S. D. BAPTIST PASTORS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 2, 1869

S. D. BAPTIST PASTORS.

EDITOR ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH HERALD, Dear Sir: R. F. Cottrell, in your issue of Feb. 9, in an article under the heading “Sacred Nations, No. 2,” says:

“I venture the opinion, however, that S. D. Baptists, who have stood one commandment in advance of others, have erred less in restricting their communion to Sabbath-keepers, than they have in their ministers’ taking the pastoral charge of Sabbath-breaking churches, where their lips were sealed, year in and year out, to the preaching of the claims of God’s moral law.”

In the above statement I cannot but think Bro. C. is mistaken in the material fact named, as in a church connection with the people named of over forty years’ continuance, more than thirty-five years of which have been spent in the ministry, and a personal acquaintance extending over almost the entire denomination, I have never known an instance in which one of our ministers has taken the “pastoral charge” of a “Sabbath-breaking church.” If instances of this kind have occurred, they certainly have been few indeed.

Fraternally yours. N. V. HULL.

Alfred Center, N. Y., Feb. 12, 1869.

REMARKS. As Bro. Cottrell specified no locality to which his statements applied, he may have had reference to S. D. Baptist pastors in England, with whom, in years past, the evil of which he speaks was notoriously conspicuous. But the same mail which brought Bro. Hull’s communication, brought the Sabbath Recorder of Feb. 18, 1869, in which is an article very nearly, at least, sustaining Bro. Cottrell in his statements. A correspondent writing concerning religious matters in Hopkinton City, R. I., says:—

“Within the limits of the city proper, there are two churches—a First-day and a Seventh-day Baptist church—the former, according to its last annual associational minutes, numbering seventy-five members, and the latter, one hundred and thirty-eight members. The first-day church was constituted in 1834, and the Seventh-day church in 1835. The most friendly Christian relation now exists between the two churches. The pastor of the Seventh-day church supplies the pulpit of the first-day church, which arrangement is expected to continue the ensuing year. This arrangement tends much to promote the Christian union which ever ought to exist between all Christian churches.”