The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-10-29
THE EPISCOPAL PASTORAL
rbe Doctrinal Aspects OF the Work
and Progress of the Church.
increased Sympathy with the Weak and
Suffering Classes-Sharp Criticism of
the Prevalence of Divorce.


Convention yesterday. The paper was. read
bv Bishop Huntington. The letter begins
thus:
Were there no better language, it might be
said that the church catholic, with all that
belongs to it, is the logic of events-the sure
deduction of history from the birth OF the
Externally Begotten of the womb OF the vir-
gin. Better language there is. We are not
in the sphere of dialectics. The gospel
is not philosophy. The church is not dis
covered at the end of line of argument any
more than by telescope or crucible. Per
Bonal power rules in the realms of spiritual
things, as in institutions and reformations
on the earth. Not in airy generalities reac-
lions from a virtual tritheism, any more
than by ancient hereses and half-heresies,
ran the truth of the tri-unity of God be
preached, but only by the clear affirmation in
the old symbols
To take men and things as they are, in or
der to make them what they ought to be- is
the craftsmanship of common sense. To ig-
more facts, or be dainty in accommo dation,
In order to revel in theory, is the insanity
Df the doctrinare The head of the church
permits us the comfort of observing cheering
Signs as that, all over the country, when
thoughtful minds now pass out of their own
religious belongings, on revision OF their
claims, they pass far less frequently from
one to another of these voluntary societies
than from all of them to our household; as
that lately, more than ever before, one fea-
ture after another in the apostolic system,
with the logical coherency of them all, is
found acceptable to our lately jealous neigh
bors. Will it not be reasonable also for us
Sandidly to acknowledge that there is among
them azeal for God, fervor of piety, quick
Bagacity to discern religious opportunities,
a consecrat ton of property, at once estima-
bile and imitabe? We had better confess,
for instance that on the score of theological
education, in ample libraries, in strong en-
dowments, in multiplying branches of re-
search, in an even pace with the best stu
dents abroad, we have no boasts whatever to
make before one, if not two or three of the
Christian bodies working and worshiping at
our side; in fact, nothing at all worthy of
our superior heritage and traditions.
Foreign missions home missions, missions
to men of any tongue Or color, are but the
unfolding and spreading of the power OF the
one Iucarnate Life. That is universal and
30 must our missions be. That is endless,
and so must the travels of our missionaries
be. There is no difference between the Jew
and the Greek. Humanity dead or dying in
bin is always the foreign" land.
y Within twenty years, and never more con-
spicuously than since our last triennial meet
ing, this church has been awakened to in
creased practical sympathy with the weaker
and suffering classes; victims of social wrong,
of unequal laws, of intemperanee in drinks
and an inscriptions traffic in them, and
sometimes of merciless wealth. There is
such thing as spirit of the age; and under
Its sway cruelty to mems bodies and public
violations of their rights in civilized nations
pave yielded to gentler code.
In the action OF this convention, taking
measures to provide a Christian care for the
Immense mass of European emigrants daily
arriving at our sea- ports and lake-ports and
distributed over the continent there is
pointed out line of usefulness peculiar to
our condition, open to clergy and laity alike.
For the success of many safe schemes of SAN
itary relief and reform, we have comforta-
BILE guaranty in humane tendencies that have
become popular A dreary conservatism it
would be that would take off our hands from
helping them, in any nervous fear. We may
better covet the honor of being foremost in
them. Their principle is not modern. Fair
humanities, bloomed and bore fruit in ''old
religion"
In every class the springs of all morality
are tainted by the Dissertation of marriage
vows To defile the homes of a nation is to
barbarize it, The purity of family life and
thence of social life, subssting only in the
sanctity of wedlock, the true obligations of
that covenant are found only in the teaching
which presents the rule of its nature in the
mystical union between Christ and His
church. Whatever may be accomplished by
secular alarm or policy in checking divorce,
there must be more searching remedy. 1t
must be profounder force that regulates
the passions and judgment in forming and
protecting the marital tie ITSELF Christening
not only its form but its spirit Wretched
households and broken matrimonial pledges
come of Eighty engagements, an absence of
all seriousness from the most solemn of all
human steps, immodest publicity in the lives
of boys and girls in streets and public houses,
the abnegation of parental control, or the re-
lection of it by juvenile insubordinaton.
In nearly all our cities and large towns
the sidewalks after nightfall are
alive with gay, but ominous presages of So
Icial degeneration. There can hardly fail to
he before long general effort to suppant
with pure but entertaining reading the ruin
Gus publications that are poisoning readers
of all ranks-a literature of divorce, OF Sc
ducton, of adultery, of moral death. The
pulpit has its responsibility; special combina-
tions may do something, but far more is to
be done by breeding pure manners and
guarded thoughts in young children through
the instructions of mothers and fathers in
dwellings, where daily domestic prayers
quicken the conscience and cleanse the heart
Frightful statistics have lately shown how
carefully the public school system needs to
be watched, how utterly inefficient mere
book knowledge is to forestall vice or crime.
Loose notions of doctrine and duty may
creep into the air as well as by
untaught teachers in a Sunday school,
where the rector has abandoned
the trust of his ordination to wellmeaning
incompetence, as by the sophistries of some
audacious author preacher who publishes
his destructive fancies in a romance or a
sermon. In these primary seminaries of the
church there is room not only for more
definite tuition and stricter attention from
the clergy, but for personal partici patton
in them on the part of the learned laymen,
of standing however high, of business how
ever urgent, men of affairs and professions,
Christian gentlemen without shamefacedness
or self-indulgence, such as may be seen now
and then in some parish in old England,
where the minister of religion has for his Law
reader and catechist a minister of state
Service for Christ to the young, like that,
lends robustness to the manhood of the
manifest OF men. At best, however one hour
of the seven DAYS can never suffice