Danger of Religious Anarchy.
REV. L. H. PIERCE, pastor of one of the Baltimore M. E. Churches, said in a recent sermon:-- "We live in the last days, here meant—a period extending from the ascension of Christ to his coming again. How near we may be to the close of human history no man knows. Certain it is that the state of the world at this hour is one of peril. There is hardly a royal head in Europe that rests on an easy pillow, scarcely a parliament or a national assembly that is not menaced by some dangerous political factor. The church is suffering terrible loss along some of her lines. One peril of the hour is the appeal to dynamite; in other words, to terrorizing agencies as a means of reform. With the advance of the principles of civil and religious liberty and the spread of knowledge, the class who are discontented with existing forms and with the constitution of society have greatly multiplied. Within this class is a dynamite faction—a class of desperate agitators, of violent plotters—who have despaired of reform by constitutional measures, or believe that terrorism is both just, and potent. In Russia it is nihilism; in Germany, socialism; in France, communism; in Spain, blackhandism; in England, it is specifically dynamitism. Our people are too busy in developing the amazing resources of the land and building great institutions to be greatly discontented, but our peril is great—made great by the very things of which we boast, such as freedom of speech and the marvelous immigration. What complications are almost sure to rise! But in this argument it is coercion as an argument that is to engage our thoughts. In all leading constitutional governments of this day, when liberty is in the very air of the world, appeal to reason, the agitation of thought, the advocacy of right and the protest of good men, are a thousand times more potent than appeal to force. In the realm of religion, force is most dangerous. No man, or class of men, nor church, has a right to dictate, under pains and penalties, what any man shall believe or do. We blush for the holy name of religion when we think of the horrid engines of cruelty which have been invoked in support of the edicts of the Church. There is danger of a baneful reaction against the imperialism of force in the church. We are in danger of religious anarchy."