Only when men refuse to compare Scripture with Scripture and to read the mind of the Spirit in the complete revelation of the one truth unto salvation, could they fall upon the cheerless and forbidding thought, that the God of love created some men to an inevitable doom of death and endless misery, and that Christ was sent to be the cause of their destruction, as He was sent to be the cause of life and salvation to others more favored of God.
Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. Psalm 19:12
…While we insist upon it that not every error is fatal, we wish to guard against the misconception, or false conclusion, according to which it is forthwith pronounced indifferent.
“On what do you rest the foundation of your faith?”
“Paleario, a man that was born about the year 1500, a man who was one of the greatest martyrs of his day.
“Life is not a game. It is not a field merely for selfish uses, limited by worldly ends, as though it were only of this earth that abideth forever. It is an arena for noble effort; it is a school for our immortal faculties; it is a training of holiness and preparation for heaven.
“The great fact to be considered is not our lot in life, but what we make out of it. Let us, then, each accept the lot assigned us, simply to do the best we can in it and with it.
“Nowhere in Scripture is there any intimation given that it could be pleasing to God, or even excusable in His sight, to yield any portion of the revealed truth to satisfy the desires of men who object to it.
“The view of Jesus as a man of sorrows shows us that seriousness, sorrow, even sadness, is suitable to our condition as fallen and sinful beings. In the experience of life we find that in all genuine happiness there is an element of sorrow.
“A kind of notion has come through false teachers, all over the world, that there is a great eternal progress beyond this life, and that no difference how we live, nor how we die, away out beyond the grave somewhere, sometime, we are going to reach the perfection of God Himself, and it is by the false lie that the devil has planted into the hearts of the people that hundreds and thousands are going down to hell day after day.
“When a minister will just hold up Jesus Christ as a model man there is no power in it; the truth is, when you hold up Jesus Christ as a good man and not as the Son of God, it is all nonsense.
“Essence and revelation, being and clothing are the two ideas of the entire creation.
“The clothing of our race since the fall is not the mere result of physical necessity, it springs from a divine purpose.