FALLING

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 10, 1879

Those who object to our saying that the popular churches of the present day are fallen, will certainly have to admit, in view of the following testimony, that some of them at least are falling. The Boston Sunday Herald of May 18, 1879, under the heading “Religious,” says:—

“That a tendency toward a complete rejection of the Christian religion has, says the Christian Leader, made great progress among the Unitarians, is patent to every one who reads the current literature of that people. Yet the confession—rather, the complaint—of Dr. W. G. Eliot in the Christian Register, as to the extent of Unitarian negations, does indeed surprise us. We know a case not far from Boston in which the pastor of a Unitarian parish had trouble with his people, who made against him the solitary specification that he preached ‘too much Jesus!’ We supposed that this extremity of deism was, however, rather exceptional. Dr. Eliot complains that it is anything but uncommon. He gives an instance in which a Unitarian parish has been organized in which all recognition of Christian doctrine is purposely omitted. And he fears that the Register itself is following hard after. His own conclusion seems to us a ‘very sensible one, that ‘Jesus Christ can do without’ Unitarians, but that Unitarians will find that they ‘cannot do without him.’”

If the real facts in the case were made to appear, we think it would be found that the Lord has already for some time been doing without them.