THE Protestant historian, Dr. Wylie, declared, relative to controversy:— “When we must engage in controversy it is not that we love contention, but we love the truths which are at stake.” Jeremiah, the prophet, though a man of peace and goodwill towards men, had to declare, relative to his life-work in an evil generation, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me” (Jeremiah xv. 10). John Calvin, though destined to be a man of strife and contention, in like manner, to the whole earth, was, by nature, a lover of peace and of a quiet, sequestered, studious life, while the late Rev. Donald MacFarlane, Dingwall, though he stood fearlessly, faithfully, and courageously for an inspired and infallible Bible, when the Truth was trampled on the street in Scotland, was nevertheless a man of a naturally timid and retiring temperamental disposition. The man who indulges and delights in controversy, and especially religious controversy, for its own sake, is a person to be abhorred and sure to be shunned generally, yet the man who engages in controversy for conscience’s sake, to the glory of God, in defending His Truth and Cause, regardless of consequences to his own tender nature, is a character to be admired and highly commended. The foregoing statement is sufficient as an introduction to the following quotation on controversy from a recently published book entitled “The Great Deception,” by Mr. J. H. Hunter, the Editor of The Evangelical Christian, Toronto, Canada:—
“That these articles will be contentious we know, and some will write accusing us of uncharitableness towards others, and deprecating all controversy as contrary to the Spirit of Christ. These people always forget that controversy is the very law of life. Light is a controversy with darkness, cleanliness with dirt, and truth with error. Christianity itself was born because of God’s controversy with sin. Our Lord’s life was one long controversy with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and those who, like the Romanists of to-day, follow the traditions of men. It culminated at last in the cruel death of the Cross, thus making possible the settlement of God’s controversy with you and me. What are all the New Testament Epistles but controversies with those who undermined the Faith, and exhortations to those who had been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ to stand fast, to quit them like men, and to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. Rome thrusts this controversy upon us. If contending for the faith means war, then we accept it, for even war is better than peace without God.
No one desires controversy less than we do. The thing itself is not pleasant. It is abhorrent to our nature. No one likes the wintry blasts that sweep our land in winter. Sunshine, calm, and balmy breezes are more to be desired, but God sees differently. The storm may be necessary as a purifying agent, the thunder and lightning to cleanse the atmosphere even while it uproots and destroys. Let it never be forgotten that it was in the time of the greatest controversy that the truth of God shone clearest, and that it was when no voice was heard to challenge error that darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the people. The sacred flame burned brightest when Tindale, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were laying down their lives for the truth, and Luther and Knox were breaking lances with Romanism and winning victories the fruit of which this Empire enjoys to-day. It is not controversy that we desire but the fruits to be won from it. Anyone who cares to make a short excursion into history will find that it is through controversy our rights, privileges, and blessings have been won, and these can be maintained only by our being willing to defend, protect, and perpetuate them, and by our readiness to give a reason for the hope is in us.” It must not be peace at the expense of truth.
The foregoing quotation should be seriously perused and pondered over by all, but especially by the modern type of arm-chair professing Christian critic who seems to love ease and following the line of least resistance, while the only interest he or she takes in the righteous contentions of those who are earnestly defending the faith is to criticise them adversely, as if such were the promoters of strife and contention, rather than the propagators of errors and heresies opposed to them. Some present-day professing Christians seem to forget that this is the church militant in this world, and that consequently the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are here engaged in a life-and-death struggle, while he that is born of the bond-woman continues to persecute him that is born of the free. Some want all the love, peace, comfort, and undisturbed joy of Christianity here, while they leave the contending, selfishly and cowardly, to others. It is however, through a path of tribulation that Christians enter Heaven, and not on a bed of roses. The Saviour came not to send peace on the earth but a sword, and to cause divisions. The foregoing salutary Scriptural truths, however, do not alter the fact that “blessed are the peace-makers,” so “as much as lieth in you live peaceably with all men.”