St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-12-21
FOR A HUMANE GOD.
Review of the Life of the
Originator OF the Univer-
saliSt Society.
The Struggle Of the Church
for a Compassionate
God.
4 Mastery Discourse by Rev.
w. S. Vail at the
Grand.
w. j. Jaynes Lays Bare the
Aims Of the Christian
Scientists.

before the OniVefSallSL congregation III
the Grand opera house. He said in sub
stance:
This day has been appointed in our
churches to consider the life. or char
acter, or work of John Murray, the first
man who presented the Universalist
idea III America. The one idea that is
pre-eminent, not only in his struggle,
but in the struggle of the time, and of
the church since that time, is the search
for compassionate God. The age was
seeking for a compassionate God. 1t
was the promise of a better day-this
eighteenth century at its noon. Men
had been organized on the ideas of the
feudal ages; that meant cast, might for
right, arbitrary distinctions. 1t meant
horrible punishments in this world and
the promise of added
Horrors in the World
to come. 1t meant gold and silver and
special privileges for the man born in
the castle; Serfdom and squalor for the
man born in the hut, and help or hope
only for the few. But the age was look
ing for a change. The long, weary,
bitter night was far spent. Different
leaders were. like travellers who walk
in different valleys, each leading a
small number, each ignorant that any
other is walking in the same way. John
Wesley, with whom Murray was associ-
ated, was looking for humane God.
He had reacted against all the common
ideas that had preceded. He had re-
acted against the deists. He had react
ed against the elegant skeptics who
had gone to school in France, and were
taking lessons in the art of casuiStry,
and discussing questions without
thought Of active assistance. He re-
acted again against the CalviniStS. who
at that time were a power, and had a
theology as
Solid and FOrbfdding
as granite fortress. And he sought to
wake men by cry. He was Nemesis
to some, menace to others. All men
listened, most men trembled. 1t seemed
almost as If some special messenger was
at hand. The tendency of the age spoke
in Burns. This word was different
His was the plea for man in need. He
came and asked us to look to the needs
of common humanity. He looked into
our frailties, sorrows and joys. And he
was the first of modern men to find in
human life the compensation for hard
lot. He was one of the first men to
show us the resources Of the soul that
might take the place Of money and rank.
Unhappy, at times diSSipated. never
able TO practice what he preached,
constant illustration of the sorrows that
attend the careless and the wicked, his
note seems all the more true and we be-
lieve his way is "a safe and sure one.
though the master missed it," TO
him the fear of hell was the
hangmau's whip to hold the
wretch in order; happiness was not
in title nor in rank, but in pauSing when
you felt your honor grip, and happiness
was found in the human heart; these
were the places to look. In a word, he
was trying to find that mysterious evil
dence that John Wesley had been seek
ing-God in the human soul. But the
age in trying to help man was also try
ing to find God. Already men were be-
ginning to harness the power of steam.
Already they were dreaming of the in
eXhauStIble influence and manifold uses
Of electricity. Already political free
dom was meaning more. Already the
world was wheeling into light. Men
were travelling towards the same ideas.
They were travelling by different roads.
They did not know each other. But
they were all moving in the same direc-
ton. They were trying to bring in the
better day of redress for wrong, good
the world.
In his personal experience Murray
was moving out in a search for the COM
passionate God. He was not a great
scholar yet he anticipated the positions
taken in our day by the leading schol-
ars of the church. Not all of them, of
course; he was more orthodox than
most modern scholars, but he read the
modern meaning into the passages that
refer TO endless things and everlasting.
| He did not understand the theory
enough TO say as Matthew Arnold,
''IO on must read the Bible and Judge it
as you would the words of literary ex-
| preston if found elsewhere" but, COM
| pairing text with text. he
Gained the Same End.
And there is reason for this. He had
| one theory. God must be good. A good
| person would not not allow the calamity
| of endless punishment to happen. Well,
| does not Whittier, whose birthday we
celebrate this week, declare that ito one
fixed stake my soul will cling" l know
| that God is gOod.& "And when Tenny-
| had passed through the ten years of sui
| fering, and looked with hope toward the
| future, was it with the assurance that
nothing walks with aimless feet; that
not one soul shall be destroyed, or cast
as rubbish to the void, when God has
made the pile completed" And did not
Henry Ward Beecher base his denial of
endless punishment, in his lecture be-
fore the students of DR.. Parker'S church
in London on the same ground? But
there is still higher and more
Mysterious Fact
cOncerced IN all this production. Muir
ray was only very ordinary man liY-
ing in connection with an idea that was
trying to get expression in the age.
That is the important fact. When the
time comes that God calls forward
! movement, men are instruments who
have little idea of what such call
means. OF successful men most
think they could have done
better at something else. A
| great painter would be a poet
A great writer would be general; and
so through human history from Michael
Angelo to Thomas Carlyle, there is a
pathOs in the way men are always
choosing one path and always following
another. Murray was influenced by the
Calvinists. Then he was personally
trained by both Wesley and Whitfield
He witnessed some of the most remark
able results in religious work the world
has ever seen. Still, there was that il
| him that never fully responded to
either, and like patriarch, it seemed to
him that call came finally to 90 out
into the new world, and he went, MOI
knowing whittier he should 90 or why,
only moved by this mysterious power
that lies behind ali the great
Movements of the Age.
That such an idea filled the time i:
seen in the strange character of ThOma!
Potter, who built the meeting house
down in the Jersey forests, and like