Full Question
You have never changed your belief; is it not sufficient for you to affirm this? Why need you anything more?
Answer
1887 pg. 67. “ You have never changed your mind on the subject. Good, but ought you not to let your brethren know what your mind is that you have not changed, and what you think of the change we have all been invited to make, and that many have made? Is this change a change from the condition which you have always been in, and, therefore, from which you have not changed? Or is it a change which you regard with indifference? Or is it a change that you approve of? Or is it a change which you resent as an invitation to corrupt the word of God, and to unsettle the foundation on which faith is built? If you have not changed, the circumstances among ecclesias have changed, and your view of those circumstances becomes a matter of importance as determining your relation to those who can make no compromise— To be silent is to give your brethren sorrowing cause for believing you on the wrong side.”
1885 pg. 222. “Some say, ‘why should we declare ourselves on a subject on which we have never changed our minds? The answer is, ‘that others may know where you are any may know what to do.’ There is a need for it, and it is according to apostolic precedent. When heresy was abroad in John’s declining bears, on the subject of the nature of Christ, he told the brethren to try everyone claiming fellowship, and to receive not any who refused to confess that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. I John 4-1, 2; 2 John 7-10. The ground of his recommendation was this: ‘Because many false prophets are none out into the world .’ This currency of false teaching created the necessity for brethren declaring themselves. It is so now .”
“The Valley of the Shadow”