GIVE THEM AN EDUCATION! 2

 

This is a continuation of yesterday's article.  It features the response to an article posted in the Herald on the education of ministers. - ed.In addition to our remarks on this subject in our last number, we promised to copy the circular into this paper, and to show the corruption, hypocrisy, and covetousness of its doctrines; but before we proceed to uncover its doctrines, we will offer a word or two in regard to its origin.  

This circular is the Ishmael to a church and state establishment in Michigan; it emanates from the Michigan Baptist State Convention.  The kingdom of Christ is not of this world; and without a warrant, either example or precept, in the scriptures.  Separate what is called "the church" from the world, and you annihilate the Michigan Baptist State Convention, and with it the whole brood of its kindred Arminian institutions; it is therefore unlike the kingdom of the Lord Jesus.  

To justify our conclusion, that this Convention is a church and state establishment, examine its composition, and the number of its name.  This creature is not the church, nor does it claim to be, but take from its connection with what is called the church, and you destroy its existence.  Again, it is not the State of Michigan, or it would adopt a more summary modus of raising the lucre for Mr. Marsh, to sport in idleness upon; but it is a thing composed of church and state, and of this, its sponsors were aware when they christened it, by a name appropriately signifying its mongeral composition.  The number of its name distinctly articulates the names of either it must cease to be.  It is a religious organization, whose maker and builder is man.  Without being born again, men can see it.  Without being born of water and of the Spirit, men can enter it.  The Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has set upon his Holy Hill Zion, presides not over it; for the president's name is John Booth [President of the Michigan Baptist Convention].  

It is not governed by the New Testament; for it has a constitution and laws of its own.  Not grace, but money, is the required qualification for membership.  This beast is not to occupy a place subordinate to the church but is destined to hold the station of a god.  Prayers and supplications are made to it.  The cry comes up to this humanly devised deity, from settlement to settlement, and the cry Sends us ministers"! absorbs the undivided attention of the churches, associations, and Convention, so far at least as relates to those compressed within the slimy folds of this leviathan.  If the worshippers of this beast do not regard it as a god or cause it to sit in the temple of God, showing itself to be a god, Why do they pray to it for ministers or gifts and qualifications for the ministry?  The King of Zion has instructed his subjects to pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his vineyard, and in regard to qualification for usefulness, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask God, who gives liberally, and upbraids not."   

But how different the policy of anti-christ!  If settlements and churches want ministers, let them pray the Convention, and let their piteous cry echo from settlement to settlement, until it absorbs the undivided attention of the Convention.  And if any of their ministers lack wisdom, let them ask it of the education department of the Convention.  Is not this rival of the government of Christ an idol?  "The cry, Send us ministers," says the circular, "thrills through the delicate nervous system of gospel love, and awakes to lively exercise the noblest sympathies of the devout mind - the cry is heard - is felt; and nearly our whole pecuniary force is directed towards the relief of the applicants - consequently the operation of the Convention in the other departments of benevolence, is of an exceedingly restricted character."  What a burst of eloquence!  Who, by reading our plain old-fashioned Bible would have thought of the delicate nervous system of gospel love?  Gospel love is not quite as nervous as the circular would represent.  

By gospel love, in a scriptural sense, we are to understand the love of God.  It is sovereign, immutable, efficacious, and eternal.  Such is the love of God, and such love God communicates to his children, and they, when under its governing power, love the gospel, and all it develops, of doctrine, of faith, and practice; and as they love God, his people, and his laws, they discard all who would rival him in the management of this kingdom.  this love is not so nervous as to be acted upon by animal magnetism, or the galvanic battery of Arminianism.  What this circular profanely calls gospel love, is only the love of the world, its sympathies are to be moved by human machinery, and when excited, to be measured out in dollars and cents; until "nearly the whole pecuniary force of the Convention is exhausted.  But what is the pecuniary force of the love of the gospel of Christ, when reckoned in silver or gold?  That love which Judas possessed, amounted to THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER!  But gospel love could not be displayed with such corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.

