The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-02-22

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Pei Story when be fancies it and rejects it at
oeue, times. He says that he never honored
anu loved jesus as he does today. And yet he
says snere ID no way of finding out what Jesus
salu OF oidi These doublings upon himself are
ys 70 pe explained except by supposing that he
'ne gospels as the source of his informa-
tion Let him then abide by them or drop the
Pnon 70 Christianity. For Jesus is real
Plsonaa'y' having the best kind of an
historic record to His life and work.
l. protest that it is not possible to
e.ininate the resurrection from the Gospel
sso,ies' ano leave any conference in what re-
mains. protest that there is no Christ left il
| you take away his resurrection, and in addition
70 tnat ms unique advent into this world. A
man whose moral perceptions are SO warped
mat ne can attribute to Jesus birth of shame,
onth not only bare Of divine origin, but lack
ius even the respectable beginning Of an ordin-
AIRY lie, and then expect Jesus to grow up the
Purest and the greatest of men,-I say o man
Win such warped moral perceptions is an unfit
| guide for human souls
Inc lie OF Jesus here began among people
oereit OF all the usual prerogatives of national
hy. They were a subject nation; they were
mostly corrupted stock, as to genealogy; they
were, as whole, farther removed from God
IMAM Abraham had BEEN You cannot think of
"The beautiful b.ossom of the life of Jesus" as
Mr. Savage puts 1t, as being produced
| from that stock by the process of
evolution. You cannot, even as
an eyolutionist, look to see such q result from
| such source and you cannot think that Jesus
Is a sporadic, fortuitous being, cast on the mer-
| CHESS world. You must, as an eyolutionist,
look to see him repeated many times in the Gen.
turtles among people of better advantages and
| higher knowledge, and yet all agree that His
| ike has not arisen. Therefore, whatever else
| we think OF Christ, we cannot believe that he
was an evolution or an accident We see that
the hand OF God entered human affairs, and
| planted In the midst OF bad, decaying age,
HIM who was the life and the light OF men. In
| spite OF all the answers that have been given
through the ages to the question "Who say ye
That am? no answer has ever rung trus on the
human heart except the reply of Peter: "Thou
art the Christ the son of the living Godl'
Proceeding farther in the effort briefly to de-
fine some prominent features of Jesus, we be-
| leve with DR.. Abbott, that God was in Christ,
| reconciling the world unto Himself And we
believe this not in any dogmatic sense, but in
| the sense that God mingled in the flow of our
| lie the purifying influence of His own. When
| He made laws, or should rather say, when he
revealed to us the eternal law, He did not tell US
| that we must be subject to any burden that
| Himself would not willingly bear The mean
| ing OF the life of Jesus is that God weds Him
self to all our experience-of shame and victory.
Our own sin brings pain to us; but the woe is
| experienced no less by our Father. He has
made us in His image. The sacrifice of Jesus
| for US therefore was nothing new, and it is not
at an end so long as there are redeemable quail
| ties in US, so long as we are worth saving
| The sorrow of Jesus over our sin be-
| gan before, and continued after He left
| us. Indeed, it was compassion, or fell
| low-suffering, that brought HIM here, and that
| took Him to the invisible world. The incarna-
| ton therefore is the visible expression of an
| eternal condition. He did not merely suffer for
lin ~ l.
| over He continues in the same condition in
| spirit. And so when He tells us about obedi-
| ence He also obeys the eternal laws of his own
character; when Jesus tells us of self-sacrifice
| He only urges upon us his own nature, which
| gives itself always and everywhere for all men.
| This is the revelation of God. There is no con-
| test between God and Jesus, who is His incar-
nate spirit There is nothing Illogical in Chris
| tianity: 1t is the sweet reasonableness of God
| There is mystery at every stcA but the mind Of
God SO far as 1t is revealed to us does not con-
| tradict our own thinking.
| 1t is in this sense that the life and death of
| Jesus is vicarious. He Is, by the nature of His
loving being, one with us, that He suffers for
| every one OF our sins at the same time that we
| suffer for them. And His full heart, and the
| sense of the shame that He feels for us, is our
| strongest inducement to live righteously. And
| SO He stops us in wrong course and saves US
by His own sacrifice from the evil that still lay
before US. He saves US from our past by giving
us hold upon His own immortal life OF love-
He keeps us from despairing. He walks step by
step with us, like comrade in battle, and car
res our arms when we cannot carry our own.
This is fairly called vicarious suffering. 1t is
our salvation, our hope and JOY, even while it is
our shame. And while He is thus
saving every soul that trusts Him,
in this individual fashion, the whole
race derives the benefit For wherever a man
n Of
rescue casts ripples on the farthest shore of
human hsbitation. What think ye of Christ?
He is the Precipitation for our sins, and not for
ours only, but also Tor the sins of the whole
world. We believe that there is no virtue dis
| played by Jesus that we can afford to neglect.
| There was nothing too much for God to do for
u.s. He revealed His real and eternal nature in
our Jesus, and every grace of heaven He
lavishes upon Us. Beloved. il God so loved us,
we ought also to love one another. Christ is a
contagious nature. not cold model. We think
also of Jesus that He is altogether deperdable:
that He does not grow and change as we do,
but that He shows forth the eternal beauty of
Gods own character
We think that He made no mistakes. We do
not suppose that He is merely, as Unitarian
friend said to me the other day, the sbest up to
date" We do not believe that God has thus
| Knocked the desire OF men for an absolutely
satisfactory life.
We believe in our own growth, because we
have something TO reckon on in Him. In q
world OF evolution we believe in an overseeing
eve bringing all things into harmony with Him
self Jesus is not sketch He is not substi-
tute for Gods province, but lie is the embodi-
ment of Gods activity in the world. He grows
only rs our understanding OF Him grows He is
greater, as we are, and deeper and stronger in
His love simply because we see of His affection.
We believe that he did no temporary work.
He did not fill gap in moral history such as
the ceremony of Mosasm filed until tho
fullness of time should come. But we
see in Jesus one placed IN the center
of the worlds history, a reckoning point
for all things twill never be inappropriate to
reckon the tide OF human affairs by the date OF
the nativity. We believe that He came to the
world at just the time when He could do most
for it. and around Him surge the contending
currents of ali our being, gaining their char
acter from the touch of Him-whether they lash
Him in anger or kiss His feet, the act is not
without its influence upon their characters.
We believe that human nature Graves and
must have something to tie 10. The eternal
change of all things would make us skeptical
and desperate were there not one who is the
same Yesterday and today. We could not see
any truth in evolution, or gain any hope from
It. unless there stood one above the racking
cloud, making His giOries known, and unless u
consistent eternal purpose Of salvation were en-
bodied in Jesus, taking His path steadily
among us to satisfy our craving for one from
whom nothing shall separate us-neither hered-
iiv, nor surroundings, nor PHILOSOPHERS, ncr
half-truths, nor things present or to come, for
Christ is all and in all.
We think Of Jesus also as showing to us the
need that God has for men. This may seem a