© 2001 Arthur Nash
© 2001 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Excerpted from the book, “The Golden Rule in Business,” copyright 1923, this material has significance for Urantian scholars for three reasons. It provides first-source information about the seminal religious beliefs of Dr. William S. Sadler, who, in his youth was an ordained Seventh Day Adventist minister, and contemporaneous to Nash. Clearly, these beliefs are far afield from the Urantia Papers. Second, Part I of this excerpt chronicles Nash’s devotion to his church, and the misguided fundamentalism of the organization that resulted in his expulsion. It is inspiring to read the birth of personal religion in Nash by means of loving service-the great gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. The third reason for examining Nash’s work is that it may well have been a secondary human source for a key concept of the Urantia Papers, as we shall see in Part II.
Outside of the fact of its representing some sort of a religious system or cult, the term Seventh Day Adventism can mean little or nothing to many who will scan these pages. They regard it as being merely a combination of vowels and consonants. The character and content of what its leaders teach and its adherents believe, is as far beyond the frontier of their interest as it is beyond that of their knowledge … [yet] in view of the fact that as a Seventh Day Adventist I was reared and grew to manhood, and of the further fact that, as a fully accredited member of that Church I became a preacher of its doctrines, it can scarcely be deemed irrelevant if I outline, briefly, the history and belief of the people among whom I was raised.
Seventh Day Adventism originated in the work of one William Miller, who was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts February 15, 1782 and died at Low Hampton, New York December 20, 1849. A farmer by occupation possessing very limited educational advantages, he became deeply interested in the study of prophecy. In 1833 he began to lecture on the Second Coming of Christ, and predicted the destruction of the world in 1843 . He made many converts to his views, in this country, in Canada, and in Great Britain. They were called Millerites. The prophet’s prediction of doom having failed, he made other dates for its consummation. These failing also, the faith of many of his followers weakened and numbers fell away. Yet he still remained regarded as a man of deep sincerity, great intellectual ability, and a devoted Christian, by a large body of people.
In 1846, James White and his wife, adding certain tenets to the creed of the Millerites, founded the Seventh Day branch of Adventists. At various times they made their headquarters at Paris, Maine and Saratoga, Oswego, and Rochester, in the state of New York. In the year 1855 they settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, which, until recent times, formed the center of their activities.
The main points of doctrine taught by Seventh Day Adventists, as set forth in their literature, are as follows: They believe in the divine Sonship of Jesus Christ; that the seventh day, Saturday, is the Sabbath of the Lord God; that the keeping of Sunday is the mark of the beast, the Sabbath having been iniquitously changed by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church; that the beasts of the Apocalypse are to be identified with said Catholic Church, and that by changing the day set aside for the observance of the Sabbath they established the mark of their power; that the observance of Sunday is that against which the terrible pronouncement is made in Revelation xiv:9-11: “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, if any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up ever and ever; and they shall have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”
In addition to these things, Seventh Day Adventists believe that their late leader, Ellen G. White, was inspired in precisely the same way as were the writers of Holy Scriptures, that the Bible must be interpreted as to harmonize absolutely with her writings; that all the great prophecies of Scripture, except those relating to the end of the world, have already been fulfilled; that all should pay tithes; that all churches save only the Seventh Day Adventists, constitute Babylon and are spurned of God; that they, and they alone, are called to give the last warning of approaching doom to mankind; that this is the very last hour of the world’s history; that the dead are unconscious, body and soul alike, biding the great awakening; that the wicked together with Satan will be annihilated; that when Christ comes, for those advent they are hourly waiting, only one hundred and forty-four thousand of all people then living on this planet will be saved — and, of course, all of these will be Seventh Day Adventists.
… In the days of my youth, the theological school of Seventh Day Adventists was located in Battle Creek Michigan. To that school I was sent, and when I had finished my study-course it was said of me by some of the elders that, in their judgment, if the entire text of the New Testament should become lost, I could replace it from memory. That, of course, is a pretty tall statement, and I must be permitted to deny ever having claimed the qualifications such an extraordinary feat would entail. But, this much I have no hesitancy in saying: Did anyone, in those days, misquote a passage from the King James Version of the New Testament in my hearing, I could detect it instantly…
At the time when I completed my course at Battle Creek, the Seventh Day Adventists had a school for ministers and missionaries in the city of Detroit. To this school, in which there were about twenty-five young people preparing to become bearers of the “Third Angel’s Message,” I was sent as an instructor. A short while after I entered on my duties, the elder, who resided at the school in order to keep a watchful eye on both students and instructors, handed me a card of invitation, which read as follows: “This will be your Sunday [naming a date a few weeks ahead] to conduct services in the afternoons in the d’Arcambal home.” The elder explained: “There is an old lady here in Detroit who maintains a home for jailbirds. Some ministers take turns giving services for them. I suppose this invitation means that it is our turn. But we never pay any attention to them.”
