A Presbyterian's View of Seventh-day Adventists.
By B. M.
[Bro. White: In the Reformed Presbyterian and Covenanter of Oct. 1865 is the following, which you may deem worthy of room in the Review, and also of comment. JOHN MCMILLAN.] "Fairgrove, Tuscola Co., Mich., July 22, 1865.
Messrs. Editors:— I came here two weeks ago by the order of our Presbytery, on a domestic mission. I found the community all in a ferment with the leaven of the Millerites or Second Adventists. Four miles from this is the village of Watrousville. They have set up a large and commodious tent. It is sixty feet in diameter, and will seat a large number of persons. Here are three preachers. They hold meetings every night and are found in the tent through the day studying, or conversing with all that come to them. Their views are extremely wild. They maintain that Christ, although superior to all other creatures, is still a created being. They deny the immortality of the soul, claiming that it dies and is raised again with the body. Indeed they are materialists of the grossest kind; for they think that the image of God in which man is created is the figure of the body. They keep the seventh day for the Sabbath, and maintain that there is no salvation without it. They acknowledge that they have been mistaken in setting the day for the end of the world, but they expect it soon—in this generation at least. When Christ comes the righteous will be raised. After a thousand years the wicked will be raised to be punished. This will be by fire which will annihilate them. At the request of one of our people, they gave me permission to occupy their tent a week evening to prove the immortality of the soul, on condition that we would come the next evening to hear the answer. I spoke an hour and a half, and my opponent spoke two. He claimed that the word 'soul' meant only life. That the spirits of just men made perfect, in Heb. xii, meant Enoch, Elijah, and Moses, and that Isa. lvii, 1, meant rest in the grave; and the promise to the thief on the cross referred to the resurrection. Strange as their views are they make progress. It is about four years since they assumed the form of a denomination. Yet now they claim forty-seven churches and twenty thousand members in the United States. They have Missions in all the Northern States, also in England, Ireland, and Italy. Their success is owing partly to the novelty of their various doctrines, which commend themselves to all the lovers of change; partly to their zeal in carrying on their missions regardless of cost, and partly to the carelessness of the Orthodox, who, when the enemy is coming in like a flood, take little pains to lift up a standard against him. My principal object in writing is to admonish our ministers to preach frequently on the Spirituality of God, the Divinity of Christ, and the undying nature of the soul; also on the change of the Sabbath. They are plentier in Michigan than in any other State. They have a Publishing House in Battle Creek in this State, where they issue various publications which their preachers have ever on hand for sale. They have republished one work of J. W. Morton's on the Sabbath. He is now in connection with the Seventh-day Baptists. They are non-combatants. All of their members who went to the war were promptly suspended. However, they had no sympathy with the South."
B. M. [NOTE. As the above article pertains to Brn. Van Horn and Canright's field of labor, we leave comment for them. Ed.]