Morning journal and courier., 1891-12-28
DK.smYrH,s CHRISTMAS SERMON

course at the Center Church Tester day.
 Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth yesterday l morning in the Center church preached a Christmas sermon that may well be profit ably considered and reflected upon. He said in opening the discourse that if all men made earnest with their Christmas, as they now keep it, after Christian fashion then indeed would the fulfllment of the messianic time draw nigh. True, it is one good thing at least if the world stops in its eager computations to listen to Christmas chimes. For even a nominal Christianity is better than organism. The real message that our Christmas brings to us is an assurance of our knowl- edge of Christ's coming. Around the pulpits now faith itself has grown intel igent and the critical understanding of the educated world will not accept our most familiar religious words of divinity without new test and research for what really lies behind them. There are many things concerning Christ which are partly matters of knowledge and partly matters of faith. There are some things, how ever, which we positively know. We know that Jesus was the author of Christ ianity. He made the desciples have faith in him. Christianity never came into this world save through the personal presence of Jesus himself. We also know in gen eral what things Jesus himself loved and what things were hateful to him. None of us, with the gospels before us, need doubt what kind of 8 life Jesus would have us live. Jesus's ideal of character. Be ye perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect; Jesus' measure for the use of talent, power and wealth. She hath done what she could; Jesus secret of true, generous living out of the abundance of the heart; Jesus promise of freedom and joy; all this doctrine lies before us in the greatest charms The world and the people in general always recognize. Christian life, clear itself from its sur roundings and pay tribute to it. Again, we know in its general outline the distinc- tive kind of life that Christ Jesus himself lived while on earth. The singleness of Jesus life unto God is unmistakble. He knew himself as one sent from God and as one doing the fathers will. Jesus we know as the man who lived from God, and with God, and unto God-himself in this sense, if not in sense more mysterious, the Goldman of history.
 Again, we know Jesus as the new source Ol pO"cE III Iuc " u6uC6 pOWGL was, what ultimate secret of divinity it has to disclose, is a further matter; but the fact of the new influx of power through the Christ is known; his power has become one of the known and regular forces of the moral w i'd. No man can deny it, for it was not merely power witnessed to a former generation; it is present power to be observed in its immediate working un- der our skies and in our own homes We know that the first generation of believers in Jesus himself were moved beyond all anticipation by the personal influence of Jesus. The accounts of the miracles show how nightly they felt, even on the phys icsl side of it, the power of it. Whatever we may be pleased to think concerning miracles, these reports of Jesus mighty works show his surpassing power; for ei- ther they happened, as the church has al ways believed, or they did not happen, ss a close sense of the lower uniformities of nature has inclined some to think; but in either case, whether they happened or not, the reports of these miracles, which arose and spread among those who knew Jesus himself, are enough to show that men must have discovered in him some new power, remarkable beyond all precedent, an observed power in Jesus, which gave ground for the reports that he could have "OEhco suCA luISubl LhiAdSlCs. " uat WAS there in Jesus himself which ever led men to believe that he was born of a virgin, worked miracles, walked the sea as king of nature, and was raised from the dead. The marvel of the belief in miracles, which in the lifetime of those who had known Jesus himself became the firm and fixed tradition of his disciples, does not grow less to our thought when We look 6 little more deeply into the qualities of the supernaturalness which with one ac- cord the first disciples attributed to Jesus himself. For these wonders reported and believed of the Son of God were not iso- lated marvels, nor momentary bswilder- ments occasioned by display of some oc- cult power, but these mighty works re- por3ed and believed of Jesus form one series, follow one moral type, proceed as one rational sequence of deeds, so that all these miracles seem perfectly natural to Jesus himself, as they would be unnatural if attempted by one altogether like us; throughout this whole narrative of the wonder working Christ We do not come across broken marvels and surprising eI- clsmations, but we behold one clear lumin- ousness of life, the simple and consistent manifestation of one supernal character, 8 revelation of one power of the spirit. He was of the seed of David, as an apostle puts it, according to the flesh, who was marked as the son of God with miraculous power, in the spirit of holiness, by the resurrec- ton of the dead. Beyond this mighty work ing amid the lower infrmities of nature his was power to take men out of their old habits and narrow ways, and to set them moving off on grand lines; power likewise to change old institutions like the Jewish Sabbath and eventually to put the Lords day in it's place, one of the greatest mira cles ever wrought in the fixed customs of a most tenacious people; his was power not quenched at death, but living in the spirit, working to larger issues through the missionary devotion to the gentiles of 8 once Jewish bigot, and henceforth know ing no bound of nationality, no limit of language, no inaccessibility of race or cline; power increasing with the years and flowing with fresh fullness into end less diversities of thought, manners and historic movements; power greater eigh- teen centuries from its coming to earth than it was when first witnessed by cho- sen few in the person of Jesus himself, and still more varied and greater to-day than it was in our fathers days, or even in the worlds last years Christmas time his was and is power to be compared in it's extent only with some astronomic force
 holding this world from out infnity, and not to be estimated in its moral quality, save in the terms by which we worship the | justice, the holiness, the pure and absolute | sunniness of the eternal love-such power | immeasurable and as the power of God was | the influence of Jesus himself among the | living and the dead.
 | am still speaking not of what we be- | lieve, but of what is known of our Christ, as gravitstion is known, as light is known. | There is no known force in the whole moral
 sphere to be com pared with the influence of Jesus himself.
 Such things, with other truths that might
 be added constitute this worlds knowledge | of the Christ. And this knowledge of him | is to be taught as any science is taught and
 accepted as anything that has fallen into | the experience of man on this little earth
 is to be accepted whether we understand il Il or not.
 Turning now for moment to the second point suggested, we should distinguish | further those truths concerning Christ
 which are in part known and which are in part also objects of faith.
 | Now these further beliefs concerning Christ's nature the church has maintained
 and we are warranted in making them ar ticles of our Christian teaching, so far a:
 they are rational interpretations of tht
 simpler, unmistaksble things that havt
 been made known in the Scriptures con
 corning Jesus himself.
 First inquiring what we know of th'