The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-03-10

should enter the house of God except
with long face and a severe demeanor.
Grimness is not piety. Lugubrious-
ness does not heighten worship. But
there is such thing as a cheerful Sc
robustness, and an earnestness that puts
away lightness of thought and demean-
or; and L would that every man and
woman could assume it before passing
the inner threshold of this church. You
can take but little away from here I'M
less you bring something with you.
The preacher will have hard task in
deed if he gets no voluntary help from
his hearers. Some soil, with the best
of husbandry, yields no harvest.
II.
But when with heart and mind COM
posed for this place and it's observances
you enter these doors, the church sa-
lutes you with another thought. By
its very shape it greets you in the name
of Jesus Christ the Lord. 1t holds be-
fore your eyes the very form of his cross.
Nave and transept represent the cross
ing trunk and branches of the tree
on which the worlds Redeemer hung.
No richer and more suggestive archi-
tectural thought was ever given to man
than that which wrought into the very
walls of the church the symbol of the
church's great Head. Jesus Christ is
the very heart of Christianity. Not
Jesus the good man; not Jesus the
moral teacher; not Jesus the chief
OF the prophets; not Jesus the best
Of the Tabbis; the Christian church
Is not accounted for by any of these.
The saving power of the gospel comes
from deeper root, grows out of a
richer soil. 1t is in Jesus Christ, the
only beg0tten son Of the Father, in
whom dwells all the fulIness of the
Godhead bodily, the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world, the head
of every creature, the Saviour of the
world There is no true Christianity
save that which has Jesus the Christ as
it's center. He is to all the church's en-
ergies, aye, to all the throbbing life of
the civilization which has become ami
mated by his spirit, what the heart is
to the organs and the members of the
body; and whatever weakens trust in
his authority, belief in his word, love
of his person, paralyzes all the life
which still goes on in his name, dries
up its richness, chills its warmth, and
reduces the activities of the grandest
religion the world has ever seen to the
cold exercises of ethics; the calculated
admiration of good and loving man.
Let these walls, whenever you enter
them, speak of that great truth which
is the cornerstone of the Christian
faith. Other foundation can no man
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus
Christ"
Let them say more. The cross they
symbolic is the token Of that truth,
the deepest of all theology, the lofties,
to which human thought can rise, that
| God is love. That is the message of
the cross. The love which led those
patient feet up Calvary's slopes, the
love that invited the cross and endured
all its agony and shame, was the ex-
preston by the Redeemer of the su-
preme fact in the divine nature. 1t
was the revelation of the love of God.
For " Tod commendeth his love toward
us, in that while we were yet sinners
Christ died for us.' Whatever recalls
the cross reminds us of all for which
the cross stands. And the profoundest
meaning, first, last and always, is the
love of God manifested to this sinful
world.
The wrong that pains my soul below,
dare not throne above;
know not of his hate-I know
His goodness and his love-"
Ill.
There is another thought which has
been in my mind ever since l first saw
in imagination even, this noble and
lofty lantern which draws the eye ire
sistibly upward, and fills the mind with
the same sensations which are begot-
ten by the springing arches and aspir-
ing curves of the Gothic churches. 1t
has been common phrase with us in
describing our new house of worship to
say that it was " to be lighted from
above" The expression has never
passed my lips without suggesting to
my mind the thought of its aptness in
describing the great and vital fea-
ture of our common religion, 1. e.,
" light from above" We receive the
truth as Jesus Christ declares it, not as
man-made system, but as God given
inspiration. 1t is not the fruit of
mans experience, but the gift of Gods
power. 1t is not an inference but an
intuition. 1t is not reason but revela-
ton. When we go to the gospel we
are not retreating to the fallacious and
Elusive work of the human intellect
and conscience, building with uncer-
tain hand out of the hard-bought ma
terials of past experience. We are ad-
vancing into the light which streams