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Progress of the Meeting

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 8, 1864

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 24, No. 24.

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Progress of the Meeting

By Dudley Marvin Canright

From Bro. Canright.

Bro. White: Our meeting is progressing finely. We have given fifteen lectures here. The interest seems to be good for the times. We have just introduced the Sabbath question.
The Methodists have assailed us on the immortality question. A minister spoke against it here yesterday, denouncing us as infidels, heretics, &c. We reviewed him at evening in a house crowded full. His principal arguments were,
1. That matter could not sin; but his text (Eze. xviii, 20) said that the soul, that sinneth it shall die, therefore the soul is something besides the body. To illustrate, said he: The law says that whoever shall kill a human being with malice propense, or aforethought, shall be declared guilty of murder, and shall suffer death by hanging. Now, said he, one man shoots another. Is it the ball that commits the murder? If so we will hang that. Is it the powder? Then we will hang that. Is it the gun? &c., &c. No; it is none of these; for, can they have malice? or aforethought? Then how absurd to hang these ! ! ! Then what was it? the finger that pulled the trigger? No; it was something back of all this. It was the soul!
One of the congregation asked, "Then what did you hang the body for?" This was a poser. He said the body was the house in which the soul dwelt. Then of course if a man owning a house in Mich., should commit murder in this State, you would go and burn his house as the penalty !
His second argument was that 999 out of every 1000 believe that the soul is immortal: the majority should and do rule, therefore it is right !
As to scripture argument, one of his strongest proof texts was 1 Cor. xiii, 12, to prove the conscious state of the dead. His text said that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." Many times in his sermon he declared that "the soul can never die," and labored two long hours to prove it !
We trust that this will turn to furtherance of the truth. D. M. CANRIGHT. Jackson, Ind.
One week later Bro. Canright writes :
Our meetings are still in progress. For the last week it has been dark nights and rainy weather : yet the people have turned out so as to fill the house almost every night.
We have sold several dollars' worth of books already. Prejudice is giving way before truth. Broad acres and fine houses are the hardest arguments we shall have to meet now.
Present truth looks clearer and more beautiful to us the more we study it. Praise the Lord for a religion that agrees with the Bible, common sense, and the wants of man. D. M. C.