Manners Corrupted by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Oct 25, 1883

Manners Corrupted.

By Editor

A MAN who has tried to be prominent in California as a professed "Christian" preacher, has written a communication which is published in a professedly "Christian" paper, in which he speaks of the labors of Brother Briggs in Los Angeles County, and calls him "old Briggs." Now considering that Elder Briggs is a young man, and that the writer of that report is considerably older than he, and that Brother Briggs is a gentleman in his bearing and deportment, that does not speak well for the writer of the article or the paper which would publish it. The New Testament says that, "Evil communications corrupt good manners." We have no assurance that the writer of that communication or the editor who published it ever had good manners. But if they had they must have been accustomed to "evil

communications," for their manners are sadly corrupted.

We believe that a man may be a gentleman without being a Christian, for our idea is that "Christian" is a higher title than "gentleman." Therefore we think a man can hardly be a Christian who is not high enough in the scale of "good manners" to be a gentleman. But that, however, will depend somewhat on his intelligence and good sense.