COUNTERFEIT by H. J. Spicer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 15

COUNTERFEIT

By H. J. Spicer

BY H. J. SPICER.

Does the counterfeit invalidate the true? No. Only the genuine is worthy a counterfeit. The existence of the latter proves that the former is considered valuable. What sense would there be in spurning all coins because a few are known to be spurious? Yet this is the glory of the overskeptical mind, which avoids all religion because of certain false systems. He whose boast is liberalism, rationalism, freedom from all sectarianism, usually proves himself emphatically a bigot when he ripens his no-creed into a creed,—narrow to that degree that he excludes the infinite divine, and confines himself to the paltry human resources.

The Author of all has not left man without a science, without a religion. Universal History, in the light of reason, attests to an organized opposition, a power of darkness chiefly occupied in palming off counterfeits. Prove all, hold fast the good. In metallurgy the pure furnishes the test for the spurious. A pure system of morality may be required to substantiate its claims, not only by proving itself, but by giving criteria for the rejection of all other systems.

The careful student will not fail to perceive that the Bible alone fulfills this requirement. Brevity forbids even a complete general comparison. Take not the most degrading forms of idolatry, ancient or modern, but note the noblest offspring of Rome’s, of Grecia’s genius. Can the characteristics of the manifold supreme gods, so human in all the attributes of love and passion, petty jealousy and incontinence, be reconciled with purity and goodness? The people could not rise above their imagined sources, hence, like the gods of their own creation, they reveled and feasted to excess in celebrating the mysteries. How incompatible with that temperance and sobriety enjoined by the Christian religion.

See Homer’s priest of Apollo at Troy crying for vengeance, and more, claiming even injustice because, forsooth, he has thatched temples to that god. How does this balancing accounts with a deity appear alongside a prayer whose only plea is mercy through the merits of a divine Redeemer?

Note the earthly rewards and honors for the leaders in other systems, which are repugnant to the principles of the true religion, and the pursuit of which debars from Heaven.

How can the delirium of the old hag sitting upon the tripod over a pit of sulphurous or other poisonous fumes causing her to mumble oracles,—she knows not what,—or the shallow, senseless foolery of a modern spiritist medium be compared with the peaceable and pure inspiration of the Bible. The latter is not imparted on frequent occasions for idle curiosity or test purposes, but given rarely, as the Spirit of God moved upon men, and when reason could discover a crisis or necessity for such interposition.

There is no need to pursue the subject further. It is only through choice that one can place Christianity below par or even at par with paganism. Reason never compelled it. The most extensive reading of mythology, not neglecting the Bible, could but cause the student to have a broader, higher view of the foundations and ramparts of eternal truth. What if there are points of resemblance? The true was first. The counterfeiter’s business is to copy.

What shall we say, then, of such as claim that they are forced to yield all faith, and deny all responsibility? Ah! here is deception—a blindness of choice! Pitiable indeed the state of one who hardens the heart against the dealings of Providence, then seeks to avoid responsibility by denial; or the state of one who turns from God through disappointment, or an unfortunate greed for flaws in good men’s characters. The Bible reads, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

More to the point than anything we can add is the selection from Ruskin for Ingersoll:—

“You can never get at the literal limitation of living facts. They disguise themselves by the very strength of their life; get told again and again in different ways by all manner of people; the literalness of them is turned topsy-turvy, inside out, over and over again; then the fools come and read them wrong side upwards, or else say that there never was a fact at all. Nothing delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative,—to show that everybody has been wrong. Imagine the delicious sensation to an empty-headed creature of fancying for a moment that he has emptied everybody else’s head as well as his own! nay, that for once, his own hollow bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been first empty,—first to know nothing.”

How the channels of thought all finally narrow down and are lost in the unfruitful sands of desert self? The glory of every effort for humanity evanishes because a selfish claim enters and takes it away. Such a man is not to be relied upon. He who is untrue to himself will be untrue to others. Reader, knew you ever a man who had lost all confidence in good men, that could himself be trusted?

We impugn the honesty of such infidelity. It is not lasting in sincerity. It will be outgrown with the strengthening of the mind, or it will ripen into open hostility to God and goodness; and the curse become a sad deformity, to canker, and create unrest that cannot be disguised. To quiet fears, Satan, the great counterfeiter, usually asks, “Who is to judge when each one follows his own conscience?” Man has been granted a modicum of reason, with a faculty of comparison; and he who comes to the bar of God with a question of such coinage dares the great Detector of all counterfeits to remand back to its dust the baser metal,—the fearful and unbelieving, with the hated hypocrite,—all who have proven unworthy to wear the form of man by refusing the Refiner’s fire.