The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1895-02-07

the power and the wisdom and the viz.
tue which have gone out from Him? Or
the miracles Of Christ, the preaching Of
the apostles and the conversion Of TIT
world stake my Christian faith, and
fear not the legions of unbelief. -
It is easy-to the silly ones it may ap.
pear clever-to tell what Christ has not
done, enumerating things that he neye,
intended to do, and that master from
heaven would not be expected to do; to
make long record Of crimes and mis-.
takes which followers Of Christ and the
Bible may have been guilty Of through
centuries, either because they mis- under-
stood Christ or His spirit, or positively
disobeying Him, alv then to exclaim
"Why is this?" I will tell you why.
He was man and did not know.
Let me put questions to the world.
Was there in history ever an ideal of
moral perfection offered to msn ap-
preaching in purity, in elevation, in
fruitfulness, to that Of Christ and the
New Testament? Was there ever in all
history power for good working in any
comparable degree as the Christian
church, which embodied in her life
Christ and the Bible, and brought into
full activity the principles of truth and
purity given out in the preaching Of
Christ?
The world has seen 1000 years of
Christian civilization. It's history has
its dark spots, for mems free will and
passions remain; but it has had it's floods
OF light, of truth and purity, and all
that throughout it's course is bright and
blessed; all that is it's pride in the moral
life is from Christ. The elevation of
woman, the sanctifcation of the home,
the destruction of human slavery, the
suppression of brutal despotism in rulers
of peoples, the universal freedom of men,
the humanity accorded to the weak and
the suffering, the softening of feeling in
international relations, moral virtues,
public and private, all come from Christ.
And because without all those high
moral gifts to the world men would be
incapable of peace and progress, there
has come to the world from Christ social
happiness, progress in material things,
advance in art, in science. and all the
refnements of culture and civilization.
This is what Christ has done for us.
Scott then, you who dare, at Jesus and
His Bible; scott at all that is His, at
Christendom and Christian civilization;
scott at family regenerated, at woman
hood redeemed; scott at sacramental
marriage and holy virginity; scott at the
charity that has peopled the. nations
with asylums and hospitals; scott at the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man; scott at the enfranchised slave;
at the most sacred principles Of your
own American constitution; scott at
Jesus and His Bible.
Where Christ is not there is barbar-
ism; there is servitude of the weak, des-
potism of the strong, inhumanity and
unbridled and unrebuked
by public opinion. Where Christ is not,
the family, with pure woman as it's
queen, is not; sacred matrimony is not.
The little of good in a world without
Christ comes from imitation of Christian
nations, from the introduction into it's
own body of Christian principles and
practices. We will not have such a
world.
What will unbelief give us? It replies,
a scientific, rational world, beginning
with itself and ending with itself. Let
us first be consistent, and from this
world eliminate what Christian princi-
pies and practices it fain would retain.
The words most glibly repeated by un.
belief, the family, dignity of woman,
liberty, fraternity, are Christian
words, and without Christianity they
would be meaningless. Take
them out Of your world of
unbelief as you give us scientific world
that is, you give us a material world,
a humanity without souls, without wings
on which to rise to the skies, a humanity
with no purpose in life but to seek salts
faction for bodily appetites, with a
leaden sky over it through which peers
no love, no hope, no consolation, where
the strong assert themselves and the
weak are crushed under foot, where
pleasure is the norm of action, where
there is no power above man himself,
whose voice calls to duty, whose memory
stills passion.