The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-10-09

as the Lord and Sovereign and Judge,as well
rs the creator of the earth and men upon it;
ana IT. takes wha, God declares, in that which
the history of the world declares to be His
WORD, and what tie devout spirit reverently
accepts as the word of God, concerning
Hlmsef and man and mans need and the
hereafter. Here inspiration and redemption.
regeneration by the Holy Spirit, retributon
IN the fusnre, time as the proof of eternity,
come yivldly before us as the thoughts of
Cod. lie shows them to us in characters as
broad as if He had written them in a great
theodlcy OF star-fires and enduring orbs in 6he
heavens. This system of theology does not
cast any dlccredit on lman nature; it exalts
IL by showing it the object of Divine solic-
itude; 1t casls the splendor and the solemnity
of eternity upon the prerent experience ard
life of man, and it gives to the Bible an
Unreasonable and an almost incopceiyable
i'm portance and value.
Now l understand perfectly that the
natural tendency of men is to accept the pre-
ceding system, as the natural tendency of
manis to believe that the earth is the centre
and the heavens go around it. Man finds
self 1onscio Isness tie first element of
thought. TIE imp llse of self assertion
eppears to be the primary impulse of human
nature. 1t is simply the egotistic man, of
who'll it might be said as was said by a
friend OF mine, speaking rather roughly and
not very elegantly about man who was
very egotistic and who had offended him by
his egotis n: 81 believe that that man
thinks that his house is placed where the
leg of the eompasses was put down when the
earth was made round" Iaughter.) There
is a certain tendency in every human heart to
feel that it is central, and that it has rights
and p ivileges and possibilities belonging to
itself inhe-c emily and with which no being can
fa,O1,arlx trafr Aud x-orIrc
with its multiple forces and instruments
and wealth in the same direction, taking a
man feeling his lordship of the earth and
reminding him more and more and encourag-
ing him to feel that he is lord of his destiny
and lord of the hereafter as we'll There are
ce tain phllanthropic sentiments which work
in the same direction, no doubt, tending to
make Lien believe that all will be right here
after so mellow or other, and that after
some possible brief unpleasantness in the
fusure thee will be a universal deliverance
and restoration into holiness and its peace.
And the secular spirit Of the time, intense,
widening, ever increasing, moves in the same
direction. 1t enters into literasure it enters
into life on every side; it finds no reality in
.elgion; it believes it a matter Of poetic
aspiration, or of cultivated literary leisure, or
of fine speculation, o. of social observance, or
possibly of ethics, or more likely Of aesthetic
art; bat the grand reality of religion, as
bond uniting the huma1 soul with the d
vine, it does no. recognize or feel. It this
which gives significance and importance to
inhdel harangues; it is this spirit which
| speads reath and behind them. The
harA1gues are merely the surface pustules
while the disease is within. They are the
red and sulohurous flames, while the fires are
underneath. And yet they nultiply. The
/ bllciOncc of fhic oitx ,f
| be carried on on the plincip'es of these har-
angues. There is not a. bank or an insurance
| company here that would rot have to shut
| its doors if it posted within its walls, "This
| is an agnostic establishment. (applause.) 1t
| is carried on upon these principles: that
| there is no God about whom we know any,
| thing; there is no hereafter proba-
| bic; man came out of the monkey: and
| there is no moral law Let such sentiments
| p-evail in this city, and it would have been
better if the fire Of a few years ago had swept
| away every house within it and left nothing
but the bay ar d the beach on which to plant
| new town; and yet men love to crowd
| halls and pay money in order to hear these
infdel speculations which are in substance as
old as the ages, and which are simply fu-
| of the doctrine which hrve described.
| And thus it comes to pass that religious
thought loses its power among those VINO
areSnot directly touched by such harangues,
that the influence widens continually to
make the Bib'e a neglected book, and to
make the Sabbath secular dav to make
the church mere convocation Of people
| coming together at leisure to hear lecture
Z Try 1t out, and don't see why the general
auaintance of the Bible could not be fairly
presented by that perhaps mythical West
| en- editor, who saw, you know, in some re-
| IpIO1tS pYphaDUa an Of
comments upon tie Deluge of which he had
never heard beeo-e. He rushed into the re-
| po tsr's room and said, Look here; that slow
| old rellg ous fellow has got ahead of us
There has been great food only one mans
| family is saved, his name is Noah. Go
aud get the whole business and work it up"
| Laughter.
1t is at such times that the spirit of liberal
ism as it is called, in religious speculations
| tending all the time to loosen the bonds and
unstring the strength of the gospel of Christ,
| finds opportunity and Indictment and comes
| n ore widely to prevail Liberalism II repu
| d ate the term. appausel. do not under
! sand what function hbe~ality has either in
the record or the in the Interpretation of facts.
| do no. understand how he is liberal math-
| ematic an who makes his calculations bend to
| the p. eferences of himself OF his pupils
| do not unde stand Row he is liberal chem
ist WI feels at Ibe~ty to play fast and loose
| with the principles of his science and
| will not quite affirm whethe- gun
powder Wilt explode or not when fire
touches i. How is he a liberal chart
maker vfo rubs out all the reefs and rocks
and bars and warning headlands from his
map and shows smoo.h coast-line with
nothing but smiling shores and welcoming
| baysF How is he liber.l Interpreter of the
1 Ulnha who 6eY,iao fba Oh IL.
fire beneath and afirms that the whole is
built, if we only kT ew it. ofexcellently select
| ed wood-pulpH What possible province has
iberality in the record of facts or in the inter-
| probation ofthem? understand perfectly what
| liberality means as toward the opinionsof 9TH
| ersi who differ from us. understand what iber
| ality means as to ward the character of Others
who are entirely opposed in opinion and in
| action to us. Coleridge's canon has always
| seemed to me perfectly to cover the grourd
| "Tolerate no belief he says, "which YOU
deem false and ofinjurious tendency, but ar
| raign no belief. The man is more and other
than his belief, and God only knows how
| large or how small part of him the belief in
| nan may be-" But liberality in the statement
| of fects- there, we want exactness, we want
| earne tness, we want precise fidelity to the
| truth Of things; arc there is no opportunity
| for what calls itself liberality there. How
| is it less liberal to tell man that strych-
nine will kill him than to tell him tha
| it will certainly give him pain in his stom-
ache Laughter. How is it less liberal to
| tell man that he goes over Niagara he goes
to a sure peath than it is to tell him that if he
takes that ewful plunge he will almost GER
tainly wet his feess Laughter MOI When
man comes to me and says, ''These are the
liberal doctrines: there is not probably ar
God j we do noS know where men come from;
there is no law above him; there is no retribu-
tion--or if there be any, il is a snail one
waiting for him. l say: l perfectly uad~r-
stand your doctrines. Thee is no rea. on
why ISshould not. There is nothing i'm
d ense or complex or mysterious about
tt m,--in fact they are rather thin. laugh
ter. They remind one of the pill
lows which ore Of the walters stole
at a White Mountain hotel where thay
didn't have very solid pillows. They knew
he stole them sbec-use they found them on
him, both of them. in his waistcoat pocket
Laughter. We carry tt ese doctrines very
easily in our thought ard hand. There is
nothing massive or maje7tie about them; there
is nothing ibelal in them. If man
is true to his cor viet:or G he ;s +r,,o