Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1888-03-10


what few that do exist Tin imagina.
tion) are doomed to die with the
century knocking at our door.
Who does not remember the early
days of bushmeetings and revivals ?
Anguished parents mourning for
their children distressed pastors of
souls lamenting the distraction to
their church membership; anathe
mas and accommodations.
These same churches are still liy-
ing the children lost are still saved;
campmeetings are popular, then they
were unpopular. That's all the diff
ference. True, something happens
at them occasionally. Last summer
lightning struck in tree at Emory
Grove and killed a very estimable
young lady. Something happens
occasionally in the best Of churches.
A man died at the Communion rail-
ing in Baltimore the past year.
We have often wondered whether
the curses heaped on body and soul
in former times for infractions of
customs that have died out long
since or grown into adoption and
popularity with the changes in man
and manners, did not revert upon
the cursers and anathematlzers and
il not, why not, as judgment not to
be adjudged. In the light of the
present, condemnation falls upon
the heels of the condemner, not the
condemned. " We are the ancients y
of to-day if we are not the moderns
of to morrow.
These arguments are unconscious
~ carried out in the combined oppo.
sitIon of all churches to infidelity,
where fifty or more years ago many
of them were at daggers' ends. Even
in this little religious furore of faith
healing at Chambersburg, the most
orthodox of the churches proclaimed
permission to its members to go into
any of the other churches, but not
to the faith healing seances. 1t used
to be a mortal sin to go into pro-
testing church; later on it became
only grievous or venal sin, and
now if the most orthodox pastor of
Chambersburg is correctly reported,
1t is no sin at all, on condition that
you do not go to hear salvationist
or faith-healer!
Like many other people, we have
no desire to go out of our way to
countenance any new-fangled theory
or condemn it; what's good is bound
to stand,-what's bad, IS bound to
fall; but if church guided by the
Holy Spirit of revealed truth goes
out of its way to curse and condemn
violated restrictions of weak human
nature in one age which it will toler-
ate in another, who shall be held to
account for the loss of faith.
sThen move ahead this little step
before the bright sun of intelligence
of the twentieth century hoists the
sun-shade of your ignorance and IL
liberality over past opposition to
what will live or die according to Its
merits.
What is our worldwide religious
liberation, anyhow, if it is not the
free will of mind and body, in word
and action, for us all, as long as we
respect the laws that govern us all
and observe the commands that
maintain order in society.
Under the old law and under the
new, in sacred history and profane,
the laying on of hands and tongues
for divers purposes and designs was
practiced in the most cruel and
abusive forms. This very religion
under the same Cody that now SHES
at the black flag of heresy when car
ried by a few simple women, or
cranky men, had astone in the hand,
and hand in the seething cauldron
and the writhing mass of burning
flesh. Kings under divine sanction
with the church as an accomplish
laid hands on human diseases of
mind and body. and the cares were
more numerous than the sands upon
the sea-shore,-not my word for it,
but the iron pen of history,-from
Herod to Agrippa,-from the Nam
ertime prison to London Tower.
But the church of to-day will not
be responsible for all that is record
ed in history,-past responsibility
for the future she cannot shirk.
Have the grand principles of truth
eternal changed? Have they I'm.
dergone any shadow of vicissitude ?
Heaven and earth will pass away
first. But the minds and manners
of men! How tickle? This age is
shocked at the barbarities that are
buried in the past, and the grave OF
centuries would open in terror at the
liberty and license we call freedom
of worship and progress of intellect.
God could have created man as he