The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1875-03-12
The Religion OF christ.

From sermon by Prof, David swlng.l
Il If II Christianity came and
offered light to man, but it could
not compel him to accept of it. II
offered universal love, but the
church preferred career of hate
and blood 1t offered in Christ an
image of virtue and justice, but
every pope and bishop and priest
preferred his own image to that OF
Bethlehem. 1t commanded men to
love and feed and clothe and educate
the poor, but men in power found
it more profitable to enslave and
whip and starve the powerless null
titude, Christianity is only an offer
of truth, not an enforcement of
truth. The history Of the church
therefore is not a history of Chrst's
doctrines, but n history Of barba-
rians that knew of no value in
pearls, and hence trampled them
under foot. Mohammed taught
truthfulncss, but his followers rs-
NAMED oriental liars.
The lesson of this morning is
this, that the dead past may bury
its dead. Those who love it and
believe in it and defend it, may re-
main by the venerable old father
whose gray hairs have not been
found in the paths of righteousness,
and they may compose at last the
pail but as for the new, living,
present age, it would better leave
all and follow its great Leader.
The present and the future are its
fields Of action. The past is only a
memory. Into the present and
future Christianity moves unim-
paired. Even its history is not all
dark. Wherever a human heart
has sincerely and intelligently come
up to an obedience of Christ, it has
risen above the low, sinful world.
But it claims the future as its field.
AS liberty and equality do not locate
their experiment in the past; as
public education and benevolenco
and science and art all look to the
future, so does the religion of Jesus.
1t says, "Let the dead bury their
dead" but come thou along into the
present and future
THE PATHS OF LOVE AND REFORM.
We now confess it to be a misfortune
that the church did ever turn aside
from its distinct path of piety and
reform; that path in which Christ
walked, and in which he was fol-
lowed for a time by Paul and few
apostles calamity that it did seek
all the thorny roads Of power, riches,
dogmatism and even vice. The
simple path of love and reform
would have led to triumph, the
other broad road led to shameful
defeat. Instead of enjoying a re-
deemed world we must all sit down
now in ashes AMI weep over past
folly, The age of pitiless criticism
says, "Falsus in uno, falsus in ON
nibus," and unjustly casts upon
Christ the scorn which ought to be
hurled at the souls of His faithless
children. That Bethlehem forehead
is radiant with its own divine beau
ty. The wreaths of science will
never equal in splendor that crown
of thorns. But the past of the
church is unworthy with the uni
versal unworthiness Of man. Light
came to it, but it loved darkness
rather than light. Ambition and
wealth and vice wore away and dis
solved into dust the culture that
had come from Greece and AleXan-
dria, the justice that had come
from Rome, and the morals that
had come from Jesus; and as n ship
beaten by storms and rocks at mid
night goes down, SO went down the
Now Testament in that black sea
that rolled between the fifth century
and the eighteenth. Let the dead
past bury its dead. The living
hearts Of to day have no time tc
weep, nor have they a music sac
enough to weave into a fitting
miserere. Let us follow our Leader
and look well to the present ant