Religious Miscellany by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1875

Religious Miscellany.

By Editor

—The Baptists have a church in Paris, with an average attendance of 120 members.

—Mr. Muller’s well-known Orphan Asylum at Bristol, England, containing 2,000 children has been visited by an alarming outbreak of typhoid fever, affecting about 500 of the little ones; but out of this number only twelve had died to Aug. 12, and the majority were convalescent.

—A correspondent of the Liberal Christian explains why Western Unitarian societies give so little money for denominational objects. The explanation seems to be that there are so few Unitarians in them:

“The members, some of them, are Spiritualists, some Universalists, rarely a genuine Unitarian. Many call themselves infidels; more are simply dissatisfied with Orthodoxy. Emancipated from the thraldom of Orthodox creeds, they are impatient of Orthodox methods, and rebel against the contribution-box or levies for missionary work. They tell you plainly, when you ask them for funds to be used in propagandism: We have no sympathy with the work, and will not give a cent.”

—The recent examination at the Congregational Theological Seminary in Bangor, Me., took a new departure in ecclesiastical history, as the following questions and answers give full proof:—

“What was the apostolic and primitive mode of baptism?” “By immersion.” “Under what circumstances only was sprinkling allowed?” “In cases of sickness.” “When was the practice of sprinkling or pouring generally introduced?” “Not until the fourteenth century.” “For what reason was the change adopted?” “As Christianity advanced and spread in colder latitudes the severity of the climate made it impracticable to immerse.”

Let us see if this is so: we find that sprinkling first came into common use in warm climates, notably in Africa, while hundreds of the ancient Britons were immersed in the rivers, but seldom if ever sprinkled. To-day, sprinkling is most common in the mild latitude of Italy, and wherever else the pope has sway. And immersion is most common in cold countries—such as Russia, Siberia not excepted. The whole Greek church, reaching farthest of any into the frozen zone, practicing immersion with infants as well as adults, disproves the supposition that the coldness of a climate may have caused the rejection of the Lord’s command for baptism, and the substitution of man’s command for rantism.

—On church music the Examiner and Chronicle says: “The music of our churches is the most difficult of all things to manage. Quartette choirs, chorus choirs, choirs made up of professionals, choirs made up of volunteers, seem to be equally unsatisfactory. It does not strike people pleasantly to know that the man who leads the congregation in the praises of God on Sunday morning with his cornet-bugle, leads a band on Sunday night at a Sabbath-breaking entertainment. ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’ does not sound well from the lips of a man who sang so late at a theater on Saturday night that he had not time to wash the burnt-cork off of his face.” Why not dismiss the choir, select a good leader from the congregation, and let each worshiper use his own voice, instead of hiring some one to praise God for him.

—What are professed Christians thinking about when they appoint camp-meetings for the service of God, then advertise croquet and other pleasure-grounds as an attraction of the place, and when assembled, spend a small portion of the time in listening to sermons on entire sinlessness, and the greater portion of it in visiting and feasting. Of the great Eastern sea-side camp-meetings an exchange says: “It has been observed that the number of professed conversions has been very small. Formerly the aim was to convert sinners. Now the aim seems to be to convert saints. The drift of the preaching and the exhortation, with the labor, has been expended to bring professing Christians into a particular state of mind called sanctification. And there seems to have been more joy in these camps over the winning of the ninety-and-nine who needed no repentance, rather than over the sinners who had never professed Christ. Nearly everywhere the persons professing entire holiness have been in the ascendant. In connection with these labors, the inroad of worldliness and the rise of the tide of pleasure, have well-nigh choked the word of grace.”