Church Progress | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 29, 1882

Church Progress.

At the recent Baptist anniversaries in New York, Mr. B. F. Jacobs, of Chicago, as reported in the Examiner, said that "it seemed to him that nothing ought to interrupt the discussion of the Bible work by the Baptists in America, unless it might be an intermission for a little time to put a few of them into circulation." As an illustration of the necessity for Bible circulation, the Examiner gives the following:—

In Illinois, in one county, seven townships were found without a church or Sunday-school. In Chicago there were thousands unreached by Christian influences. In New York State 800,000 children are in no Sunday-school. So even in our most favored places there is work enough to be done. Denominational statistics were given to show how slowly was the work of salvation progressing among all the churches of the land. The Methodists last year reported an average to a church over the whole country of nine probationers, the Baptists of three members, the Presbyterians of but 3/4 of one member.

He told the effective story of the General's servant Tom, who wanted to go home to cheer up the old folks a little, and said he'd be certain to say nothing disrespectful of the army; he should only tell the old folks that from the lay of the land and all the surroundings, he should judge the army was advancing backward, and the enemy was retreating on us. It sometimes looked as if the Christian army was advancing in something of this way.