Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-07-06
NUMBER $.

dehned II, or In any other way, requires as
! s'ne qua non 4 free agent for the sinner.
Justice cannot pronounce sentence upon a
prisoner whom the Judge himself by an
omnipotent will ioreordained to do the act
declared to be the crime. An infinitely
merciful and loving Father cannot shut
out from his mercy and exclude from his
love his own creature who has helplessly
done what he designed and willed. To
assert the contrary of these things is to
call upon the human mind to stultify
Itself as TO Its innate and, we believe, God
gwen ideas OF justice, mercy and love. 1t
Is no answer TO talk of mysteries and faith.
There is still abundant room and need of
faith, and there will, no doubt be mvs-
teries through all eternity, but they do
not call upon us to stihe our ideas of right
and wrong when we think of God. Nor
do we need to think of Him in this way in
order 10 think of him as infinite. There
are things beyond reason and there are
things contrary to reason. We may believe
that His ways are not as our ways, nor
His thoughts as our thoughts without
believing that with Him Justice and love
are capable of acts which are not merely
inexplicable, but truly revolving to all that
is highest and best in us, and which He
Himself put in us. What shall be the
conclusion of the whole matter? Shall it
not be that this doctrine of preterition be
stricken from the Confession of Faith. if
on no other ground, then upon the ground
that 1t has no place in prefessed state
ment of what the Church believe to be re-
vealed of God? AS has been well said,
the fact can never henceforth be concealed
that many in the Church do not believe
this. The very most that can now be
truthfully affirmed is that it is doctrine
as to which the belief of the Church is
divided. If so, it does not belong in the
Church's Confession of Faith"
The pamphlet on "The American Board
Troubles" reprinted from the Springfield
Republican of May Goth, written by a
conservative Congregationalist for the Re
publican" is very plain-spoken. 1t says of
the Board: This is the sort of machine
which. protesting to serve the churches,
rules them with an iron rod. That its in
splrers are dishonest; that they are not
actuated by religious motives, no one who
knows either them or the strange inyolu-
tions of conscience would think of affirm
ing. They are the sincere successors of
the sincere inquisitors of preceding age.
They help one to understand medieval
history. Making many prayers, devout,
as no man can doubt, honestly seeking to
serve God, it seems to them the correct
thing, nevertheless, to manipulate public
opinion; then slavishly to follow it: to see.
In this living, burning age of opportunity
no issue except one connected with refine
ments of dogma to reject, not heretics, as
hnt ,nht h,,t 4
as they; to spread estrangement and con-
troversy through the churches; to show
favorable balance-sheet each year by draw
ing immense sums from rapidly y-dwindling
funds, or by the employment of drastic
methods of raising money; to crowd in ap-
pointees whom, ten years ago, the board
would not have thought of sending-some
of them not possessed of requisite aualifi-
cations, some of them of disadvanta-
geously advanced age, some of them for
eigners, members of other denominations,
etc; then to point with pride at the pros
porous year, the balance in the treasury,
and the great number of appointees. Mean
time, stupendous missionary openings can
not be entered; missionaries ask in vain
for the increased force and appropriations
imperatively needed in fields already oc-
cupied; overworked men and women break
down and return, to find that their loved
board has lost its hold on large numbers in
the churches; and from bad. matters are
fast going to worse. Yet all sail is now
crowded on. Your brochures are going
around, evolved from the official brain.
Your American Board of Campaign: Or
thodoxy versus Heterodoxyp is being
pushed in portion of the religious press
The plan appears to be, at the annual
meeting at Minneapolis next October, to
point with PRIDE as ever; to make any
machine gains in the personnel of the ad-
ministration which are possible; and to
surrender-neverp
The Rev. Professor Charles A. Briggs,
ID, writing in the Christian Union on
Christian Unity" says: "The time has
come for repentance and reformation, and
each denomination should study what sac
rifces of unessential things it may make
in order to the inestimable boon of church
unity and the attainment OF the ideal of
our Lord and his Apostles. The House of
Bishops, in proposing the Historic Episco-
pate as one of the essential terms of church
unity, do not propose any theory of its
origination or any doctrine concerning the
the historic expression of the executive
function of the Christian ministry. As
such the Episcopal churches have it in
better form than any other body. All
other churches need the episcopacy for
their highest efficiency. do not see how
it is possible to give visible expression to
church unity in any other way than in the
unities of the executive function of the
Historic Episcopate. 1t does not follow
from this, however, that the House of
Bishops would underrate the Importance
of the presbytery or of the congregations
of Christian people. If the Presbyterian
churches propose the presbytery as an es-
sential term of church unity, do not see
that it will be at all inconsistent with the
Historic Episcopacy. The Episcopal
Church mas been tending in that direction
in its conventions as the Congregational
churches have in their associations. The
problem of church unity is to harmonize, in
higher unity presbytery and episcopacy, by
giving the presbytery bishop of its own
choice, and by giving the bishop presby-
terry to sustain him and check him in his
administration of the affairs of the church.
And so Congregationalsm has something
valuable to contribute to the reunited
church. 1t has battled for the rights of
the Christian people, and has won them.
These rights have in large measure found
recognition in modern Episcopacy and
Presbyterianism. In the reunited church
these rights should be recoenized, care
fully guarded from encroachments, and
conserved. Thus, the three churches have
each of them unfolded valuable functions
of Christian ministry, and each will have
something of value to contribute for the
common good. When the leaders of the
churches can be induced to lay aside per-
sonal ambition, pride of place, and bondage
to traditions, they will be able to agree in
Christian love upon church constitution
that will harmonize all the Christian
churches of America, consolidate them,
organize their powers, increase their eff
ficiency, and make them invincible in
evangelization of the masses of heathen-
ism, and the semi-heathen of our cities,
marshes and mountains. Let every
Christian man and woman make up his
mind that church unity is one of the chief
problems of our times, and the solution of
the problem will come upon US glad sur
prise, and rejoice us by proving to be one
of the simplest and most natural things in
the worldv