The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-16

force. Certainly this doctrine of the universality
OF the Olvine Presence is going to be not upset.
but substantiated.
THE NAME NOT THE THING.
Already the foremost a~gnostics and atheistic
reasoners on this subject propose 20 rename
God and call Him force or energy. I don't care,
II oy that they mean, IA they will have to mean,
what we mean by Jehovah, by Lord. by Christ
they can make a name TO suit themselves. The
name Is not the thing. 1t is the qualities thai
are in it. And if there be one thing that is To
be triumphantly demonstrated. it seems To ma IN
is to be that the whole life of the world ia BRO
noted by the life behind it of God Himself. We
have got to enlarge our ideas and refine them in
that direction. The universal sinfulness and
imperfection of human nature-is man born
s~inless, blameless, and is that his character al
revealed in history and is that his character as
existent man?-is the doctrine of human sinful
ess-not the awkward phrase, total depravity.
which is a phrase misleading and inappropri-
te-does the doctrine that man everywhere,
always and everywhere, is q sinful Great
ure-is that likely to be substantiated
or to be overthrow by evolutionl The abs0-
lutte necessity of a change in mankind from the
control of the flesh to the supreme control of the
moral sentiment-or, if you want the old phrase.
conversion, regeneration, the being born again
lis that truth likely to be upset or enforced and
Fortified
IL AaCI tttdt III ukud butsIO WCEG CkU-
ments that when stimulated by the Divine
Spirit lifted men up to such a relationship with
God as to give them not only a sympathy and an
understanding of God, but gave in these states
of exaltation something of the divine power
this is the tenor Of the New Testament, mys-
teriously expressed, more perfectly by Jesus as
recorded in John than anywhere elsc-namely:
that there Is in mankind an element of power
which, when quickened by the influence Of the
divine mind, carries him up not only above his
baser passions, but into an atmosphere Of
thought and susceptibility, that gives him moral
intuition, or the power of the prophet, the
power OF sight before reasoning comes in-is that
taught by evolutionl 1t leads up to it.
The derivative control of mind and matter is
taught in Christianity exterior to ones own self.
That is, when men drawn I'D by the spirit OF
God have come so far into His presence as to DO
filled with the vitality of God in a limited degree,
he has given to him something of divine power.
All these mysteriously and utterly unregulated
coming-a and going exhibitions that we are seeing
now, and that are without form and void, like
the earth itself at creations dawn. all of them
are in the borderland of which Christ himself
teaches us-namely: that it is in the power OF
men by fasting and prayer that they may rise to
such a state that they can control not only
demoniac spirits. but also matter itself. That
my spirit can control as much matter as have
got in my body | do not doubt. nor my children
either; but the control over matter exterior to
ones self and not organized into ones self, is
that a hard thing to believeg Christ says it can
be done. 1t can be done by those that rise,
expanding in themselves to such an ex-
tent that they are like God and receive, as it
were, divine impulse, and with it divine pow
err: and that gives them control in a limited do
gree over matter exterior to themselves. That
is taught in Christianity. A power not only to
receive divine influence but to reciprocate in
some faint degree and to act upon the divine
nature is also taught, as a little child has power
over its parent, not by its hand or its foot or by
it's whole body, but by feeling with its little
affections upon the affections Of its superior, the
parent. "a little child shall lead them.r So IL
has been from the beginning; go it will be to the
end; and with that same principle of obedience,
that the pure in heart shall see God; and when
men come to that stage in which right things de-
sired can be obtained by the impulse, the impli-
cation of the soul upon God, that he is the effect,
though he made laws and the continuity Of laws,
yet there is a scope in the Divine Being and a
large commonwealth of liberties by which a man
can produce features through God that can be
produced in no other way. Aud here is one out
let to the skeptical doubts brought to bear, all
Of which. in the series of discourses, will come.
more particularly up for discussion.
CHRIST AND THE JEWS.
Christ broke up the provincial and degener-
ate notion of the contemporary Jews. For the
Jews in His day are not to be COMPOUNDED with
Jews of the elder day. There had been q back
sliding and a degradation in the days that i'm
mediately surrounded Christ, and He broke up
their provincial notion that God was by GOV.
enant their national God as distinguished from
any and all other nations. Likewise the stoio
notion of faith held by the Greek philosophers
and the mechanical notions of the divine gov
eminent, as q vast machine OF invincible laws
which God would not change and man could
not. 1t taught. In distinction from these, that
there were buried in mankind the elements Of q
Hhartv like Code own and that If minds and
lives were unfolded to the extent possible they
should be redeemed from the hard conditions Of
inferior law, from the mechanical inevitable-
ness of material law, from matter, and come
into the glorious liberty of the sons OF God.
Christ also brought to life and light Immortality.
He painted these coming evolutions in the soul
of men upon the background of a radiant inn
mortality.
Now, the sum Of all these is that man is, at a
primary observation. an animal, low-toned, a
sinful being; that it was not necessary that he
should remain 80; that there was a power in him
of unfolding by which he should steadily gain ad-
vantage and ascendency over his lower and ami
NAL nature, and that when the rays of tho Divine
Soul touched his and translated him to the higher
spheres, then that he should come into a direct
and personal communion with God consciously,
and that when the predominant moral sem
slollitleS were, as 1t were. stimulated and brought
to their superior elements by the intouch OF
Gods own nature, that they should not only have
q poWcT VI CutSipHG, IOTeSlSnU, luIultlOHt Gut
they should have such communion with God as
that they should be conscious of His presence all
the time, and that in this intimate communion
of the soul with its Creator in its higher range
they should have something of the divine power,
and might be called really set free from all ami
maiism, and mainly from subverting influences
of cur feshly condition.
That is Christianity-is not that cyoluticna
Is not that the most glorious application that has
ever been made yet of that ascending scale by
which men. bapiNninO at nncrOWued matter.
steadily going up through animal phases to the
social, aud to the moral, and to the intellectual
and to the spiritual, finally find out their birth
place, their birthricht. find out that God is their
God, and that they are His children by a success
sive series of unfoldingsl The doctrine of evo-
luton of forces in life; of the unfolding in us OF
all that lies TO seed; of the steady unfolding OF
all that lies in matter; of steady development OF
natural laws; of all that lies in human society
by the gradual stages of civilization; of all that