Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1888-02-27
AN1NTEREsr1NG DIsCoURsE

Delivered by Rev. G. w. de Lyon
terday.
Rev. c. W. de Lyon Nichols, assistant at |
st. Thomas, preached at that church yester-
day afternoon highly interesting discourse
from portion of the oath verse of st. Johns
gospel, ''God is Spirit" The following is
a partial outline of the discourse: est. John
was the doctrina1 and liturgical apostle of the
church, his gospel the spiritual gospel and
the keystone of evangelical history. He
stands forth as the apostle of the incarna-
ton; to him belongs the suceinet statement
of the ground thought of the incarnation
the "word made hesh". His was contem-
plative vision of God-inspired seer Mys-
ticism is by no means an exotic to such
temperament as his whose daily pilgrimage
on earth meant pure and serene fellowship
with God. St. John seems to deduce all
theology from Gods self-oensciousness and
to place all things under the form of eternity.
As the Greek of old was wont to reflect The
owl of Minerva does not wend its flight until
the evening shadows begin to darken", SO
with the apostle. not until the sable pail of
old age had begun to gather about him on
Patmos did he give forth to the world his
wonderful book of Revelations. The moral
of all this is that mans truest wisdom is ret
respective. The secrets of to-day are in
sense the revelations of yesterday. His high
soaring genius chastened in the sanctuary of
sorrow, the pinions of his glowing imagina-
ton empurpled with the blood of Calvary st.
John comes before us the most ideal of ideal
lists endowed with all the sympathetic insight
which prophecy can lend to transfgure toll
and care and lifts the veil which conceals the
forms of hope.
IT. IL:
folding be built up SO that the man of ordi-
nary habits of thought can catch bird's-eye
view of this promised land, the spiritual
kingdom? Provided the mind be not car
ried away by skeptical, earth-born preju-
dices of the carnal understanding, the great
truths grasped at the end of this voyage of
discovery must necessarily be the three-fold
mystery that God is a spirit What is the
three -feldness of the mystery? 1t is the mys-
terry of the ever blessed Trinity. All this is
true, all this is of heavenly interest, but
where is the intellectual scaffolding by which
We were to reach this transcendent plane?
The good, the true, the beautiful form the
beams of this scaffolding; the firm and sub
tile bond fastening these trinities of elements
is philosophy, you say. But what is philos-
ophy? Thus is the reason of man,
urged on by revelation, compelled to trans
cend the limits of the senses and mount up
to the presupposition of the absolute, the
is a God and that God is spirit, in order
to complete the series OF conditions of uni
versal existence. Men ask what are the hid
den mainsprings of all phenomena. This is
the problem which the world process is
every day helping to solve. Visible nature
and the drama of history are the symbols
through which works the hidden
logic of an organized spiritual evolution. The
shell on the ocean strand and the humblest
infusoria alike reveal the inner nature of
their germinant life. The varying and mex
plicable elements furnished in sense and SEN
suous Imagination, says Goethe, must orys-
tallize into the majestic forms of eternal
thought, of reason divine. An infinite self
conscious personality then must be posted
as the author of the whence and whittier of
things. Thus any philosophy of mans ex-
istence, if legitimately carried out, conducts
us to the truth which the humblest Christian
reaches by faith-that God is spirit. The
proposition that God is spirit is a closed
circle. It is both the decomposition and
goal of all existence. The journey of the
soul to it is direct and easy; every by-path
in the natural or mental horizon leads
straight up to it. The doctrine saat God is a
spirit, with its absolute and necessary im-
plication that God is a Trinity, while built
in as the chief corner stone of Christian
theology, is at the same time the most simple
and abstruse of the articles of our belief Its
coTollary that the spirit of man is in the i'm
age of a reflected Trinity in its practical
bearings moulds and shapes unconsciously
the lives and destinies even of the unlettered
and ignorant While fallen humanity does
the heavenly country, in some
instances it serves as a valuable
hand-maid to faith God is a
spirit. He made the oblation of his only be-
gotten Son precipitation for the sins of the
whole world. Our blessed Lord was both
L. III 1a&s@ ,.~E
world and the high priest Offering the sacri-
fee, both the offering and the oferer. Christ
is spirit, for who but an infinite spirit
could compass within his being this double
negation of being at the same time the high
priest and the sacrifice! God is spirit; his
essentially belonging to a spirit
will and affection.
What is the practical sequence to all this!
What hold does it take on our lives? AS
God is a spirit he does what is of the nature
of spirits He imparts himself by the gift of
the Holy Spirit, the sancti6er. For, as the
epistle to-day marks, God has not called us
unto uncleanliness, but unto holiness. God
grant that this Lent may register the begin
ming of strieter prayerfulness than other
years of our lives have chroni-
cled. Let each one of the lamps
of our devotion now Pickering and be-
dimmed by the glare of the worlds gaieties,
pS cPt dAo dAI0sA Uo1OIo
the throne of the heavenly..grace Lent bids us
stop and think, but stop and think what to do
next. Wherever the meek and lowly Jesus is
taken for our standard bearer, there must be
sacrifice. Wherever Christ's disciple dwells
there must be Golgotha. A merely general
attendance upon the church's services with
out work invariably ends in merely general
state of salvation, salvation SO general that
it will apply to anybody except to those per-
sons who want it the most to apply to them
selves.
Let SO dwell among men that our daily
conversation shall be in heaven, that in the
new heavens and earths we may abide in the
secret place of the almighty, to canvass in its
infinite depth and fullness the presupposition
and the goal of all existence that God is
spirit.