BABYLON HAS FALLEN by A. O. Burrill

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 25, 1877

BABYLON HAS FALLEN.

By A. O. Burrill

This truth has been fully illustrated since we have been in Howard City, Mich. A few evenings ago, while speaking in the tent, a boy went through the streets ringing a bell and crying, “Fresh, warm oyster supper, only twenty-five cents; for the benefit of the M. E. Church.” We did not think any of the other churches would stoop to such things; but, to our surprise, the Baptists, only a few evenings later, if anything surpassed the Methodists; for they went to the deacon’s house (and with the rest, several reverends), and after the oyster supper engaged in the amusements of the occasion, playing “needle-eye,” &c.; and while I am writing, although it is nearly 11 P. M., we can distinctly hear the voice of mirth from another church, where they are having another oyster supper.

Who ever heard, during all the preaching of the apostles, of a boy’s ringing a bell in the streets of any city or village where they had founded churches, saying, “Fresh, warm oyster supper, only twenty-five cents; for the benefit of Paul’s” or “Peter’s church”? Truly, we have reached the time when there are those “having a form of godliness,” who are “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,” and is it any wonder that the apostle should say, “From such turn away.”

A. O. BURRILL.