"Several worthy friends have lamented the complication of the question with personal ingredients, and have expressed strong disapprobation of what has appeared to them the intemperate tone which the Editor has imparted to the controversy. Why, say they, cannot the question be discussed apart from names and persons? Their views are to be respected as those of men desiring to see truth prevail on its naked merits. But there is another side. Such questions never have been debated in this world without personal bearings, and they cannot in the nature of things be detached from them. It is personal transactions that bring them into controversy. Persons are their instruments; and they can no more be dealt with apart from these instruments than politics can be discussed without some reference to the actors on the political stage. This very obvious fact is illustrated nowhere more forcibly than in the Scriptures throughout, in which, at every stage, persons stand forth as the occasion and symbols of the various phases of national character or doctrinal agitations recorded. The spirit of the objection is estimable enough: but the form of it is out of harmony with practical earnest life as we find it under the circumstances now existing on the globe." The Christadelphian, 1885, p. 61 |
