North Carolina Christian Advocate from Greensboro, North Carolina • Page 4

Thursday, January 2, 1913. Page Four Contributors Department feALEiafl CHRISTIAN ADVOdATfi. 1 1 too often heard of needy fields untilled because of want of money to hire laborers, many will be telling of waste places tilled and will be coming bearing their sheaves with them. We can advance if we will. Often-times it is well to sound a bugle call.

Why not begin 1913 thus? A USELESS CITIZEN. By C. H. Wetherbe. iS NOT every Christian useful? I am sure I I that if one be a genuine Christian he must I I I be of some use to those around him, and I I even beyond him.

But some will reply that those who are not Christians are also useful to the people. That is true; and yet there ought to be a difference between the usefulness of a Christian and one who is not a Christian. I will not say that there is any marked difference between a mere professor of religion and one who makes no profession. A mere professor is only a man of the world, and we must not count him as a Christian. But a true Christian, although he may have some grave defects, is of moral use in the community.

He is useful to his family and to his church. He may not be so active in church matters as some others are, but his life, as a whole, is a helpful force in church and society. The late Bishop Phillips Brooks said: "Do you remember, when Jesus was sitting with His disciples at the last Supper, how He lifted up His voice and prayed, and in the midst of His prayer there came these wondrous words: 'For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified'? Is there anything in all the teachings that man has had from the lips of God that is nobler, that is more far-reaching than that, to be my best, not simply for my own sake, but for the sake of the world? You can help your fellow-men; but the only way that you can help them is by being the noblest and the best man that it is possible for you to be." This is a fine view of the usefulness of a Christian life. To be good for the sake of the good of others is worthy of our highest ambition and endeavor. erence; they quote his sayings and show interest in his life and teachings; but each places its own teachers and prohphets above him in authority, and denies the very essence and meaning of his religion.

The latest of these prophets who brings to us the "message of the East" is Abdul Baha, the present head of the religion first known as "Babism." This faith was founded by "the Bab" (meaning the deer), as a reform of Mohammedanism in Persia, as Buddhism, was originally a reform of Brahmanism in India. The "Baha" is the nephew of "the Bab" who perished under persecution in Persia. He has come to America with a message of universal peace. He has been received in many Christian pulpits to give his message, which in answer to a written question, he declares to be Vthe message of the spiritual, brought from the land where the spiritual is understood," and offered to us "in exchange for our understanding of the material." He speaks of "his Holiness Mo-hammet," "his Holiness 'and "his Holiness Christ," but gives precedence, of course, to the first. A place of worship and a number of teaching centers have been opened and there are already many Bahaists in America.

The latest religious census of 1910 gives the increase of these non-Christian faiths as less than 11 per cent; this does not include Mormonism whose gain alone has been 38 per cent. Neither were these figures claimed to be exact, for the Theosophists never give numbers; the Vedantists are often merged in other religious organizations, and the census was taken in 1906 before the "heathen invasion" became of noticeable proportions. With 50,000,000 in the United States without any religious affiliations; with almost Mormons; with fast filling ranks of openly, or in reality, non-Christian faiths how long will this nation have the right to call itself All these religions in themselves may not affect largely the life of the nation but we have only to study their fruits in the lands of their birth to realize the type of morality, standards of living, and national character which they produce. Many of these faiths in their esoteric teachings are beautiful and mysteriously attractive; but would we choose India instead of England; China instead of Germany; Turkey instead of Italy; or even Japan instead of America, as standards of national excellence? But the universal brotherhood of Theosophy and Buddhism; the universal oneness of Brahmanism and Vedantism; the universal peace of Bahaism, will bring this nation into internal contest and external disgrace. Only Mormonism that mixture as one has aid "of Mohammedanism, Judaism, Paganism, and Diabolism" with its claim of right to "universal dominion" founded on divine decree is a menace to the honor and well-being of the nation.

What is Mormonism? In its last analysis, Mormonism is an aggressive Hierarchy, owning one State, politically controlling at least seven others, claiming the right to govern absolutely "from the cradle to the grave" every act including of course the vote of every adherent. It constitutes a compact kingdom, within our Republic, under the absolute control of one man, "divinely appointed," with unlimited resources in lives and money; so compact in its organization, so far-reaching in its power, that no lines of government, commerce, or industry in this country to-day entirely escape its influence. It is said that relatively to its size and numbers, the Mormon Church is the most powerful organization in the world. The divine order of plural marriage known by the world as polygamy, is at the root of the belief of the Mormon Church; absolutely inseparable from its teachings of God, of morality, of the family life and relations, of the very nature of Heaven itself. Since the admission to statehood, on pledge of giving up the practice of polygamy, the nation has believed it "as dead as the but the residents in Utah, those who have been converts and those who have investigated conditions uninfluenced by Mormon guides testify unflinchingly to the fact that polygamy is a living institution aid only needs the freedom of power, or protection, to become a national issue.

