E. J. Waggoner's position on the moral law in Galatians 3 in the Signs articles did not go unnoticed by the church leaders in Battle Creek, Michigan. The first salvo, in what was to become an all-out-war over the law in Galatians and the covenants, was the emergence of a new journal from Battle Creek. The next move would be a visit from the General Conference President himself, Elder George I. Butler. He would journey to Healdsburg College, California, and find out what was happening in the classroom where Waggoner taught. The Gospel Sickle was published in Battle Creek in competition with the Signs published in Oakland, California. Ellen White detected the competitive nature of the two journals. She wrote to E. J. Waggoner and A. T. Jones about it:
The "Sickle" was started in Battle Creek, but it is not designed to take the place of the "Signs", and I cannot see that it is really needed. The "Signs of the Times" is needed and will do that which the "Sickle" cannot. I know if the "Signs" is kept full of precious articles, food for the people, that every family should have it. But a pain comes to my heart every time I see the "Sickle". I say it is not as God would have it. If Satan can get in dissension among us as a people, he will only be too glad.
Elders George Butler, Uriah Smith, and D. M. Canright were regular contributors to The Gospel Sickle using it as a vehicle for promoting their views of the law and the covenants in opposition to those views published in the Signs by E. J. Waggoner. For as long as the Sickle was published, from February 1, 1886 to December, 1888, Ellen White could detect the "dissension" in it.
Elder Dudley M. Canright, one of the principal contributors to the Sickle defined his concept of the covenants:
Now what is a covenant? Webster thus defines it: "A mutual consent or agreement of two or more persons to do or forbear some act or thing, a contract; a writing containing the terms of an agreement or contract between parties." It will be readily seen that this agreement made between God and Israel in Ex. 19, is a covenant in the fullest sense of the term. . . . sense of the term. . . .
Canright took his definition of the Bible covenant from Webster's dictionary. Thus he saw God's covenant as a contract between Himself and Israel.
Later Canright used terminology that revealed his underlying assumptions:
Some persons maintain that all God required under the old dispensation was simply outward obedience to his law. . . . They had the Spirit of God in the Old Dispensation. . . . The fact is that God designed his people to be just as spiritual during the old covenant age as he does now.
Canright associated the "old covenant age" with the "Old Dispensation." Canright's assumption was that the Spirit of God was in fulfillment of the old covenant. He did not understand that God's everlasting covenant (the new covenant) was the only covenant which promised the Holy Spirit. It is true "that God designed his people to be just as spiritual during" "the Old Dispensation." But that could never be possible with "the old covenant." Here again, the biblical typological dispensationalism was dominant in Canright's thinking to the neglect of the equally biblical paradigm of the two different heart experiences of the old and the new covenants. the old and the new covenants.
Uriah Smith was in harmony with this Canright's understanding of the typological dispensational emphasis on the time element of the old and the new covenants, when he said, "The new covenant superseded the old when Christ ratified it with his own blood upon the cross." Smith's diagram of the two covenants published in the Review indicated his typological understanding of their relationship in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It led Smith and his colleagues to overlook and exclude the heart experience of the new covenant before and after the cross. The was the fuller dimension of the biblical truth of the everlasting covenant. everlasting covenant.
Canright insisted:
The new covenant, or the gospel, then, began to be preached by Jesus Christ. . . . The mediator of the new covenant had now come to supersede the old covenant; but Jesus was careful to have the new covenant offered only to the Jews; because the Lord had promised that this new covenant was to be made with the house of Israel.
Here Canright asserted the sequence of the old covenant followed by the new covenant. It was apparent in his thinking that the old covenant was God's plan of salvation for the Jews, but it was superseded by the new covenant with the coming of Jesus. This seems to point to a new method and means of salvation, or a fundamental change in God's dealings with man, or both, implicit with a time-based transition from the old to the new covenant. This would later create uncomfortable complications for Canright, making it difficult for him to maintain key Bible doctrines such as the Sabbath.