THE CHURCH ICE CREAM AND OYSTER BUSINESS.
OUR New York Baptist brother, the Examiner, is usually very mild and conservative, but the church ice cream and oyster apostasy inflames his proper and phlegmatic spirit to these utterances: "But there is another use of the ice cream and oyster idea that is objectionable, and that deserves all the reprobation that can be poured upon it, all the shafts of wit and ridicule that can pierce it—that is, the debasement of this useful and innocent social adjunct to the level of a catch-penny, money-making scheme, to save people the effort and deprive them of the luxury of self-denying giving. This attempt to glorify God by filling man's stomach; this pretense of giving something for religion, when one is really only indulging one's own appetite; this substitution of vulgar and worldly methods of raising money for a Christian principle of giving as God has prospered each—what words can be too sharp-pointed to express the detestation and disgust for it that every Christian man ought to feel and cherish? Of all the travesties of religion, ice cream religion is the least worthy of respect and gentle treatment. Away with it from our churches."—Selected.