Ex-Senator Cannon declared in New York, a few months ago, that "polygamy was never so aggressive, so widespread, so openly practiced among young Mormons as now." Bishop Spaulding, of Utah, and many other residents in that State, fully corroborate this statement. Polygamy is only one item, although SHALL WE MAKE VOLUNTARY ADVANCE? By Marion T. Plyler. IN THE CLOSING hours of the Conference I I at Fayetteville a resolution passed without I I I a dissenting voice asking for larger volun- A I tary effort this new year in our church work. More men and women willing to labor without money and without price are needed to till new fields and gather larger harvests.

Some now employed at a price should let the stipend fall farther into the background and throw a new glory about the sacrificial life. Service under the compulsion of constraining love is ever the impulse of victorious Christianity. A fresh, new call for such sounds in our ears. In ancient days, men went into the prophet's office for a piece of bread; but these knew nothing of a divine message in the heart and a burning fire in the bones. Such always mark the decline of an effective prophet-message.

A ministry of place and potency always acts from another and higher impulse and moves with corresponding efficiency among the people of its own time. We may not be in peril of filling the prophet's office for a piece of bread, but we are in danger of a professional and perfunctory ministry doing only that which the demands of the hour urge. A Presiding Elder may simply make his rounds, preach the same old sermons, call the questions in a perfunctory way and prove one dreary round of professionalism; a pastor may pass from one appointment to another clinging to the same dry-as-dust material used on a former charge, bringing no new vision, no fresh impulse and divine message; only filling in the months in a professional and perfunctory way, but what does it all amount to? To get salaries in full and collections rounded out is barely a small part of the work of a Methodist preacher. Even to do what he feels compelled to do by the demands of his charge is unworthy any man who assumes the solemn vows taken by every Methodist preacher. Only the voluntary service secured by sacrificial love will qualify for such a life this alone will give us a ministry sufficient for these last times.

Perils equally grave, though different in form of approach, threaten the pew no less than the pulpit. Churches are ever in danger of formalism of worship and contentment of life. Not a few to-day are satisfied with their formal rounds and oft proclaimed efforts to hold their own with never a yearning for deeper consecration and a call for general advance. They pay the preacher to look after their church affairs and wait to hear his report. Some have been known to ask the stewards what per cent they got for collecting the preacher's salary.

Efforts have been made to put the Layman's Missionary Movement on a money basis the one field where voluntary service should be kept to the front. With the transformation on in Dixie and the new and urgent demands in the old North State, in both town and country, a loud and urgent call comes for more voluntary service on the part of the ministry and the laity in meeting the needs about us. The Mission Boards have not the money to supply sufficient workers, and they should not if they could. Much remains to be done by the loving effort of willing workers. The woman who blows a trumpet on the street corner about her Missionary Society, but rarely goes to prayer-meeting and gives no attention to the mission Sunday-school; the man who makes long prays and pays the last cent due from his church, but refuses to join a crusade against unrighteousness in a fight to conquer new fields, the preacher, zealous as a Pharisee in all that appertains to his own charge and personal obligations, but never found giving himself without stint in the conquest of new fields or in fresh fights with the devil, can never be more than sounding brass or clanging cymbals.

They know little of the love that never faileth and that suffereth long. Just now we are in need of a fresh and vigorous voluntary contribution of more enerj to the cause of our Lord here in North Carolina. No less stress should be put upon the finacial demands upon us indeed, more and greater but in a new way. Let the method of attack be different. If every Presiding Elder, pastor, lay leader, steward, Sunday-school superintendent, and officer in Woman's Society would begin the new year with the stress on greater outlay of effort without reward or the hope of reward, the greatest success would crown the year.

Instead of the complaint NON-CHRISTIAN FAITHS IN AMERICA. By Elizabeth B. Vermilye. NE of the fundamental ideals of this nation is religious freedom for one's self and toleration for one's neighbor. However, inasmuch as from the beginning our nation has been a Christian one, our claim of complete religious tolerance has really been applied in connection with the different forms and expressions of Christianity.

The bulk of "the old immigration" bore the stamp of Christianity, Catholic or Protestant; non-Christian faiths were looked at across continents only vividly realized by foreign missionaries or traders to the East. To be sure, Mormonism, that anomaly of times and systems, was with us, but so few in adherents, so negligible in positon, so far off in location and influence, that it usually was not recognized as hybrid and alien, when met as "Church of Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ." However, the new immigration, with its Asiatic elements, has brought into our country the "heathen religions" upon whose overthrow, in foreign countries, we have spent millions of dollars and sacrificed hundreds of lives. Hinduism in one of its six orthodox forms (Vedantism) is making many converts here. Buddhism following in the wake of Chinese, and Japanese has established itself on our western coasts with temples and shrines, one of which contains an ancient and very sacred image of the Buddha, worshiped by all the faithful. To these, not only old-time Buddhists but new converts of Anglo-Saxon blood are being drawn.

Theosophy, while claiming to be of all though above all religions, is in its views and practices, most in sympathy with the religion of Buddha. The ancient and divine wisdom, which Buddha claimed to have found above any other leader or sage, is the same as that which Theosophy is spreading, with wide acceptance, through every part of our land. These ancient faiths in modern dress come to this nominally Christian nation with the assertion that they interfere with no faith, but can respect and assimilate any truth. They speak of the Christ with respect often with rev.