The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1893-02-23

There was thus the spirit of sincerity in
every word that fell from his lips.
Second-His power consisted in his
cdthohcitg in the breadth Of his syIn
pathies and his views.
He was born into ritualistic church,
and he wore the forms as an honest man
wears his clothes. He never used forms
for the purpose of exhibition. The church
in which he was born and to which he
ministered was large enough to hold him,
and that is the grandost compliment that
l can pay to the Church of England to-
day. mean. when speak of the church,
even its ecclesiastical. mechanical ar
Tangements. 1t strained toward the last
but it did hold him.
He was rash enough to believe in the
broad basis of a fraternity of spirit and
| Of heart, and it did not shock him to sit
on the platform with ordinary Presbyte-
rian or Baptist or Methodist preachers
He did not worry about apostolic sue
| cession. He believed in that wider truer
church universal. His soul was truly
| great soul, and for that reason he was in
capable of small thoughts, small jeal.
ousies Of man with man, Of church
| against church, of ecclesiastical machine
against those who are outside of the ma
chine. For that reason small men never
| liked him. Small men, whose souls felt
secure simply within forms, never agreed
with his policies or his principles or with
his methods Of enforcing his thought or
his life work
THE TRULY GREAT SOUL.
Great souls are never capable of small
| thoughts. You remember when Jenny
| Lind gave an entertainment in Loipsic
On one occasion MondClssohn was pres.
ent, and they were given great ovation.
The great crowd thundcred its applause
and continued until MendessOhn said to
! Jenny Lind that she must go forth and
say something TO the people. She said
she would if ho would go and make the
| speech. So arm in arm these two great
musicians came before the people. When
the tempest of applause which greeted
their appearance had subsided, Mendcls-
sohn in the most graceful way paid the
highest and most delicate compliment to
the great singer and proposed that the
cheers of all Leipsic should bo given to
her. Then, while the building echoed
with one of MendelssOhn's songs, they
went back to the room behind tho rOs.
trum. There was no jealousy between
two such souls. A great many small
musicians that play the second fiddle
that just know how to scrape a little, are
mighty in jealousy, but great souls are
never jealous.
So of this preacher Small thoughts
were impossible to him He saw the good
] in all churches, and he saw good outside
all churches, He was a high priest of
the race. He saw good even in these low,
evangelical churches that from the high
church point Of view, are rerY low. Phil
lips Brooks even held old fashioned re-
vivals in Trinity. church. He preached
about a church outside the church, and
the most eloquent, most powerful pres
entation of that church outside ever
heard from mortal man came from his
great heart. He was the bishop of this
great church universal
Third-Not alone to his catholicity,
but also because Of his prophetic power,
his success is due.
The true preacher Of Cod is a prophet,
not priest. 1t was his peculiar func-
ton to prophesy. ldonot mean to predict
future events. The work of the prophet
Of old was to give ne1O vie1rS Of God and
of truth. The Aaronic priesthood ended
with the Christ, and from the Christ
went forth the line of those who should
| prophesy, and who in his name should
unfold new views Of God and of truth
New theology? Yes, his theology was
not only new;it was the nelUe8t theology.
And to get from him sermon was to
! get from Gods own life new breath, q
new revelation, new view Of truth.
| HE FORESAw THE BETTER TINE.
He was prophet in the true and high
sense of the word, and therefore he was
progressive. He did not stand still or
bow down to dogmas. He would not
limit himself to ecclesiastical conclusions
Of councils or great men in the past
With his great heart fixed upon the
| spiritual realities Of truth, he pressed
forward, onward ever, from day to day,
never pausing in that upward march To-
ward the summit of truth, toward the
full revelation of God. If you want to
know what preacher in the goth cell
'oiJ VIII ia Se'NL' SCud9 INC iIC vi SuCi u
man.
Fourth-His success rested on another
thing-his tremendous earneStnESS. No.
body went to sleep while he preached.
His intensity of soul was such that il
| swept him along outside Of himself. The
human tongue could not utter what his
heart felt fast enough
have sat before him and watched the
play Of divine passion cross his face
flushed with the tumulto of great thoughts
struggling for utteranceI Words could
not be born fast enough. And through
those great eyes, as through the windows
of his soul, could see the beating of
angels wings against the prison bars of
languagei
He was in dead earnest, and only that
kind of men can move the world. Martin
Luther YVES man Of tremendous ear.
nestness. Ignatius Loyola, who led the
Church of Rome against Luther, was a
man of tremendous earuestness, and such
was his power even on Catholicism that
Jesuitism at last absorbed Romanism it.
self. Savonarola swept Florence with
resistless power because of that mag
petic, indefinable power that displayed
itself in his earnestness. Beecher WAS o
man or power, an epoch shaping man, a
man who made and unmade theologieF,
because Of that divine spark of chSrae-
ter. Earnest men in politics, in religion.
In history, are the men who make his,
tory. In q man like Blaine, who could