Morning journal and courier., 1891-05-11
ooRnuPr1rG cons WORD.

 vellous success in the spread of the gos- pei. It was an era of preaching. There is a widespread conviction that if the prevalent type of modern preaching were apostolic the era of wonderful suc- cess would return. Who shall say that there is no ground for this conviction? You cannot think of those apostles preach ing for livelihood without degrading them. Nor can you think of them as ut tering insinuations concerning the word of God as though it were fictitious, or as try ing to invent ingenious criticisms to empty the sacred Scriptures of the supernatural without degrading them.
 With them the Scriptures constituted a revelation and not a compilation of the religious conceptions of an immature period. They believed that God spoke in times past by the prophets.
 They believed that the church was built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cor ner stone.
 Moses warned Israel to the last against corrupting themselves and their ignoring revealed truth.
 Jeremiah's presentation was in part due to his attack upon false prophets who pre- sented their own dreams for the word of God.
 Jesus charged the same thing home upon the scribes that they made void Gods law by their traditions. The length of some St. Paurs epistles is accounted for by the necessity he felt to resist false teachers. Even in that period the attempts to cor rupt the word of God came from learned men.
 The prophecies in the New Testament foretell perilious times when men shall heap up for themselves-teachers having itch ing ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth
 And the reason which St. Paul gives is that the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; and when he knew that his life-work was done and that the time of his departure was at hand one of the sources of satisfaction was that he had kept the faith instead of corrupting it. Then, under Constantine, the church achieved political triumph and lust for worldly power took the place of former evangelism; preaching began to change in l character and importance. Gradually the faithful preaching of the word of God was supplanted by a gaudy | symbolism; religious service became spec l tacular; vestments, altars, images, pie l lures, ceremonies were introduced. New sacraments were invented, new | l ized and tradition swayed the sceptre. You ask why this gospel which the world SO much needs to hear; why it has not made all the nations of the earth glad ere this, and back the answer comes, be- cause the gospel has been so far sup planted by the inventions of men as to doctrines, duties and institutions.
 The Apostolic age had this battle on hand, and this same battle is on the church | of to-day.
 Paul said: We are not as many who corrupt the word of God.
 It would seem that when the church was numerically small even then there ! were many corruptors of the word.
 will mention seven ways by which the word of God has been corrupted.
 First, By additions, some rule of conduct or ceremony or doctrine of human origin has beenplaced on par with those ofGod's word. This has created a church calendar of sacred days, which being marked out in history has left historic christianity practi- cally without the Christian Sabbath. It remains one of so many other sacred days ! that it's preeminence as swallowed up. That is only one application of the princi- pie. ~
 Second, The word of God has been COT, rupted by elimination Something which God has enjoined has upon human author ity been omitted. Something has been subtracted either by literal erasure or by underwriting it's significance.
 Thus Gehenna has been obliterated from the map of eternity and purgatory in modified forms inserted. The word "cor rupt'' in the text means, to make merchan
 disc of, or ''to trade upon" Men found that the Gehenna of revela ton afforded no chance for making mer chandise but purgatory, though borrowed from the heather, was highly renumera tive.
 Third-Another mode of corruptinp Gods word is by 'perversion, wrestling the scriptures, twisting them, seizine them and giving them half turn so that
 the angie of statement and significance is changed.
 The Essenes treated the Scriptures as ar allegory, and their disciples continue witt
 us until this day.
 Fourth-Another method of corruptine Gods word is by contraction, or taking : few isolated passages of doubtful mean ing and attempting to found a dogma ] Thus the "felt washers" have arisen and and later still we have the second proba ton business.
 Fifth-Another method is that of sup pression. One phase of which historically consists of burning Bibles, another of con fning the reading and interpretation o1 ths Bible to officials. How the centuries have suffered from this mode. Sixth-By substitution. Any society social, philanthropic or religious, which creates rules, ordinances, forms of wor ship-in short, ritual at variance witt ] and contrary to Bible christianity-is oper l to this charge of corrupting the word o1 God by substitution.
 Thinking men who join all sorts of SO cieties need to examine the ground or l which they stand and how their new ritua conforms in doctrine and spirit to tht , word of God.
 Seventh-Obstructio or exclusion. This t may occur by traducing the divine author ity of the scriptures. Men obstruct the
 barricades of their own theories or th,
 theories which they have borrowed from z their neighbors' theories which beget the
 suspicion in the minds of the untutored that what was supposed to be the word o1 7 God is nothing but tumble of ante } quated fragments of the religious effusionl
 of the Semitic race. Still another method
 of obstruction is that of putting the Bible
 in our homes and either neglecting it's sa
 cred contents or studying it from a secular , | standpoint.
 So men may come to it to find little geography or chronology or poetry or lit . erary excellence, while the heart is but the closer locked against that gospel which i, - the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.
 The efficiency of revealed truth is ob structed by rejecting the key of all true
 interpretation of spiritual truth.
 The one postulate concerning correc
 apprehension of Gods revealed thought. is directly stated by St. Paul. He whs , l would understand the mind of God mus , first receive the spirit of God. These thing F are spiritually discerned. . Found In Her Stomach. BRIDGEPORT, May 9.-Mary Breen, tn,