Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-06-18

see in the religion of the day mass of con-
ventionalism, not that spirit of love
to God and love to man that
makes religion a life, overcomes the
world, Overturns its maxims, brushes its
selfshness, and establishes a new earth
whereon dwelleth righteousness. So the
contest RACES to-day, as it ragged century
ago. The watchwords, and the signals, and
the maneuvers of the contending armies are
changed, but the battle is the same. Men
have an ideal which comes from Christ but
they do not see in the Church of to-day a
realization of that ideal, and they study
positivism and agnosticism, and listen to the
sophisms Of Ingersoll, and the negations of
Adler, to discover if, hapIy, truth may be
somewhere found and rest for the spirit that
becomes more perturbed as science opens to
its views wider vistas of the universe that
surrounds M. Truth is sought earnestly
and with ardent longing, but can truth, it
is asked, be found in a Church that cannot
point to one country, one city, not to one
little village, and say that there every hui
man being that has arrived at years of dis
erection is making the teachings of their
leader the directions. Of their life? there all
speak truth, all live uPrighuy, all manifest
purity of heart ard conduct; none seek
power, show, or riches, and none are deficient
in the necessaries and comforts Of life; and
they all love one another as affeciionate fam
lilies love each other; in sickness, misfortune
and sorrow there Is always sympathy, COM
passion is never wanting and help abundant
and free is ever at hand when help can as
suage misery. Such Ia the Church Christ
He came to establish. Show us that and we
shall know where the truth is. Your teacher
said: "By their fruits We shall know them"
yet not even a little village is known where
the fruits are habitually manifested. We
look over the christian world and we see
Earring, and chicanery, and everywhere sell
6shness seeking power, display and money.
Within the Church itself, "the bride, the
lambs wife" we see disunion, strife, pomp,
desire for precedence, self-assertion, denunci-
alton, accommodation, law suits, exclu-
sions, while the general tone of morality is
not higher than that of the decent, con-
scie ntious self-respecfing citizens outside of
the Church. Taken in its divisions or as a
whole, we do not see the fruits your leader
said his followers were to be known by, and
this after nineteen hundred years of exist
ence. So men observe and question, and in
despair geek at strange shrines and from
stammeriDg tongues for what bible IN
dimmed by human differences and specuIa-
lions would teach if the veil-man's presump-
ton and mans desire to make religion
sanction his pride, his covetousness, and his
utter selfshness were removed. AS it Is, the
most solemn truths are questioned, the being
Of God viewed a speculative idea, and
mans Immortality dream, beautiful but
baseless. So the turmoil of hundred years
ago is renewed, and wrongs and contentious,
and ambition and arrogance, and the IN
quenchable thirst for money, in the Church
and out OF it, goes on, and men yet grope in
darkness for "the living epistles to be read
d all men" fail