Good Principles Wherever Applicable
(From the "Word and Way") WE easily say that God raised up David, Joseph, Daniel, Paul, to meet specific demands. What kind of men are needed now? Do we need some transient religious politician who can make good with a multiplicity of denominations? When Ahab married outside of his own denomination, his pastor, Elijah, had trouble. When Herod married his brother Philip's wife, John the Baptist, the preacher, confronted trouble and death. It is among the possibilities for a Baptist Church to become matrimonially mixed, if not matrimonially muddled. We are not naming any one church. We are saying that a Baptist Church that is matrimonially mixed with Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Campbellonians, and so forth, presents a tasking, taxing problem to an honest Baptist pastor. The problem can be in a board of missions — a State board, a foreign board, a district board. Does God raise up men now — men who can speak the truth in love anywhere? Perhaps the leading man — leading in gifts, leading in general influence, leading in piety, leading in actual devotion to God — is in his family mixed matrimonially with other denominations; and the pastor, or the corresponding secretary, or the district missionary, or the foreign missionary, is intimidated when he wants to quote the whole commission or preach the whole Gospel. A Baptist missionary in China has a wife who is not a Baptist. It would be an immense help to our Baptist work throughout the world if we could quit forming matrimonial alliances that put us into embarrassing and compromising positions in relation to our Baptist faith and work.