Manuscripts and Memories of Minneapolis

Uriah Smith to L. F. Trubey, Feb. 11, 1902

(COPY.)
Battle Creek, Mich., February 11, 1902.
L. F. Trubey,
415 East Eighth St.,
Waterloo, Iowa.
Dear Brother:—

Yours of February 6 received. I am sorry that you are not pleased with the remarks of Brother Brickey on Galatians, for I think he is correct. This, if you are acquainted with the past history of our cause, you will remember, used to be the old established view of our people, viz., the same view that Brother Brickey advocates. MMM 312.1

It seems to me that if any dissatisfaction was aroused, or any injury done, it should have been when this view was ruthlessly broken into by the articles in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, and the lectures in Healdsburg College and subsequent articles in the YOUTH’S INSTRUCTOR and REVIEW. MMM 312.2

We have always believed in Justification by faith; and, how the articles of Brother Brickey militate against that view, I do not see. We have had this battle to fight all along for the past forty years, against the charges of our opponents who claimed the law was abolished, and appealed to Galatians in proof of it. MMM 312.3

It seems to me that one thing is true and sure: if the “added law” and the “schoolmaster” referred to in the third of Galatians apply to the moral law, then, when the Seed came, that is, when Christ came, there was a change in our relation to the law, and we are no longer held by it as a rule of duty. We can not maintain the perpetuity of the moral law with the view that has been lately introduced; and it seems to me like making a move backward to give ourselves away to the claims of our opponents. MMM 312.4

I do not know, and never have known, of a position that fully meets the no-law position, except the position that Paul in the Galatians refers largely to the ceremonial law; and this does not interfere at all with the question of justification by faith. MMM 312.5

Yours very truly, MMM 312.6

(Signed) U. SMITH. MMM 312.7