Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-03-17

cOmlOIsing LIS PupAA III epiiepsiO
face 'tdeadly pale, quivering painfully,
the ''parting with the Christian mythology
is the rending asunder of bones and mar
row." Never. There is no marrow in sucn
bones. A Christian of the old sort, who has
not simply felt its spirit in his life, but has
given direct and candid thought to its doc
trines, feels, in parting with its myth, that
he has come to the fulness of time when the
clumsy centuries-gathered conglomeration
is to clear away and the simple direct re-
ligion' of Christ is to shine forth in its
pristine purity. 1t is the sublime and
crowning moment of his life, the revelation
of. God and from God in his own rap! and
worshiping soul. That nan should
need to be dragged to it by cart ropes as
Mrs. Wards young rector was dragged
pallor and convulsion, is not because ne Is
great man, but because he is weak man.
HYsTERIo VIOLENCE.
He displayed his weakness in many ways
He went at his new religion and his loving
wife with the same hysteric violence which
is as far removed from strength as spasm Is
from health. He grappled for the first time
with his borrowed book of exegesis after ne
had come home late from his nightschool,
with no one up in the house; and he had not
ingl Outside, the tossing, moaning Decem-
Der night; inside, the family cracking fire,
the standing figure. Naturally he was IN
state of nervous excitement. Any person
up alone in a house at midnight is liable to
feel "eruel, torturing hand laid upon his
lnmost being" If, when the rector came
home late and tired, he had arranged him
self for the night, with nothing to do when
he should have ceased reading but to blow
out his lamp and sink to sleep, the desc
late, intolerable moment would have been
changed into buoyant, budding promise
and prophecy under whose benign overpow-
ering spell the only selfrepression needed
would have been not to waken his wife out
of her beauty sleep to talk il over. Instead
of which the result of his childish vigils
was to frighten her out of all happiness and
ight-heartedness by stalking around like a
maniac coneealing or meditating murder,
and then because she cannot bow down and
worship his mania we are to lay 1t to her
Sintellectual limitations"
And what did it all amount to? What
truth did this advanced thinker strike out
with his wrestlings and struggles and
anguish and quiverings and sharpest sting
and desperate catechisms-the delirlum
tremens of constantly increasing sense of
oppression. of closing avenues and narrow
ing alternatives which for weeks together
seemed to hold the mind in grip whence
there was no escape;" five months of 'living
intellectually at a speed no man maintains
with impunity;" walking through the
woods with hands locked and face like the
face of blind man, getting paler and paler,
his eyes growing duller, mere instinct with
a slowly dawning despair?
A VITAL TRUTH.
Simply this: In the shelter of the wooded
lane with the birds in the branches and the
gusts of air rustling through the gorse, wait
ing, conscious that it was the crisis of his
history, there rose in him. as though articu-
lated one by one by an audible voice, words
of irrevocable meaning:
every human soul in which the voice
of God makes itself felt, enjoys, equally
with Jesus of Nazareth, the divine sonship,
and miracles do not happen.
1t was done.
But it was better done 1900 years ago,
when Jesus Christ himself declared the
same truth, of human and divine kinship;
came on earth expressly to declare it; when
he stretched forth his hand toward his dis
ciples and said: ftBehold my mother and
my brethren! For whosoever shall de the
will of my Father which is in heaven the
same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
AS Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee,
that they also may be one in u.s."
Better said by Paul: ''The Spirit itself
beareth witness with our spirit that we are
the children of God, and if children then.
heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with
Christ" Infinitely better said when Paul
not only asserted our sonship, but cried
out, because ye are sons, God hath sent
forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
CRYING A bba Father
Better said by the beloved and loving dis
ciple, ''Beloved now are we the sons of God
and it doth not yet appear what we shall
be-"
Old orthodoxy has befogged many truths,
but it has kept itself alive because it has
kept alive in its rugged bosom the vital
truth that we are the children of God. 1t is
a great truth, but it was not left for nine
teenth century agnostic to discover, and
there was no more intellectual advance in
his lying awake nights over it than there
was in the sailor rushing out of church and
knocking down the first Jew in the streets
for crucifying our Lord on the plea that,
though it was done :, 800 years ago, he had
just heard OF it. GAIL HAMILTON.