St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-07-02
THE SUPREME QUESTION.
What Constitutes Christian Dis
cuSSed i'm an Able Manner


cussed in an Able Manner.
At the Church of Christ yesterday
morning Rev. w. j. Lhamon preached
an interesting sermon from the text,
Mark viii, 81.
Christ,s questions are always leading
ones. The PhariSees had their little
questions about hand washings, and
Sabbath keeping, and tithes, and fasts,
and phylacterieS; the church fathers
have had their little questions about the
divine substance, and persons, and
trinities, and unities, and frightful
ChriStologies, and Anthropologies and
Theologies; the church quarreled over
the questions of Arianism for fifty
years, and over Monophysitism for more
than hundred; who cares about, or
even knows, about these things now?
The present day church has also Its
little questions about Episcopacy, and
ism, and Sabbatarianism, ETC., till one
might name forty "isms." The differ
ence between many of these 'isms' is
that eternal and all-important one of
''tweedledee" and 'tweedledum, but
they serve to pamper sectarian pride,
keep up jealOuSies and impede the
Lords work. These miserable
questions have been the bane of
Christian progress. But if Jesus is the
Christ. if Christ is 1.-THE perfect revela-
ton of God, and the perfection of man
hood if he is ''the unique Divine Son
and the unique sinless man," if he is
the ''realized ideal of humanity" if he
is 1.-The purest among the mighty, and
the mightiest among the pure of all the
EARTH" if he is ''the Divine Person, a
standard of excellence, and model for
imitation" if Jesus is what he himself
Savior OF the world, then this was the
supreme question: "WhO do men say
that l amps
The chief of his apostles answered !:
''Thou art the Christ" On that truth
the church was built. Whatever may
have been the errors of the historic
church, it is certain that the churchoof
the present begins again to see Christ
clearly, and that the church of the
future promises to stand on that truth,
viz, that Jesus is the Christ. Christ is
fact. His life and death and resur-
rection are facts. He is the Son of
God. He is the Lord of earth. When
devout men have become free
from the phantoms of theology,
from tradition, sectarianism, big
OUTy, pFluo anu jealousy Gl6y
will gladly acknowledge the divinity of
this, humanity's greatest Brother, and
as gladly live in loyalty to his Lordship.
This question was the only test of fel-
lowship in the early church, and should
be the only one to-day. Loyalty to
Christ constitutes Christian. No creed,
council or pope has right to demand
more.
In Christ centers moral truth, social
truth, political truth, religious truth.
In Him, therefore, is the solution of all
our hard problems. The world begins
to acknowledge this in many ways
hitherto unthOught of. For example,
political economists like Prof. Wagner,
of Berlin, are sitting at the feet of
Christ, and political science is becoming
Christian science. 1t is so in many de-
partments of thought.
Christ is the sun, and hence the sun
light of our moral, intellectual and spir-
itual systems. AS in the sunlight rest
ing on all the earth there grows life in
its myriad forms of beauty and activity,
so in the light of Christ the thousands.
of thousands OF men and women, and
little children of all the earth, into a
happier and holier life, a life that as.
pires to Immortality.