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SENSITIVENESS. The obsolete meaning of "sensitive" is wise, sagacious. We wish its meaning could be con fined to this, and all sensitive persons were wise and sensible and sagacious. There is a peculiar type of this common dis ease, which might be called "church sensi tiveness." The word has come to describe a person who is easily and acutely affected by external words or things. The church variety is the most acnte form. Men, who go straight forward in their busi ness regardless of any other's opinion to the contrary, shrink and cower and surrender to a biting tongue in the church in opposition to them, or their plans, however right they may be. In the give and take of professional life, or in business, men let the ultimate purpose control them ; but when it comes to the king dom of God, they wear their feelings 011 their sleeves, and one adverse criticism sends them scuttling to cover. Even a disagreement in a court of the Lord's house is taken as a deadly insult. Many a man hides his head and keeps silent because he is afraid his words may do so much harm to the delicate feeling of some man. And the truth is often silenced because somebody's feelings might be hurt. This is the reason there is 110 discipline in the Church today. Some members of the fam ily might be hurt, when the scandalous doings of the erring brother are really the injurious things. Wrong goes unrebuked ; sins flare up in the face of the Church and no condemnation is allowed. The minister who would rebuke them knows that somebody's sensitive feelings may be trampled 011 and he and his be bun dled out into the cold world without cere mony. We ought to be sensitive to truth; and where we err, to correction, but sensitiveness is usu ally accompanied with an irritation, that ex presses itself in both words and deeds. The results of this sensitiveness 011 the part of church members are manifold. The minister must say pleasing things or suffer loss of at tendance and interest and sometimes worse. Officers, instead of doing what common sense and business interests dictate, let things slide along, and hope to "muddle through" the Church of God, the greatest business in the world. Babson says there is invested in Church property not less than 1,800 millions of dol lars. There are 200,000 paid ministers, and 500,000 workers. Yet it is the most ineffi ciently operated business in the world. No factory of industry would survive six months, if operated as the Church is. Its divine origin is seen in the fact that it has survived. Approach business men, and ask th? ques tion, "why is the Church handled in this slack fashion?" The answer will be, "you cannot apply the principles of business to the Church, because the members are too sensitive." This answer has been given to the writer time and again. The storm centre of sensi tiveness is the choir. The minister is wise who stands with hands off in this matter. Yet the average church music is an offense to high heaven, if the praise of God demands the best. Those themes which ought to expect the best musical treatment, often find themselves sac rificed 011 the altar of some sensitive member of the choir. Who does not know the chari ness with which the average officer handles this delicate object? The pocket nerve is another delicate one with the average church member. He looks upon the deacon as a robber or a beggar, and cuts the sinews of efficient service 011 the part of worthy deacons. Instead of recognizing that they are rendering a high service for, which they receive nothing, except a good con science, the sensitive nerve begins to tingle and the scowl rises to the face, and the sharp word to the tongue, till the deacon drops into an apologetic tone, or turns his back and flees. Who can blame him? Oh ! these religious nerves of ours. Profes sors have been known to tingle under any ref erence to the institution of which .they are shining lights; as if any institution were per fect and above kindly criticism. Ministers lift up warning fingers when their ? churches are reminded that they are not quite up to the mark in the Presbyterian Progressive Program. Members shy away from the pulpit that can not deal out ecclesiastical soothing syrup. This is a world in which truth is the only thing worth while, and truth is sometimes rather blunt. We want nerves, even ecclesiastical nerves, but we want them so subordinated to con science, and kindly feeling, and the carrying on of the purposes of God, that they do not get to jangling when men disagree with us; or speak the truth plainly. What we ought to aim at is not our little, narrow exaltation of self; but the carrying out of God's plans to the final consummation of Ilis kingdom. A. A. L. Contributed THE SOUTH CAROLINA OVERTURE. By Rev. W. I. Sinnott. The Synod of South Carolina at its last meet ing, after some opposition, overtured the next General Assembly "to make a deliverance in the following or similar words: Since the pas tor is the moderator of the session for pru dential reasons only, and not because of any inherent authority in his office, the