Professor Wilder’s Lectures.
PROFESSOR H. A. WILDER, of Spokane Falls, lectured on Monday and Tuesday evenings in this city to fair audiences, his subject being “Civil Government and Religion.” The fact of his lectures being given in the church led us to believe that he was an advocate of the Blair Sunday bill and favored the move on foot looking to the union of Church and State. We were agreeably surprised to find that his ideas are exactly the reverse of this. While a Christian, he opposes any union of Church and State, or the passage of stringent Sunday laws, maintaining that no authority for such can be found in the Bible or the experience of successful civil governments. He thinks that no man can be made religious by force, and holds that it is the idea of Protestantism to persuade and appeal to the moral nature of men, consequently it can have no affiliation with Catholicism, which would set ecclesiastical authority above the civil, and bring force to bear where persuasion fails. The Professor is a fluent and pleasant speaker, and we regret that our limited time and space forbid a more extended notice of his lectures. We trust he will favor us again in the future.—Oregon Scout, September 19, 1889.