The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1894-10-13
Our Denominations Its Purpose Field and Machinery.

therefore sacred. 1t is a grand thing
to put our places of worship under
the dome; business at the bottom,
worship at the top. | do not dishonor
business by putting it at the bottom,
because however aerial mems
thoughts are their feet must stand
upon the earth. That is the basis
and the spiritual aspiration should
be built upon that, enclosing seven
sacred days, instead of one, SO that
i would be impossible for any man
to come under the sound of our voice
on Sunday and then go out during
the week and raise an entirely differ
ent standard of action by which he
would be permitted to grovel in the
dirty rivalries of trade.
III. The NEED OF MAINTAINING Our
MACHINERY. l have passed through
the period of life when people spend
time in quarreling with their tools. I
have discovered that good workmen
do not do it. 1t is the poor workmen
who are always criticizing their i'm
plements, finding fault with their
tools, as if the tools were expected to
do the work of supplying brains to ID
mechanic. When / go to new church
that is, pass from one pastorate to an
other, l very seldom find a need of
changing anything radically. There
is machinery enough already for any
amount of steam that I can supply.
So l think in respect to our denomin-
ational machinery, if I had not ex-
hausted my philosophy should have
attempted to go into the philosophy
of the machinery of the body, but l
think you have heard enough of it
from others. All | think about it is
that denomination like ours, built
on the very plan of the Government
of the United States, an American
machine just like the Government,
modelled after it. | do not believe
there are any plans of religious or
ganization in the New Testament any
how. l know people who think il is
full of Episcopalianism, and I know
others who think Presbyterianism
looks out of every page, but 1 never
could see that there was any plan in
it. The organization grew up as the
spirit grew. The only thing is "it
seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and
it was. Just one illustration. The
preachers had large congregations in
those days. They did not make
much preparation for their speeches,
but they talked all the longer for that,
and they generally do it now. While
they were active, having large congre-
cations and preaching long sermons
the charity work got mixed and
large number of widows came clam
oring for their, support and the
preacher said, "Now, we cannot stop
preaching to supply the needs of
these widows and divide it, you know
We will appoint deacons. There
were no deacons in the first church,
but they appointed deacons, and the
reason they gave for it was that ct
seemed good to the Holy Ghost" and
to u.s." That has been the way for
eighteen hundred years. Whatever
seems good to the Holy Ghost and
to us-l think they usually put it the
other way,-whatever seems good to
us and the Holy Ghost-it is or
dained of God. And each church or
ganization, SO far as it's managers are
concerned, claims to be divine, abso-
lutely essential to the salvation of
mankind. The Bible says, there is
no other name to be saved by except
Christ, but they improve on that
and say, there is no other way to be
saved but our way. Well, l do not
say that, but say we have denomin-
ational machinery enough and what
we have is good enough for our work
1t is said that one of our brethren
went to a certain town in this State
which was named this afternoon, for
his summer vacation, and spent sever
al weeks in an earnest endeavor to
transform the Universalist movement
Thereon decay, rather,-to revive it
under another name, under the name
of an Independent church. Now |
should have been very glad if that
brother, who is a very able man, had
taken the trouble to go there and try
to revive it as a Universalist Church
In my judgment we could do very
little better, brethren. There are not
many of us. / was quite surprised
to hear that we had so many churches
maintaining only occasional services.
do not think the trouble is in the
machinery at all, | think the trouble