has been attached to their form and handed down from father to son. The children down here, because they bear the same name, think they have the same religion; on close inspection, there is no more divine life about the former, than animal life about the bones of the old horse."

Nothing is truer than that we shall "degenerate unless we have recourse to our first principles." A church may take its rise in the purest principles, be owned and blessed of God; but when its numbers and power are increased, it will become corrupt and backslidden unless daily warned by some faithful watchman. May God help the Advent people to avoid this shoal on which so many have been stranded. This can only be done by giving heed to the testimony which God has placed in the church to guard it in these perilous times.