NEW FIELDS FOR CLERGYMEN.
Much was said in condemnation when an ex-United States senator consented to write his impression of a prize-fight for a prominent western paper. The latest sensation in this line is the securing of a clergyman for this purpose. A late prize-fight in New York was reported through a sensational paper of that city by John L. Sullivan and the Rev. R. H. P. Mills, pastor of Ravenswood Presbyterian Church, and their pictures appear side by side in the paper. This clergyman excuses himself on the plea of a “chance to speak boldly and write a protest to so great a multitude of readers,” and he had gone to see that he “might speak with authority, and, with God’s help, would stay it out.” And he did stay it out, and reported the fight. From this logic we would conclude that to speak boldly, to speak with authority, and protest against evil, one must know and see the evil. He must visit the theater, the prize-fight, the gambling-hell, the houses where virtue is sold and shame is not known. There was One who lived upon this earth who spake “as never man spake, who taught as one having authority and not as the scribes.” And what He taught was not what He learned at the prize-ring, but what He learned from God. John 3: 11. And when He sent forth His ministers, it was with the one sole mission of preaching the Gospel. And here is another field. The New York Journal of December 17 reports that— “The Rev. E. L. Stoddard, rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Jersey City, proposes to start a dancing class in connection with the church, and says that he will be prepared to give instruction at the rate of six cents a lesson. The rector further adds that he has already secured twenty pupils, and that when the list reaches forty, the class will be opened.” It is a cause for weeping and mourning by every true Christian, and no wonder the world is disgusted at religion and hardened in heart when it beholds such travesties. And yet “the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His, and, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” Such things as noted above are becoming more and more frequent, and less and less abhorrent. But they do not destroy God’s Word, nor should they destroy confidence in it, for they are the fulfilment of just what God said should come in the last days. Matt. 24: 12–14; 2 Tim. 3: 1–5. While they are a cause of grief to every loyal Christian heart, they are signs of our Master’s coming to usher in the reign of the good, the pure, the true.