A Good Sentiment.—While advocating "The Twentieth Century Forward Movement" in mission work, organized by the last Methodist Episcopal General Conference, Dr. E. R. Dille, of this city, said:—
"We want something in our religious world which shall not be made and operated by machinery. Whenever the power of the church begins to decline, its machinery becomes stronger, until finally its whole moral sentiment is swallowed up by the very oppression which it has created. How much machinery did they have in early days? Jesus did not order His disciples to manufacture a religious machine, but He ordered them to go up into the upper room, and there gain personal power and the Spirit of the Lord. We do not want machinery in the church, for there is nothing more appreciated by the devil than that. We will not go at this work with a big parade and celebration. We shall go about it quietly and like a soldier who is on duty and who is always ready for orders. We shall do personal work for it; it is that which counts. We are pledged for the saving of souls, and it is by personal work that we are to accomplish our aim."
When the regular biennial Sunday-law agitation in California comes on next winter, we hope the doctor and his clerical co-laborers, in urging such "machinery," will remember what he has said here about the evidence of the decline of church power.