p. 274 | Seeking Church Office

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 20, 1913

Seeking Church Office

WE expect that in the political world men will seek office and do everything in their power to secure the coveted position. This is the spirit of the world. But this spirit of self-seeking should have no place in the Christian church. According to the teachings of Christ, Christian service affords the greatest distinction. The Lord of all became a servant of all. He sought not his own but others’ good. This same spirit should possess his followers. Speaking of the self-seeking policy of the world, which little by little is slipping into the great church of ‘God, the Continent of Feb. 27, 1913, justly says:—

Spring birds are not more sure to be a-wing in March than a covey of moderatorial booms flying toward one or more of the Presbyterian General Assemblies dated for May. Wherefore the Continent deems it seasonable in the end of February to say again what in substance it said soon after last General Assembly time—that for the credit of the church this whole flock ought to be mercilessly hunted with ammunition guaranteed to be fatal to ambition and self-seeking.

Progress from bad to worse in the use of political methods to secure personal honors in the church has gone far enough to demand drastic measures to end it. For the Christian cure of the condition the only adequate measure is a frank and unreserved adoption of the standard of the apostle Paul, who prescribed that Christians must in honors and distinctions prefer not themselves but one another.

Knowing full well how grave a thing it says, the Continent declares here its positive conviction that henceforth no man ought to be selected to the chair of moderator in any General Assembly who has given the least occasion to suspect that he covets the place. Only by this rigid rule, in our opinion, can the horrible unchristian habit of “making a fight” for distinction in the kingdom of God be obliterated. And nothing less than obliteration of it can square the church with the plain teachings of its Master. Better far that all the men of eminence in the church should be passed by and that the choice should fall upon some man too obscure to have dreamed of receiving the honor, than that the place and its distinction should be esteemed the reasonable reward—as is now with amazing complacency often assumed—of the most shrewd and relentless candidacy for it.

Control of Catholic Church Property

AN interesting decision has recently been made by Judge Brumm, of Pottsville, Pa., in the case of the legal control of the St. George Catholic Church, Shenandoah, of that State. The attorneys for the church argued that the present Archbishop Pendergast had succeeded to all the rights of the late Archbishop Ryan, and for that reason was the legal trustee of the church property. The court, however, decided that church property in Pennsylvania is absolutely under the control of the lay members of the congregation, and that as the former archbishop had held the deeds only in trust for the congregation, the present archbishop has no trustee rights in the property unless they are given him by the members of the church society.