p. 7 | Hindering the Gospel

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 7, 1908

Hindering the Gospel

At a meeting of the Methodist Laymen's Missionary Movement at Chattanooga, Tenn., on April 21, Mr. James Bryce, British Ambassador to the United States, speaking of the results of coercive and oppressive religion among the natives of America, said:—

Is it any wonder that the behavior of men who are nominally Christians—Christians in profession if not practise—has checked the spread of Christianity? The missionary comes preaching a gospel of justice and love and peace. But when the natives see how men behave who profess the religion which the missionary preaches, the preachings lose their value.

These are true words. The gospel of Christ has thus been wounded in the house of its professed friends in every country in the world, and this has been specially and emphatically so where that religion has been a state religion, compelling its way among the natives by lash and bayonet, as it did in America. The arm of the state behind the missionary has robbed his preaching of its true soul-winning power, and produced hypocrites where genuine Christians might have been.