Church Action on Temperance [pp. 595-632]

Church Action
observance of Lent, Good Friday, and other church days, absti neniice from meats on Fridays, or in the ways and times pre scribed in Lent, are of religious obligation. Here is a case to
try the wisdom and charity of the well-instructed Christian
who knows better. He is no; to despise or disregard their
scruples. He is not to put on proud or overbearing airs to wards them. He is not, if he can so do, with fidelity to other
claims of truth and duty, to refuse to abstain from meats, or
to attend religious services on these church days, when by refusing -to do it his example will lead these weak brethren to
disregard them while believing them obligatory, and thus to
do what to the eye of their conscientious conviction is sin. In
short, he must act charitably towards his neophyte brethren,
and instead of causing thenm to stumble, must do what he can
to promote their edification; and, without causing their fall, to
lift them up to the light and strength and liberty of the gospel.
But of the extent to which he must go in doing this, to which
lie may go without indorsing popery, prelacy, or ritualism,
without treason to the truth and the God of truth, he must be
the ultimate human judge, responsible for the use of his liberty
to that Master to whom alone he stands or falls. Nay, he
might carry his sinful compliances so far as openly to betray
his lord, and so deserve excommunication. Suppose that these
converts should insist that, unless he kept fast on Fridays and
during Lent, or attended service on Good Friday, or counted
beads, or went to the confessional, he was no Christian and should
be debarred firom communion. What then? Instead of complying, is it not his duty to vindicate thle truth by refilsing
conformity? Was not this the case of Paul himself, in like
circumistances, who circumcised Timothy in accommodation to
Jewish prejudices, and in other things became as a Jew to the
Jews; but when the Jewish converts undertook to make circumcision essential to justification, withstood them to the last?
He refused to circumcise Titus " because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty,
that they might bring us again into bondage, to whom we
gave place by subjection; no, not for an hour; THAT THE TRUTH
OF THE GOSPEL MIGHT CONTINUE WITH YOU."-Gal. ii. 3, 4, 5.
Nay, he declared, "if ye be circumcised, Christ shlall profit you
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