Pecuniary force may properly belong to that kind of love that is excited by State Conventions, and other idols set up and worshipped by men, But if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, (the love of God, which is stronger than death,) it would be utterly contemned.  Canticles 7.7.  These pecuniary exhibitions of the Convention's love, have, like Pharaoh's lean kine, eaten up all the fat kine, "Consequently the operation of the Convention in other departments of benevolence is exceedingly limited."  This may explain the reason why bread is not dealt out to the poor, by these monopolizers of modern benevolence; no milk of human kindness dealt out to suffering humanity around this monster; and it would be regarded as a prodigal waste of benevolence, for this Convention, under its present embarrassments, to even speak the truth concerning the Old School Baptists.

But says the circular, "We call upon you, as God has prospered you, to aid the Convention in their noble purpose, of giving to Michigan an educated ministry."  Like all other heathen deities, this god is dependent upon its worshippers for the means to execute its dispensations, and those who worship this beast are called upon to furnish the funds for supplying Michigan with an educated set of hirelings.  But it is quite different with the King of saints.  He has never had occasion to call on his subjects to furnish him with the means to supply Michigan, or the world, with ministers, nor has he ever called for aid in the business of preparing men for the work whereunto the Holy Spirit has called them.  He came in possession of ample means, for supplying his church with all needful gifts, "When he ascended up on high, and when he led captivity captive;"  then did he receive gifts for men, and in evidence thereof, he gave a specimen of what sort he was able to give, for he gave some Apostles, to some prophets, and to some pastors and teachers; and before he left the world, (in his ascension,) he left with his church the standing order, which we have before referred to viz., Pray you the Lord of the harvest, &c.  

All the idol gods, that have ever been made or worshipped by pagans, Jews, or professed Christians, have required a supply of priests.  God's ministers of course are not the kind wanted; they have consequently been under the necessity of making or buying such as would answer their purpose.  The glitter of gold has uniformly called them out, and, as far as we can judge, satan has always been as ready to furnish the men, as the people were to supply the funds; nor has the old serpent been backward to furnish just the sort that was wanted, provided the requisite sum of lucre could be forthcoming, as he is only averse to barely one sort of ministers.  Not so with the ministers whose vocation is of the Lord; they take oversight of the flock of Jesus, not for filthy lucre's sake but of a ready mind.

We call not upon you," says the circular, "brethren and friends, to relax your efforts on behalf of Domestic Missions.  No; God forbid!  but we call upon you to aid the Convention, &c., to give to Michigan an educated ministry."

How their pious covetous souls recoil at the thought of relaxed efforts, to provide for the support of their machine-made ministers, and they pray to God to issue an order from his throne, forbidding their dupes to give less for the support of their ministers, when made, on account of being taxed by the Convention, to give more for the manufacturing of an additional member of them.  If the Convention should succeed in giving Michigan an educated ministry, to whom will that state be indebted for the pestilential boon?   Not unto God, for they have only asked him to forbid the people's giving less to the Domestic Mission; but to the brethren and friends of the Convention, to make the bequest.  Next flows a train of incentives; "You will soon be in your graves, and your spirits saved," &c.  "Your offspring will take your place in Zion, and be assured you now take, &c. will produce."  This extract is partly true, those who are cajoled out of their property, will not live always to need what they so foolishly contribute, to enable the Convention to insult the God of heaven, and afflict the church of Christ; they may be enclosed in their graves before the scales fall from their blinded eyes, and not live to see that their offspring shall see, nor to feel what their posterity must inevitably feel.  Posterity robbed, by an aspiring, avaricious hierarchy, finding the inheritance to which they were naturally and justly entitled, in the hands of a religious aristocracy, and in lieu thereof, entailed to them, poverty and vassalage, embellished with religious establishments of proscription, persecution, inquisitions, prisons, racks, tortures, stakes, chains and faggots, and well may we be assured that posterity shall long feel, and also groan under the deleterious effects of the attitude now taken by those who lend their air to make an image to the beast whose deadly wound was healed.  

