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The Great Controversy
In this tide of worldliness and pleasure seeking, self-denial and self-
sacrifice for Christ’s sake are almost wholly lost. “Some of the men
and women now in active life in our churches were educated, when
children, to make sacrifices in order to be able to give or do something
for Christ.” But “if funds are wanted now, ... nobody must be called
on to give. Oh, no! have a fair, tableau, mock trial, antiquarian supper,
or something to eat—anything to amuse the people.”
Governor Washburn of Wisconsin in his annual message, January
9, 1873, declared: “Some law seems to be required to break up the
schools where gamblers are made. These are everywhere. Even the
church (unwittingly, no doubt) is sometimes found doing the work of
the devil. Gift concerts, gift enterprises and raffles, sometimes in aid
of religious or charitable objects, but often for less worthy purposes,
lotteries, prize packages, etc., are all devices to obtain money without
value received. Nothing is so demoralizing or intoxicating, particularly
to the young, as the acquisition of money or property without labor.
Respectable people engaging in these chance enterprises, and easing
their consciences with the reflection that the money is to go to a good
object, it is not strange that the youth of the state should so often fall
into the habits which the excitement of games of hazard is almost
certain to engender.”
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The spirit of worldly conformity is invading the churches through-
out Christendom. Robert Atkins, in a sermon preached in London,
draws a dark picture of the spiritual declension that prevails in Eng-
land: “The truly righteous are diminished from the earth, and no man
layeth it to heart. The professors of religion of the present day, in
every church, are lovers of the world, conformers to the world, lovers
of creature comfort, and aspirers after respectability. They are called
to suffer with Christ, but they shrink from even reproach.... Apostasy,
apostasy, apostasy, is engraven on the very front of every church; and
did they know it, and did they feel it, there might be hope; but, alas!
they cry, ‘We are rich, and increased in goods, and stand in need of
nothing.’”—Second Advent Library, tract No. 39.
The great sin charged against Babylon is that she “made all nations
drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” This cup of intoxica-
tion which she presents to the world represents the false doctrines that
she has accepted as the result of her unlawful connection with the great
ones of the earth. Friendship with the world corrupts her faith, and in