A Profession Instead of a Vow
A SMALL number of students in Denmark having, as we see by the Blad, been induced by Mr. Wilder to enter into the Students’ Movement, exception has been taken to the solemn promise to go abroad. The students have therefore modified it into a profession of a present intention to go abroad, not to be lightly given up, but, in view of possible developments of duty, not binding with so much of the stringency of a vow. It is worthy of note that even in the Catholic Church some of the later orders, especially the Oratorians and the Paulists, substitute such a profession of present intention for a vow, so that if strong reasons should appear for leaving the order, the conscience may not be entangled by an irrevocable engagement. As an eminent Roman Catholic clergyman has said to the present writer, “Vows hardly agree with a free age and a free land.” The present disposition to reintroduce them among Protestants is of dubious import. “Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”—Missionary Review.