I made no reply at the time. Later, I talked the matter over with a young man in the school who was a very accomplished singer as well as a progressive student. We decided we would like to go and take a peep at the d’Arcambal jail-birds.
“Mother” d’Arcambal, the widow of a French count, was an invalid, yet a woman who was doing a wonderful humanitarian work in the city of Detroit. She had a representative of her Home meet every discharged prisoner at the gate of the state prison at Jackson, and offer him a shelter and an opportunity to make a new start in life. She, and her husband, had built the Home, and had a rug and broom factory connected therewith. As I have just said, Madame d’Arcambal did a great work, and scores, possibly hundreds, of men who, else, had gone down into irretrievable ruin, were by her Christly spirit and practical assistance saved to society and years of better living. When she died, the whole of the religious world of Detroit-Protestant, Catholic, Jewish-paid homage to the work and worth of a real friend of the fallen, to a great servant of God.
To resume: The young student and myself went to the service we had been invited to conduct. After it had been concluded. Mother d’Arcambal said to me: “Mr. Nash, this appears to be a dreadfully busy world. For sometime, as you may know, I have been an invalid; and although many good and worthy people unite in supporting our institution they don’t come in to see me very often, and I get awfully lonesome. Won’t you try to arrange to come here, once in a while, and read the Scriptures and talk with me?”
To this dear soul’s request I very gladly acceded, and for the next two or three months I spent one or two evenings each week at the bedside of Agnes L. d’Arcambal. I was with her when she bade the world good-bye, and passed to a higher and larger sphere of service.
A few days after the death of this good woman, I was engaged in class instruction in the school, expounding the ““Third Angel’s Message” contained in Revelation xiv, describing to the students what, according to the Adventist interpretation, the mark of the beast was, and what the seal of God, and how the one hundred and forty-four thousand, who were to stand secure from the otherwise general condemnation upon the sea of glass, must be observers of the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord. When I had finished my lesson, the supervising elder rose in his place and said: “Brother Nash, I want to ask you a question. In view of the exposition you have just given the class, do you believe that Mrs. d’Arcambal can be saved?”
The question hit me as would a blow planted squarely between the eyes. Up to that moment, possibly, I had never ventured on a really independent thought in the whole course of my life. I had accepted and taken for granted the impeccable truth of what my “spiritual pastors and masters” had taught me. But right there I was literally jolted by the question, put to me by that stern elder, into some sort of genuine mental action. I knew something of the worth of this woman’s life of service, of her great heart of sympathy and love. I knew of the hand of helpfulness she had stretched out to those who had stumbled along life’s journey, and had lost the way. I knew of her faith in God, and, what is more, of her faith in the possibilities for good surviving somewhere in the deeps of even the worst of mankind. Mother d’Arcambal not saved? The thing was absurd, utterly unthinkable. Every feeling within me revolted at the idea. So I blurted out: “I want to ask you a question. Do you think Jesus Christ can be saved?”
Now I suppose that was a shocking thing to say in an Adventist school. It would be a startling, if not shocking, thing to say anywhere. Yet it must be remembered that I was but a youngster at the time, and the phrase was born out of the heartfelt indignation that swept over me at the suggestion of a soul like that which I knew had dwelt in Mother d’Arcambal being consigned to perdition, simply because of a question which, in essence, relates only to a weekly calendar. But I had most certainly flung a bombshell in our class that morning. The elder straightened himself up, and fixing me with his eye, replied, “Young man, probably you are not aware that Mrs. d’Arcambal once went down to Battle Creek, listened to the great truths of the Third Angel’s Message from Elder White, Elder Uriah Smith, and other of our great leaders, and rejected them. Moreover, what right has a young, inexperienced upstart like you to liken this woman to Jesus Christ?”
My immediate reply was that I did know she had been to Battle Creek. I knew, also, that she had listened to expositions of Seventh Day Adventist doctrine by the great leaders of the Church, but did not know she had rejected them. However, I was so aroused that I did not even state that fact. I merely informed the elder that I did know that she had been to Battle Creek. I was not looking for a way to dodge the issue I had raised.
