St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-02-13
SANITY CITY DOINGS
"Creed or Conduct" the Sub
ject OF Rev. S. G. Smiths
Sermon Yesterday.
Rev. Father Fitzpatrick Gives
the Cathedral WorShipepS
q Talk on Lent.
A Party of Capitalists From
Cleveland Who Sundayed
in the City.
Summary of the Doings of
One Day Gathered From
All Sources.
CREED OR CONDUCT.
The Subject Of DIR. Smith at the
Grand Opera House.


Grand opera house yesterday morning
TO a large and attentive audience.
Almost every chair in the theater was
occupied and many new faces were no
ticed. Rev. Mir. Smith took his text
from Matt. xviii, II. Subject, ''Creed
or Conduct" The reverend man said !:
Among the quaint pictures of East
India. which they use for the purposes
of religion. is one of an elephant en-
tangled in swamp, aid prevented by
his own weight from finding his way
out. This is fair symbol of the human
attempt to escape from its moral sur
roundmgS. The man entangled in be-
sediments, lassoed by habits, and sunk
in the mIre of his own deflement Won
derS, with breaking heart, how he may
escape from his past. Religion pro-
feSSeS tOS how man Il way out of the
swamp. BY its success in doing this
ought it to be gloritied or doomed? 1t
ought II be plain 10y this time that the
happy result cannot be achieved by
any mere process of thought. The
trouble lies far deeper than the intel
lect. Blindness to this fact has caused
much of the sluggish movement of
Christianity. The church has had too
many learned theOlogianS, and too few
dered more against the worlds errors
than it has against the worlds crimes.
No sensible man can belittle the value
of religious ideas. High thinking is a
prelude to high action. Conference of
organization depends upon conference
of thought. But God Himself has taken
care of fundamental religious ideas.
They are part of the natural cargo of
every human soul. Jesus Christ, in
dealing with the people, always
assumed that they had
enough of speculative truth. What
they needed was its moral application.
The early church fashioned for itself
the only catholic creed, in a spirit of
emotion and "9etry. The Apostles
creed was no ii. llectual symbol, under
which hosts might gather for angry
combat. 1t was the peaceful music and
RHYTHM of that unclounded early life,
where fact and faith were one. 1t is
therefore not so much dogma, as it is
worship. Not alone in the sim
plicity of its content, but in
the very spiritual quality of it.
The fact that il was born, not made !;
that it was the sign of harmony, and
not discord; that II had nothing judicial
or penal, separates it from every othe +
creed with as wide space as that
y lie
We accept it as our basis, not to put
each clause and word upon some intel
lectual rack, and make it yield up
AMIDST TEARS AND ORGANS,
the last shred of its awful secret; but
we rather use it as expressing our faith
In the supernatural, and as the univer-
sal liturgy OF God. This creed is a
meeting place of peace. AS during an
armiStice. battatIonS of contending
armies may meet on neutral ground in
friendly commerce, so does this creed
furnish broad fields where all the con-
tending hosts of ChriStendOm may ell
camp under its sky of calm. But every
creed made since that tune has been
preceded by artillery, and followed by
ambulanceS. The council of Nice
formulated a creed as the out
come of preliminary combat, which
produced an external peace, but which
marked the interior doom of the
church. 1t asserts the being of God
in terms which are strange to the New
Testament, and which would be wholly
unintelligible to Paul or John. The
church before this had suffered perse
cution from without, but we have here
the spectacle of reOrganiZed chriSten
dom, uniting under legal power to pun
ism one OF their own number. More
fell than martyr fires built at the edict
of heather emperorS was this sentence
of Punishment against AriuS on account
of his opinion. This was the prelude OF
that dark catalogue of racks and thumt
screws and murder, which have de
pleted the church and desolated the
earth in the name of Him who came tt
teach US the gospel of peace. No hu.
man words can perfectly compass the
statement Of absolute truth. What
blindness is it, therefore, which has
permitted in the past, and still permits
chriStendOm to be Scourged and torn
and divided over questions of statement
and dogma? The other side of this
shield reveals the placid stupidity of
those persons who rejoice in the fact
that they are settled" Meaning by
this that they have adopted complete
set of religious opinions, and no longer
care to be disturbed. Some take refuge
III one form OF ether of what we call the
church, and in the shelter of its sacred
protection, sink down into intellectual
and moral stagnation. Life hardens
into tradition, intellect weakens into
commonplace, and the soul is visited by
no generous sensations of noble diScOv.
cry of new and better thoughts.
TO BE SETTLED IN THOUGHT,
IN dogma. III habit, may be comfortable
for Old men and women in their dotage
but this is not the spirit that beats in
unison with the pulses of the worlds
progress. Nor will it escape the doom
of the word of God, spoken by the
prophet Zephaniah. 81 will punish
them who are settled upon their lees.'
No, it will not do to build a Noah'S ark
in the midst of the swamp, and conclude
to stay in it, even though you do put a
Spire upon the edifice and surmount II
with cross. We must get out of that
swamp. think it is time the old words
orthodox and heterodOX were made OBJ
Solete, or else furnished with a new
meaning. Who are the heterod0xesT
Not those who fail to comprehend or ac-
cept this or that form of words. Not
those who fail in statements of sacred
arithmetic or theories of sacrament, but
these are they: The men and women
who will not deal justly, love mercy,
ana walk humbly with their God"
who deVour widows houses, and vet
make long prayers that they may re-
ceive the greater damnation. These are
they, those of every name, or creed or
church who have failed to understand
that Jesus Christ came into the world
not TO furnish new order of thought,
but to make new race of men.
What is right Worship 1t is no Or
derry process OF service or ritual. 1t is
when the heart has learned to thrill
with the love of Jesus, and the life TO
reflect his character. This it is to be
orthodox. Misleading as is a merely
intellectual conception of Christianity,
even more dangerous is an emotional
one. Religious emotions that are not
connected with life are like wheels of
power unconnected with machinery,
the faster they so the more dangerous
IS 1t Tor the steam engine. Put on the
belts and transform motion into action
and aspiration into character. There
has been a great deal of misuse of the