The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-04-09
TAKE NO PART IN
GAME OF POLITICS
Church Members Will Not
Vote For Public
Officials.
NOT FOND OF MUSIC
Oppose Lodges, Theater Co.
ing, Use of Tobacco and
Dancing.

In little frame building on Summit
street near Seventeenth band of less
than 100 worshippers gathers every
Sunday to hold a service almost Puri-
tan in it's simplicity, says the Kansas
City Star. There is no organ in the
little church, nor a piano either; when
the time comes to sing a hymn the
precentor strikes tuning fork and
the members of the congregation lift
up their voices together in the words
of a hymn written not by modern
musicians, but by the psalmist David.
The place where this occurs in the
Reformed Presbyterian church, 1875
Summit street, the only one of its de-
nomination in Kansas City. 1t will be
only for a few more Sundays, how
ever, that the small congregation will
gather in the fraiI wooden building
where services have been held for the
last twenty-five years. Within
month the members nope to move into
church which is being built. Only the
Sunday school room will be finished
then, for the members of the Gov
= enanters' church, as many members
of the denomination prefer to style it,
do not believe in going into debt.
"Pay as you CO." is their motto, and
one might add the further Injunction,
'if you can't pay, don't go
There are many interesting things
about the Reformed Presbyterian
Church, some of which were explained
to visitor the other day by the Rev.
J. M. Wylie, pastor of the church, as
he sat in the sunny front room of his
home. In the first place, the church is
the direct-and DR.. Wylie says the
only-linea1 descendant of the Scot
fish church of the Covenant, establish
ed by John Knox.
1t was John Knox, you may remem-
her. who was in the habit of going
fearlessly up to the palace of Holy
rood in Edinburgh, where Mary Queen
of Scots held her gay court, to rebuke
the Queen and point out to her the
error of her ways. And though the
Queen did not like John Knox and
might have had him killed somehow
she didn't; perhaps as she was unable
to help feeling for him a certain
grudging admiration after all.
At one time and another members
of the Covenanter church were hunted
through the mountains of Scotland
like wild beasts, compelled to hold
their meetings in the hillside caverns
and in open groves, but still they held
fast to their faith. For they are sturdy
folk, these Covenanters, whose history
has been story of fighting for free
dom for something more than $50
years.
They fought the house of Stuart for
fifty years-from 1888 until William of
Orange drove James H., the last Stuart
king, from England in $685.. and the
historian Bancroft says that to the
Covenanters, more than any other
body of men, belongs the credit for
the famous Mecklenburg declaration
of independence, made in 1775. Among
the earliest enemies of negro slavery
we find the Covenanters, and today
one reason members of the church de
cline to vote for men running for Fed.
eral offices is because the Government
sanctions the liquor traffic.
The service in the Coventer church
is as austerely simple as was the wor-
ship of the Puritans who settled in
New England. There is no choir in
the church, no organ or musical &C
compartment of any sort God is
praised only by the human voice. Not
DR.. Wylie explains. that the Covenant
ers believe there is anything wicked
about music, only that music, like all
other forms of art, has no place in
church services.
There men and women should come
together, the members of this church