Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 21, 1906

It is an unpleasant reflection upon the standard of morality among professed Christian ministers when the secular papers deem it necessary to reprove and instruct them. The course of Dr. A. S. Crapsey, a rector of the Episcopal Church who has recently been tried for heresy before an ecclesiastical court, has called out well-deserved rebukes from some daily papers which recognize the common principles of honest conduct. One of these is the Washington Post, which says:—

Mr. Crapsey or any other man has a right to hold and to utter views that the Episcopal Church abhors. But no man has a moral right to use the prestige of the position of a minister of that or any other religious body to scatter seeds of unbelief in the creed of such church. It is passing strange that a minister who attained his commission by professing belief in a creed and by vowing to be a faithful defender of that creed can get the sympathy and support of other ministers and influential laymen when he flouts his creed and his vow. It astounds plain, practical business men, unfamiliar with theological finessing, to see scores of religious teachers rallying to uphold a preacher who has abandoned the creed that he still continues to recite during every service at which he ministers. That line of conduct finds no toleration in honest business or social organizations.

The Post is right. But it is passing strange that any man should deem it proper to insist upon remaining as a teacher of divine truth within the pale of a denomination when he finds himself at variance with the denomination. It is plain that some will strain out the gnat of inconsistency in the lives of others, but will swallow the camel in their own cases.