Birmingham age-herald., 1895-08-05
THIRD EDITION.
THE CHURCHES.
SYNOPSIS OF SOME OF THE SERMONS
Delivered in Birmingham Churches Yesterday The Way of Life Is Made Plain 10.
 All Who Seek the Lord.


 There was very large congregation of worshippers at St. PauPs Catholic church yesterday. Rev. Father Murray officiated al both masses.
 The sermon preached at the second mass might be summed up as follows:
 While we cannot have too much con fidence in the mercy of God, neither can we have too little confidence in our own spiritual weakness. There was time when mans lower nature was completely subject to the nobler elements of his char acter, but that time passed away from earths history when sin came into the world. At present there is constant fight going on in man, and that fight Is the great cause of mans weakness We need all the strength of which we are possessed, and in addition that special help of God, which we call His grace, to enable us to keep clear of sin.
 Care is needed, however, that our con fidence in God be kept free from all sus- picion of presumption, for God requires us to work and to work with zeal and perseverance in His service and for the salvation of our own soul Cod says St. Augustine, "who has created you without your cooperation, will not save you without your cooperation"
 But today more than ever since the dawn of Christianity is this great truth crowded out by the spirit of the world. That very liberty which has come to us and which makes 1t possible for all men to achieve a position of prominence tends also to make man forgetful of the things of faith.
 Even the philosophers strive to separ-, ate the great questions now agitatinG the world from all tie of religion, or else they strive to create for themselves q species of natural religion which, like the child's card castle, falls to the ground before the top Is laid.
 In Christianity they break away from the concrete and tenable to lay hold oi the abstract.
 The masses too fly from all thought of practical religion. They have to buy and to sell, or to carve for themselves place in the worlds progress. We are part or nature, and nature for us is material and therefore we attend to material things. Great cities are built, railroads binds the cities and towns together and all things depend on money and position Hence 1t is that God and the soul are forgotten by men. They are tabooed topic in society, in politics, in the schools and too often also in the families. Sin is no longer wrong because 1t oHends God, but because it breaks the laws or brings shame to the individual or in- jury to the race.
 How is it that man can blind himself so to the just proportions of things, for in spite of the world and in spite or progress God and the soul, sin and virtue are the great facts which man must face, willingly or unwillingly. Oh, that you had known, and that in this thy day the things that are for thy peace.
 There is no man so rich and no man su poor, no man so learned and no man so ignorant, but that for him, as for others the great question in the end Will De have you saved your soul?'
 You cannot be so fashionable but that the judgment of God will reach you Pride of birth, a long line of ancestry, wealth and relatives will not save you from that judgment, and if the Judgment is adverse there will be even less excuse for your blind and culpable ignorance than there was for the doomed city or Jerusalem.
 Yes. this is the spirit of the world which denies God in fact if not in words. But what of you Christians? You bear the name of Christ's followers. Can the world tell the difference between you and it's own votaries? Are you less ava ricious, less grasping of this worlds goods, more loving to your family. Kind CT towards your friends, more charitable to your fellow man? What is there that you have done today or yesterday to which Christ could not say, as He once said during His life time, "Even the heathens do this"
 An ordinarily good life is not sufficient; a Christian life is required of you. one in which evil IS avoided ana good IS uOne for Chrst's sake. It matters little that you are better than others, that you are not murderer or drunkard or thief if you have not been so circumstanced as to be tempted to any of these crimes. What you would be if you had been so tempted God alone knows, but you will have to answer as to whether you have avoided those sins to which you were tempted. Granted that they seem small in the worlds eyes or in your own, 1t is still all that God asked you to avoid and it's insignificance should have made you the more ashamed to refuse it to Him.
 Your only temptation may be to anger or to sloth, to lying or to islander and de- traction. These, then, are the things that God asked you to avoid for His sake, be- cause you were Christian. Have you done so?
 Father Murray then concluded by ex- horting his hearers to mark out some thing special that they would do for the sake of Christ. their master and spoke of the strength that would be given by the Almighty to those that worked in His service.