session may, with his approval, elect one of its mem bers to preside whenever it is necessary or expedient to hold meetings at which he cannot be present. Whenever such a meeting shall be held, the reason for it should be recorded in the minutes." Every Session has an interest in this over ture, and as the method of making and con struing law in the Chureh is involved in it, a subject on which the Church sometimes is like a ship at sea without chart, compass or rudder, some thoughts growing out of it may not be inappropriate. The law in the Hook of Church Order (to which I refer by the paragraph numbers) is: The pastor is always moderator of the Ses sion, Par. 57, except when for specified reasons, he, with the concurrence of the elders, invite another minister of the same Presbytery to preside, Par. 67. When a church has no pas tor the moderator is a minister appointed by the Presbytery, or one invited by the Session to preside on a particular occasion, and in judicial cases the moderator must always be long to the Presbytery to which the Session belongs. In emergencies if the Session invites an elder, a deacon, a private member, a licen tiate, or a minister of another denomination to preside, it violates no law, Par. 68. To this overture I offer the following objec tions : I. The answer may be unsatisfactory. (1) Overtures like this are referred usually to a committee that is so overburdened with other work that due consideration is not always given them, and reports are made sometimes when not even one-half or one-fourth of the members vote intelligently on them. The Evangelistic work of the Church at home and abroad, Education and Ministerial Relief, Pub lication, Sabbath School Extension, Foreign Correspondence, etc., take up so much of the limited time of the Assembly that contradic tory deliverances sometimes are made ?which confuse Sessions. (2) The overture itself in its preamble (which for brevity's sake I omit) calls attention to the apparent conflict between the deliverances of the Assemblies of 1 81)6 and 1919 on this very matter. In 1896 also the Assembly decided that neither one ruling el der alone nor the pastor alone can constitute a Session; in 1897 it decided that one ruling el der alone can constitute a Session, but it did not reverse its decision regarding a pastor, leaving the Church in the condition that, while one elder can receive and dismiss members, order collections and make sessional reports to Presbytery, a> pastor cannot do any of these things. Pars. 7 '2, 73 of Digest. (3) Even in making law the Assembly is liable in haste not to be as choice in its language as it should be. In 1892 the law was "if there be so many as" two elders both are necessary for a quorum of Session, but if there be not more than two only one is necessary. The Digest tells us, page 73, that it was in answer to the overture of W. I. Sinnott that this language was made intelligible. Again in 1912 the Assembly sent down to the Presbyteries an amendment to Par. 134, that grammatically could not be ap pended to it. The adopted amendment as now printed in the Hook has three unauthorized changes in its language. II. Amending the law by grunting the over ture will not be official. Amendment can be made oidy by two Assemblies with the advice and consent of a majority of the Presbyteries. The Assembly has no authority officially to construe (or misconstrue) the law in its appli cation to a lower court, except by general re view and control, reference, appeal or com plaint, Par. 258, which construction is always in a concrete case. If the Assembly miscon strues the law in a concrete ease, as there is no higher court to correct the error, it stands, of course, unless subsequently reversed, but this error cannot bind any court in a similar ease to repeal the error, otherwise the law can be amended by judicial decisions without the advice and consent of the Presbyteries, re quired by the constitution. Two concrete cases may be cited to show that court decisions when erroneous do not legally amend the law, but only misconstrue the law, in that particular case. I ask that it l>e reineml>ered before making the citations that, the Book of Church Order is composed of two parts, Government and Discipline, which never should be, but often are confused by church courts. In the first case cited a church in a congregational meeting requested the Session to dissolve the relation existing between it and a venerable elder, which request was granted against the elder's wishes, Par. 113. Under the law the elder was entitled to complain and to have the sessional act annulled, Pars. 267, 271, but as no sentence had been passed upon him and no judgment*recorded he was not entitled to appeal, Par. 255. Both Presbytery and the Synod illegally allowed him to appeal, and the Synod tried the case as one of Discipline, Par. 205, and not of Government, Par. 113, and sus tained the appeal, an act which the General Assembly with the facts and misapplication of the law before it in the Synod's records sub sequently approved. If this now is law, as some contend, then, under the mutatis mu