Morning journal and courier., 1880-06-14
Price Four Cents.

l the power of the graces of the spirit In oth- 1 CT words, it was the Pauline doctrine which runs through the whole of the New Testa- l ment: overcome evil with good, contend
 earnestly for the faith by your Christian walk | and conversation, by earnestness of goodness
 and kindness and true love, and by these
 overcome falsity of life and fals1ty of doc trlne." We have other and higher authority. l When Christ called men he called them by his
 meekness, and gentleness, his love. The heresy of the New Testament was not an in- 1 tellectual one. It was practical immortality The history of the Christian religion is a terri l ble commentary on the perversion of the ear- l ly doctrine of love. That principle was early l abandoned and rasping conflict tooki it's place. l and the controversies that have occurred I have been enough to sicken any man. Ihold l that the instituted religion of the world pre- l sents worse example of the play of the hu- 1 man passions than IS found in governments or phllosophles any business forms of asSo- citation among men, In other words, men protesting to act for God, associated togeth- 1 CT in churches, have behaved more devilishly [ in the attempt to maintain the Bible and the ological truth-they have behaved more in- 1 fernally-than men have behayedin commerce or in any organized form of business That part of history that we find represented in ecclesiastical history is shocking I have known men who became infdels from read ing the long, dreary history of religious con
 
 totle were saints in comparison with these theologians, their writings bitter as gall and full of all uncharitableness. God never gave to any associated body of men authority to enforce any particular doctrine on men. The history of religious bodies is one long, bitter warfare. If you take the history of the coun- cils of the Church-Imean the great ecclesas- tical councils of the ages gone by-whether
 you examine the lives of the men that trolled them, or whether you consider the in huences that were brought to bear upon them, from the politics of the State, or from
 partisan feeling which sprang up on different sides of the theological question, I think it may be said that these councils represented the spirit of the internal deity more than that of the heavenly host. The history of these councils has never been fairly written, and some of them have been more internally aboninable than anything in the worlds his tory, and the decrees of some of them, to which the whole Church is expected to bow down, are the decrees of councils one-half of whose members ought to have been in the ! penitentiary and the other half in a lunatic asylum. About half of the councils have been held or controlled by men who could ! not be permitted to walk the streets in day light even in New York, and since that, in all forms of organized religion, ghow have they carried into every controversy every malign instinct and passion? The catalogue of cpl thets and imputations-it would require
 
 procession the terms of internal abuse that have been heaped up by church on church to a degree that has never been equaled in any literature beside. The whole economy of the
 Church has been poisoned by this conception
 of the rights of men by reason of conscience or in association, especially if they claimed to represent Christ's apostles, to coerce indi-
 vidual minds of different opinions from theirs to believe in the same doctrines that they be- heyed It is said that the Church has tained religion in the world. I say that it has been the religion in the family that has sustained the churches. It is said that all
 this bitterness between the sects has passed away, but this IS not so. Don't you know how in the early days of my ministry I with indignation thundered against the exclusion of the children of the Unitarian churches from your annual parade? You would not let these little children walk in procession with your children-httle children in panta- lets the orthodox churches of the city of Brooklyn would not let the children of Uni tarian parents walk in the parade of the May anniversary, and they don't do it yet! You
 tell me that the spirit of persecution IS gone
 you undertake to tell me that you are living
 better lives, you that live by the Westminster
 catechism you that are living on the long catechism and many of you on the shorter
 one; you that exclude these children from
 the mere courtesy of walking with yours for rear that you should give countenance to her 6Syg lou give lu6srueVlI heresy when you do this, and go counter tcn that theology of love by which the world is to
 be saved if at all. The attitude of Flu rope in respect to infdelity is that
 ought no to excite surprise. No
 one who takes large view of human nature
 need be astonished at it. If had no other evidence of religion than that given by the churches of Europe for the last hundred years, should be infidel to-day If had no other evidence of the nature of God and of his moral government than that which has been represented by the systems of theology that obtain in those churches, should be atheist to-day But am deemed from infidelity and from atheism, because the glory of God has been revealed to me. But if l was a laboring man, trodden under foot by the hard grasping tyranny of the church, sustained by the State, I would damn the priests and overthrow the Church to-day. If there is infidelity in Europe, largely the Church may thank itself for that condition of things-not religion, but the Church and the churches and to very siderable extent the skeptical tendencies of the age results from the attitude of the churches towards the scientific disclosures of the period If we are to contend earnestly for the faith we are to do it by living upon
 higher plane, more purely, more nobly. God Illness and goodness are the only orthodoxy, and that should be written on all the altars of all the churches. In the discussion of politi cal matters men are not quite develish in the discussion of matters pertaining to theology but they are almost bad. We are now entering upon one of those circles of controversy and discussion which come upon
 us once in four years. In the very nature of our government, the structure of American society there is provision made for uni
 versal discussion, and it runs in sections and
 in States through the years regularly but
 once in four years the whole nation rises up and we are just on the eve of such a univer- sal excitement. And the result of my past
 experience leads me to say that during this controversy we shall have all manner of vii tuperation and bitterness and exaggeration of the truth with regard to men and things and a stout resistance on the one side and on the the other, and a carelessness as to personal character, and all partisan bitterness and into this circle of tropical fury and heat
 we shall have Christian men and Christian women swept, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, will hardly be known and the power of the true kingdom will scarcely be discerned. Yet nevertheless, although the example of the Christian sects in the days gone by has been to pervert all true harmony and love, yet it is still the office of the christian nature to say, Contend earnest ly for the faith that is necessary for salvation, but contend with sweetness and love and gen tleness, with manly patience and forbearance. Do not tear each other, do not think of such a thing as plenary indulgence of the passions in matters pertaining to politics. This Is a matter on which you cannot escape your duty by saying that politics is such filthy pool that you will have none of it. No man born in this land has right to shrink from his duty in this regard. You bound every one of you in your places according to the measure of your influence-you are bound to have voice as to the magistrates and the magistracy and as to the public policy. You are bound to be informed and bound to spread
 as far you can the knowledge which you obtain. No man has right to do it at the point of anger or of envy or jealosy or un- charitableness Every man is bound to hold himself in the bonds of true love and never to lose sympathy with his fellow-men on ac- count of their weakness or imperfections. It is for us if we love our people and love our principles-it is for us to urge them to shrink in no respect, but to urge them so that the spirit of love shall not be lost or condemned. I have no fear of the result of the present controversy. have doubt we shall come out of this conflict as we have come out of still more terrible ones. We are being led by the hand of God. There are problems to be