CARNAL MONEY-GETTING DEVICES.
A BROTHER writes thus: “I wish that you would again have something published on church festivals. During the last year there have been three or four festivals held in churches on this charge, to pay for organs etc.; and our minister has, I believe, attended each one of them, even leaving his protracted meeting to go to them.” “I understand that they put forward two of the young ladies present, and voted to give the nicest cake to the young lady who was declared the handsomest. That question is decided in favor of the one who gets the most votes. The votes are sold for a certain sum each, and every one has the right to vote as often as he pleases, or as he has money to buy votes with. In that way a large amount is often raised. For my part, I never could see any religion in these acts, and oppose them as best I can. But the greater part of the church members here attend them. This, however, is not to be wondered at, when ministers countenance such doings by attending them.” The wickedness of our modern church entertainments of the character mentioned by our brother, has become popularized, and the evil has grown almost into a nuisance, and, in some cases, into an outrage against common decency. We read not long ago of a similar church entertainment in which a lady permitted herself to be publicly kissed by all present who would pay a certain fee for the privilege! So the story was told in one of our exchanges. We felt no surprise in reading it. The whole business, from beginning to end, in our humble estimation, is of the world, worldly, of the flesh, fleshly, and of the devil, devilish. Good people in the churches (by good people we mean those who are truly spiritual, or sanctified), being always largely in the minority, cannot so successfully withstand the evil as to prevent it. It is simply the outshowing of the worldly and carnal spirit that is not only in the church, but predominant therein. Our brother is right in objecting to and resisting the sin against which he writes. But perhaps all he can do or say will not have the effect to convict his church or his preacher of this sin, or put an end to the abomination. And the same is true, generally, throughout Christendom; for the evil is as wide as Christendom. We are in the dispensation of sham and shoddy (sham and shoddy religion), and the high carnival of carnality will go on. Christians who are such in deed and in truth, in conscience and in life, must and will protest against such wickedness in the church. And perhaps this is all they can do—only to wash their hands of all stain of complicity, and, with tears and prayers, plead with their wayward pastors and churches, and with God for the discontinuance of the evil.—Banner of Holiness.