ALARMING COLDNESS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · January 15, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 3

ALARMING COLDNESS.

By Editor

THERE is an immense field for comment respecting the religious condition of the different denominations viewed in connection with the work of modern revivalists and the large number of converts which they report. But these comments we would rather they would make than to make them ourselves. The Alliance, of Chicago, seems disposed to do its part of this work. The addition of so many new converts would naturally be expected to impart new life and vigor to these religious bodies. On the contrary, it is claimed that to these is due the coldness and inconsistencies which characterize these churches. There is, then, certainly something wrong in the process of their conversion. In its issue of Jan. 3, The Alliance says:—

“Brother Harrison, who rubs repentance and faith into sinners, has been at work in Baltimore, and gets this first-class notice from the Methodist:—

“‘The many Baltimore friends of the Rev. Thomas Harrison, evangelist, have been much gratified to learn of his great success at the Wharton street church of Philadelphia. Brother Harrison has few gifts as an expository or logical preacher, but as a “revivalist” few ministers of the M. E. church can point to such a record. It is said that nine thousand persons have professed conversion in meetings he has superintended in the past three years. Fruit, and not symmetry and foliage, is the true test of the tree. The game secured, and not the powder and shot expended, is the badge of the great hunter.’

“We believe in conversion to Christ as thoroughly as any, but we have no sympathy with that ‘revivalist’ who goes forth among sinners with his game bag, and counts up his converts as he would prairie chickens. We believe that converts made by the use of animal magnetism alone are not very reliable. They are apt to flutter out of the game bag, and no huntsman ever gets within range of them again. To such converts is due the fact that the church is cold and inconsistent to an alarming degree.”