Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-11-17

beers OF his own communion, compelled to
desist at once from the exercise of his min
isterial Office, and was shortly after
deposed from the ministry. Would the
church have shown itself less demorelized if
it had retained him? You cite the case of
another who has been tried and acquitted by
q civil court. Did the court acquit guilty
man? If 30, how does that prove the demon
alization of the church? But, if he is inno-
cent, according to the verdict, what about
the decentralization of the press, which per-
slsts In repeating and republishing the Sian
der?
Let the secular press and its managers be
tested in the same balances in which you
weigh the church, and you will more clearly
see the injustice of your method. There are
thousands of voters in this Congressional
district who honestly believe that certain
editors and politicians supported
for Congress at the last election
a man whom they knew to be denagogue
of the most untrustworthy type. do not
affirm that it is true. They may have be-
lieved the candidate an honest man, and the
candidate might have been what they believed
him to be, but still the majority of the peo-
pie believe otherwise. Whether they are
right or wrong, they are as honest in their
| estimate of character as you are in pro-
nouncing certain minister guilty, and all
others who do not agree with yon as in league
with corruption, and therefore most to blame
for what you style the decentralization of the
church. II this be the right method of
forming judgment, the conclusion would fol-
low that the political editors of the country
are sadly demoralized, since they uphold
men who are believed to be the servants of
political corruption.
Suppose it was a proved fact that a mem
Der of your profession was guilty of fraud
and falsehood, how could his sphere be
purged? Is it not we'll known fact that
there is no human tribunal which can take
connizance of such ofenses as you charge
upon each other? You may appeal to the
people, but still they persist in unfolding
the men whom you believe lie the most psr-
sistently, and cloak their fraud the most art
fully. Therefore for lack of authority in
civil tribunals, and through corrupt use of
influence upon the part of editors and politi-
clans the world is very badly de-
moralized according to your own showing
May it not be true that this demon
alization originating thus in the world.
contaminates the church, and therefore
those who profess to teach the world better
things, and even assume to teach the
churches and the clergy their duty, are
| themselves seriously involved in the accuse
| tions they make against the church and it's
| ministry?
| Ecclesiastical courts have power to take
cognizance of offences beyond the jurisdic-
ton of civil courts, and they often do. In
my own church an editor of any of our pa
pers would lose his place if even the sus-
picion of bribery or fraud prevailed against
him. He could not command the suffrages
of the general conference. Every year
the character and standing of
every minister is reviewed. Some
times offenders escape conviction,
since even church government is administer
ed by fallible authority. Suspicious are not
always satisfactorily proved, and though
they may often interfere with a mans eff
cheney SO as to compel his voluntary with
drawal, yet no principle of righteousness re-
quires the body to which he belongs to expel
him on the ground of suspicious, which in
the honest Judgment of majority are not
proved. How could you better it yourself,
Mr.. Editor, if you were member or minister
in the church?
You say that 'splaces for religious instruc-
ton have degenerated into places OF amuse-
ment. The mountebank in the pulpit draws
the largest salary, and as the natural Sc
quence the rest of the clergy strive to initiate
him. They preach sensationalism, and
except religion. The weekly prayer meetings
are ':caves of gloom rather than places Of
joy" The exercises, amid s'Aickering and
uncertain gas light consist of singing smell
ancholy hymns and ssprayers full of moan
ings and compIainings.''
Pray, Mr.. Editor, what church do you
| attend? What minister do you hear? and
when do you go to prayer meeting? Nearly
all my life I have been a regular attendant
| upon the sources of the Christian sanctuary.
I have mingled freely with other denomina-
tions than my own, and have heard nearly
all the representative clergy of the day
preach, and from actu / observation |
have to report that a mountebank
in the pulpit is rare exception; that eensa-
tional preaching, in the bad sense of sensa-
tional, does not draw for any length of time,
and that prayer meetings, though not always
what they should be, are most generally
means of rest, cheer and religious refreshing
to those who attend them regularly. AS to
the gas light cannot tell why it should be
any more s'fickering and uncertain in
prayer room than in an editorial sanctum.
The charge of singing melancholy
hymns is hardly true for there are no such
hymns to be found in any Christian hymnaI.
There are hymns appropriate to funerals, but
these are adapted to console the sorrowing
and hopeless, and warn the sinful, and are
never sung at prayer meetings.
There are hymns which contain confess
sions of sin, supplications for mercy, depre-
cations of the divine displeasure; and if the
church and the world are as you paint them,
these are the only hymns that ought to be
sung. Instead of complaining of the soon
LESSONS of lack of faith and fear of falling
from grace" you ought to see that such con
fessions are in harmony with that portion of
the facts you state IS evidence of the demon
alization of the church. You unwittingly
pay tribute to the honesty and humility of
Christian worshippers. Humble confession
of SIN and bewailing of ones own manifold
transgressions are far more consistent than
croaking about other peoples faults.
But there are hymns of JOY which sinners
sing when they get out of the s'caye of
gloom where croakers live all the time not
even getting out to go to a prayer meeting.
You have but to give me permission and 1
will furnish from the latest edition Of the
Hymnal now used by the Methodist church
a sufficient number of hymns to fill every
column of the GLOBE for six successive