Untitled article by Wm. C. Gage

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 15, 1865

Popular Errors and Their Fruits. No. 1.

By Wm. C. Gage

THE world is full of unbelief. If we question people in regard to their religious faith, nine-tenths of them will proceed to tell us what they do not believe. Instead of complying with the apostolic requirement, to be ready to give a reason of the hope that is in them, they are always ready and sometimes anxious to give a reason of the unbelief that is in them. Now it is apparent that such persons cannot be true Bible Christians; for such will ever be ready to tell what they believe, and give a reason why they believe it; and that reason, we may be assured, will not be that "our church" or "our minister" believes so.

It is nevertheless a fact, however, that very many who openly profess Christianity, are in this state of semi-infidelity; and in view of this fact, the query arises, How do they get there? It would doubtless be a very difficult matter to account for all the skepticism that prevails in our land of Bibles and Christian privileges. The infidel declares that Christianity itself is at fault; that as a system, it does not commend itself to the judgment of enlightened men. While we unhesitatingly deny this statement, we shall take a position which may at first seem somewhat like it, and charge a great proportion of the prevailing unbelief upon the so-called Christianity of the present day. In other words, the popular errors which have so perverted the Christianity, and become incorporated into the religious belief of the churches in our land, have a tendency to drive men into unbelief.

We are sometimes accused of being too earnest in assailing these errors, and making them of too much account; but if we succeed in establishing the foregoing proposition, and prove that they are a prolific source of unbelief, no further defense of our course is necessary.

It is not our purpose in this short article, to go into a discussion as to the truthfulness or falsity of these doctrines, but, upon the ground that we consider them as gross errors, give some of the reasons why they should be opposed. So many errors are afloat at the present day, it is manifest that to consider them all, would be out of the question, so we propose to take up such as are most popular, and endorsed by the greatest number of religious denominations.

First and foremost among errors, comes the doctrine of endless misery. Endorsed by all Evangelical churches, thundered from almost every pulpit, used as an incentive in every popular revival, we dare assert that it has made more rank infidels than any other false doctrine ever preached. By it God is represented as a vindictive tyrant, whose anger at the wicked cannot be satiated, even throughout all eternity, although the Scriptures declare that his anger will cease in their destruction. When pulpit orators, with all the eloquence at their command, present before their hearers a picture of the wicked undergoing the pains of eternal torment, wailing out their anguish and despair in cursing God, while the righteous are happy in contemplation of the scene, and God himself is represented as delighted with it, can we wonder that men turn away from the picture and say, "I want nothing to do with such a God and such a religion as that?"

In view of the mischief of such teaching, it should be our earnest endeavor to show its falsity, and persuade men to love the Lord because he "hath no pleasure in the death of him that dieth."

Wm. C. Gage.

Manchester, N. H.