And yet there is even worse than Rome and all its idolatrous practices, for many within her borders doubtless have a saving faith in Christ and His precious blood. But what shall we say of much that is now sweeping over Protestantism. “Campbellism,” which voices the theological infidelity that has grown apace during the last thirty or forty years, has eaten its way into multitudes of congregations in cities and even villages. A friend has just communicated the following: A Baptist congregation in the village― of was without a pastor, and invited a layman to undertake the preaching for a time. The layman was an earnest Christian who preached plainly man’s lost condition, his need of conversion, and the atoning sacrifice of the cross, the Lord’s coming, &c. &c. After a short while “the three deacons met the preacher to inform him they could not accept his preaching. He replied that he could not vary his message; it was what God said. Thereupon the senior deacon asked, Which God? There are four in the Bible―one they carried about in a box, which, upon being opened, it was found did not exist― (there was much more far too blasphemous to print). In respect to the coming of the Lord, they asked him not to preach such curdling things which made the hair stand on end; they wanted something more comforting.”
In that same village the consciences of slumbering Christians have begun to be aroused, and that through the instrumentality of a woman, “a sister in deadly earnest,” as my correspondent tells me, adding with, alas! only too much ground for it, “while we are so many of us idle, except to throw mud.” This is not the first time that God has used a Deborah!
ED.