To Which Class Do We Belong? by Mrs. Clara F. Coursen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 27, 1915

To Which Class Do We Belong?

By Mrs. Clara F. Coursen

MRS. CLARA F. COURSEN

FROM a historical sketch of the Vaudois, I quote the following:—

“A Catholic army on the plains of Piedmont, made up of adventurers without discipline, continued to advance, visiting its outrages upon Catholics and Protestants alike. The Catholic inhabitants of the country, knowing the rigid purity of morals of the Vaudois, and desiring to secure the maidenly chastity of their daughters from the brutal grossness of that lawless soldiery, did not hesitate to confide the honor of their families to the virtuous fidelity of the Vaudois cottagers. Accordingly, many of them took their trembling wives and children, and left them among these heroic mountaineers. It was surely wonderful to see these young Catholic women committed with confidence to the care of Protestants at the moment when Catholicism was marching in armies against them. But the confidence was not misplaced. . . . Incredible as the fact may appear, all historians of the time, Gillis, Richard, DeThou and Crespin, make mention of it; and it affords the most beautiful testimony which their adversaries could have rendered to the virtue and generosity of the Vaudois.”

Does your life and mine bear the same beautiful testimony? World conditions today are fast forming society into similar classes. A Methodist bishop of Savannah, Ga., describes it thus: “Rome in her darkest days never tolerated such systems of iniquity as are prevalent in our social circles today.” God's peculiar people should be modest in dress, unassuming in manner, and primitive in worship, a constant rebuke to the lawless and corrupt society of the present.

To which class do we belong? Do we represent a strong tower, into which the righteous run and are safe?

*Barnet, Vt.