The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1885-12-30
DR.. Newton on "Culture.:,

The Rev. R. Heber Newton, in All SOUS
church, West Forty eighth street, New York,
preached his last sermon Of the series on
Couture" to a very large congregation. cts
aids to the moral and religious life' was the
subject selected. Culture, the preacher said,
outtlanks the carnal man and Indirectly, but
most effectually, wars against the flesh. Lead
this brute man up on the plane of spiritual
being, open to him the delights Of intellect,
the noble joys of thought and imagination, the
rich resources of knowledge, the heavenly
pleasures Of the worship OF truth and beauty,
and you free him from the absolute slavery
of the appetites and passions. What mon
strous animals were our dear ancestors of q
few generations back! Sec those faxen-
haired, blue eyed Saxons Of our motherland
a thousand years ago feasting over whole
stuiting and swilling until they drop
asleep under the table, and then going
forth in the morning TO butcher one another
by way Of giving themselves "a constitu-
tional" against another revel! We take our
pleasuree now in the library and the museum,
the picture gallery and music hall. That
mighty brute of the Saxon period has grown
@ head and his vast body has shrunk in the
process. To convert good society TO purity
and the pro.etariat to sobriety one thing
would be found Of immediate inluence-a
little more intellectual life.
Culture is an antiseptic to worldliness.
Vanity Fair is open here in New York all the
year round. except when it adjourns to Sara
toga and Newport. We must needs all pass
through its avenues and by its booths, but, if
we would not be seduced into tarrying amidits
destinations, we must have before us some no.
bic aim, in whose pure, high light the garish
glory of the scene shall pale into the cheap bril-
lance Of tiuseled pleasures and spangled
e~1oplor- oc Nf q cforn ruha,, fha cQc 1C
turned out and the daylight steals in. One
cannot see the intrinsic shallowness and bald
ness and vulgarity of the court Of Malnmon
unless he can look down upon it from
the Olympian circle, where Homer, Plato,
Circero, Dante, Shakespeare, Bacon, Darwin,
Emerson, and the glorious hosts of the inn
mortals walk the heights OF being in the dis
course of the gods. A little high thinking
and deep feeling will make one content with
very plain living. Science, which the church
denounced and banned, has emancipated re-
liyion from the dungeon of superstition and
has restored it to the sunshine. How hes it
come to pass that men have ceased to believe
in the CHASTITY terrors of medieval hell! They
nave Simply outgrown such a conception.
The churches 20 on repeating the old Ian
guage about false religion, claiming still a
monopoly of grace, but church members live
enough in tho great world Of thought toknow
that virtue grows in India as in England;
that faith and hope and charity blossom in
Japan as in America.
If you want to rise into a noble and gra-
cious religion, a serene and sunny faith, GU
tivate your mind at the same time you are
feeding your soul. Deepen your inner life in
a mission, and then widen your outlook in a
generous course of reading. Adjourn for ten
years, my young friend, all questions about
dogmas and sacraments, and give your spare
--.-. b. 11f I'VE Ntns
and you will find these questions, like the let
tiers which Napoleon used to keep for a month,
have answered themselves. You will have
climbed out of the valley where men strive
over such matters, upon the hilltop, where
the stoeple of the meeting house is no longer
the centre oft1o panorama, but where, above
the broad and breezy sweep of earth, the
stars simmer and the heavens open. Gull
ture has a very impressive bearing on one Of
the prime duties of religion. Our whole
I Ihes' Intellect pS1Hs 'ar as we'll UvSf ' as e'5S ;SSHas
We are to capitalize Immortality with mind
as we'll as with character. Until Of late the
intellectual aspect of Immortality has been
wholly overshadowed by its moral aspect: A
mar may wander through the New Jerusalem
much as lie once wandered listlessly through
London or Nuremberg, seeing in heaven lit
tic more Of it's real beauty than he once saw
" j AoiiN D 6tO y OHS A
q town by it's hotel, another by its madonna,
each having found there the provision for
what he took with him-a stomach or a brain.
A man may yawn in heaven, anil when he
has seen the golden streets, and the pearly
gates, think that he has 'done" the new Jeru-
salem, or those pearly gates may open to
him an apocalypse of glory and every step
along the golden pavements be buoyant with
the rapture of delight, 'overy glimpse a some
thing to come back and to study with an en-
uberant joy that knows no safety. Sweden
borg's instructive teaching on this point have
been we'll followed up by the higher teaching
Of spiritualism.
Moral Responsibility of the Press.
At the Church of the Messiah, Greene and
Clermont avenues, Brooklyn TIE Rev. Charles
R. Baker, pastor, preached the last of a series
Of public Sunday lectures on prominent ques-
tions Of the day, his subject being 1.-THE
Moral Responsibility of the Press"
The reverend gentleman took for his text
Philippians, w., 8-'Finally, brethren, what
soever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatso-
ever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are Of good report: