EVANGELISTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8374, 30 September 1890, Page 3

EVANGELISTS.

TO THE KDITOR.

Sib, —Does it never occur to any of the travelling evangelists, who all seem to deal so largely in the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy, that by insisting that the state of the world grows worse and worse, they are putting a very dangerous weapon into the hands of the enemies of the cause they profess to have at heart ? What possible conclusion can be drawn from the fact as stated, that Christianity has been in the world nearly nineteen hundred years, in spite of which the moral state of the world grows worse and worse, but that Christianity is, on it 3 own showing, a failure. I have often wondered at the zeal these worthy people display in advocating a Gospel whose principles they have no prospect of ever seeing triumphant. But I do noli wonder at the scanty results of missions when the missionaries are thus minded. Ask the advocates of any special moral or social reform what animates them under difficulties and discouragements, and they will reply, the certainty of ultimate success of their cause. Happily, Holy Scripture, taken as a whole, does not sanction this God-dishonouring doctrine, which is no better than an excuse for lazily acquiescing in all the evils which afflict society, on the plea that nothing can be set right until the Saviour returns to do it himself. Out upon such a maimed Gospel as this, a relic of Judaising superstition and Calvinistia narrowness. — am, &c., No Pessimist. September 26.