The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1891-01-07
MSUNDAY TH0UGHTSDo
AOHk
MORALS%M MANNERS
By A CLERGYMAN.
By A CLERGYMAN.

will be turned over today-and turned
back again tomorrow.
1t would be a great, good thing if, as
God gives us a clean page, we would en-
deavor to write on that page the lesson OF
the holiday season, love to God and to
man. Such an effort would demonstrate
Christmas, instead of being, as now, a
mere beautiful ideal, it would become an
abiding reality. Once a year we all ex-
emplify the spirit of Christ for one day.
Why not stretch Christmas over the
whole year? by gentleness and patience
and generosity we might enact anti
Claus every day and make him a peren-
NAL character. An occasional Santa
Claus is not haif SO desirable as a perpet-
ual one. Ask either child or adult for an
opinion on that point
The week OF prayer which begins today
is a spiritual harvest time. Not that God
is any more willing to bless at this season
than at any other, but his people are more
expectant and hence more receptive.
ANY one with the new testament in his
heart and hands must acknowledge that
there come certain times when God
chooses significantly and ~signally TO bless
his people, and savingly to call persecut-
ing Sauls and sinful Magdalens to come
out from the world-seasons of Pentecost
with apostolic Peters and converted null
titudes to attest the divine reality. And
IL is remarkable that these times always
synchronize with the expectation and re-
captivity OF the church. An eager looking
for divine blessings is the necessary condi-
ton of their bestOwment. May the
churches expect and pray for great things
this week.
Here is a parable OF the rats, clipped
from a Scotch paper: \ laborer at the
Dundee harbor lately told his wife, on
awakening in the morning, a curious
dream which he had during the night.
He dreamed that he saw coming toward
him in single file four rats. The first one
was very fat and was followed by two
lean ones, the rear rat being blind.
The dreamer was greatly troubled, as
there Is a superstition among the ignorant
that 10 dream OF rats forebodes calamity.
He appealed to his wife concerning this.
but she could not interpret the ill-omened
dream. His son, a sharp lad, who had
heard his fathers story, volunteered to be
the interpreter. The fat rat" he said,
sis the man who keeps the public house
that We gang till sac often, and the two
lean ones are me and my mither, and the
blind one is yourself, father"
Let us hope that the new year may be
signalized by an increased practical appli-
cation of Christianity. There is need Of
this, because the inevitable tendency of
religion is to become institutional. Per
sonal responsibility evaporates. Form re-
places substance. Ritual Is exalted above
life. Then We discover that love and help
lessness and self-sacrifce central Christian
%virtuesl have zone out OF the church and
have been replaced by ecclesiastical millin-
cry and pOmpous creed.
This is the real explanation of the di-
vorCe between the church and the laboring
classes. The rich classes having annexed
the church az a kind of personal append
age, the poor avoid il and look upon it "a
part and parcel of wealth's realty. Atthe
same time they recognize the fact that
the divine carpenter was one of them,
and they often adhere TO him while re-
pudiatlng his prOfessed church. The tele-
graph told Us the other day of 5000 men
in London who Kissed the church and
cheeTed 'the Man of Nazareth" Jesus
has love and influence where his church
is held in contempt.
Something is wrong. What is it? Is it
not the waking Christianity institutional?
In so lar az the church is a mere institu-
tiOn it is infidel. For Christ was the most
practical OF philosophers, the most revo-
lutionary OF teachers, the most personal of
refOrmers. His quarrel with Phariseeism
was waged on this very issue, that it was
a ritual and not a life-it said and did not.
1t has been truly said that the gospels are
the history, not of a religious recluse. a
mystic dreamer, an acute scholastic. or a
vague spiritiSt, but of one who mingled
freely with men, and ate with publicans
and sinners, whose teachings were super
latively practical and whose life flowed
out IN constant ministration to the down.
east, to the toil-worn and tempted, to the
fallen and lost.
It's one OF the happiest signs of the
times that the church is beginning to
realize this truth, and TO adjust itself to a
practical propaganda OF divine helpfulness.
God bless and speed the e~ndeavorl
The great contention of what is called
"the higher criticism is that the Pente-
touch is a gradual formation through the
course OF centuries, it being impossible, or
at least unlikely, that such a system could
have been preserved, unchanged, during
the long period of Israers history. But in
a recent number Of the Sunday School
Times DR.. Howard Osgood shows that the
Egyptian Book of the Dead" is extant in
three copies, one of the fifth dynasty at
Memphis. a second of the thirteenth dy-
nasty at Abydas, and n third Of the eight
zenith dynasty at Thebes, and all these
texts are substantially the same, although
the period Of seventeen centuries elapsed
between the fifth dynasty and the eight
zenith. This is the testimony OF Birch OF
England, Chabas of France, and Sepsius
OF Germany-foremost experts. Therefore
this fact may be regarded as absolutely
established. The argument then, is. il
the Egyptians preserved their book OF
prayers, confessions, magical formulas.
etc, so carefully and successfully, through
SO NAM ages, would not the Hebrews pre-
serve, with at least equal fidelity, what
they considered to be the very words of
God himself?
The truth is that the standing miracle
of history is the distinct and separate
existence of the Jews themselves, as
marked and characteristic to-day as they
were when Hamsn described to the King