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          A brother asks, "What do you think of  "fundamental church" work? The most of our advent believers here are running after them: they have got it into their heads that it is the compelling message."
         Anyone who thinks that the fundamental church is giving the compelling message is very much in the dark, it seems to me. The "church" is doing some good, of course, and the members of it are for the most  part, I suppose, honest, sincere, zealous Christians. And from their standpoint they are much more consistent than most of the churches; for surely if the impenitent are momentarily  in danger of falling into  endless hell, then the apathy and indifference of most of Christians are criminal, and the extravagant and grotesque zeal of "fundamentalism" is mild in comparison to the intense earnestness that ought to characterize Christians in their efforts to seek and save the lost. If this doctrine of endless torment is true, then any measure however extreme; beating drums and tambourines, parading the streets with banners and songs, turning a prayer meeting into a circus, any thing and everything that will attract the people and bring them under the influence of Christian teaching, might be justifiable and even commendable, and the churches instead of finding fault with this extravagant zeal ought to bid them God-speed, help them all they can and imitate them as far as possible.
         To me however "fundamentalism" appears to be in the same business as the rest of the majority of Christian churches, viz. "beating the air." They are beating the air a little harder than some other Christians, but it is only beating the air after all. They make converts, and these converts are reclaimed from bad habits for the time being, and lead better lives, etc., and so far they do good; but what are these converts converted to? And what are they fed on after conversion? They are converted, not to an intelligent understanding of God's truth, but to a notion, to a man-made system, to error; and they are fed on sensation, excitement, a vast amount of doing and very little knowledge. The life of a Christian is faith; (Gal. III. 11) the foundation of faith is knowledge; (Rom. X. 17). Knowledge of God, or the truth, is the only thing that will establish, and advance, and keep steady, a disciple of Christ.  Those fundamental churches do not  possess this knowledge of God, hence the converts do not have it; hence though for the most part they are doubtless sincere, yet they are only pseudo-Christians after all, or at the best, mere "babes in Christ."  One fact, if nothing else, would indicate their lack of true knowledge of God, viz. their invariable method of endeavoring to frighten the unconverted into a profession of religion; the false doctrine of endless hell-torment is constantly made to do duty as a lash whereby to whip in the careless and indifferent. God is thus misrepresented, the truth is obscured, error is made prominent, and where a few feeble minded, timorous people are influenced by this sort of harangue, the majority are hardened by it all the more, and thereby driven away from, rather than drawn toward, God. No one can know God truly while they believe in this unreasonable, unscriptural and utterly hideous dogma of endless torment; and yet this doctrine is the principle stock in trade of "fundamentalism."  Their publications, their songs and prayer meeting talks have more in them about the devil than they do about Christ, more about hell than heaven, more about the wrath than the love of God; and so the various clans of the nominal church fare on; pounding away, beating the air, mere "bodily exercise," sweating and straining to do something great, and really doing nothing to any purpose, in ignorance and unbelief of the blessed truth of God, which did they but know it, would immediately give them rest and peace and quiet in Him. "For he that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His."-- God is indeed using the carnal church, to further his own plans, just as he "worketh all things after the counsel of his own will," (Eph. I. 11) and yet it is a part of "Great Babylon" that is waxing so mighty in these last days, and is destined soon to fall to be "found no more at all."

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