Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. WarnerByers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Religion
Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner
Byers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Church of God (Anderson, Ind.) -- History; Warner, D. S. (Daniel Sidney), 1842-1895
Whether men worship the moon or an idol of their own make, it is an
equal insult to God; and whether men worship a gospel principle, or
a doctrine of devils, is of little if any difference in the sight
of God. Either case is idolatry; because Christ is supplanted as
the center by something else either subordinate or foreign. When
men get a chronic lopsidedness, so that they will scan greedily
over a paper and drop it as soon as they see nothing on their
hobby, whether it be sect or antisect, Sabbath or antisabbath,
or anything else, notwithstanding it may contain much good, pure
food, many blessed thoughts about Jesus, they have put something
else in the place of Christ, and their religion runs about like a
grindstone with its axis near the outer circumference and passing
diagonally through the stone.
We once heard a Disciple preacher say that every sect that holds
some truth that no other sect holds, has a right to its existence.
This provides for as many sects as there are truths in the religion
of Christ; but God allows no "schism in the body." Nothing but the
exclusive 'holding the Head,' 'seeing Jesus only,' and the full
enjoyment and constant "praising of the beauty of holiness," can
keep us from all isms.
A selection from the Vanguard, copied in the Trumpet shows the
spiritual state into which a number of leading holiness editors
had by this time drifted because of a failure to follow as God was
leading.
BACKSLIDDEN
Brother Brooks in the last number of the Banner (and his authority
as the oldest holiness editor in the country can not be doubted)
says that the aggressiveness has gone out of the holiness movement,
and ceasing to be aggressive it is a dying thing. In most places
its numbers are decreasing, only a few accessions.
Well, he tells the truth. The holiness people as a general thing
through the country are backslidden from God. A large per cent of
them never had anything but a reclaimed backslidden experience
to leave. They got back to God and called it by the new name of
holiness, taught to do so by superficial teachers that wanted to
swell the Banner reports.
* * * * *
The chief cause of this awful declension that has rolled back the
tide of the salvation of the world a decade is that the editors and
evangelists, failing to become more and more aggressive at every
point against sin in the church and out, especially among holiness
people, have backslidden as a class....
Brother Brooks told me he could not put radical truth into the
Banner without Brother Haney and Brother Kent and other such
temporizers writing and denouncing him; so Brother Brooks would
yield and backslide from Holy Ghost power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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