Los Angeles herald. [volume] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1890-1893, 1891-10-12
DR.. Chiehester's Sermon On
a God of Love.
DR.. Blum's Thoughts On the
Souls Immortality.
Rev. Smither DiscOurses On the
Character of Ruth.
Some of the Features of Yesterdays
services-Dr. Chichester on the
Revision of the Creed.
Ruth's Unselfshness.

Ut. w y. OulCu6Sb0T, having recovered
from his illness, preached in Emmanuel
Presbyterian church yesterday on the
subject of the revision of the West
minister Confession OF Faith. 1t was a
powerful presentation of the reasons
why the confession should be revised in
the features that had called forth the
demand for revision. The Westminster
confession was compiled at time when
polemical war was at its reddest heat.
The Reformation was in its infant stage,
and Calvinism had to stand like a drawn
sword at the portal of its faith. The
Commonwealth was in power, and the
struggle between Presbyterianism and
the Roundheads, who were the inside
power in the government, was at its
height. 1t is not strange, then, that
body OF churchmen, breathing more or
less the sharp and biting theological
atmosphere of the times, should have
carried into their fundamental work a
tineture of the fierce controversial pre-
JUDGES in which they lived. 1t would
be wonderful if they had not given
cOAHC PO1bAOhC vi bAlCll WOIh d bOu6 VI
harshness repellant to the spirit and in
consistent with the advanced biblical
interpretations of the age in which
we now live. He dwelt upon the fact
that there were many things in the con-
fession which no minister OF the present
day preached, and which no enlightened
laymen believed. The doctrine of
reprobation was abhoTrent to the con-
science as well as to the intelligence of
the present age, and the texts upon
which it was ostensibly based were con-
sistent with more humane and merciful
interpretations. He believed that we
had reached the time when the church
should altogether eliminate that doc
trine from its tenets. Those who would
make our God God of hate instead of
a God of love, God whose compassion
brought within the saving grace of his
divine mercy every human being he had
created, were men who would be willing
to sacrifice the substantialities of the
all-embracing love of the divinity to the
distractions of prescriptive prejudice.
They were like the old lady who de-
clared that she loved all the doctrines
of the church, especially that one of
human depravity, which it was her con-
slant prayer and earnest desire that all
could live up to.
The doctor congratulated the congre-
cation that the work of revision was 60
ing on so hopefully. The consensus
of opinion of the Presbyteries
to whom the amendments of the
assembly committee had been SUBJ
mitted showed plainly that the church
would indorse the changes, and that
reprobation, predestination and the
harsh judgment pronounced upon "non-
elect" infants would soon find no place
in the confession of faith of the church
of God who was all love, all compass
sion and all mercy, and whose divine ma
ture was vexed and grieved at the per-
versity OF any of his creatures.
The discourse was one of great power
in its treatment of subjects that are
going through the ordeal of sharp and
searching controversy. 1t betrayed
keen intellectual insight into the IN tan
gible operations of time and mental de-
velopment upon the human heart, and
showed that whilst the great truths of
fundamental truths might be weak
ened in the force they
ought to exercise upon the
human mind and the human heart by
adhering too tenaclously to merely
human deductions from the grand CEN
trail doctrine of faith founded upon the
imperishable truths of scripture.
This admirable discourse is so clear
and conclusive of the subject which it
treats that it ought to be given wide
publicity by publication in pamphlet
form.
THOUGHTS OF IMMORTALITY.
Rev. ID. A. Blum ON Atonement eve
delivered sermon on Thoughts on I'm
mortality, of which the following is an
extract:
The soul and the body are united in
tlmately in the strict union OF substan-
tial composition. They are marvelously
blended like lightin the diamond, which
permeates every atom, and yet is not
confounded with the atom. The soul is
present IN every fiber in the body. al
ways distinct from it ard yet forming
with it one animated whole-the human
person.
And now we come to the second fact,
that my body is constantly changing,
and yet | remain the same. | am the
same being that began to live ten, TWEEN
ty, thirty, forty years ago. My body has
been in constant change since began to
exist; it has never ceased the flow of it's
vicissitudes; in few years it is no long
er the same; its very particle has been
renewed. Yet there is something in me
by which am always the same person.
am the same person that was few
years ago weak baby in my mothers
arms. | remained the same through all
the tleeting years Of infancy and child
hood, OF youth and manhood, in Joy and
in grief. it was that suffered and re-
joiced, that thrived in health and
strength and pinned in weakness and dis
ease. There is therefore in me a some
thing vastly different from the changing
body with its never ending changes,
something always young, always
enduring; this something is my soul.
Wondrous being 1t reaches back into
the vanished past, it holds the present,
it looks forward to the future as to
something that belongs to it. 1t lasts,
and thus it is the image of the eternal
God. But not only does it endure in
the crumbling tenement Of the body, it
is everywhere-in brain, in heart, in
eye and tongue, and hand and foot in
the great muscles and in the minutest
nerve and fiber it is; it acts, it rules, it
governs, and thus it is an image of the
immense and all-governing God. Be-
sides it not only presides over the phe-
nomena of animal life, but its energies
extend into spheres far higher than the