The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-07-07


lights Of the world" and to them did
the world look for light. On the other
hand was Jesus as we have described
him, unlearned in the wisdom of the
world, poor, obscure and even despised,
and he, too, claims to be the light of
the world. How shall we decide the
controversy between them? Simply by
an appeal to facts. Time which tries
all things will bring to light the truth.
Eighteen hundred and odd years have
rolled away since the shout went up
from the Swans of the earth that the
impostor or fanatic was dead, and his
light was quenched in the darkness Of
death and all his professions scattered
to the winds. But trace those centur-
ries as history has recorded their pro-
gress, and whose footprints do you find
there most conspicuously marked? Is
it Gamaliel or Jesus? Is it the phil
osophers of Greece and Rome or the
teacher of Nazareth? The high priest
Of the Jews who ministered in the
glorious temple, or the man in plain
garments who sat on Olivet or by the
sea of Galilee and talked to the fisher
men? Who is it that has made his
mark and left his footprints most in
delibly marked upon these ages? Does
not the child know that among all his
contemporaries there is not one who has
wrought as he has wrought? Not one
of them, nay, not all Of them combined,
have done for the enlightenment of the
world the 1.-THE Of what he has done.
And how is it to-day? Where are the
priests that judged him, the scribes
that despised him, the lawyers that
derided him, the philosophers that
looked down upon him as a vain
babbler?
The worms have eaten their ponder
GUS volumes aud all their glory is a
heap of rubbish at the foot of his cross;
while their wisdom is forgotten and
the teachings that they carefully put
down on parchment that they might
not be lost are all gone, those words that
he breathed out on Gods air as he
walked by the way are treasured in the
hearts of men and taught to children
as household words through all the
length and breadth of the enlightened
world; nay, more, those words have
been the main instrument by which
the process of enlightenment has been
carried on. These are the facts, as
thus on the face of the present and in
the history OF the past, and l claim
that they reveal in him fountain of
divine life and power; a spiritual force
that goes far to justify his claim to be
the light of the world. 1 claim that
from him and his teachings, there has
flowed out to the ages, and come down
to the present, more of light and truth
divine than from any and all other
sources combined. In the dark vaults
beneath the Pantheon at Paris is the
tomb of Voltaire. From the marble
sarcophagus that contains his remains
there rises white chiseled arm, hold
ing in its hand marble torch, design
ed to symbolic the fact that he held
in his own hand the torch to light up
his own Immortality. AS I looked
upon that silent and cold emblem of
human vanity could not help think
ing that Voltaire once called Newton
an old dotard, because he believed in
Jesus and Immortality. Time has
passed away and the world has pretty
we'll decided which of the two was
the dotard.
So the wise men of the age of Jesus
pronounced him vain babbler, but the
history of the past, and the facts of
the present, testify clearly enough who
were the babblers. Look still further
into these facts; examine the map of
the world, and see the vast difference
there is in different portions of it, not
only as regards the knowledge of things
spiritual and divine, but also in regard
to knowledge of the sciences and all
the arts of a refined civilization and it
is not difficult to decide where the light
is and whence that light came. Where
ever Christianity has gone, even in its
corrupted state, it has done much to
deepen the sense of the value of man
as man, and thus it has quickened the
intellect and stimulated all human en-
ergies, and advanced man in knowledge,
and in the march of improvement. 1t
has been and still is the handspring of
human progress, and have no doubt
that, if you were to-day to blot the
New Testament out of existence and
henceforth withhold from the.world all
the knowledge that has come to us
through the medium of Christianity,
the most enlightened nations of the
earth would gradually fall away, and
eventually relapse into barbarism.
The actual difference between
Christian people and those where
Christ is not known is world wide. In
the former, brute force is the law, and
might makes right. Gov
eminent is absolute and despotic if, in