The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1889-08-15

am not so much interested in the ques-
tions they asked Him as in the questions
He asked them. He asked the questions
not to get information from the doctors,
for He knew it already, but to humble
them by. showing them the height and
depth and length and breadth of their
own ignorance. While the radiant boy
thrusts these self conccited philosophers
with the interrogation point, they put the
forefnger of the right hand to the temple
as though to start their thoughts into more
vigor, and then they would look upward,
and then they would wrinkle their brows,
and then by absolute silence or in posi-
tive words confess their incapacity to an
swer the interrogatory. While any
one of a hundred questions about
theology, about philosophy, about astron-
omy, about time, about eternity, He may
have baked them, Disconnected them,
flung them fat. Behold the boy Christ
asking questions and listen when your
child asks questions. He has the right to
ask them. The more he asks the better.
Alas for the stupidity of the child without
inquisitiveness! 1t is Christianlike to
ask questions. Answer them if you can.
Do not say: 81 can't be bothered now"
1t is your place to be bothered with ques-
tions. If you are not able to answer,
surrender and confess your incapacity,
as l have no doubt did Rabbin, Simeon
and Hillel and Shammai and the sons of
Betirah when that splendid boy, sitting
or standing there with a garment reach
ing from neck to ankle, and girdled
at the waist, put them to their very
Wits end. 1t is no disgrace to
say: 81 don't know" The learned doc
tors who environed Christ that day in the
Temple did not know, or they would not
have asked Him any questions. The only
being in the universe who never needs to
say: 81 do not know" is the Lord AL
mighty. The fact that they did not know
sent Keppler and Cuvier and Columbus
and Humboldt and Herschel and Morse
and Sir William Hamilton and all the
others of the worlds mightiest natures
| into their lifelong explorations. Tele-
scope and microscope and stethoscOpe
| and electric battery and all the scientific
apparatus obi the ages are only ques-
tons asked at the door of mystery. Be-
| hold this Nazarene lad asking questions,
giving everlasting dignity TO earnest in
| terrogauon.
But while I see the old theologians
L
| pressed as never before with the fact that
what theology most wants is more Of
| childish simplicity. The world and the
Church have built up immense systems
| of theology. Half of them try to tell what
God thought, what God planned, what
| God did five hundred millions years
| before the small star on which
we live was created. I have had
/ oil
about the DEGREES Of God and the eternal
| generation of the Son, and discourses
| showing who Melchisedek wasn't, and
| give fair warning that if any minister
ever begins a sermon on such subject in
my presence 1 will put my head down on
the pew in front and go into the deepest
! slumber 1 can reach. Wicked waste of
time, this trying to scale the unscalable
and fathom the unfathomable while the
nations want the bread of life and to be
told how they can get rid of their sins and
their sorrows. Why should you and
perplex ourselves about the DEGREES of
God? Mind your own business and God
will take care of His. In the conduct of
the universe 1 think He will somehow
manage to get along without us. If you
want to love and serve God, and be good
and useful, and get to Heaven, warrant
that nothing which occurred eight hun
bred quintillion of years ago will hinder
you q minute. 1t is not the DEGREES of
God that do us any harm; it is our own
DEGREES of sin and folly.
You need not go any further back in
history than about 1856 years. You see
this is the year 1880. Christ died about SO
years of age. You substract 33 from 1888
and that makes it 1856 years. That is as
far back as you need to go. Something
occurred on that day under an eclipseG
sun that sets US all forever free if with
our whole heart and life we accept the
tremendous proffer. Do not let the Pres
byterlan church, or the Methodist church,
or the Lutheran church, or the Baptist
church. or any of the other evangelical
churches, spend any time in trying
to fix up old creeds, all of them i'm
| perfect, as every thing man does is i'm
perfect. move a new creed for all the
Evangelical churches of christendom;
only three articles in the creed, and no
need of any more. If I had all the con-
secrated people of all denominations of
the earth on one great plain, and had
voice loud enough to put it to a vote, that
creed of three articles would be adopted
with a unanimous vote and laundering
aye that would make the earth quake and
the heavens ring W it'll hosanna. This is
the creed propose for all christendom,
Article 1. God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son that who
soever beliveth i'll Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
Art. .. This a faithful saying and worthy
Of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners, even the
chief.
Art. 8. Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain to receive blessing and riches and
honor and glory and power, world with
out end. Amen.
But you go to tinkering up your ola
creeds and patching and splicing and In
terlining and annexing and subtracting
and adding and explaining and you will
lose time and make yourself target for
earth and hell to shoot at. Let us have
creeds not fashioned out of human inge-
nuities, but out of scriptural phraseology,
and all the guns of bombardment blazing
from all the portfolios of inf1delity and
perdition will not in thousand years
knock off the church of God splinter as
big as cambria needle. What is most
needed now is that we gather all our the
Ologies around the boy in the temple,
the Celebrations around the simpiicities,