CLERICAL INFIDELITY by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 39.

CLERICAL INFIDELITY.

By Editor

FROM a letter from Prof. F. S. Hafford, a few days since, we present our readers with the following:—

A few days ago I heard a prominent city clergyman (not of this city) make some remarkable statements before his congregation at their Thursday evening prayer meeting. The one appointed to lead the meeting chose the subject of faith, and read the eleventh of Hebrews. He soon opened the meeting for testimony and called on the pastor to start the remarks.

The minister said in substance that when one began to talk about faith he was treading on quicksand. That there was not a minister in the city that dared to preach Bible faith! That he had tried to find a definition or reason for Paul's preaching it and he had concluded that "courage" was what he usually meant. That we never heard of Christ preaching faith! He did not need to, but Paul needed it to keep up his courage, implying that if he followed his reason he would go astray. That belief in Bible faith would revolutionize the life of the believer, and those who professed it would not be building fine houses and surrounding themselves with servants and all comforts and luxuries they could invent or imagine and then go to church once or twice a week and say they enjoyed religion. Christ did not live that way!

The foregoing statements created the sensation they were intended to produce. I think there were a hundred people present, and quite a number were prompt to argue the subject. The pastor, however, kept still till the storm was over and the meeting was ready to close, when he remarked pleasantly that he was like a man who preached a sermon on Sunday for which he had to spend the rest of the week apologizing; that he would call around and see them in their homes before the next meeting.

In the same city the ministers' union after due deliberation have agreed to reject parts of the Bible as uninspired. I did not hear just what parts were discarded, but learned that the books of Moses, Job, and Daniel were among them. These were not to be quoted as authority or texts used to preach from. Many others were also in the proscribed list.