“How to Master the Truth”

E. J. Waggoner

It would be well if all seekers after truth—all students of the Word—would speedily come to an understanding of the principles so tersely expressed by Phillips Brooks, that “not by the sharpening of the intellect to supernatural acuteness, but by the submission of the nature to its true authority,” man conquers truth; that “not by agonizing struggles over the contradictory evidence, but by the harmony with Him in whom the answers to all our doubts are folded, a harmony with Him brought by obedience to Him, our doubts must be enlightened.”

A grasp of this simple principle would save days and months, and even years, of fruitless and wearing “investigation.” Nobody ever comes to a knowledge of the truth by study. We must first know the truth, by revelation from God, and then we spend the rest of our lives, even through eternity, in studying it.—Present Truth.

—The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 80, 2 (January 13, 1903), p. 9.