The record-union., 1898-10-02
IN RELIGIONS REALM.
EXPRESSIONS FROM VARIOUS
RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPERS.
The Religious Thought of the Day
as Expressed in the Sec
tartan Press.

| Z
| English church papers are tolerably
unanimous" says the Living Church
| P. Ed of Chicago, 'in condemning the
action of Father Ignatius in getting
himself ordained to the priesthood py
| Archbishop Mar Timotheos, belonging
to the Patriarchate of Antioch alias
Rene Vilatte of Little Sturgeon, Wis
| consin. The Church Review recalls
the case of the Bishop of Iona, re-
ceived with open arms by some enthu-
| Siastic clergymen, who was reported
| to have secretly 'consecrated seVera'
Bishops, but who was ultimately dis
covered to be not even priest NM
self. The Church Times says: we
cannot but think Father Ignatius has
| made a sad mistake. 1t thinks the
J iappeal to the anomalous cond1tlon of
| the Celtic monasteries many centuries
ago is quite beside the mark, and that
there is no ground for reversing the de-
csion which the English church came
! to in the sixteenth century. that mon
| astefies should not exist independently
OF the diocesan. 1t is further OF the
opinion that the history of the use OF
their independence made by the monas-
teries is not such as to make us Will
! ing to re peat the experiment. IL Is
much to be wished that Father 1gna-
thus, whose sincere motives and power
as a preacher of the Gospel seemed 10
be on the point of opening doors Whlch
had hitherto been closed to him, mlSht
see some way Of repairing a. step "hlch
must necessarily exclude MN from Inc
pulpits Of the church.
I'm no other civilized country is the
problem of divorce so poorly solVeo, or
so full of danger, as IN the Onlteo
States says the "P,resbyterlan BAN
ner" of Pittsburg. I'VE have no gen
eral laws on this subject, ana IN soine
Of the States they are simply scandal
GUS apparently framed to encourage
and facilitate divorce Every soclai
and religious heresy that breaks out
has something in it in opp positlon 70
the permanency of the marriage rela-
ton. But at length the public nina IS
beginning to be aroused to tho lnde-
cency and danger connected with the
drift toward easy divorces. The New
England Divorce Reform League, IN
which all Christian denominations are
united. has been doing good work. EHle
| religious press, a part of the seculat
press. and the ministers of the gospef
have been rendering efficient service,
and will continue to do so. A confer
ence has lately been held at Saratoga,
New York, to promote uniformity OF
IleeisIation in marriage and divorce. II
that conference did not accomplish
much directly, it at least discovered
that it is altogether impossible to lead
the States to agree upon what snail pc
the causes, for absolute divorce. OWING
to the training of the people, and their
SURROUNDINGS and the varying IDEAS
concerning the marriage relation pre-
yalent in different parts OF the country
no large number of the States Will ever
. agree upon a uniform law dissolvlng
marriage. Our only hope is in uni
form legislation secured by national
constitutional amendment. To this emo
all the friends of pure marriage should
labor
.sThe time of easy definition and
broad distinction has gone by, pre-
sumablv forever,'' says the Christian
Register Unit.) of Boston. The OLD
clear lines are fading away. But the
fading of the historic lines is not be-
cause modern men do not think about
religion. 1t is not because there are
no vital issues before the world. ON
the contrary. we may trace certain pro-
found, tendencies in religious develop
ment. Underneath the surface, and De-
hind the cover of the hereditary names,
reformation is going on upon new
lines. Look up some of the great groups
to which men belong, however they
NAV still call themselves. In the first
place. we discover in almost every de-
| nomination the group who make It's
| liberal wing They are men Of es-
sentially modern thought and educa-
ton. They have parted company with
the world of authoritative proof-texts
and conventional authority. NO array
| of supposed supernatural testimony
will compel them to the bellef IN an
unreasonable proposition. nat an
article of creed is in the Bible no longer
satisfies them. Who, of all the hberal
school of ministers, holds any longer,
| with regard to his unconverted frlends,
| that they shall go away into ever
la sting punishment While these lib
erals have the new wine OF modern
thought their common characteristic
is that they are trying nara TO pour
into the old bottles They use famil-
/ larry the eXpTeSsolOliS olAA e@hiiiN' "AAA~A1
| have hitherto been associated with
mediaevaI or Calvinistic or evangelical
theology With type of religion dls-
tinctly different from that which the
churches of the reformed faith have
| generally believed, they still speak OF
sim and salvation and 'atonement
| and the cross and the Holy Scrip
| lures as if the Old and New Testa-
| ments were the only word of God,
and even, in a mystical sense, OF
! eternal retribution.' But there is not
one of these ideas to which they have
not given a new interpretation
| y
| LET no man presume to run, either
I'M the sphere of the theological sem
mary. or in the work Of the active
ministry, who has no sure, positive,
eager, evangelical tidings ready, says
| the New York observer Pres).
! "What the world needs, more perhaps
| than it wants, is the pure, pungent
Gospel. from the lips of men who are
sure of themselves, because they are
sure of God. and who because of their
| near personal contact with the Christ
i who is the source of all truth and in
spiration cannot but speak the things
[ that they have seen and heard. 1t ls
the Gospel of the yea and the amen
| which men crave and that men In the
long run will listen to and will obey.
The Church of the Holy Ambiguity,
the creed of the cipher, and the priest
of the unknown. chill rather than COM