BAPTIST USAGE | AdventAI

S. D. A. Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 26, 1881

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 20

BAPTIST USAGE.

The following item we find in a daily paper:—

“The Boston Watchman, (Baptist) says of a young Baptist clergyman recently tried for murder: ‘That queer and uncertain thing, Baptist usage, declares that as long as he is not deposed by the church of which he is a member, he is a Baptist minister in good ecclesiastical standing. No Council can be called by any other Baptist church, nor by all the Baptist churches in the land. No Association has any disciplinary power in the case. As far as Baptist usage goes, he is as much a Baptist minister as Dr. Abbott of Oakland, or Dr. Frost of Sacramento. But the blood is on his hands. The crime is on his soul, and not all the waters of the Pacific ocean can wash it out.’”

This sounds almost like irony on the part of the Watchman. But we do not know but it is strictly true: that that is all square as Baptist usage. But whether it is or not, we know it is calculated to bring a deep reproach on the name of Christianity and the cause of Christ as represented by that church.

We distinctly remember that when we were in the Baptist church, the Association with which we stood connected assumed the right to adopt rules requiring that any church, in order to be represented therein, must be sound and consistent in faith and practice. How far “Baptist usage” has degenerated since that time we do not know. We fear that the barriers are broken down in various ways in most of the great churches of this age, and that a lack of spirituality and pure devotion is the result. How would the Methodist practice of to-day compare with the Discipline of the last century?