Article May 2, 1901 Issue

Religious Items

The (Baptist) Standard raises its voice in protest against the continuance of the wars which the United States and Great Britain are carrying on. It says: "Tolstoi declares the root of the evil' of war and all other abuses of modern society to be the perversion of Christ's teaching by the Church. Perhaps he is not so far wrong as some people imagine. At any rate, the sanction given by organized Christianity to warfare—not merely a toleration but often a glorification is a most singular example of pagan survival in a religion of peace. But we believe that there are thousands of Christians who protest with their whole hearts against the exaltation of force and violence, and who will sooner or later make their voices heard in other ways than the passing of deprecatory resolutions. The people of Great Britain are facing the same question, and their religious papers echo with the heated controversies of peace advocates and the defenders of a war for the vindication of national pride and the subjugation of territory. In both England and America the stage of calling names is about over, and that substitute for argument which consists in labeling men 'patriots' or 'traitors' is already discredited. There is a profound desire for peace, and the prospect of an early termination of pending wars is welcomed with relief."

"The Apostleship of Love," is the title of a leading editorial in the (Swedenborgian)New-Church Messenger, in which it says: "If any man has become free of the pride of life and the pride of intelligence, and if there has been imparted to him the desire, the really earnest love to do the Lord's will, the promise is that the truth of his life shall not be in any doubt. It shall not stand as a mere probability or hope. man shall know. He shall know, not because he has strong, carefully-thought-out arguments, nor yet because he has mastered the question of 'evidences,' but because his will stands in such a friendly relation to this perfect will that he has given it his obedience: and by doing what it teaches he has gained an experience of the blessedness and divine character of the truth which he now feels with all the power of certainty. The apostle John appears to be a shining illustration of that kind of discipleship; and John, we are told, was 'that disciple whom Jesus loved,' from which we infer that in the Lord's sight the apostleship which is so formed, is of all others the surest and the most blessed."

At the election of the Bishop at St. Paul's, last week, the quaintest of the various formalities was the following proclamation of the verger:—

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