The record-union., 1893-01-23
e HEART RELIGION"
The Contrast Between the Intellect,
the viii and the Heart.
Synopsis of Sermon Delivered at
Pythian Hall Yesterday by
Rev. L. J. Horner.

Rev. Mr.. Horner yesterday announced
an interesting series of meetings
under Unitarian auspices, for this
week, beginning on Wednesday evening
in the Jewish Synagogue with the install
lation Of the present Unitarian minister.
Rev. Horatio Stebbins, DID,, of San
Francisco, with Mr.. Wendte of Oakland
and others will take part.
A platform meeting will follow on
Thursday evening, the speakers being
Rev. J. Herndon Garnett, late Of the
Third Baptist Church of San Jose, and
Rev. E. B. Payne of Berkeley, formerly
of the Congregational Church of that city.
Rabbi Levy will preach on Judaism
and Unitarianism on Friday evening, to
which service the Unitarian congregation
is invited. a reception and sociable will
follow on Saturday evening in Pythian
Hall for the new minister and wife.
In his sermon Mr.. Horner said: every
human soul has three principal faculties,
each connected with and dependent upon
the other two. These are the intellect,
the will and the heart. The normal man
IS he in whom each is balanced by the
other two. But alas few men are
normal, and when we are passing judg-
ment upon others, how often do we stop
to think of that? 1t is now accepted by
science that men are not alike in their
endowment physically, mentally or
morally.
Humanity is endowed with all the
possibilities which genius has ever re-
vealed, but individually we will never
reach in this life all that we feel we ought
to have and be. In judging others we
must remember this and remember, too,
that men are warped by circumstances,
by lack of advantages and perhaps
have never had what we call fair chance
until character had become set and then
it is too late to bend or shape it as it
should be.
''How hard it is to believe that we
(who may be the ones at fault have not
virtues we admire in others, or that we
have the faults we condemn in others! If
we could but see ourselves as others see
US charity would abound with liberal
store.
1.-THE intellectual part of our nature
is the part that thinks, draws in
permits the intellect to act, is
volitional. Logic will never con-
vince man unless his will permits
him to see the reasonableness of the con-
clusions. We all know people who are
gifted mentally who yet never have the
will to put their abilities to any good use.
81 know veritable intellectual Wilkins
Micawber, now past forty and still wait
ing for something to turn up"
"The willtul class, on the other hand,
are constitutionally stubborn. They
take the negative of every question be-
cause they by nature feel that they must.
Heredity or early environment has made
them so, and the more any one faculty is
encouraged the more it grows at the ex-
g ,,fh -
pays to argue question with this class,
and the only way to influence them to
any good end is to seem to agree with
them until you can make them espouse
the cause which they are sure to oppose
if it is first suggested to them.
1.-The third faculty is the heart. Not
the physical heart, but that which loves or
hates. scientifically we know little if any
more about what the soul really is to-day
than was known to Aristotle. All that
we can test via science is phenomena.
Mind, we believe, knows and thinks,
wills, and loves or hates. These are
manifestations, and the nearest we can
get to soul itself is through the conscious
feelings. The intellect cannot see God.
1t can only think God. The intellectual
idea of God will depend entirely on the
furnishing of the individual intellect.
Hence the idea of God will vary all the
way from the idol of the savage to the
hard, unrelenting judge of Calvin's
thought; or from the pantheism of the
Orient to the unity of Unitarianism
and Judaism. When intellect. will and
heart are combined and equally developed
to the highest degree the best results are
obtained.
.'The heart is the affectionai part of our
nature, hence is the most truly religious,
Its province is not to reason, not to will.
but to feel; and pure religion is that feel
ing in us which makes us conscious of
communion with the Highest. Hence
religion is no more product of intellect
alone than love is. Love is of the heart
and comes and goes regardless of eth er
the intellect or the will. But DO not un-
derstand me to say that the intellect has
no province in religion.
"Our idea of God has much to do with
our idea of duty, but if that idea be not
made full of life and love by the heart n
winter. Because we, as Unitarians, be-
lieve that our ideas are more nearly
reasonable than those of any other svs-
tenn, that does not prove that we have a
monopoly of religion. A purely intel
lectual religion, if there can be such a
thing. lacks both the humane and Divine
elements.
"Calvin's system lacked the heart feel
ings, which in these modern days have led
the young men in the Presbyterian fold
to rebel against his system. Lack of the
heart element may be seen in the late
trial of DIR. Briggs in New York, in
which manifestations of i'll temper, ieal-
ousy and suspicion were brought into
public sight, tending to bring all religion
into disrepute.
"Misunderstandings, of course, are in
evitable among men. But when the
political methods of the ring are used to
bring about the condemnation of a fellow
man for heresy, the bad feelings engen-
dered proclaim a bad heart rather than a
truly religious one, though all parties
may be true to their intellectual views of
points in dispute. 1t is what the heart
nanifests that tells what is in it, always
and everywhere.
"a pure heart reflects only the good
and hence sees God in everything"
RHEUMATISM racks the system like
a thum bscrew. But it retreats before
the mower of HOOd'g SarsaDarilla vvbinh