A TRIBUTE TO REFORMERS by J. W. Julian

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 19, 1880.

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 8

A TRIBUTE TO REFORMERS.

By J. W. Julian

If reforms were left to thinkers and scholars, and the wise and prudent, they would never be undertaken at all. The grandest efforts of heroic virtue can only be inspired by that supreme devotion to a holy cause which amounts to fanaticism, and nothing less than this can call forth the enduring admiration and perfect love of mankind. This truth is illustrated in the lives of all the world's great martyrs to liberty and high priests of reform. If no hazards are to be braved, nothing will be attempted. None of the great agitations of the world could have passed muster if they had been compelled in advance to go to trial on a cool calculation of the chances of success and the sacrifices involved. The reformer feels that if he would save his life, he must be ready to lose it. He sees the particular cause which he espouses with such vividness, from his mount of vision, and embraces it with such unreserved ardor that its service is accepted as a divine command. The light which points his way casts all else into the shade. He accepts the philosophy embodied in Mr. Lincoln's motto of “one war at a time.” The very one-sidedness of reformers, their readiness to die for what they believe to be the truth, and that element of exaggeration which so often enters into their conceptions, thus become providential guises, for which the world has reason to return thanks.—J. W. Julian.