p. 299 | DANGER OF WORLDLY POLICY IN THE CHURCH

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, May 12, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 19

DANGER OF WORLDLY POLICY IN THE CHURCH.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Satan has a thousand ways of attacking God’s cause. When he fails in one way, he tries another; his tactics are constantly changing. As soon as the Church has defeated him in one field, he abandons the ground, and attacks it from another quarter. The first battle the Christian Church had was with Judaism, a system of formal legalism; then its fierce conflict with paganism; after that rationalism; now the most threatening danger is the friendship of the world. Christianity has become a recognized power in the earth; the world speaks well of it, rich men seek it, and all classes treat it with respect. Persecution is laid aside, and the hand of friendship is extended with the offer of peace. Really this is the most dangerous ground on which the Church has ever been. Upon this subject Howard Crosby, in his Yale Lectures, pp. 80–82, solemnly warns the Church against this danger.

“False doctrine and corrupt morals have often had their rise in the mistaken zeal of godly men who have sought a new and better plan than Scripture gave them of advancing the truth. And when conservative men have lifted up a warning voice against such new departures, their faithfulness has been greeted with derision, and often with impugning of their motive and denunciation of their spiritual coldness and worldliness. Many, conscious of the error, have feared such an opposition from active and prominent minds in the Church and from a public opinion which such minds guided, and have, therefore, rushed into the new idea with the multitude, salving their consciences with, ‘Oh, it’s a little matter!’ and thus establishing a false principle to work its evil in the Church for generations. That which greatly strengthens such false movements in the Church is the support of the better elements of the world. The evil principles adopted are generally such as are in use in the world’s affairs, and the Church unconsciously leans upon the worldly judgment which it hears expressed on all sides. It is so easy to leave the divine oracles for human wisdom. It is, perhaps, easier in this day than ever before, when the world has put on a friendly and sociable air toward the Church, and its newspapers act the part of patrons and critics of the Church’s life. It is very natural to yield to this alliance on the score of liberality and humanity, and yet this yielding is the poisoning of the sources of the Church’s strength.”

“Instead of the Church’s being guided in its conduct by the word of God and its ministers, a crowd of Godless Bohemians break into its sacred inclosure, and not only defile everything with their pens, but influence votes and decisions, which should be made only in the fear of the Lord, and in a prayerful and unworldly spirit. The Church’s position toward the world should not be different from what it was in Christ’s day. The world hated him, and he assured his disciples that the world would hate them. The church that is loved by the world has lost Christ.”

“The love of the world by the Church, on the other hand, should be only the love of compassion and godly desire for its redemption. Where it is the love of complacency, then, again we have a Christless, Godless Church. He that loveth the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Now, we cannot deny that the Church’s present danger lies in this tendency to make up all differences with the world, to kiss and make friends. By this misalliance distinctive Christianity is in danger of becoming merged in a species of naturalism, and all that is supernatural and divinely authoritative is to give way to schemes and systems of human wisdom. Again and again we assert that there is no remedy for this fearful evil but a faithful, humble, persistent, and exclusive return to the inspired word; the honoring of which will exalt and purify and advance the Church, which will appear before the world only as its instructor and guide, and never as its companion and partner.”

These words of warning are much needed at the present time. Careful study of the Scriptures, and a close adherence to the Bible standard, are our only safety.

D. M. CANRIGHT.