p. 246 | A SPECIMEN by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 21, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 16

A SPECIMEN.

By Editor

Bro. A. Smith, of Grandville, Mich., sends us the record of a little incident which shows to what condition some of the churches of our land have fallen.

A church not a hundred miles from his place, threw wide open its doors for an entertainment by a sleight of hand performer, magician, mesmerist, ventriloquist, spirit medium, slate writer, etc. The entertainment was to be a roaring scene of fun and frolic for old and young, according to the handbill advertising it, a copy of which he has sent us. According to the bill it must have been a mixture of reality and fraud, truth and deception, human cunning and diabolical agency. But viewed from any stand-point, and in any aspect, it must have been an abomination in a place of worship.

This entertainment came off the latter part of last February. But a few months before, Bro. S. had made application for the same church for a funeral service for one of our brethren, and was refused except on condition that nothing should be said derogatory of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul!

Fun, frolic, mesmerism, psychology, spiritualism, may come freely in; but in that house none may be permitted to express, even in the burial service of their friends, the Christian hope that consoles them, if it chances to impinge upon a pet dogma of their theology. These facts tell their own story.

We are happy to know that there are many in the churches who love God and his pure worship, to whom these things are a grief, and who will yet, in due time, feel impelled to bear testimony against wrongs and corruptions which they cannot arrest, by separating themselves therefrom.