But, that their spirits shall be saved eternally, as promised by the Convention, is not so clear.  The original beast, as well as the false prophet, made similar promises of eternal life, to their deluded millions, but who is prepared to believe that the pope's pardon or Mahomet's promise can remit our sins or raise us to immortal glory.  The Circular demands a general effort; the sound must echo from every pulpit, and go from every association and convention on the wings of every wind of doctrine.  The zeal, with which the convention labors to forge chains to bind down the people of Michigan, is astonishing, and can only be equaled by that of kindred institutions in other parts of the land.  "In arriving at this conclusion," says the Convention, "we do not look back fifty or a hundred years."  Well then, they certainly do not look back far enough to find a warrant in the scriptures, or in the practice of the Apostolic church; for that would require them to look back eighteen hundred years.  But, by their own admission, there was nothing of their New School machinery to be found even fifty years ago.  Why, it was born in 1843, and lacks some months, according to their own chronology, of being one year old.  But here leaks out the secret, viz:

Education is now liberally patronized by the State.  The church must keep pace with the march of mind, or sacrifice her dignity, and with it her moral power over cultivated intellect."

Can "the church," spoken of in this passage from the circular, be the bride, the Lamb's wife? Is this the virtuous, chaste, modest, beauteous, and unspotted spouse, whose Maker is her Husband, and whose Redeemer is the Mighty One of Israel?  Does Zion "go about"in this manner to seek new lovers, and to keep pace with the world; even step, with an adulterous generation?  Base slander!  It is the Whore of Babylon the great, Mother of Harlots, and abomination of the earth," and Michigan and all her sister states are even now drunk with the wine of her filthy cup.  In the seventh chapter of Proverbs and all the seventeenth of Revelation, this lewd and strange woman is described with unerring accuracy.

How ridiculous, to represent the church upon a stride with the states and nations of the earth, striving to maintain dignity, by securing humanly cultivated intellect, as though she was afraid of being eclipsed by the superior excellence of the world!  If the poor stupid fool, who wrote this slander, could but see the kingdom of God, he would behold her as the holy city coming down from God, out of heaven, adorned as a harlot, to seek lovers.  In the next sentence of their circular the convention brings railing accusations against her Paedo-Baptists do not annihilate any institutions of our Savior, nor have the power to annihilate anything that God has established.  It is true they practice what they call baptism, as they received it from the pope, but with Christian baptism, they have nothing to do, and it would greatly relieve the people of God if all other antichristian establishments would follow their example, and not profane the sacred rite by applying it to the productions of their anxious benches.  But according to the old adage, "

Set a rogue," &c. - The New School Baptists do oppose the government of our Lord Jesus Christ, preach false doctrine in his name, deny the truth of the faith of God's elect, prostitute the ordinances of the gospel, believe the gain is godliness, and usurp the peculiar prerogatives of our Lord Jesus Christ, "and when gravely inform the community that they are sustained by the Greek."  But the sons of Zion are able to meet combat, and put them to silence, with no other qualifications than those which their God has given them.  One can chase a thousand, and two can put ten thousand to flight."

The next passage of the circular, requiring notice is the pathetic appeal on behalf of those poor panting lads, in Michigan!  Only imagine, reader, the position occupied by these boys, they are longing to preach, their souls burn within them to preach; they are poor; they have not the requisite knowledge; with all their ardor and fire, they cannot be pastors; nor missionaries; the internal fire is burning them up.  Poor fellows!  they are pining away!  Oh shocking!  They are in agony of spirit, and lastly, they are panting; like the fish out of its element or a wind-broken horse!  Is not this enough to touch your sympathies?  Will you not shell out your sixpences, and relieve them?

"If," says the circular "this is the mind of God, he cannot accept less at our hands."  Very well shows us in the scriptures, which are the record and revelation of his mind, where he has authorized the course, and we will go into it most heartily; but this cannot be found; the word of God virtually forbids it; and commands those whom he has called to the work to trust alone in him, and to speak with the ability that he gives; and to speak, not with the words which man's wisdom teaches, &c.  Therefore to require it, as the Convention does, is adding to the words of the Book of God, and to demand it in the name of Christ, with his order, is a forgery.