Article October 17, 1903 Issue

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We do not believe that in themselves religious symbols have the slightest spiritual efficacy. All their virtue for the souls of men resides in the truths which symbols represent, and the personal relationship of men to the truths. A symbol is a description of a spiritual fact in a material form or an outward act. The broad distinction between the evangelical and the sacerdotal view of Christianity is that those who hold the sacerdotal or sacramentarian theory maintain that actual spiritual virtue is resident in material things,—in the bread and wine of the Lord's supper, or in the act of Christian baptism,—so that they believe that spiritual life is imparted. . . . "Now I know," said Micah, "that the Lord will do me good seeing I have a Levite to my priest." Micah thought that if he had the symbols he had the reality, just as multitudes of people think that if they are baptized and receive the Communion, somehow they stand in a different relationship to God, as if there were some magical efficacy in the sacraments that made the means of grace without reference to the disposition of the recipient.

The Watchman.

The interest in the union of religious denominations is constantly increasing and we note steps taken in that direction every week. Committees of the Presbyterian Church North and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church met to select a basis of union in St. Louis, September 29. Presbyterians and United Presbyterians, who have each a theological seminary at Alleghany, Pa., are talking of consolidation. The subject of union is becoming acute among the dozen or more sects of the Lutherans. The Primitive Methodists are discussing the subject of union with Methodist Protestants, while the latter are considering union with Congregationalists. More and more as the reasons urged for separate organizations shrink to their true proportions, the union of religious sects similar in creed and polity and one in spirit will be imperatively demanded.

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