Another friend is a Seventh Day Adventist, who is full of zeal for the
declaration of the "Third Angel's Message," for he believes that
only by heeding it, keeping sacred the hours from sunset on Friday
to Saturday sunset, in accordance with his reading of the fourth
commandment, and also believing in the speedy second coming of Christ,
can one's soul's salvation be attained.
The Baptist is assured that his mode of baptism--complete
immersion--is the only one that satisfies the demands of heaven, and
the more rigorous members of the sect refuse communion with those
who have not obeyed, as they see the command. The members of the
"Christian" Church--as the disciples of Alexander Campbell term
themselves--while they assent that they are tied to no creed except
the New Testament, demand immersion as a prerequisite to membership in
their body. The Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Nazarene,
and many others, are "evangelical" in their belief, as is a large
portion of the Church of England, and its American offshoot, both of
which are known as the Episcopal Church. Another portion, however, of
this church is known as "ritualistic," and the two branches in England
recently became so involved in a heated discussion as to the propriety
of certain of their bishops partaking in official deliberations with
ministers of the other, but outside, evangelistic churches, that for a
time it seemed as if the whole Episcopal Church would be disrupted by
the fierceness and anger gendered in the differences of opinion.
To my own mind, all this worry was much ado about nothing. Each man's
brain and conscience must guide him in matters of this kind, and the
worry, fret, stew, evolved out of the matter, seem to me a proof that
real religion had little to do with it.
Recently one good brother came to me with tears in his voice, if not
in his eyes, worried seriously as to my own religious belief because I
had asserted in a public address that I believed the earnest prayer
of a good Indian woman reached the ear of God as surely as did my own
prayers, or those of any man, woman, minister, or priest living. To
him the only effective prayers were "evangelical" prayers--whatever
that may mean--and he was deeply distressed and fearfully worried
because I could not see eye to eye with him in this matter. And a
dear, good woman, who heard a subsequent discussion of the subject,
was so worried over my attitude that she felt impelled to assure me
when I left that "she would pray for me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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