With the Papacy springing back steadily to resurgent life and power, and growing increasingly aware of our every statement and move, and with Protestantism stretching her hands across the separating gulf toward strange but ominous support of Rome's sign of ecclesiastical power and authority, we must march forward unitedly as a band of coordinated workers, as pertains to declarations bearing upon this situation and its approaching climax. We must not break rank according to independent judgment or personal inclination.
Individual starring or bravado may gratify the urge to assume the heroic role. It may seem to the participant greatly to honor, champion, or publicize truth. But if such publicism causes confusion in the ranks, if it brings difficulty to one's comrades, or gives the massing foe the coveted opportunity of attacking the entire phalanx, then instead of being a praiseworthy achievement, it becomes an unwise venture and a mistaken move.
In these tense days, no individual worker has a moral right to jeopardize his many brethren through unwise or premature statements, especially when they are issued contrary to the expressed counsel of the appointed leadership. No man, moreover, has moral justification in committing the denomination, or his brethren, to a position upon which there is honest, known difference of opinion concerning the validity or conclusiveness of some argument employed or some evidence cited. This is particularly true when the Spirit of prophecy is absolutely silent thereupon. Who is to say that a particular item or interpretation is vital when it is not so much as mentioned in all the diffuse writings of the gift?
This is peculiarly true of statements issued in printed form, such being much more serious than oral expressions because of the extent of their circulation, their permanence, and their inevitable repercussions. Editors have a particularly grave responsibility at this point, possessing in a journal speaking for the denomination—and which they edit as a trust —no right to project their purely personal views on points upon which the denomination has not spoken, or upon details of interpretation over which there is known division of views which has not been reconciled. Commensurate with their prominence and position, the same responsibility extends, of course, to contributors. We have been duly warned that in the time of trial approaching, we shall have to face all our statements. But the tragedy is that the denomination will have to face many gratuitous utterances made by independent voices—some of them willfully independent.
There are recognized principles clearly governing coordinated effort in an army that are likewise mandatory in the army of the Lord,—principles regarding unity, loyalty, obedience, restraint,—all governing independent action. Ours is not a guerrilla warfare—each man on his own and for himself. We are interdependent. We march in rank. We fight under orders. We can successfully meet attack only in unison. Restraint and obedience, as well as courage and daring, are therefore required of the ministry of the advent movement. And frequently those in command, with their full—or at least fuller—knowledge of the situation on all fronts, are in a position to direct halts, advances, or flanking movements, that naturally would not be fully understood by all in the fighting lines. In the very nature of the circumstances, we must trust and support the wisdom and judgment of those whom the church has chosen and appointed to such leadership. We cannot, of right, weaken their hands without assuming grave responsibility.
A people apart, and soon to be despised and hated as a Mordecai in the gate of modern religious apostasy, we must stand together or we shall fall separately. We must restrain impetuous desires and recognize our accepted organization, order, and discipline, heeding and following, as good soldiers of the cross, the guidance of our appointed leaders, and abiding by the ethics that govern in a body constituted like ours. We must submerge our individual "rights" for the greater rights of the cause as a whole. Such is a reasonable expectation.
Moreover, speaking even selfishly, apart from the violation of the principle of coordinated effort, to make an utterance that cannot and will not be supported by one's fellow workers, is both unwise and costly to the one who indulges. The moral support of one's associates in service is worth having and retaining; nay, it is indispensable, but it is inevitably lessened and sometimes forfeited by independent and harmful action. We are to press together, and so much the more as we see the last great crisis approaching.
L. E. F.