p. 86 | Evading The Testimony by J. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 11, 1863

Evading The Testimony.

By J. Clarke

SOME read the Review with much interest, especially the columns of letters, and are much edified by the communications of those who give their experience there; but when they speak of the peculiar doctrines advocated and set forth in the Review, they say, we will leave those to you, and content ourselves to feast upon the experience of those who write.

If I should say that I disliked a certain kind of tree, but was fond of the fruit it bore, I should thus be considered inconsistent truly; all would exclaim, ‘What folly!’ yet not more so than the class of people above described.

Those who speak as above, admit that no other people publish a living experience, weekly, as clear as the one under consideration. They admit the churches are falling lower and lower, and they see the marked difference there is in the character of the Review, from the average of religious periodicals; yet they fail to see the cause.

They see the effect, and delight in it; but the cause is not yet visible to them.

Cause and effect! the laws of which are as unerring as the word of God. Cause and effect! Don't you see the relation existing between these things?

Do not you see at a glance, that the doctrines a man believes affect his practice, and that there is an intimate connection between a man's belief, practice and experience?

As closely connected as the foliage is to the tree, is the experience of the person to his doctrines and practice. Nay, do not violate common sense, and stultify the moanings of much abused conscience, by saying this is not a fair statement. Approve the truth, and conscience will applaud and comfort, instead of goading and reproving. Thus, in time when you have not only approved, but obeyed the truth, will you delight greatly in the Lord, and rejoice in his commandments.

But you say these are new doctrines. Are they? Are you sure they are new? Have you carefully, impartially, investigated the matter?

You say you are unprejudiced. Are you sure? You say Satan was not the first advocate of the natural immortality of man. Are you sure?

You say that all this ado about God's law is unnecessary; that water baptism is unimportant, that the Review is too radical and too exclusive. Are you sure about this?

For more than a year after I commenced reading the Review I was confident that if they (the editors of the Review) would say less on some points, it would be better for the cause; but I afterward found to my sorrow, that I had been mistaken. I thought my judgment excellent, and my mind candid, but I found that evidence proved some of my notions very much out of the way. I had been too sure, too sure! Thank God, I found it out, I hope in time.

I am well satisfied that a consistent, correct view of the relation between cause and effect, (every child of good mind posesses it, until it is vitiated by bad education,) has much to do with salvation, and that he who thinks to enter the pearly gates, stumbling along indifferent to the plain teachings of scripture, bolstered up by an old hope, dating far back in life, will be terribly disappointed. — J. Clarke.