Church Discipline Difficulties in a Popular Denomination

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, April 15, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 16

Church Discipline Difficulties in a Popular Denomination

The following item, showing the difficulty of maintaining the standard of church discipline in one of the popular denominations, appeared in one of our recent exchanges. We immediately wrote to a brother residing in the place to ascertain the correctness of the report, and he informs us that it is correct, with the exception that it was the young lady’s father, instead of the young lady herself, who horsewhipped her pastor. The item is as follows:—

“Miss Norma Comer, the organist of the Methodist church at Van Wert, O., attended some dances recently, and on Sunday was publicly censured in church by the pastor, Rev. J. R. Henderson. He was severely criticised for the act, and called on Miss Comer to apologize and was met by her in her father’s store, where she gave him a sound horsewhipping, which he received without resistance.”