Morning journal and courier., 1880-06-28

teristic manifestation, as it determines the character by it's individual acts The theory that denies that God is person very natu- rally and logically denies that man is a person. He is only highly developed set of phenom- ena Towering out from the hidden root-the unknowable unknown. What we call his personality, his will, his character are all as unreal as the clouds of a summer noon-one moment apparently as fixed as mountain sumnits, and another dissolving as you gaze.
 On any theory of man personal God is needed to give energy to the moral ideal and to proclaim it as his personal will. The other self within us is powerless to enforce obedi- ence. Much as we may respect it's commands when forced to hear them, we can, alas, toe easily shut our ears to it's voice. But when this better self represents the living God, who, though greater than conscience, speaks through conscience, then conscience, takes the throne of the universe and her voice is that of the eternal king, to which all loyal sub- jeets respond with rejoicingF Fassent, and with the hope that the right will triumph-reioice that God reigns in righteousness.
 But man is not always loyal either to con- science or to God. As a sinner against both, he has need of deliverance and hope. What he
 most needs and longs for is to be delivered from the narrowness of selfshness, the bru- tality of appetite, the fever of ambition, the meanness of envy. the fendishness of hate, and the righteous displeasure of God against them all. When men know what they are, as measured by what they might have be- come, they cannot but be ashamed. When they review their failures after trial they can not but despair. They find no rational ground in themselves for hope that they shall actually become better in the springs of feel ing or the results of their life. If there is no God, or they know of none who can show them what they ought to be and who can and will help them, and whom it is rational to ask to guide and help them, they are without hope of lasting and triumphant success. But if God has made himself known in Christ in order to give us living example of human excellence, and also to inspire us to make it our own, and above all in order to remove all hindrance or doubt in the way-then we may hope, by trusting ourselves to this redeeminp God, to be like him. His life, his death, his words, his acts, his living self, are full of the inspirations of hope. That inspiration has wrought with mighty power through all the Christian generations. The more distinctly and lovingly Christ makes God known, the more confidently does man respond with hope that he shall be emancipated into likeness to God. From ali these hopes, the agnostic atheism cuts us of. It weakens and shatters our ideal of excellence and then it denies the freedom by which we may rise, and finally it withdraws the inspiration which is ministered by personal deliverer and friend. It weak ems mans ideal. It cannot do otherwise, for it derives the law of duty from the changing feelings of our fellow men It degrades the nor al law into 0 shifting product of society, and conscience with it's rewards and penalties into the outgrowth of the imagined favor or dis like of men as unstable as ourselves when fixed and transmitted by hereditary energy. Such an ideal, or law, or tribunal, can be neither sacred nor binding nor quicken ing, because it has no permanence. To be a good or perfect man in one eeon is not the same thing as to be good man in another. It is altogether matter of taste or fashion, and each age under the law of development sets the fashion for itself
 It sets freedom aside. Toreach any part of this ideal is the result of simple mechanism. Character is the joint product of inheritance and circumstances. Freedom, with it's possi- bilities and it's kindling power, is but fancy and shadow, the hooking phantom of mans romantic longings or the vain surmising of his idle regrets.
 There is neither inspiration nor hope for such man in the help of God. He certain ly needs help from some one greater than himself If his mor- al ideals are not fixed and he has no free dom with which to follow or reject, such as he has he is like a man who is bidden to walk in the sand that fails beneath his tread, and whose limbs are at the same time frozen with paralysis, like bird with stiff ened wings when dropped into an exhausted receiver. God cannot encourage or help him. To him there is no God, or none of whom he can know that he can will give him aid He has no cer- tain or fixed ideal to which to aspire. He has no freedom with which even to pray. He has no God to whom to pray. What better can such a man do than to give himself up to the passions and impulses of the moment, which at least may divert his thoughts from his degradation, or amuse his aimless and horaIarc c&o .l lurid lights over the darkness of his despair
 III. Belief in God is the only condition of hope in the advancement of public and so- cial morality, and consequently in social sta bility and progress. The universe in which we live represents two factors the physical and moral. Both of these are manifest in so- cial phenomena. If God is required as the ground of our hope in nature and in physical science, and also in the sphere of morals, how much more in the sphere in which na- ture and spirit meet together. Those who deny God, or who assert that we cannot know Him, can give no reason for their faith and hope in human progress. Force and law alone, whether physical or moral, do not answer all our questions here. Social forces too, are less easily discerned than those purely physical. Even if we could resolve these forces into material agencies and assume that these laws can be expressed in mathe- nautical formulae, this would avail us but little, because the forces are so complex and subtle, less easily traced, less readily analysed and less confidently interpreted, and less readily turned into prophecy. But if we believe these forces to be largely spiritual and per senal, if we accept freedom in both man and God, then only rational ground of hope for mans future is that the eternal has his own plans concerning mans future we'll being and will fulfill them in consummation of good. The developments of the past, ex- o1 46a1 SofI IrN1 hope for the future. In the facts of the past there is no security that the movement of man is onward. Manifold phenomena in hu- man history suggest fearful forebodings of depravity and retrogression. Long periods of darkness and eclipse have gathered in gloomy folds over the human race. Sudden collapses of faith have spread like the plague. Fearful convulsions have opened like the chasms of an earthquake to swallow up the gathered fruits of culture and art. But as soon as we know that God rules over man for mans moral discipline, and that Christ is setting up & kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, then we lift up our hearts, and gather courage for mans future history. We find good reason to conclude that man will continue to make progress in the knowledge of whatever is true, and just and honest, and of good re- port. We become well assured that the sim pie law of Christian love will in due time be expanded by Christian science into thousands and tens of, thousands of the special precepts of Christian ethics, which future generations shall joyfully accept-which will be light as air in their facile accommodations to all the con- ditions of human existence, and as strong as links of iron to hold men to every form of duty. We triumph in the faith that the time will come when this unwritten law shall sound in every obedient soul as winningly and as lovingly as the evening breeze that rests on the wind harp and shall thunder as terri ply to the disobedient as the voice of God from Sinai.
 Such faith in human progress is rational It is true indeed that if God is personal and man is free, the relations of God to man may be more complicated, and less easily known than if man is material and God an unknown and impersonal force. On the other hand, social science gains nothing, but loses much, in telling us that the laws of society are as fixed as the laws of the planets, and that man is as plastic to their moulding as stardust or protoplasm to the cosmic forces. For on either theory, if we are to have science of the future, we must have faith in order and a purpose as the ground of our hope for that in which we confde. Order and purpose suppose personal thinker If we have no God, or a God whom we cannot know, we are without rational hope for that moral and social progress in which we all believe We believe that men will make progress, because