Newspapers / North Carolina Christian Advocate … / Aug. 15, 1918, edition 1 / Page 2
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RALEIGH CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. Thursday, August ,!)ls EDITORIAL :0 Page Two Notes and Comments IJy Proclamation of fiovcmoi IJiokett next Monday, August 1.9th, has been set apart as a day to minister to the relief of the suffering Jews. His proc amation will be found upon an other page ot the Advocate, and we wish to take the occasion here to com mend it to the favor able consideration of our pastors and people. Ji is the Christian, the patriot. c, the iiumane thing to do. n i v Will Bishop liai-'.ingtoii Tako the Mint? Our eye fell upon the following announcement the other day: "Bishop Mouzon has announced that at the coming sessions over wh'.ch he has charge he 'will inquire of each preacher if his official members take the Church paper.' " There is no question but that the importance of the Church paper ought to get more emphasis at our annual gatherings than it does. There are many faithful pastors who give the Church paper the attention that is due U; but there are many others who never seem to think that it is worth their while to give it any consideration. We be.ieve there is no cause to which a pastor can give a due portion of his time to better profit to the Church and to himself than to the Church paper. n n n The Progress of the War continues to go in favor of the Entente Allies. Just at this writing there has been a temporary lull in the battle, but the most desperate fighting of the German forces has not been able to turn the tide against them. Since the Allies took the initiative away from the Central Powers, they have captured some 75,000 prisoners, incuiding about 1,000 officers of various ranks, and about 700 guns with an immense amount of ammunition. The progress up to this time has been most satisfac tory to the Allies, and all of our war activities at home and abroad are going forward with re newed zeal and hope. Of course, no one thinks that the war is nearly won yet, and no relaxa tion of effort is for one moment to be thought of. At the same time there is cause for rejoicing to mingle with our giief over our herozs who have fallen on the fields of France. 11 u u President Wilson on Mob Violence. When President Witeon undertake to say a thing, it is always stated pointedly and with force; but he has never said anything truer than the follow- . uAiiaa; We proudly claim to be the champions of dem ocracy, if we really are, in deed and in truth, let us see to it that we do not discredit our own. I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of a mob or gives it any sort of countenance is no true son of this great Democracy, but its betrayer, and does more to discredit her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law and of right than the words of her statesmen or the sacrifices of her heroic boys in the trenches can do to make suffering peoples believe her to be their saviour. How shall we commend democracy to the acceptance of other people-;, if we disgrace our own by proving that it is, after all, no protection to the weak? Every mob contributes to German lies about the United States what her most, gifted liars can not im prove upon by the way of calumny. They can at least say that such things can not happen in Germany except in times of revolution, when law is swept away! I therefore very earnestly and solemnly beg that the governors of all the States, the law offi cers of every community, and, above all, the men and women of every community in the United States, all who ievere America and wish to keep her name without stain or reproach, will co-operate not passively merely, but actively and watchfully lo make an end of this disgrace ful evil. It can not live where the community does not countenance it. The Soldiers and Religion We are reading some right remarkable state ments written by men who claim to know the soldier as he is in the trenches and the Church as it is at home. We are admonished that there must be some radical changes in the Church, if it is to appeal to the soldier when he returns from the battlefields of France. We are told that he has discovered a new reality, and that he has suddenly become endowed with a new wisdom concerning spiritual things. We are warned that the Church must "clean up," if she expects the returning soldier to be influenced by it. We are not unmindful of tremendous religious changes that this great war is likely to effect. If it should result in many Church members "cleaning up" in their habits of life, it would be a great point gained. The pulpit has been say ing this from our boyhood days we do not know how much longer. We have observed ob served it with pain that there is a wide gap between the preaching of the pulpit and the prac tices of the pew. It is a gap, too, which the pew does not seem to have realized. They will compliment the preacher for his utterance. They will give hearty assent to the truth of it and claim to have enjoyed immensely the hearing of it. But forthwith they proceed to live as if ex actly the opposite were true. We have often wondered if they were conscious that they were doing it. Is the ministry responsible for this? Those preachers whom it has been our