The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-02-12
Don't Be De1uded by Bell
amy-E1smere Gospels,
Says DR.. Stoddard.
THE ECCLESIASTICAL RIVER
P~awnshops, Swimming Baths, Jubi.
lee Singers and Revivalists
Can't Keep 1t Agoing.

Church yesterday morning preached the last
of a course of three sermons on Con
SCIENCE He took for his text, And thy
neighbor as thyself.p He said, in part
s'God has created a world and peopled it that
He might have a field for the exercise OF his
most glorious attribute-love. And we are
made social beings, and given t he instinct
which leads us to associate one with another,
for the same reason-that we may exercise
this glorious attribute, love. This is our
salvation. Hence the two-fold command of
Our Saviour. What is the first and great
commandment? Love God; it is your life.
What is the second commandment! Love
man; it is also your life. This
law is so important, dear friends,
that its necessity is impressed upon
our neighbor or not, we have to live with
him. We nave duties to him which we must
perform, and there are benefits which we must
receive from him whether we love him or
not. We nave some of his burdens to bear
and he some of ours. The only key to a
happy bearing of such burdens in the key OF
love. It is the wisest way of getting on with
our brother man as well as the only right
way. But love to God must come first. We
can't bring it to bear upon our relations
with others until we have settled our rela-
lions with God, learned to love Him and feel
His owe developing in us. We can't do this
because our personality is the strongest thing
about us. 1t is true that we are what we
| are somewhat from our environment. You
can't make a man better simply by changing
his relations, his surroundings; you must
also change him. Mans relations can't be
| right while he is wrong. This IS another
wonderful difference between human sys-
| TENS of reformation, other religions and
Christianity. The first simply touch mans
relations and environments, While Chrlstl-
| anity changes his character. Man, 1T says,
must first be saved himself. then set to save
the world.
MAN is A SINNER.
"Man is a sinner. Because he is wrong, his
surroundings are wrong. Hence his soul
| must be saved first. Don't forget this. Don't
be deluded by these modern Henry George,
or Bellamy, OF Robert Elsmere gospels,
which overlook this tremendous tact. Ihese
| men are trying to tell us how to save the
| world without first taking away the SIN OF
man. The world is wrong, we repeat, be
| cause individual men are wrong, and The
| reform we want is the Lamb OF God that
takest away the sins of the world, because he
takes away the sins or man. Inc
hardest thing for us apparently
to do is to keep a true straight
line of walking IN Gods plain and clear
| highway. Having for some generations
been furiously loving God and forgetting
about human duties, this generation, with
| DESPERATE eageFness has begun to love men,
| forgetting often that the way to love men,
wisely and permanently, and to do them
e~ffectual good is by loving God and teachlng.
| them to love Him first. But it looks as II
for a time, love of God was to give way to
love of man, as If the worship OF humanity
| was to be substituted for the worship or
God. So our churches must all be working
churches. and there must be kitchens, and
| sociables, IN g~ynlnasiums, and swimming
baths. and pawnshops, and relief societies,
and debating clubs, and penny banks,
and even baseball teams connected
with our churches. and smart sermons
I.upon early closing and political knaves and
horse racing and all sorts of good times for
the Young folk. And so the ecclesiastic
stream runs furiously and the mill wheels of
enterprise go round delightfully."-, and every
body is pleased until it is suddenly discovered
that the water insthe ecclesiastical river IS
getting lower and lower. Men begin to ask
where. after all, this new river of the love
of men comes from, where its reservoir or
fountain is, but no one seems to know.
Then desperate measures are resorted to to
fill the river.
lore SENSATION.
sMore and more sensation is put In the SER
mons. Sunday night concerts are begun,
Jubilee singers in the pulpit, bass drum solos
in the Salvation Army and violin solos for
the aristocracv, anything to fill the river
and make the mill wheels go. But lower
and lower runs the stream, and then at last
men find out that in their care for man they
had forgotten God. You can't fill your
spiritual river unless you have deep, vital,
loving connection with Him, the spiritual
fountain. Your love for men can't
last nor their love for you nor for
the church nor anything spiritual UNI
less it begins with love to God.
xya,,-, ,crr,, 7,aci11n or. N UnSb0n V011r C6-
batting society are all right il God is behind
them all, if a serious, consecrated faith is
behind them all, if you put true, reverent
worship first and these attempts to win after
wards. Love men by all means, but it you
do not begin with God and put implicit
obedience to Him first your mill will stop.
Service to your fellow men, and | quote
again from the new era, service to our fell
low men must never be a substitute for our
right relation with God, but must come from
that relation. A working church must not
be a substitute for a Dious church, or it
will die. The work must spring from the
piety. AS for our worship, | am not sure
that we want mere crowds in our churches.
1t depends on why they come. We must win
men to Christ, but not by presenting the
church under the guise of the world. |
would rather get ten men into the church, as
the church, than to get 100 men into it under
the guisef of the world, and thinking that
perhaps after all the world and the church
were about the same thing. 1t is very nice
to have crowds in the church, but it is much
better to have God there, and if we begin to
use the tinsel of the world to get men into
the kingdom of God, we shall drive the King
Himself out of it.
THE DEVILS WAYS.
This is precisely what the devil wanted to
do at the beginning of the Savior's ministry
in the second and third temptations in the
wilderness. Use me, he said, use my ways,
my worldly guises to attract your crowd
and then you can do them good. As throw
yourself down from the temple and make a
grand sensation, and when the people run to
see the miracle you can preach to them. But
our Savior declined to use these methods.
We could get a crowd here every day in
Lent by offering to give q basket of bread or
a fifty cent piece to all who come. Why
not! Il we are to use the worlds methods
in loving men why not use them to some
purpose. And here we end, where we
began, with God. Each man must go to
Him, decide with Him, before Him. what
the character of his life shall be, and then in
the spirit of love go out to help and bless the
world. But always using Gods methods,
never those of the world, always trusting
Gods power. never that of the world, always
being willing to see, as Jesus did the world for