Well, the upshot of that morning’s experience was, that the Conference Committee of the Adventist Church was notified to convene to consider my heresy. The good brethren who composed it were scattered all over the State of Michigan, and it required two or three days’ time to bring them together. During that period I knew not what sleep meant. I pondered and pondered, until my brain practically refused to function. But before I reached this mental impasse, I had arrived at a definite irrevocable conclusion. When the Committee finally met, its deliberations were short, if not sweet. I went into the room where its members were gathered and said: “Before you enter on a consideration of my case, I have just a dozen words to say which will clear the atmosphere in better fashion than two hours of cross-examination. They are these: “If people like Mother d’Arcambal are doomed to go to hell, I want to go with them. Goodbye!”
The very ground on which I had stood hitherto, crumbled beneath my feet. Remember, that from my earliest infancy I had never heard or learned anything of a religious character except the tenets and teachings of Adventism. On their validity, and my acceptance of them, the authorities of the Holy Scripture, the verities of the Christian faith, the very fact of God Himself, had turned. As I let go of them, I seemed, at the same time, to be letting go of everything-human and divine. My soul became a rifled chamber, robbed ruthlessly of its every treasure. Every laudable impulse, and up-reaching desire, died away in my heart — died swiftly, as a soldier might die in battle, as a bullet crashes through his brain. The light in my spiritual firmament faded suddenly into the “blackness of darkness;” my sun went down at high noon …
Men there are, of whom I have met thousands, who are making their way through life untroubled by a single problem or question relating to spiritual things, or with anything relating to creed or belief. Not vicious men, these, not notoriously evil. On the contrary, many are to be reckoned as being among the most respectable and respected members of society. Such matters as these simply have no place in their scheme of things-that is all. Born in homes where no attention or significance was given to the things of the spirit, reared in an environment where personal religion played no part, they have grown to maturity completely insensible to the appeal of anything which does not relate immediately to sense and time. With such men, ignorance is indeed bliss, or at least freedom from “the gnawing worm.”
But let a man have behind him an upbringing such as mine-it matters not what the character of teaching he may have been under the influence ofand the case is altered, instantly. Try as he will, by any sort of known means, laudable or reprehensible (as the world judges), he will fail to still the mutterings of conscience, or rid himself of the appeal of the Christian faith. He may aim to find distraction in dissipation, in social, even political, obligations; in love, marriage and the discharge of family duties; but he will still hear the voice — the warning, pleading, condemning voice-crying: “This is the way, walk thou in it.” This is no “call to the unconverted.” I am now making no “appeal to sinners,” but a plain statement of plain fact. And so, again I say, my heart always beats in sympathy with any man who, having once had a vision-no matter how misleading-of sacred things, finds himself compelled to turn his face away, only to find-confusion and chaos. That is a stretch of life’s journey, along which a man makes his way with bowed head and bleeding feet. It is a stretch I know well, for I have trodden it with heavy heart and bitter tears …
I left the Adventist school in Detroit and went back to my father’s home in Indiana, realizing that I had flung away every vestige of my faith and had become an infidel or, at any rate, an agnostic.
I did my level best to run away from duty, faith, God-and myself. My father strove earnestly with me to recant my heresy, to acknowledge my having turned traitor to the faith of my childhood. Two prominent elders of the Adventist Church added their pleading and argument to those of my father, but I turned a deaf ear to them all. For me, the lamp of faith had spluttered out.
I left my home in Indiana and took to the road. For four or five years I wandered about the Middle West, doing odd jobs here and there. Often did I go ragged and hungry. During those years, I never cared two straws which way a freight train was headed when I climbed into a box-car, or what it was I did to keep body and soul together … Seeking rest and finding none; roaming hither and thither with all good incentive and desire absent from anything to which I set my hand, I became veritably lost …
Presently I made my way back to Detroit. The vast industries which, to-day, form the activities of the Michigan city were then undeveloped. The whole community was in the throes of a commercial slump, and the poverty and suffering among the poor were very acute. Distress prevailed on every hand. My mind reverted to Agnes d’Arcambal: I began to think of the good she would strive to be doing, were she still alive, and out of the thought grew a desire to do something to relieve the misery which surrounded me on every side.
