The Hard Problem by M. W. Howard

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 12, 1864

The Hard Problem.

By M. W. Howard

“There never was since the world began a problem for our faith to solve so hard as that which tries American believers at this time.” So says one who clings with blinded zeal to the so-called millennium theory. The ideas which had been advanced were no new sentiments. I had been familiar with the stereotyped phrases from my childhood. Though they had always jarred somewhat discordantly, it was only by the help of present truth that I had been enabled to see how utterly futile and unscriptural they were. But now it struck me with new force; and as I drank in the import of the words above quoted, I fell to musing: At last one was ready to admit that it was a “hard problem.” And no wonder! for he was forced to see and confess, “That Edomitish envy, aristocracy and greed characterize our people; that hostile camps of brothers of one land frown defiance at each other with such bitter hate that scarce a sentinel can live between them;” or mingling in the closer conflict, our land is deluged with brothers’ blood. No wonder it tries the faith of “American believers,” at least that portion of them who are trusting in the American churches, dignified as the vicegerent of the gospel of Christ, to renovate this fallen, sinful world. No wonder it is a problem, hard for such a faith to solve; for well it may be, in the face of all the scriptures that disprove it, aside from the stubborn facts and proofs of man’s degeneracy. Then why not open your eyes and see that the faith itself is the harder problem?

It must needs be, “that the Scriptures be fulfilled,” is the only way one can account for this persistent clinging to an unfounded dogma, by persons possessing clear, practical good sense in understanding other things. Why need a veil rest over the understanding in reading the word of God, except it be that so few read it with sufficient discrimination to break the spell of a hackneyed early training. Alas! that mankind will so impregnably intrench themselves behind the ramparts of prejudice, that, resisting alike argument and the sterner logic of passing events, they will reiterate and endorse the sentiment, as not long since I heard one, in an outburst of pulpit eloquence, “I will never! no, never! till the latest hour of my breath, give up the idea that this sinful earth is to be renovated, and lifted to millennial purity by the gospel of Christ!” I sighed mentally then, and repeat it now: If you never will, you never will! But may not Jesus now be saying of such, as he said while upon earth of the scribes and Pharisees, “Let them alone; they be blind leaders of the blind;” even though they would doubtless ask as arrogantly as did those Pharisees: “Are we blind also?” Let Jesus’ answer come with solemn weight to all, till in earnestness we pray, “Open thou the blind eyes.”

M. W. HOWARD.

Malone, N. Y., June, 1864.