SOME SOUND REASONS CITED.
By T. E. Bowen
JESUS CHRIST brought into the world principles so wise and pure that the world could not fully appreciate them. They were and still are as foreign to the spirit and ways of the world as heaven is higher than earth. They never can be united. In name the church may think to possess them while being actuated by worldly policies; and some in the world may honestly believe they belong to Christ, but He does not recognize them as His. If the church would remain faithful to these exalted truths, and let alone the worldly idea of civil force, she would not have so much to complain about. If the Lord’s instruction, which says, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” were really practised by the church, there would never appear in the papers of the world such pertinent remarks as the following:— THE DECLINE IN CHURCH ATTENDANCE.—While the ministers are discussing the reasons for the diminishing attendance at church services, it may be worth while to call their attention to the recent revival in Baltimore of an obsolete and neglected blue law of 177 years ago, and the raid last Sunday on the ordinary and necessary and harmless Sunday traffic. Is it to be expected that honest and reputable citizens who are made the victims of such a raid, and who are held up as law-breakers and malefactors under it, will show much enthusiasm for the mistaken zeal which prompted it? The foregoing is an editorial from a journal published in the year 1900. People who go to church desire to hear from men in whom they can have confidence as Christians. If they do not have such confidence, and do not hear the Word when they do go to church, they will prefer to stay at home and enjoy their favorite reading rather than listen to some tirade or political speech. People love the taste of the fruit from the Spirit of God, altho they may not understand its Source, or how it is produced upon the human branch. The spirit of Sunday laws is far from being that Spirit of love which “worketh no ill to his neighbor.” A tree is known by its fruit.
T. E. BOWEN.