Hassell on Hardshell Hermeneutics

Interpreting the Scriptures-The Danger of Applying All Scripture to the Children of God

Written by Sylvester Hassell

The Gospel Messenger—February, 1894 "It seems almost incredible that any sane and reverent mind can for a moment be so captivated and deceived by Satan as to believe that Cain, and Balaam, and Judas, and all the most horrible and diabolical criminals that ever lived on earth, were the children of God; that the elect and the non-elect, the penitent and the impenitent, the believing and the unbelieving, the loving and the hating, the obedient and the disobedient, the saved and the damned, are the very same persons; that election, and repentance, and faith, and love, and obedience, and salvation, as well as their opposites, are nothing but empty names; that words have no meaning; that the universe is only a delusive phantasmagory, containing nothing but shadows and dreams. Such false and ruinous systems of interpreting the Scriptures seem to me far more becoming to a lunatic asylum than a Primitive Baptist pulpit." Well, amen to that also! Were Hassell alive on earth now to see what the Hardshell church has evolved into, he would be greatly alarmed.