The Progress., 1893-02-11

tiger had taken fright. They put the
body in the middle, and each man got
into one Of those bombproofs and took
his musket and waited for the tiger TO
come. The moon finally went down, and
the tiger did not appear, and then they
| dozed and went TO sleep III those places Of
supposed safety. Next morning but three
men got up from those holes. One of the
! four was gone, and it was found that he
had been dragged away by the tiger while
he was asleep. So again and again in the
past the church has crawled into its
bombproofs until finally the evil one has
come along and seized it. The church
that survives will not go to sleep.
If it is vital, it will be catholic, not
| narrow or sectarian. The age has gone
! by when men will lay their souls simply
on the altar of a sect. I do not believe
/ the hour is yet come when Catholics and
Presbyterians and Baptists and Meth
odists are to be pitchfOrked into one or
ganizatiOn, but believe the hour is now
upon us when the spirit Of Jesus will
! bind us together around himself as one.
| If you try to emphasize the mere ques-
/ ton of sect, neither the world nor the
! church will respond with heart or money.
| If you want to reach the world today,
you must strike the broader catholic key
of reaching man as man, heart to heart,
without the mere limitations of your
/ sect.
TRUE RELIGION Is SPIRITUAL.
SecOnd-Another of the characteristics
of the religion Of the future will be tina;
| IT is spiritual, not formal Jesus Christ
was religious refOrmer. He was put
out of the synagogue because he was a
hereto. He led forlorn hope against
the powers intrenched in the ecclesias-
teal world. If he should come back to-
day, great deal of our religion no
would not recognize, because il has gone
back into the old circle of Judaism and
ecclesiasticism and accomplished the
very thing Jesus came to abolish Jesus
said: Il am come that We may have life.
not the penalties of the law. God J.
spirit, and he that would worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth. ="
If the religion of the future is to be
Christianity, it will be spiritual reli-
gion and not a formal one, and if it is
not Christianity it will perish. believe
i'll the triumph Of the Christianity Of
Christ.
Ecclesiasticism is the one curse that
has held and bound in chains the prog
ress of religion in the world. If it sur
wives in the future, then it will certainly
drive mankind out of religion and Chris
tianity. That would be to defeat the
triumph of Christ, and it cannot be.
believe in the triumph Of Jesus, and
therefore L believe in the triumph of
supremely spiritual religion. Mems
forms and ceremonies perish, traditions
perish, but the eternal verities on which
a spiritual religion is based move ON for
ever Nature, with resistless tread, hur-
ries on to God. History, with busy feet,
rushes along the great highway of the
divine, and mans heart keeps music to
them both. So long as there is the pro-
cession Of the suns, 30 long as there is
this vast procession of history hurrying
toward some great world triumph, SO
long as mans heart beats for God, so
and bad metaphysics, and triumph he
sure!
Not the questions of form, but the
questions of the spirit beneath the form.
saw the other day where poor mother
was forced to sign away the rights of
her child. She had married man who
had deserted her-she found he had been
married before. So she took up her bur
den of life and attempted to save her
child. But in the struggle with poverty
there came an offer from wealthy people
to adopt the child if she relinquished
all claims. So, believing it was for the
child's best interests, she signed the
bonds. Then finally her life became
better. She moved back to New England
and afterward married in Boston.
Eighteen years afterward she saw a
letter that her child wrote in some pub
hcation, and in it there was an infinite
yearning for the mothers heart and the
craving that could not be held in for the
mothers face. When the mother saw it,
she said, II have signed the bonds, /
know, but l must have my childr' So
she went to Albany the other day and
claimed her. You could not blame her.
1t does not matter about the formulas
of legal contract-there are great re-
alities beneath them, great facts that
bind man TO man and man to God-the
fact Of fatherhood and childhood-that
when all 70 ms have been set aside these
eternal things shall live and assert them
selves. You may sign God away from
the universe-it does not matter. Back
to the great heart of God will come the
heart of man, because it came from that
source; it is inevitable.
RELIGION BASED on REASON.
Third-The religion of the future will
be a rational religion. 1t will be a reli-
gion that will shine with the primal light
God flashed into man made in his image
Faith has been defined as 1.-The art of be-
lieving to be true what otherwise we
know to be false" 1t does not mean
with me intellectual gymnastics of any
sort. Faith means the consent of my