Morning journal and courier., 1893-02-13
THE RIGHT VIEW OF LIFE.

tween Good and Evil-Rev. pr.
 Smyth's Discourse at Center Church
 Yesterday Morning.
 Below is given in full powerful dis course delivered yesterday forenoon at Center church by the pastor, Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth.
 Ephesians, 6:12 For we wrestle not against assa ana ab n.eod, but against the o this darkness, against the spiritual hosts Of wickedness in the heavenly places.
 This text may serve to introduce thoroughly modern conception of life. l do not mean, of course, to say that St. Paul in this passage used the same imagery as that familiar to our thought. Quite the contrary is true. The imagery of this passage belongs to the bygone philosophy of past age. We do not think of powers in the air as the current beliefs of St. Paul's day permitted him to think of them. We do not conceive of seven heavens peo- pied with spiritual hosts. The Arab, in- nocent of scientific thoughts, may still apologize to the spirits of the air whom his arrow may transfx as it speeds to its mark; but to our clear intelligence there are no spiritual hosts in the air. Hydro gen we know, and sodium and other ele- ments common to the earth we know in sun and blazing star; but not demoniao powers in the heavenly places. The imagery, I am saying of Paurs thought, is not modern, is not scientific, Is not imagery easy for our cold, practical intelh- gence to use.
 Such words as these-prinoipalitie powers, world rulers of this darkness, spiritual hosts of wiokedness in the heavenly places, belong to the perishable elements of the inspired scripture, and l grant this. .withIthe utmost chesrfulness as theologian, because If we should not be able or willing to distinguish the temporal from the eternal in the Bible, the human ele- ment which passes from the divine word which sbides, we should put the zeal in- spiration of the scriptures in jeopardy every hour from any newly learned facts. But admitting thus the transitoriness of tke forms under which St. Paul's con- ception of the wrestling of human soul took shape-forms borrowed from the our rent pholosophies of his day neverthe- less this passage. go earnest, so eloquent with the spiritual passion of tremendous soul, Is thoroughly modern in it's con- ception of human life. I go still further and say that the conception which an intelligent man possessed of soul of any moral vigor must fern of himself, his aim and destiny as man, will correspond to this conception of life with which the Apostle Paul was stirred and swayed For when we get at the center and substance of the thought of life which is clothed in these ancient words, a wrestling with the municipalities. the powers, the world rulers of this darkness, tho spiritual hosts what do we find but the grand, awful truth that the destiny of every man of us Is problem of contendiug forces-of forces which cannot bo easily graaped or meaeured-forces for good CT evil which we may know in part, but which hasten alao from the whole outlying universe to meet in the conflict of mans life oD this earth.
 This conception, I am saying, of 8 human life vast problem of forces is to be derived from st Psurs text, ard It is trus likewise to all our knowledge I wonld have you think therefore for while this morning of cur life, of your own life, of the social complex of life amid which our little individualities are in- volved, in the light of this truth that we have to do with the powers, that the moment we think seriously we must ap- prehend, sometimes with fear and trem- bling, that we ourselves are powers for better or for worse in the midst of univ r. sal powers of good and evil.
 We know, to begin with, that in all material things we have to do really with forces. These seemingly permanent nat ursl objects, the rocks, the hills, are not as they appear to be mere inert motionless bodiee; they gre points of equilibrium of the universal forces A line of mountains, regiment Of hills forever standing guard, Is simply the parade restof great host of natural forces. Take the stone which you lay as the foun- dations of your building; it is 50 much energy of the universe locked up in that visible form of matter; there is energy enough latent in those molecules to blow your house to the skies, if it could be touched off. And the everlasting stars are only 20 many balanced oenters of sstro- homie forces; the truth of their orbits is the harmony of all the forces of the heavens So everything within the realm of your own personality Is a play of forces-your body, your thought, your resolutions, your conduct You are yourself 8 problem Of forces. Indeed, 20 familiar and 50 accepted has this doctrine of force become, that many who hardly have spiritusi courage to brace their souls to affirm, in the beginning wae God, the Alpha and Omega is the eternal Mind, the living Will, the one true God, will yet go far enough in their con fession of the unseen end the eternal to say HI LAC "nS 1u4cFi, btIuC known power is ali and in all. If they could but add to their belief in force as the ultimate truth of nature; the ultimate truth aleo of their own thoughts, that power in the last analysis is spirit, and confess that God is spirit, even as Jesus taught an ignorant Samaritan woman, then this modern belief in force might be trans formed into true Christian conception oi God.
 Look again at very much the same ides | of power from another point of view. A l new born child is given to human home. ] In that infant of days bit of the infinite unknown clipgs to the mothers breast Its life is-wha,a A trembling balance ot ! unnum bered forces! f4me fickering 8. every gust of air! The powers are met 10, 1 a life long conflict in that sleeping child Ancestral influences hays shaped its form and are stirring in its first motions. The | home in which 1t Is sheltered is tho power l for good or evil in the heart of which, 1 pure or sinful, that consciousness of life shall come to itself. School, business, the | struggle for existence, all circumstance and opportunity will invest it with new | forces, gather around 1t the storm of great l powers, open to it the possibilities of noble victories or awful defeats; that human life coming out of the great deeps of the universe to self consciousness in that little child Is from the beginning to the end down into the struggle of the spirit witt | this mortality in death, a problem o1 1 forces; and 1t sometimes almost takes oul
 breath away to watch what forces of the the air and of the earth, of heaven and hel
 are struggling for the mastery ill some hu
 man life Look st the same thing inst ono.
 m;,re from still another point of view i, 1 0rlc t., Gvc and b.ar r;x cient, modern idea of life az wreetlnl l with powers. Look at society, st the whol,
 of us in distinction. that is. from the indi
 v.dual of us. And not to make tue con
 oeption too immense, confns it to the sun
 total of the forces of humanity within
 the limits of single city, Thinl
 of the forces that are congregateC
 here. Think of the powers that ar
 wre stling in the life every day of the w.e]
 of this community. Think of the life 0
 this city as problem of forces. Of cours
 1 do not attempt to enumerate them; al
 the Sundays in the year would hardly sui
 fee for that task; yet think of the city
 life as an aggregate and tumult of forces
 seen and unseen, material and spiritual, c ] this world and from all worlds. Or nal
 row your view for the sake of de6nitio
 to few squares, or still more closely to
 circle that might be oiroumsoribed by
 short radius from this or almost any othe
 central point It is stupendous when "
 think of it, the vast array of forces, th
 great tumult of powers within such circun
 scribed human boundaries. All concei,
 able powers of earth and heaven and he Io,, ok- IL >I.. oe E1~