Romanism by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 15, 1875

Romanism.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

REV. DR. J. LEIGHTON WILSON, Secretary of the Southern Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, has recently returned from an official visit to the missions of that Board in South America. Of Brazil he says :—

“Romanism has had the field entirely to herself for the last three centuries, but, by the common verdict of this present generation has been pronounced utterly wanting; not only has it failed to improve, to purify and elevate society, but it has plunged society into the very depths of ignorance and degradation. The great mass of the people, especially the more intelligent classes, admit the fact, but they are ready to cast from them a religion that only blinds and corrupts. The priesthood are denounced as the most ignorant and corrupt of mankind, and they have not even the self-respect to vindicate themselves; they are sometimes publicly flagellated in the streets. The bishops of Para and Pernambuco have been sentenced to four year's imprisonment in Rio Janeiro, and they are undergoing the penalty without any manifest disapproval on the part of the people. Since I have been in the country an imperial edict has been issued expelling the Jesuits, a considerable number of whom have already been deported. The newspapers expose the villanies and immoralities of the padres with unrelenting severity, and hundreds of thousands of families, while professing to be good Roman Catholics, never go to the confessional, nor attend any of their religious services.

“All the convents and monastaries in the country have been confiscated by the government, and with a few exceptions, they have passed out of the hands of the Romish party. The question of the dissolution of church and State will be agitated in the next parliament, and if the act is not then passed, it will be in the course of two or three years, and this will knock the last prop from the already tottering superstructure. Many thousand copies of the Sacred Scriptures have been disseminated among the people, and there is much reason to believe that they are extensively read. Constantly persons are coming to the different missionary stations to be instructed more fully in relation to the difference between the religion of the Bible and the Roman Catholic church. I have seen many persons of this class myself since I have been in this country, and I am painfully impressed with the fact, that the number of laborers in the field is utterly inadequate for the occasion.”

D. M. C.

“Religion of the Day.”

THE religion of the day is an easy-minded religion; a religion without conflict and wrestling, without self-denial and sacrifice; a religion which knows nothing of the pangs of the new birth as its commencement, and nothing of the desperate struggle with the devil, day by day, making us long for resurrection-deliverance, for the binding of the Adversary, and for the Lord's arrival. It is a second-rate religion—a religion in which there is no largeness, no grandeur, no potency, no noble-mindedness, no elevation, no self-devotedness, no all-constraining love. It is a hollow religion, with a fair exterior, but an aching heart—a heart unsatisfied, a soul not at rest, a conscience not at peace with God; a religion marked, it may be, by activity and excitement, but betraying all the while the consciousness of a wound hidden and unhealed within, and hence unable to animate to lofty doings, or supply the strength needed for such doings. It is a feeble religion, lacking the sinews and bones of hardier times—very different from the indomitable, much-enduring, storm-braving religion, not merely of apostolic days, but even of the Reformation. It is an uncertain religion; that is to say, it is not rooted in certainty; it is not the outflowing of a soul assured of pardon, and rejoicing in filial relationship between itself and God. Hence, there is no liberty of service, for the question of personal acceptance is still an unsettled thing; there is a working for pardon, but not from pardon. Hence all is bondage, heaviness, irksomeness. There is a speaking for God, but it is with a faltering tongue; there is a laboring for God, but it is with fettered hands; there is a moving in the way of his commandments, but it is with a heavy drag upon our limbs. Hence the inefficient, uninfluential character of our religion. It does not tell on others; for it has not fully told upon ourselves. It falls short of its mark, for the arm that drew the bow was paralyzed.—H. Bonar.