The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-05-14
IN RELIGIONS REALM.
EXPRESSIONS FROM VARIOUS
RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPERS.
The Religious Thought Of the Day
as Expressed in the Sec
tartan Press.


New York "Churchman' (P. Ed, IF 1t
inevitably results in the view that
churchmen are mere passive Ieceptacles,
to be always receiving and never Civ
ing, then. indeed, it is a disastrous the
ory But if this is only one OF the Ell
forts to make the Fathers house at
least as free as the home of an earthly
father is to his children, then, indeed,
it is the only possible conception of the
church as the home Of humanity. For,
whatever may be said of the rented pew
as a necessary evil because of present
conditions, it can never be advocated as
an ideal for the very reason that a
father is no father, and a home is no
home where one child is allowed to pur
chase a place above another. But pass
ing by all these things, and returning
to what we believe to be the true heart
of the matter and the real value of the
= whole discussion, the most serious
question before the church to-day is
not the adequate support of the minis
try, but systematic and proportionate
giving-that our Christianity may be
Geal.''
OF course the pulpit will lose its
strength if it has not truth to tell"
says the New York independent" mo
matter how much faith it may put in
the untruths which it breaches 1t is
the one who has truth to tell that will
have the power of true teaching. The
man who contradicts the growing
knowledge of his generation will lag
superfluous behind; and that is right.
The people may be more intelligent
than the pulpit; and when the pulpit
tries to beat back the advance of new
truth it becomes something else than
the power of God. The preacher, to
have growing influence, must prove
himself in large sympathy with all fresh
truth learned by the students of nature
or of history. and must bring this
truth, in his own thinking, into rela-
ton with his deepest faith in the God
of nature and the providence of history.
But of supreme Importance is his own
vital identification with the truth he
breaches; and next to- it is the thunder
of his earnest and positive utterance
of that truth which he believes with all
his heart and lives with all his life, and
which is in the heart of his every hear
er, dormant though it may be, and
which can be made to control those
hearers lives only by the impact of his
own faith
The Governor Of New Hampshire
has written a proclamation which has
been the subject Of widespread COM
ment," says The Christian Register
(Unlt) of Boston. Whether it does
full justice to the state of things in New
Hampshire or not it certainly calls at
tention to a process which is going on
in every State of the Union. 1t is as
marked in Wisconsin as it is in New
Hampshire. 1t is as evident in the
state of New York as it is in the State
OF Kentucky. Travellers, whether re-
llgious or secular, vino have occasion
to do business in the small towns. re-
port many churchless communities
where the standard of morality is SO
low that some of the grossest offenses
are condoned, or at least winked at. by
those who are among the most intelli-
gent part Of the community A Judge
holding court in Boston has testified to
US with earnest solicitude that within
sight Of the dome of the State House
there are rustic communities where
moral blindness seems to have followed
the decay of the church. In cases
where he was obliged to pronounce SEN
tence for gross offenses there seemed
to be no consciousness of wrong doing.
We know that there are communities
that have maintained a high standard
OF character without much aid from an
organized church; but they are excep-
tlonaL and are able to maintain disci-
pine among themselves because they
know the dangers to be avoided. and
provide for them something which cor
responds to the checks and balances of
the church,
There are two sorts of men who
to-day are gravely impeding Christi
ahlty' and it is not easy to say which
OF the two is most blameworthy," says
the Waterman" Bapt) of Boston. "On
the one hand. those who assume that
the ethical teachings of Jesus are so
unadapted to human life that they are
to be treated as the amiable and beau
tlful imaginings of a lofty spirit. but
as wholly unified to control the con-
duct of hard-headed men, They listen
TO the Serman on the Mount in much
the same mood as that in which they
read The Midsummer Nights Dream. ;
The other sort of men interpret the
Sermon on the Mount and the other
ethical statements of Jesus, with a hard
sense of proportion, and with total I'M
Willingness to modify one teaching by
another which is manifestly designed
to limit and modify it. These men will
hasten on single text and refuse to
look at any other text. They will give
their single text the most mechanical
and unsympathetic interpreta ton, and
then proceed to denounce as disloyal to
CHRIST every one who does not accent
their Interpretation. Tolstoy is the
most conspicuous representative of this
class, but those who belong to it are
10 be found in every communicate
most IN every church. And SO it comes
about that the average man, having
to choose between a Christ that was
mere dreamer, and Christ that was
fanatic, repudiates BOTH
1T would seem that men were never
in the past more subject to delusion
than now" says the Interior Pres.)
of Chicago. ANY pretender, if he have
talent and shrewdness, can have a fol-
lowing on any line. The most fruitful
field for imposture is now, as always. in
; the perversion of the religious instincts
And here we see one of those strange
and even startling analog.es between the
spiritual and the material. By law of
psychical chemistry the religious in
stincts, precipitated by any of the sell
fish passions, produce savagery, in vari-
Gus degrees of concentration. And here
comes in principle which runs like a
!; thread through the wool of Scrpt11re