THE POLITICAL CANVASS AND NATIONAL REFORM

Among the recent developments which indicate the progress of National Reform sentiment in this country, none is more clear and unmistakable than one to which the Christian Statesman calls attention in a recent issue; namely, that the present political compaign “differs from all that have preceded it in that distinctively Christian considerations are made to play a leading part in the canvass.” This is true in the campaigns of two at least of the leading political parties. Gen. Fisk has long been a prominent lay member of the Methodist Church, and Gen. Harrison is at present a ruling elder in the First Presbyterian church of Indianapolis. These facts are set forth by leading speakers and writers in their respective parties as among the most important reasons why they should receive the political support of the voters of this nation. The question is carried into the pulpits, and the pastors of prominent churches instruct their flocks in regard to the necessity of supporting men of active religious principles, in preference to those whose religious zeal is of a doubtful kind; and items on the same point are being sent to both secular and religious journals all over the country. Not only is this true of the candidates for the leading office in the nation, but of those for minor offices as well.MMM 401.5

“There is.” says the Statesman, “a significance in these facts, of which the politicians are not aware. The moral and religious questions which are the real, though unconfessed, issues before the American people, have revealed, as never before, the essential unfitness of irreligious men for the sacred trusts of civil rule,” “The conflict over our Sabbath laws, the perils which threaten our school system, and the increasing difficulties connected with unrestricted immigration, have created a demand for conscience and moral character in public men which has hardly yet found clear expression, but which the party politicians are constrained to recognize.”MMM 401.6

Truly, if these things are of significance for politicians, they are of double significance for us. It is the clearest kind of evidence that events are coming to pass just as Seventh day Adventists, on the authority of their faith in the word of God, have said they would come, and that we are already witnessing the “beginning of the end” of the development of that for which we have long looked,-the image to the beast.MMM 401.7

And yet, with such facts staring them in the face, there are those who, after continuing long with us, can turn their backs upon the views we hold. and profess to have come to the conclusion that what we have predicted concerning this movement is all an error. Such blindness is unaccountable. When the light that is in a person becomes darkness, “how great is that darkness!” l. a. s.MMM 401.8