Untitled article by The Sun

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 5, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 23

Remarkable Language.

By The Sun

THE Rev. Dr. Parkhurst used this very remarkable language in the course of a sermon last Sunday at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church:—

It is as much a Christian's duty to love his country as his God. To an American the Stars and Stripes ought to be as much of his actual religion as the Sermon on the Mount. It is as much the duty of a New York Christian to go to the polls on election day as for him to go to the Lord's table on communion day.

The command of Jesus is to love God with the whole heart, and your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, love for mankind as brethren is a Christian sentiment. But patriotism is a restriction of that sentiment to a man's own country.

Great as are the “Stars and Stripes,” and glorious beyond measure, is a Christian preacher justified in calling them as much a part of religion as the Sermon on the Mount, in which is contained the very kernel and epitome of Christianity? They are for time; but does not Dr. Parkhurst believe that the words of Jesus are for eternity, for the endless ages, when the symbols of earthly power shall have passed into nothingness?

The duty of a Christian to go to the polls is a great and a high duty. He shares it with the Jew and the pagan; but were not the Madison Square Presbyterians a little startled to hear Dr. Parkhurst putting it on the same religious plane with the duty of partaking of the sacrament as distinctive of Christianity?

Such language is very extraordinary. But Dr. Parkhurst, it must be remembered, is a Presbyterian of the agnostic variety.—The Sun.