The record-union., 1892-11-05

Methodists, Congregationalists and other
bodies. We need not talk much about
general and universal unions until we
have done the smaller and nearer duty.
This duty presses heavily on those who
are intrusted with the management of
ecclesiastical affairs, although they sell
dom see it. They lack ecclesiastical
craftsmanship. Further than this. we
are lulIy convinced that spiritual oneness
Is the only force that can bring churches
together. What separates them is what
IS formal; intellectual or administrative,
theology or polity, and of the two the
pollty, the government is the most serl-
Gus. The churches have already we'll
nigh learned that intellectual differences
should not separate them, and we already
see Calvinists and Armenians, Sacrament
tarians and Evangelicals equally at home
in the same body. We are slower to
learn that 1t is not government that
makes church. VIII it be possible, one
OF these blessed days, for churches gov
erned episcopally and presbyterially and
congregationally to be one body and to
acknowledge their corporate oneness?
Why not?'
The Sunday-school has been fruit
fuI source of dissension and difference"
says the New York ChurchHtdn (P. e.;
1t mas been free field for theory and
experiment. In some directions it has
been magnified until the church has
shrunK to mere appendage beside it; i'll
others, by very natural reaction it has
peen denounced as uncathOlic If not un-
christian. At last, however, order seems
TO be arising out of confusion, and a larger
and truer ideal of the training of children
in the elements of faith and morals is
winning way. That at least would ap-
pear to he the witness borne by the very
interesting meeting OF the Sunday school
institute in Baltimore last week. 1t is
clear that the path of reconciliation be-
tween those who ardently support and
those who disparage the Sunday-school
lies In the direction of putting the Sun
day-schOol into a right attitude towards
the three circles OF natural and necessary
relations, the home, the community at
large, and the church. The Sunday
school holds place entirely subordinate
and ancillary to all these, and it is the
| torgetfulness of that fact that has brought
the Sunday school into ill-repute as need
less and lmpertlnent."
Every child has the right to be we'll
bred, to be trained in the fear of God, and
according to the usages of civilized man."
remarks the New \ York Examiner (Bapt.).
| "Chlldren are not so much brought up in
many families as allowed to come up.
| The results are often appalling-such a
disregard of the laws of God and Of man;
such willful delight in violating every
principle of politeness and decency. The
little vandals that one sees on every hand
have suffered the greatest Of wrongs that
child can suffer from parent. Nothing
so cries out for the punishment OF the
guilty parties as the petulance and in
science OF spoiled child. The Incidence
| or Stiffness that makes such children pos
sible is as great an otfense as a man or
woman can commit against society-none
the less great because the law fails to
recognize and punish it. The time will
come, one hopes. when just and intelli-
gent public opinion will visit the punish
ment of this offense upon the proper per-
sons, when the existence of willful,
disobedient, badmannered child will be
regarded as proof positive of failure in
fundamental duty on the part of its pa
rents. Such an offense should be fol-
lowed by appropriate social penalties,
such as generally are visited on those
who are known 10 be unfaithful to their
social duties"