Presbyterian Statistics

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 6, 1913

Presbyterian Statistics

ACCORDING to the report of the Presbyterian Church, recently published, the gain for the year on confession of faith has been 88,808. This is reported as the largest in the history of the church. The Presbyterian, in commenting on these figures, credits this increase to the decline of destructive criticism and unbelief in the church. On the other hand, the number received and dismissed on certificate was very large. Over fifty thousand were reported as suspended. Says the Lutheran, in commenting on this:—

Scriptural discipline certainly was not applied to this number, and the figure seems to reveal that which is becoming too common among our own people; namely, drawing a blue pencil through names on the church roll of those who have become careless, and letting this act be the beginning and the end of discipline.

Often there is less effort put forth by Christian believers to reclaim the back-slider than to convert one from the darkness of heathenism. There is danger that this spirit will creep into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Our own unconverted children, those in the church who have grown careless and indifferent, are quite as worthy of our best efforts as those in the dark heathen lands whom we have never seen. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” 1 John 4:20.