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Show THE DEGRADATION OF THE CLOTH, j :: i Ogden. June 'Ihe couple who were mar- ried on the stage of the Utahana theatre last night had been divorced several months ago and accepted the offer of the management in consideration of a cash prize. The Rev. C. W. Hastings of the Central Park Christian church performed -the ceremony, before one of the largest crowds ever gathered in the theatre. the-atre. Salt Lake Tribune, June 24. Who is this Rev. C. W. Hastings, who for a paltry few dollars played a conspicuous part in this disgraceful exhibition of low vulgarity, who loaned himself forthe night to whet the edge of prurient curiosity '. Is this Tastings who disgraced his cloth by perverting a sacred contract into a low comedy a member of the Ogden Ministerial association asso-ciation '. If he be, what are we to think of a cler-, ieal society which condones a public profanation of a sacred rite by tolerating the membership of this man and his presence at their ministerial meetings. Kighty years ago. when heresy threatened the permanency of ihe Catholic church in England and Germany, that great philosopher, Joseph de Maistre, predicted lhat the disintegration of Protestantism Pro-testantism would begin at its head, among its own ministers: 'T affirm." he writes, "what is, what will be, what must be; if events contradict what I advance, J I heartily invoke upon my memory the contempt and derision of posterity. In all these churches the decay I announce will begin with the clergy." The decay foretold by the French philosopher is now feeding ravenously on all forms of Protestant Christianity and the precipitation is condensing into infidelity and gross superstition. The belief of professing Christians is not now what it was fifty years ago. Who now in the Protestant Pro-testant Episcopal church, apart from the Ritualists, Ritual-ists, attaches any importance to the declaration of the Episcopal church, or the Church of England, when it declares officially that: The three creeds, the Xicene, Athanasian and the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly to be received re-ceived and believed; for they may be proved by most certain warrant of Holy Scripture 8th Article of Religion. What Presbyterian in America now pays any attention to the positive assurance of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church given in 1390 and repeated in 10:iS, 1(539 and 1G40, that this: "Conference of our faith (the Westminster Creed) is the true Christian faith and religion pleasing God and bringing salvation to man, which now is by the mercy of God revealed to the world by the preaching of the blessed evangel and is received . . . . as God's eternal and only ground of our salvation." The ministers and theological professors have deployed the faith of their congregations by their lust for notoriety and their publicly expressed doubts, or entire denial, of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Many of them, like the Ogden preacher, are now dragging the cloth of their ministry through the mire of contempt, and by their own acts are inviting invit-ing the ridicule and laughter of the masses. That the people, patronizing and supporting the Central Park Christian church of Ogden, condone con-done the pitiable buffoonery of their pastor is a public proclamation of their own intellectual inferiority infe-riority and their low position in the order of social so-cial respectability. We honestly believe that if in this city of Salt Lake there could be found a Protestant Pro-testant minister, occupying the pulpit of a Christian Chris-tian chtirch, so low and vulgar as to publicly disgrace dis-grace his cloth and Ijis cause by lending himself to the degregation of his ministry, the Christian manhood of our city would rise up in protest against the infamy. When any man wearing God's livery may be hired for three or four dollars to exhibit himself on the stage of a theatre, to act his part in a matrimonial comedy staged to attract the vulgar and rowdy crowd, and when no voice, official, offi-cial, social or ministerial, is heard in protest against the insult flung in the face of decent society, so-ciety, what are we to think of the intelligence and social aspirations of the citizens of Ogden. It is the irreverence and vulgarity of such preachers as the Rev. Hastings and the intellectual and social degeneracy of the people who. Sunday after Sunday, Sun-day, listen to his -mouthing and pay him for his incompetency, that are emptying many of the Protestant, Pro-testant, churches in our cities of thinking men and refined women. With the barrel-house, the gambling gam-bling hell or the brothel we associate moral disease and are not shocked when we hear or read of its virulence in these places, but when a professedly Christian church, by its pastor, applauds a public exhibition of buffoonery and indecency, then every ev-ery clean man. every refined and cultured woman must exclaim "God help the church." |
