The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1897-05-16
IN RELIGIONS REALM.
Expressions From Various Religious
Newspapers.
The Religious Thought of the Day
as Expressed in the Sec
tartan Press.

1.-TWO questions we think 1t proper to
put with all plainness before the minds
of those whom it may concern says
the Church Standard" Up. Ed of Phil
adelphia; they are these: First, Can a
man who does not sincerely believe in
the doctrine of Christ as this church
hath received the same conscientiously
continue to minister in her name? And
second, If a man for many years to-
gether has been so doubtful of the
catholicity and authority of the Church
of England as to have been again and
again on the point of 'verting to the
Church of Rome, must not his ministry
have lacked for long while the indis-
pensable sanction of the answer of a
good conscience? Week by week, and
day by day, he prays publicly to be de-
livered from heresy and schism, and
yet, privately, he never honestly sat
isles himself that the church whose
doctrine he processes to teach is not
heretical, and that the orders which he
holds are not schismatical. If the
Church of Rome, to which he has al
ways been inclined, is right, then the
church in which Mr.. Maturin was Off
ciating is not only stepped in heresy
but is not even a Schismatical church,
since she has no valid orders at ALL
But any man who is not sure of the
validity of his orders incurs the dan
ger of committing a sacrilege every
time that he administers a sacrament,
and this serious risk MIR. Maturin con-
tinued to take for many years. Still
further, the Church of England has no
sacrament of penance,' and if the
Church of Rome is right, she has no
jurisdiction whatever in the Church of
Christ, SO that the absolutions of her
priests are not only void in themselves,
but are mere decisions of the devil; and
yet, with this serious question of fact
unsettled, Mr.. Maturin continued for
many years to hear confessions and to
pronounce absolutions. We ask
whether these facts can be reconciled
with the plain principles of common
honesty and veracity by which a re-
spectacle man of the world regulates
his conduct in secular affairs?"
while the results of gospel preach
ing in the world up to the present time
have been marvellous, it. is by no means
clear that the elimination of the pro-
cess is as yet even in sight" remarks
the New York Observer Pres.). TT
seems probable that it is still but the
beginning of the gospel. If the geol-
ogists are to be believed, it took geolo-
gic ages to afford the mere prelude, as
it were the preliminary housefurnish
! ing, for the coming of historic man
upon this planet, who has so far exist
ed in the world but the meagereSt
fraction of the time that was required
for these preparatory processes. If so,
it is not unnatural TO suppose that hui
man history, SO far from coming now
to an immediate cataclysmic close, as
the Tottens prophesy, has as yet but
run through the opening sentences OF
a brief period. We do not know when
the Lord will come and the book of
history be rolled together like a scroll
To some minds every news item which
speaks of a CONFUSION, natural or po-
litical, somewhere on the face Of the
globe, is a sign Of the end of the
world. But perhaps we are deceived by
such apparent auguries. Perhaps God
is just beginning. Perhaps Christian
ity is inchoate yet and in a measure
tentative. Surely, it has not yet won
all posSibleVictOries, nor revealed all en-
folded promises. Why should we as
sumo that we are certainly now in the
last chapters of church history? What
do we know about the plans of God {?
Why should we circumscribe his pro-
grammes with our little Greetings of the
centuries?"