Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-01-31


The Answer of Good Deeds.
"Go," he said, "and show John again the
things which We do hear and see; the blind
receive their sight, and the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up and the poor have the
gospel preached to them"
The credentials of Christianity, then, are
not its creeds but its deeds. The best argu-
ment for the divinity of the Christian re-
ligion is its divine helpfulness. The best
solution to the great questions which touch
the truth of Christianity, and inquire
whether it really came down out of heaven
or not, is to be found in the success of
Christianity in comforting the sorrow and
helping the poverty of the world. Thus
will the doubters find the answers to their
own questions. This I desire to-day some
what to enlarge upon.
Whoever is in doubt about the Christian
faith will find more help in charity than in
theology. Let him not rely so much upon
the reading of many Christian books, as
upon the doing of many Christian works.
Let him simply try, day after day, to live
like Christian, and he will presently find
himself believing like Christian.
Working Into the Spirit.
Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowl-
edge. Whosoever does the will of God
shall know the truth Of God. John the
Baptist had faith enough as long rs he was
busy at his blessed work of helping people.
1t was only when he was shut up in prison,
and had no chance of ministering to men,
that he fell into doubt. Try to live as
Christ lived; think not of yourself, but of
your brothers need; every day somehow
help somebody; more and more learn the
spirit of Christ; thus will you come uncon-
sciously and inevitably into the possession
of all essential Christian truth.
Whoever desires to be missionary of
Christ, whoever is not content to be
Christian all alone, but wants to make
someon else Christian, will find the sermon
that Jesus preached to be the most effective
sermon. If you want TO bring some MEN,
Der of your own household into closer rela-
tions with religion, it is not good plan to
talk great deal Urging people to attend
church effects but little toward making
Christians out of them. 1t is better to be
the very best kind of Christian that you
can seven days every week.
The Efficacy of Example.
Your thoughtfulness, your patience, your
Christian good temper, your check upon
your tongue, your constancy in your own
ptIsOuol SaIlotldil VI prayer, Vi DlUlo
reading, of attendance upon the service of
the chulch, your everyday helpfulness, your
unfailing ministry to the happiness and
bettering of all about you, your deeds of
charity, your Christian conversation-this
is better than all the persuasion in the
world. If you want your husband, or your
wife, or your brother to be Christian, be
ten times better Christian your own self
1t can hardly be said too often'th large
proportion of the infdels in the Christian
world owe their unbelief to the inconsistent
lives Of people protesting Christianity.
When the devil wants to send missionary
to preach the doctrine of the pit, he gets q
Christian. Many Christian woman has
kept soul out of the church of Christ by
her pride, by her arrogant manner, by her
injustice, by her unkind speech. Many
Christian man has made o good bargain for
his bank account and q bad bargain for the
Lord Jesus Christ, and for his own SOUL at
the same time. Men are every day asking
Johns question: Art thou he that should
come, or do we look for another? Is the
Christian religion the religion of help and
truth and righteousness, the divine religion
which is trying to set up a kingdom of
heaven down here on this sinful earth, or
must we look for another?
The Responsibility nf Christians
And Christ bids them stand by as he did
in the old time, and watch, not now him
self, but his representatives, the Christians.
And all depends upon what they see. And
when they behold the Christian cheating the
blind because they are blind, and exulting
to outrun the lame, and putting the lepers
out of doors, and lying to the deaf because
they cannot hear, and rejoicing in the ruin
and death of their fellow men, and preach
ing to the poor the DEVILS gospel of tyranny
ID L.
lieve? Do they come in and beg to be ad-
mitted to such a church, and give their de-
vout allegiance to such mems s Master? "Woe
unto the world because of offenses; for it
must needs be that offenses comet must
needs be that men must find stumbling
blocks somewhere along the path-"but woe
to that man''-and ten-fold woe, if he call
himself Christian, and for pretense make
long prayers-''woe to that man by whom
the offense comethr'
All the emphasis of the Christian Church
ought to be put Just where the Lord Jesus
Christ put it. The Church, like its great
leader, ought to go about doing good. To
open the eyes of the blind, to make the lame
to walk and the deaf to hear, to cleanse the
lepers to raise the dead and to preach the
gospel to the poor-that is what the church
is for.
What the Church Might Do.
If the Church did that, there would be no
problem of poverty at all. The men upon
whose money the working classes depend
for wages, the employers of labor, the own
ers, the lords and princes of the industrial
world, are for the most part members of
Christian churches If they all had the
Christian spirit, if they were all Christians,
if they all tried to deal with the great prob
lem of pain and poverty as Christ did-oh,
what revolution, what transformation,
what a foretaste of the millennium, what q
realization of the kingdom of heaven!
Somehow, there is difference between
the church and Christ. We think that we
want to reach the masses. We desire to
preach the gospel to the poor. But some-
how the poor are not at all eager to be
preached to- We cannot persuade them
into our beautiful churches. But when
Jesus was here the only trouble he had was
to get away from the "masses' long
enough to eat and sleep. He journeys far
up into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, where
he thinks that nobody knows him. But
within an hour some poor people find Him
out. He cannot be hid. He takes boat
and crosses the lake of Galilee, seeking a