privilege to hear have in the main been faithful in the declaration of the truth, and they are earnest and consecrated men. Many of them have gone on with a broken heart, feeling that there was a wide chasm between the gospel they preached and the lives that professing Christians lived; but they have been told that they must not be pessimistic, and by this the minister was thought sufficiently answered if he gave utterance to the conviction that was breaking his heart. If this war will bring the average man up to the recog nition of what the gospel really means for man, then it will not have been fought in vain. But is this going to be the fact? We are very fearful thaat it is not, and it is quite possible that the last end may be worse than the first. We hope it will not be. We have been moved to write this editorial by a communication that ap peared in the Greensboro Daily News of August 4th. It is copywrighted by the "Ellis Service," and was written by "The Religious Rambler," otherwise known as Wm. T. Ellis. He wrote in the role of a reporter. He was stating condi tions in the camps as he saw those conditions, and not passing judgment so much upon the Tightness and the wrongness of the things which he reported. So be it. We need certainly to know the facts; and, if the facts are as con fused as his statement of them well, there is something for somebody to do. After stating that "the fate of the social or der" depends upon "the people back home learn ing before it is too late the lessons which the war has taught the soldiers", he proceeds to affii irm: "Churches, especially, should heed monitions of the men back from the front This war has been a profound spiritual experience for ihe soldiers." And then, as if to prevent mak ing a false impression, he continues: "it has not conformed them to the conventional stand . ards of Church membership back home. Thev are less than ever like the commonly cuneeivei type of 'religious' man. Anybody wh0 thinks the war has been a sort of sublimated univ Sunday campaign to 'convert the troops. js due to be sorely shocked when the boys eom back. Of piosity and churchianity ther.j js iess among the fighting men than ever before." We have no sort of defense for "the conventional standards of Church membership" that in largi measure prevail among us today. There are en tirely too many who assume those solemn vows without any inner experience conforming to them. They arrive at the age .when it is though proper for them to come into the Church, anil it is done as a pure formality. This is one oi the perils of our Church life. But a "profound spiritual experience" that sneers at "conver sion" is not going to improve the situation. Mr. Ellis emphasizes the "fraternity" of the men in the trenches, and no one wid question that fraternity is a good thing; but here is hu description of it: "Nobody except the newcomer remarks the fact that within the one Y. M. ('. A. hut at different hours of the same day there are held Catholic masses, Jewish S3rvic.es,. Protec tant meetings and Christian Science gatherings. 'Sure! Why not?' comments the soldier." There Ms perhaps no reason why a Y. M. C. A. hut should not be used as indicated, but the Y. M. C. A. has been supposed to stand for Christ as the world's Redeemer, while the Jewish service will repudiate Him as an unworthy importer. I ther.3 no real difference between these things'.' is it only a mere matter of form, a varying whim of the human fancy, that separates Christianity from Judaism? And is the hocus-pocus of Chris tian Science of equal value with either of them' Is that what is meant by "fraternalism" in the camps? Is that the view of things to which Dr. Ellis would have the Christian Church to come? From such universal slaughter oi religious convictions as this, Dr. Ellis turns to the ques tion of denominationalism. He seems to thin that the differences between Presbyterians. Methodists, Baptists, etc., are of the same typ-1 as the differences between Catholics and Protes tants, between Jews' and Christians, or between the Christian Church and Christian s-Vience. It is this wholesale disregard of religious trutn that has caused us to raise a warning voice be fore. Jesus Christ says: "The truth shall make you free." He prays the Father: "Purify lhenl through thy truth; Thy word is truth." He affirms that "no man cometh unto the Father but by Me"; but the drift of Dr. Kliis' writing would indicate that any sort of a sentinienta life. fraternity will pass them up to everlasting with equal assurance. The differences of view that separate good men into different len0 tional camps may be ignored without imperii the salvation of the Poul, but it. is I erilousi (,- ihfV belong' treat all questions of doctrine as H ed to the same class. bit is a We cannot follow Dr. Kills in ol 1,1 felrm rP H-i fnlon ovwl iYta frnn bllt h''ie - iwii Ui lilt AtfllOCJ tlilll l.' I.' ' Of of information that seems to carry bu8 chaplain's duty: "I know a Knights of Co,u"tion chaplain who was in the thick of a heavy H p he sow for three days continuously, and win e times gave the last rites of the Church, he
North Carolina Christian Advocate (Greensboro, N.C.)
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Aug. 15, 1918, edition 1
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