Personal by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 4, 1864

Personal.

By Editor

To speak of any one personally with disapprobation is not pleasant, but circumstances sometimes render it unavoidable, to save ourselves from injustice. The course that is being pursued by Ransom Hicks of Providence, R. I., makes it necessary that we say a word respecting him and his course. We learn that he is scattering over the country, so far as he can procure names, pamphlets and fly-leaves calculated to be prejudicial to the Review and its publishers. He invariably falls into a great bluster over the fact that he first offered his articles to the Review but no notice was taken of it; that he has challenged, but gets no reply; that we \"keep mum,\" &c., thereby giving the idea that we, without cause or provocation, either treat him with ungentlemanly neglect, or are afraid to come in contact with his positions. Some of our readers are aware, and for the benefit of those who are not, we will state, that the course of this man toward the conductors of this paper, for the past nine years, more especially in connection with the abuse he heaped upon us in connection with the \"messenger\" movement, for which no real acknowledgment or apology has been made, has been such as to amount to a forfeiture on his part of any notice or regard from this Office. Nevertheless, during the time above mentioned, the Office has been beset with letters from him, in which he has worked in every possible manner to get his name into the paper. But in view of his past course, and of the fact, moreover, that what he has written has been to dispute some point, or pick a flaw with some person or thing, showing that he was actuated only by a spirit of contention,—in view of all this, we have studiously excluded him from the paper, and for the same reasons, shall probably continue so to do. We should be recreant to the honor and respect we owe to the truth, should we admit such a person with his past precedents, and present standing and purposes, into the Review.

Deeply chagrined, apparently, at the result of his efforts in this direction, he now seeks revenge (for we think no other spirit can be discovered in his writings) by scattering his publications over the land, as above stated, in hope of disaffecting the brethren and sisters, and injuring the Review. The first point on which he thinks to raise division is the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, placing the former on the fourth, and the latter on the seventh, days of the week. Here he professes to have a new discovery and great light. But he has simply adopted the Seventh-day-Baptist view, which was discussed and matured among them probably before ever he was born.

A second point on which he takes his stand, is 2 Cor. iii, 7. He accuses us of great stupidity for referring the stones mentioned in this verse to the tables of stone which contained the ten commandments, whereas he refers them to the stones set up by Joshua, and plaistered with plaister, and on which a copy of the law of Moses was written, forty years after the tables of stone were given to Moses at Sinai. Deut. xxvii, 4; Josh. viii, 32. But the text speaks of something which was \"written and engraven in stones.\" Was there anything engraven in the stones set up by Joshua? Nothing. There was a writing on the plaister; for those stones were covered with plaister, not simply laid up in plaister, as he contends. There was nothing engraven in stones except the ten commandments which God did engrave in tables of stone. Ex. xxxii, 16. See the contrast also in verse 8 of 2 Cor. iii, in which these tables are not called stones merely as in verse 7, but tables of stone.

But Paul continues, The ministration of death was glorious, \"so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance.\" What were the facts in the case? When Moses came down from his second interview with the Lord in Sinai, having the tables of the ten commandments in his hands, which as a minister of the first covenant, he had then received of the Lord, the skin of his face shone, so that the children of Israel could not look upon him, as stated by Paul; and so long as he talked with them he put a vail over his face. Ex. xxxiv, 29-35. No sane man can doubt but Paul refers to this time and circumstance. It is the height of nonsense, as shown by Bro. Cottrell in No. 15, to refer it to the writing of Joshua upon the plaistered stones in Mount Ebal forty years afterward, and after Moses had gone into his grave. Some of our brethren in the West a few years since conceived the same idea, that the stones of 2 Cor. iii, 7, were the stones set up by Joshua; but when they saw Paul's evident allusion to Moses' coming down from Sinai with the stones in his hand, they were sensible enough to immediately give up the idea.

But Mr. H. now thinks he is a mighty instrument in the hands of Providence to do a great work. In a letter addressed by him, July 31, 1864, \"To the President of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association,\" occurs this passage: \"And now, if I am fit for nothing but a rod to scourge certain leaders in the second house of Israel for their arrogance and rejection of the light of God's truth when it is presented to them through some other source than that of Battle Creek, then I will be found in the way of my duty doing honor to in that capacity.\"

Think of a man who besides making only confusion on the death and resurrection of Christ, cannot come within forty years of the truth on 2 Cor. iii, 7, setting himself up as a \"rod to scourge certain leaders in the second house of Israel.\" We would not seem harsh or severe; but we think it would be difficult to conceive of a more glaring and disgusting compound of egotism and fanaticism.

We give the following articles from Brn. Cottrell and Waggoner, touching the subjects here introduced: Bro. Cottrell, though still adhering to his former S. D. Baptist views of the time of the crucifixion of Christ, presents nevertheless, what we consider to be correct ideas of the relative importance of the subject, and how it should be held, on whichever side the truth may be—not, however, that we have any doubt in our own mind on this question.