THE London Christian affirms that church members are responsible for Sunday journalism in America, and fears that Sunday papers may yet be supported upon a similar basis in England. It says:—
“The seventh-day newspaper in America stays because it pays, and it pays because Christians advertise in it—so it is affirmed.
“If they withdrew their advertisements, something might be done. We fancy that this would be the difficulty in this country also. Representatives of both the journals that offended here for awhile have said that there was money in the venture, and therefore we can hardly count ourselves safe, unless Christians should be ready to make a stand and separate themselves. Separation we imagine, will become a vital question for the church in the not distant future. Testimony for our Master and his truth is wanted and it is not easy to see how we can give it while the world and the church are so intimately blended.”
Yes; the church and the world are altogether too “intimately blended” to-day. The church needs a more clearer line of separation between herself and the world, but such a line will never be drawn so long as she … the world to gain political power. The church can never have that separation from the world which Christianity demands while the leaders of the church look in the halls of legislation, to persuade the state to give its support to religious institutions, such for example, as the Sunday Sabbath. Every religious law upon the State books is a bond of union between the church and the state, and so between the church and the world.