St. Paul daily globe., 1889-06-17
A FLOUR CITY SUNDAY
Excerpts From the Sermons
Of Several Of the Minis
ters.
Mill City Militiamen Glad
They Didn't Go to Mile
Lac Lake.
A Cracked Column Causes
Comment About the Ii
brary Building.
Milwaukee Road Employees
Said to be Dissatisfied
With Long Hours.

Time QlSappeaT, anu all mcH uaNO Vho
same religious doctrines and forms OF
worship. But this would be against the
law of progress, which brings ever
greater diversity. Life has advanced
on earth from a few simple forms to
countless complex ones. Speech has
advanced from a few simple roots to
thousands Of languages and dialects.
Architecture has advanced from rude
tents and cabins to houses and temples
of countless styles. Progress is ever
away from uniformity to greater variety.
The same rule holds in religion. Faith
has divided into many forms In the
great historic religions, and these into
more, with more gods than the Pan
theon could hold. Even faith in one
God could not agree, but gave Him
many names and contradictory attrlD-
utes. Even faith in the same Jehovah
separated into Judaism. Christianity
and MOhammedanism, each denounclng
the others, and itself dividing into sects
in turn. Mohammedanlsm long ago
counted seventy-two; and Palgrave
heard the Moslem preaching
that his alone was true, and
the other seventy-one doomed to
eternal fire. Christianity quickly
showed the same tendency, and the
Epistle to the Galatians, which is about
the oldest writing of the New Testa-
ment, is chiefly devoted to division
between Paul and the other apostles.
The early church was full OF sects and
subsects, and of these the Gnostics
and the AriarS into eighteen. This
process was afterward stopped. and the
church teaching became pretty uniform
through the period known as the dark
ages; and judging by the moral reputa-
tion OF those ages, uniformity is not
verv desirable. But with the RenaiS-
sance and revival of thought, the divis-
ions began again. and Christendom
was rent into Catholic and Protestant.
Even the Catholic was not without its
divisions and changes, and though it
claims to have had an ever uniform
doctrine, outsiders see a vast difference
between It's old teaching that the world
was fiat, and men to be punished for
ever for denying it, and it's lib
eral and humane writings OF
to-day. But freer Professionalism
divided far more, and each division has
been ever changing its doctrines.
Though claiming to have in the Bible a
revelation so clear that the wayfaring
man. though fool, need not err, it
could not even agree what this one book
taught. but drew from it the most coll
Trajectory doctrines. UniversalistS
have read there that all men are to be
saved. and Calvinists that nearly all are
to be lost. And to see how the same
sect changes its doctrines, even though
protesting not to, notice that of infant
damnation. The evangelical clergy to-
day are unanimous in denying this doc
trine; yet the generation that produced
the Westminster confession was so GER
tain of it that it had prominent place
not only in the sermons, but in the chief
American poem of the time. This
poem, though written by minister so
tender-hearted that he was called "a
man of the beautitudes," still pictures
the infants OH the Judgment day pite-
ously pleading with Christ that they
ought not to he punished for Adams
sin, but all in vain; and the best the di-
vine Justice can do for them is to put
them in what the poet calls ''the easiest
room in hell" For says Christ to these
weeping babes:
'You sinners are, and such share
As sinners may expect;
Such you shall have, for do save
None but mine own elect
Nor did this poem lie idle; but the
first year had, in proportion to the
population, a larger sale than any
American book since, remained for
century the most popular American
work, was taught the children with
their catechisms and sung besides;
was, as Lowell says, 1.-The solace of
Cotton Mather as book that would be
read until the DAY of Doom" should
itself arrive. Yet such is the change
that the book is almost forgotten, and
the successors of those clergymen not
only reject this doctrine, but are almost
ready to deny that the church ever
taught it. So little uniformity has there
been; and there is hardly doctrine
over which the church has not divided.
The convention in Minneapolis the last
week has argued ZealOusly that the
Sabbath ought to be kept. on Sunday;
but several sects argue just as zealously
that it ought to be kept on the day
which the Old Testament orders, that
is, Saturday; and many Christian schol-
ars are sure that the New Testament
abolishes the Sabbath entirely and that
Sunday must be based on another fOun-
questions the church has divided into
several hundred sectS. each, of course,
suppoSing that all the others are wrong.
The Catholic church thinks it has the
final truth; the great Protestant denOm-
nations think they have it; the little
camp of AdventiStS out in our suburbs
to-day think they have it there, and
even our Unitarian conference last
week betrayed rather too much of the
assumption that we have it. All this is
natural and almost inevitable from the
nature of the mind, and each sect is apt
to hope that its belief may yet prevail
and bring uniformity in religion. But our
survey shows rather that diverSition will
probably remain and increase. And is
it not better that they should? We do
not want all men to look alike,Why
should we want them to think alike?
We rejoice in the variety of our cot
tages-why should we not in the variety
of our creeds? TheJune landscapes is more
beautiful with its myriad forms of life,
and the religious world more beautiful
with it's many forms of worship. The
diversities in religion are even advanc-
ing the charity, which is the best thing
in religion. Uniformity of belief al
ways persecutes every departure from
it; but when we see good people in
scores of different sects. and out of
them, we learn to be brOtherly. We
learn besides that different forms of
religion often have one and the same
meaning and source-like the words of
different languages. Just as the French
''eveque" and the English "bishop,"
without letter in common, still have
the same meaning and have come from
the same Latin word; so religious
forms that seem to have moth
ing in common often come
from the same divine sentiment
in the soul. We cannot only let the re-
ligious diversities grow. but learn from
them to ''keep the unity of the spirit in
the bond of peace"
CHRIST AND LABOR.
DIR. Burrell on Christianity for the