Untitled article by A. SMITH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · March 23, 1893

Dr. Talmage and the Greek Church.

By A. SMITH

When Dr. Talmage visited Russia last summer, he suddenly became enamored of the Russian autocrat and the Russian State religion. Going as the almoner of American charity to the destitute and suffering thousands of that famine-stricken empire, and only seeing them through the high functionaries of the State and the church, the glory and honor of the occasion evidently perverted his vision with reference to facts recorded by many writers, some of them actual witnesses of the scenes they portray, and strangely agreeing, if their statements be mere fabrications, to the fines, imprisonments, and banishments that await the Jews, the Stundists and others, who, from conscience toward God, do not believe or practice the tenets of the popular church; and to the principles of human nature that will sometimes assert themselves even in the savage, in deeds of noble generosity, and in the refined and enlightened, in acts of cruelty

and oppression.

Appearances are sometimes deceptive; for we can only judge of them by their external contact with our interests. Concerning the fervor of the Russian Greek, Dr. Talmage says:—

I have traveled in many lands, but I tell you plainly, as I told Emperor Alexander III. in the palace at Peterhoff, that I had never been so impressed with the fidelity to their religion of any people as by what I had seen in Russia, and especially among her public men. I said respectfully to a Russian, when I saw him cross himself: “What do you do that for?” “Oh,” he said, “when I do that I always say, ‘God have mercy on me!’”

By the same logic, Mohammedanism, Catholicism, and Hinduism might be made commendable to some of the reverend doctors of a popular Protestant church. In making out a list of this character, diabolism, by right, should stand at the head. I am here only speaking of the merits of these various systems of belief and practice as judged by the fervor of their devotees.

The only proper standard by which to judge of the merits of any system of religion, professedly Christian, is by the Bible; and the only scale of godliness by which its membership can be properly judged is that of the life and character of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Exemplar of his people for all time. No amount of human tweedling, though it may influence the judgment of man, can give a shadow of variation to the impartial judgment of God.

Russia, to-day, furnishes an excellent example of what a union of Church and State will do. Those who dare dissent, even covertly, from the national religion, do so at the imminent risk of imprisonment or banishment. And this condition of things would be much worse than it is were it not for the benign light of religious liberty shedding its bright rays from the star spangled banner of our own fair land for a hundred years upon the Old World.

But will not the hope of the oppressed millions of the Orient fail within them when they see religious freedom assassinated here in the very capital of our country? The votaries of Catholicized Protestantism have obtained control of our Government, and in the near future they will use it to enforce their will upon all our citizens who can be coerced by fines, imprisonments, and threatened death. And our danger has lain most in the fact that the people generally would not believe that these things were coming. They could not see, and many will not now believe, that if it is possible for Congress, at the back of the Church, to legislate upon one religious question, they can also legislate upon any other religious question under the sun if they will. And precedents indicate that they will when the Church bids them do it.

A. SMITH.