p. 5 | Significant Utterances by S. B. Horton

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 1, 1910

Significant Utterances

By S. B. Horton

S. B. HORTON

Boston was the scene, Sunday, November 13, of at least two events of significant character,—one, the Men's Bible Class parade; the other, a sermon by a Catholic priest who has renounced the Protestant Episcopal Church.

The Men's Bible Class parade consisted of about five thousand men from the different Protestant communions of Greater Boston, who marched through the streets with an open Bible resting on a blue velvet cushion for a standard. Considerable enthusiasm was evoked as the marchers followed the bands playing hymnal music, interspersed with singing such hymns as “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” in which those viewing the parade took part.

Upon reaching Tremont Temple, the paraders flocked to the halls in the neighborhood, and listened to addresses by prominent speakers. The writer attended one of these meetings, in which Hon. Robert Luce was the chief speaker. He said that the community was indebted to the paraders for the example they had set in giving time to the serious things of life. In this connection he thought that press and people were giving much space and time to the gratification of the senses, and felt that the time had come when we should see if the pendulum was not carrying us too far in the direction of self-pleasing.

The speaker also maintained that the time had come when individuality in religious convictions must give way to the welfare of the majority in behalf of civic righteousness; that there must be greater effort put forth for public morality than has obtained heretofore; that “sermons and Sunday-school exercises should teach and enforce proper morals, and spread a knowledge of them. From these things we derive the most important instruction,—that with which

we would preserve society and country.” His advice was to encourage the spirit of combination, co-operation, and collectiveness in morality; and, while recognizing the fact that the church and the state are separate, to encourage the one actively to foster the interests of the other.

The tenor of this speech was much in keeping with the thought which was expressed by a leader in the Inter-Church Federation movement, and for which the movement evidently stands:— “It [the Federation] is Protestant; but whereas the Protestant Reformation emphasized the right of private judgment, and developed in a notable manner individuality, thoughtful persons are now realizing the need of combination; and the interests of the individual no longer blind the minds of believers to the needs of mutuality in service.”

Mr. Luce’s address, while from a heart full of good motives, indicates the tendency toward securing so-called civic righteousness through the church by repudiating the Protestant, the Christian, method of securing the conversion of the individual. Of course, this is the papal plan of securing such righteousness; that is, for the church to dominate the state, in the trail of which must inevitably follow the demand to render to Caesar the things which belong to God.

It is fitting that reference be made to the other incident referred to in the opening of this article.

Rev. Paul Francis, an ex-Episcopalian minister, spoke in the Catholic cathedral in Boston on the day mentioned above, maintaining that “Rome is by divine selection the hub of the Christian universe.” After referring to the fact that France is in the hands of the atheists, and that politics in Italy, Portugal, and Spain is rapidly becoming anticlerical, he said:—

“The time is ripe; the outlook here in America is hopeful. It is evident that old-fashioned Protestantism is falling to pieces, but out of its decaying systems there is emerging, thank God, an extraordinary Catholic reaction. Under what we may confidently believe to be the directive hand of the Holy Ghost this Romeward trend has taken the form of a universal cry among all the sects for Christian unity. As yet, only here and there may be found a Protestant leader who has even now caught the vision of what will be the end of this unitative movement; but we Catholics know perfectly well where it is bound to end, if, as we hope, this unity movement among the Protestants is truly of God.”

“There is no other foundation divinely laid of Catholic unity than that which Jesus Christ himself laid when he said to his personal representative among the blessed apostles: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’ A generation ago the Protestant portion of Christendom was entirely blind to this; but now by a miracle of divine grace the scales are falling from their eyes.”

“For evidences of this we need not look across the sea to the church of England and to such well-known advocates of reunion with the Holy See as Lord Halifax and the Rev. Spencer Jones, but we may begin right here at home among the Puritans of New England. The Congregational Church has its apostle of church unity in the person of the Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth, of New Haven, and when he named his book on unity, ‘The Passing of Protestantism and the Coming Catholicism,’ he stereotyped his vision of the future on its title-page.

“Then in New York we have that remarkable scholar, Dr. Charles Augustus Briggs, whose passionate study for thirty years has been the problem of church unity. Wishing to unite the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians as one forward step in the right direction, he, by still retaining his chair in a Presbyterian seminary, received ordination to the Anglican ministry. But looking upon this as merely a means to an end, he has not hesitated to declare that Rome is the goal of unity, and that no one but the Pope can unite the divided followers of Christ. . . .

“That Protestantism can never produce a single ruler or a council of rulers whom Christians of every nationality, tribe, and kindred will by common consent follow and obey, no one would be so ridiculous as to assert. The profoundest of Protestant thinkers is one with us in recognizing the successor of St. Peter alone as the hope of the reunited Christendom. Therefore, it behooves us Catholics, in season and out of season, to uphold and magnify the teaching and ruling authority of the vicar of Christ as the supreme test of loyalty and obedience to Christ himself.”

There is but one sequel to the religio-political movements now at work in Protestant America, and that is Romanism.

Boston, Mass.