Some years ago
there was an able and conscientious minister of the Canadian
Presbyterian Church who took the risk of being candid. He was a most
lovable man; able, eloquent, active, helpful, humorous, candid, tender,
devout; in fact, possessed of nearly every desirable quality. But he had
the larger hope; and one day he unguardedly gave expression to it in the
words of Tennyson:
"O yet we trust that, somehow, good
Will be the final goal of ill--"
and so on. Immediately he was a marked man, and the question was not
allowed to settle until he was placed on trial for heterodoxy. There was
considerable turmoil and excitement; but ultimately some kind of a
compromise was reached by which his orthodoxy was vindicated. He told me
that if he were once out of the church of which he was then minister, he
could get no other. I suppose he meant that he could not accept the
standards of the church; and of course that attitude would debar him.
SOUNDNESS IN THE FAITH.
At the same time it is but right that the Church should protect its
soundness in the faith by some form of subscription. The trouble is,
however, that the form now in force is subscribed to with reservations.
Then what reservations? They are not defined; so it comes to this, that
each subscriber makes his own reservations.
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