The record-union., 1891-01-11
RELIGIOUS OPINION.
Expressions from the Various
Religious Newspapers.
CURRENT TOPICS DEBATED FROM
DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS.

Ine Religious Thought OF the Day as
Expressed in the Sectarian Press
Some Matters of Interest to Both
Ministers and Laymen.
The Christian Advocate (Meth.) says {:
The compliment, given by layman to
his pastor, printed some time ago, that
he was great preacher, who never fell
below his average and often rose above
it. has been Outdone by another, who
writes us that his pastor is true minis
ter, man OF God-more than that, a man
of brains.' Perhaps he means that in adj
dition to piety he has strong intellect,
but the language is somewhat equivOcal.
The more brains religious pastor has the
greater his success; but minister of in
tellect without piety is not likely to build
up the Church, though he may draw a
crowd"
The Nashville Christian Advocate
(Meth.) says: "The affluence of life in the
Apostolic Church is one of its marked
features. The life was too strong for pro-
gramme, too overf1owing for ruts, too
fresh and full for stiffness, too ardent to
be chilled or checked by formality. The
opulence of the spiritual life burst out
spontaneously, joyously. The Holy
Ghost was on them in power, and every
thing was full and quickened and
nightly stirred by His presence. The
fullness of life, a stirring, talking, work.
ing life, was theirs. Silence and deafness
were strangers to their assemblies"
The interior Pres, Chicago) offers
the following comment: 1.-The Lining
Church, Episcopal, is out in favor Of
opening the Columbian Fair on Sunday
limiting its advocacy to the parks, hills
and conservatories.' You may shelter
| A Il f<>
the camel, but you must keep your body
outside" But the Ltving Church says
in answer: 'If the parable is fairly ap-
plicable to our position, we venture to
say it is applicable to the actual home use
OF the Interiors admirable editor. We
do not think he would deprive his guests
of the privilege of looking at the beauti-
on the Lords day, nor forbid them to
walk in his grounds. Why should Chi
cago impose Sabbath regulation upon
her guests that good Presbyterian elder
would not 1--WE presume) enforce in his
own houSe?"
The Observer (Pres.) says: "The Els
merians have come to the conclusion that
whatever does not happen in this nine
teenth century, never has and never can
happen Following that line of argu-
ment, we should logically conclude that if
the nineteenth century does not produce
Jesus or a Nazareth, no period OF the
worlds history has ever done SO. Ana
lyzed, the proposition, as stated, involves
the principle that nothing can happen
in one century that does not in another.
No other century ever produced any
thing so comprehensive and so profound
as the namby- -pamby nonsense of Robert
Elsmere. The philosophy of the Els
merians will lead them into a maze from
which they cannot eXtricate themselves.
Ifaa1 DXtyht
tinue to believe in the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from among the dead, and,
believing in him who is the Resurrection
and the Life, will be saved"
Far mton" says in the AdUance; 81
like to study the development OF minis
ters, or the failure of ministers to de-
yelop. A good many ministers / meet
not oftener than once year. Such in
frequency of meeting gives better ground
for testing the progress of ministers than
q frequent meeting. l have been struck
by what seems to me to be the failure of
ministers to develop in mind and heart.
/ find that several of them do not now
speak as well as they spoke five or eight
years ago. This decline, l think, is more
common among ministers of large
churches than of small; more common
among ministers that have large relations
with the public than among those who
live more private lives. / infer, there
fore, that the minister whose relations are
many and the calls for whose services are
diverse and frequent, has much harder
task to develop himself than the minister
whose labor is more secluded. If were
to utter a word of warning to any of the
popular preachers of the time, it would
be: Your intellect win go to pieces upon
the rock of popularity. AT 55, when you
growing, you will be in your decline, it
you do not give heed to YOURSELF"
The Rev. J. r. Slattery, writing on the
negro question in the Catholic World,
says: "Just here the influence of many
Catholics is cast against the negroes. In
the Protestant South they enjoy the right
of working at all trades. Not so in the
North, where the Church has her strong
hold. The great bulk of the trades-union-
lists arein many cities of the North Cath
olics; yet they leave no opening to the me-
groes for the learning oftrades. A friend of
mine lately employed negro. All his
fellow-workmen, every one of them a
Catholic, struck Immediately. They
would not work with a 'nigger.' Much
the same complaint can be made against
our colleges and professional schools of
the former but two or three receive ne
groes, and of the latter there is none that
l knew of which has a negro studying
for profession. The same may said of
our convent schools. This is more sur
prising as the communities in charge of
Catholic institutions of learning, with a
handful excepted, are European founda-
tions; like our own ancestors, these So
cieties are impOrtations. Yet, in institu-
tionS of the same societies in that Europe
whence they have come to US, no distinc-
ton is made between white and black; is
it not strange to find it here in free
America? A young lady, the daughter
of one of our oldest Catholic families,
in which she passed eight or nine years of
her girlhood were negro girls as dark as
midnight; yet the order which was in
charge of the school will not receive a
black child into any of the fifty or sixty
houses which it has in our land"
The Independent says: "It has come to
be rule among all our Protestant de-
nominations, with the exception of the
Episcopalians, that they will put the total
burden of all the work lin parish) upon
one salaried pastor. 1t matters not
whether it be church of fifty members
or of 1900, that one man must conduct
the whole of all the services on the Sab
bath, must prepare all the sermons with
out exchanging, must do all the visiting,
must bury all the dead. Of course he
| cannot do this work as it should be done
in large church. This is beyond the
capabilities OF human nature. 1t is a cru
city to ask it of any man. But worse
than all this cruelty to the pastor is the
injury done to the church itself. The
church ceases to be well-managed or
ganizatiOn; it becomes a mob 1locking
about preacher, and preacher who is
unable to do anything more than provide
an attractive pulpit. The minister is not
for the church, but the church for the
minister. The real work for which a
| church exists must i'll large part be ne
elected. ltcannot engage in aggressive