p. 84 | THE PULPIT AND PRESS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 17, 1881

THE PULPIT AND PRESS.

By Editor

FRANKLY, very little good seems to have come from the reading of the Scriptures by the people at large. It has produced more religious fanaticism than anything else, and more abortions which are caricatures of religion. Even among Catholics it fosters a Calvanistic spirit, which in many cases induces individuals to set up their judgment against the wisdom of the church. The indiscriminate circulation of the Bible, even with notes approved by the church, has not always been productive of good. The Church existed before the Scriptures; she guarded and collected them; she alone is their interpreter.—Catholic Review (New York).

The above paragraph shows plainly that the Roman church in its influence is averse to the study of the Scripture by the people themselves. The church guarded the Scriptures, therefore she is greater than the word of God, and must interpret it. This is the logic. On this basis the soldier is greater than the emperor that he protects, and nothing may go out from the great king without being submitted to and corrected by, the little brain of the guard!—Golden Censer.

Definiteness would ruin a great deal of so-called religion. It subsists upon its unknown possibilities—passes current, because it may be anything, from copper to precious stones. But the real thing in the experience will get defined by and by, when the wood, hay and stubble will only serve to make a big fire. And since the definiteness that ruins the poor stuff is sure to come along with its eternal tests, a wise man will begin at once to call for the calcium lights of the truth, and to follow these lights to reformation, repentance and righteousness. "Examine yourselves" is an order that is too easily changed so as to read, "examine your neighbors." Many a man will have nothing better to say for himself at the last day than, "Lord, I never saw a fault in a neighbor, or heard of one at the other side of the world, without condemning it." The Lord will one day compel us to look in a glass so steadily, that we will not be able to instruct him in his duties, or forget our own.—Methodist.

The Philadelphia Lutheran Observer has been investigating the cause of the masterly inactivity of so many professed Christians, and by accident, it were, has hit upon the true explanation, as it thinks, of their suspended animation. A man went to a watchmaker and said there was something the matter with his watch, It would not go. He wanted it fixed. The watchmaker examined it and saw nothing wrong. He wound it up and it went all right. The only trouble was that the owner had forgotten to wind it up at night or in the morning Then it occurred to the Observer, who was listening, that this was what was the matter with many Christians. They are run down. They need winding up every day to go. The key is prayer.

There is one thing that true moral excellence will not permit itself to do, and that is to pose before others in its daily walk, as though it would say: "See me; see how patient I am; how gentle and winning; how resigned to whatever trials may be sent to me; and how superior to the passions and moods of ordinary men and women." A great many persons who are really trying to be Christians, virtually say all this by their manner, if not by their words. But this is a strain of artificiality which has no place in genuine goodness of heart and life, which surely ought to be above self-consciousness and the Pharisaism of humility. "Surely," says a recent writer, "the spirit we should long to find in ourselves, and in any for whom we have a care, is that inward leaning towards all things lovely, that inward shrinking from all things base, which will make right-doing almost instinctive." And instinctive right-doing is not made up of any number of tableaux of saintliness.—S. S. Times.