St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-12-10
CHRISTIANITY PROGRESSIVE.
Church Members Urged to In
creased Efforts by Faith.


IF In his discourse at the Grand opera
house yesterday, Rev. Samuel G. Smith
discussed the question: ''Is Christianity
up with the Times?"
We sometimes characterize our age,
said the speaker, as time of restate-
ment of faith and new investigation of
struth, but every age has done this work
in so far as it has been alive. A living
thing, whether it be flower, or tree, or
man, or nation, must manifest its life
under new forms. Man and society have
progressed very rapidly during the past
twenty centuries. If Christianity was
"a complete and stationary thing, and if
. it was perfectly adapted to the condi-
tionS which surrounded its origin, since
man has vastly changed, it can not be
exactly adapted to him now. The same
9plants and animals have surrounded us,
like storms have swept over us, and the
same sun and stars burned in the sky
during hundred generations. The
changes in natural science have been
changes, not i'll SUI OF stars, or forms OF
life, but in mans perception and group
ing of the facts which relate to them.
Churches at their best are very poor
opponents OF christianity. and no one
| n
men. Christianity as form of life has
been for 1880 years struggling to be
born, and has not yet succeeded. But
people outside the churches are very
rash and wrong-headed in their crit
iciSms. 1t may be true that churches
have not done very well. but it is also
true that the most of the good deeds OF
the world have been through them. 1t
is also true that the field is still open,
and people who do rot like the lack of
success on the part of the present
organizations have ample opportunity
TO TRY IT THEMSELVES.
A church member is under no more
obligations to be good than anybody
else, for ethics are not bound UP with
conventionalities. Nobody escapes
obligation by remaining outside the
churches. Nobody is more futile than
the man whose mouth is full of crit
icisms and whose life is empty of all
practical effort. With gentleness then
toward each others faults, with graft
est helpfuineSS, it is the duty of all
men to seek practical embodiment of
Christianity in the earth.
Jesus felt sorely the limitations of the
time in which he lived and of the men
with who He had to deal. He was 81
lent upon many subjects of which He
would have been glad to speak had He
found q suitable audience; but the
wisest teacher gave permanent ex-
ample to ali of His successors, in that
fitness of His theme was as much an
object of solicitude as the truthfulness
of his ethics. The church has not yet,
l think. had breadth of vision and that
high and reverent courage which be-
longs to the audacity of faith, sufficient
to grasp and use the promise of Our
Master. Christianity had in it, the
seeds of a progressive revelation. AS a
system it was not only finished by
Christ and His Apostles. but it is not
finished now, and is capable of indefin-
lite expansion and development.
1t is not the progressive who are I'M
true to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but
the stagnant and rectionary, who are
disloyal. A seryile compliance with
dead mems thought about Christ and
His kingdom, is open rebellion against
that living and authentic spirit of
truth which Jesus promised to be the
abiding teacher Of His church. The
6ispensati0n of the spirit is the summer
time in which alone the truths of the
gospel can ripen into their proper fruit.
God did not teach Paul, Augustine,
Luther, Calvin and Wesley, and then
leave this world. He is still here,
realizing the promise of Our Savior,
HE shall declare unto you the things
that are to Gomez