Here, again, was evidence of how the influence of a life given over to the service of humanity continues to exert its power, long after its owner has passed from the sphere of mundane things. Here was I, a man who for years had striven to drive out of my ken and remembrance the last recollection of everybody and everything of a worthy or ennobling nature, finding myself drawn back to the viewpoint of a servant of Jesus, looking with eyes of pity on the distressed, and possessed by a desire to help the needy — in short, doubling back on the unworthy motives I had striven desperately to foster, through a stretch of arid, wasted years! Yet so it was; and thus sprung again into the activity the first humanitarian — shall I say Christly? — impulse that had throbbed within me, since my dismissal from Adventist school.
With the aid of some of the residents of the city, I was enabled to open a laundry which found employment for quite a number of the poor people who were without work, and almost without bread. The church people began to send us their business, and the concern soon began to get under way. I was also able to get them to donate a carload of provisions for distribution among the neediest of the city’s residents. It was, I think, while engaged in this work, that I once more found myself. Among the shadows, I once more caught a glimpse of the light. Here was I, who for years had railed against God and goodness, simply forced to the conclusion that whether Deity existed or not, there were good people in the world — people who were not ashamed to confess that they found their incentive to aid their fellows in love for Christ, and in a belief in the principles he increasingly proclaimed…
Yet the truth of the old proverb that “shadow proveth sun” was once more demonstrated, for it was while engaged in this relief work that I met what I am in the habit of calling my Third Angel. The first was my mother; the second was Agnes d’Arcambal; the third was my wife. (It will be seen that I was destined never to escape the Third Angel part of my early teaching!) She was, at this time, superintendent of a Y. W. C. A. boarding school. We were married in the following spring.
The woman I chose for my life-partner was possessed by a strong, robust faith. Her spiritual vision was not impaired, as was my own, by the glare and glitter of sordid things. The pure in heartand only the pure in heart-do see God. My association with her began to have an altogether uplifting and enheartening influence on my earth-wearied spirit. The work was slow and difficult, yet it was always headed in the right direction. Eventually, she convinced me that all my finely-spun theories, and what I had deemed sledge-hammer arguments, were, in reality, not against Christianity itself, but against a misinterpretation of it. I had been watching men, and ignoring Jesus. The frailties and failures of humanity had kept me from seeing that Christ could not, and would not, fail.
After some little time had elapsed, I determined to re-enter the ministry-this time in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — and accepted a small pastorate in Bluffton, Ohio. The end of this fresh start in definite religious work was, however, destined to come with almost bewildering suddenness. A kindlyhearted, yet professedly unreligious man died in the community in which I was laboring. In preaching his memorial sermon, I eulogized his many virtues in a way which brought down upon me the censure of my church officials, and my resignation was called for.
For me the times were once more “out of joint.” I had no job, and by this time, had a wife and three small children to support. Eventually I became acquainted with some men who were selling clothing among the farming communities, for a house in Chicago. They invited me to join them; I did so, and it took but a short time to demonstrate the fact that I was a far better salesman than preacher.
So ended, and began, another chapter in my life. The “active ministry” I left, I suppose, for the last time. Yet — to anticipate events — I am today, addressing larger audiences and filling more church appointments by ten-fold than in the days when I was “one of the cloth.” But that time had not, as yet, arrived. Nor had the vision of the work I was one day to take up as yet been vouchsafed me. I turned back to commercial life, but without any bitterness in my heart. One — nay, two things — I learned during my second “ministerial term,” which I have I have never unlearned . . . the realization that the inspiration for effective Christian service is a real, living, vibrant love for Jesus — His ideals, His companionship, His purposes.
Some of my readers may recall the story of the workman employed on the building of one of the great English cathedrals. Day after day, during his dinner-hour, his fellow workmen found him seated close to the office of works, gazing at a colored sketch hung on one of its walls. When some of them berated him for not being sociable and mixing in during the noon recess, the old man with a curious light in his eyes replied: “No, fellows, you are wrong about that. That is not the reason I am sitting here day after day. I am only an old mortar-mixer on this job, as you know; but it helps me to mix my mortar better when I see what a beautiful building I am working on!” That should be the spirit of every man who is engaged in any kind of work worth doing.
Part II of Arthur Nash’s story will be published in the Spring & Summer edition of The Spiritual Fellowship Journal. In this part Nash demonstrates the supplanting of the profit motive in business with the service motive, as predicted in the Urantia Papers, will one day take place. Moreover, Nash may well be the original human source of the proclamation that the religion of Jesus has not failed, it has never been seriously tried on a large scale.