p. 8 | NAUSEATING PRAISE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 46.

“NAUSEATING PRAISE.”

ANY one who reads the papers will have been surprised by the amount of praise accorded the late head of the Roman church by Protestant preachers and editors. We have a nauseating abundance of it. And even our sturdy Protestant President Roosevelt, in violation of all former precedent, went out of his way to send an official letter of condolence, just as when a monarch dies, a thing never done before by our government.

Protestant ministers and editors and rulers may mean well, and the world may think they are showing the true Christian spirit when they thus praise the pope, and we may be set down as narrow and unchristian and bigoted because we do not join in the general chorus. But we do not thus conceive the spirit of Christ. We believe the Papacy is anti-Christian. It stands for falsehood, for exclusiveness, for assumption of arbitrary power. Its claims are blasphemous and sacrilegious. It opposes the open Bible and popular education. It shuts, or assumes to shut, the kingdom of heaven against all Protestants, as heretics and apostates from the faith.

We do not understand that the Spirit of Christ is a spirit of compromise with colossal, high-handed, organized wickedness, even when that wickedness is clothed in scarlet and purple, and puts on an appearance of piety. Much of our modern liberalism is a false sentimentalism that sacrifices truth and principle, for the sake of appearing to a mistaken and blinded world to have a Christian spirit. We hope Pope Leo is in heaven, not in purgatory even; but if he were in heaven, it would be because in spite of his professional mummeries and humbug, and ecclesiastical hypocrisies, he had, in sincerity of heart, turned in true repentance unto the Lord. But to-day all Roman Catholics are praying for the repose of Leo’s poor soul—a pitiable confession of colossal failure.—Evangelical Messenger, Cleveland, Ohio.