Religious and Social Conditions
By Editor
ACCORDING to the figures of the Evening Tribune, the Catholics own four-fifths of the church property in Alameda County outside of Oakland. ONE after another have fallen victims to the death-charged wires of New York City, and still the courts issue injunctions against cutting them down. Human life is cheap in our great cities. THE Rome correspondent of the Catholic News says that "Leo XIII. loves America, and shows special attention for American visitors of all religions." And so does the wolf love the lamb, or the serpent the bird. Well did the prophet say, in speaking of Rome, "And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; . . . and by peace shall destroy many." Dan. 8:25. THE intensity of the joy and peace consequent on "abiding" in God can be approximated and partially measured by the intensity of the agony of separation felt by him who has once known Christ. There is no joy so deep, so satisfying, so full, so stable, as the joy based on abiding faith. Such joy is not mere pleasure; it is not the worldly joy which comes from folly, of which the wise man speaks: "Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom." Prov. 15:21. It does not always manifest itself on the surface. It is a deep, lasting, abiding gladness, which endures amid the sorest trials and greatest temptations. It is the joy and peace which come by believing God. ONE of the wickedest things, in result, at least, which has struck the present generation, is the religious novel, or romances wherein great Bible characters are made to play a prominent part. Some five or six are announced as being soon ready. Among prominent heroes in these works of fiction, there figure Joshua, David, Paul, and John. The simplicity and pathos of the Bible story cannot be improved upon. It meets the exact needs for which God designed it as it is; but to throw around each of these characters a fictitious glamor and unreal scenes, told in all the fascination of language, perverts the Bible record as nothing else will, and renders the Bible unreal and its simple truths distasteful forever after. Some of those who write may not design to do this, but that does not affect the result, which will be akin to that of tempting the appetites of children from simple, healthful food by unwholesome and spicy viands, till the simple food becomes distasteful, and the rich and spicy food breeds incurable disease. To lead men away—and by such delusive means—from the simple truth of God, is a wicked thing. THE following from the editorial page of the Catholic News (John Gilmary Shea, LL.D., editor) is most emphatically true of all seventh-day Christians. Will Protestants please take note? "Among Protestant denominations the Seventh-day Baptists are logical. They find nothing in Scripture to justify observing Sunday as the Sabbath, and rejecting, with other sects, the authority of the Catholic Church; and, professing to believe nothing not expressly laid down in Scripture, they reject Sunday." IF there was ever a time in the history of the work of God when loyalty to his cause was demanded, that time is now. Professedly Christian ministers and journals are either apologizing for the Bible or utterly repudiating some of its mightiest and most essential truths. The Bible needs no apology. It will, if rightly divided, defend itself. What is wanted is loyalty to that word, unswerving loyalty. The great majority of instances where men fail to stand for God, are not because God's word has proved a failure, but because of the ridicule and reproach of men. True loyalty will remain steadfast though all oppose. The real test of loyalty is amid opposition. EVERYTHING points to a time when there will be some kind of a disunited union among the sects. All this is to some extent necessary to the making of the image. This compromising bodes no good to the future. The following, from a recent issue of the New York Independent, points out how far that most conservative body, the Protestant Episcopal Church, can go:— "Dr. Gray, of The Interior, writes an account of a recent conference in this city between committees of the Presbyterian and Protestant Episcopal Churches on the subject of union. He says the 'historic episcopate' was the 'only striking point' between the committees. He writes:— "I asked one and another of the 'bishops and other clergy' what the goal was to which they were working—if it were organic unity. They said, Certainly. 'But,' I asked, 'how can you approach us, with any possible prospect of acceptance, with an assumption of ecclesiastical superiority over us?' There was no such feeling on their part, they said. But I said there was the external fact, whatever may be the subjective feeling. They said that having found a basis for further negotiations, there would be no trouble about ministerial recognition and reciprocity. I talked to a number of them, separately, and found that they all regarded the question of the ordination of our ministry as involving no difficulty."