The Pascagoula democrat-star. (Pascagoula, Miss.) 1878-1920, 1895-03-22
Not Wrath, But Love.

New York Herald.
Keep yourselves in the love of God.-Jude,
Your conception of God has a great
deal to do with your personal charac.
ter.
Your thought of what God will do
to you has close relation to your
treatment Of your fellow man. In
other words, your religion may make
you very charitable or it may make
yOu very cruel.
Just as a sculptor with chisel and
hammer gives the shape of satyr or
saint to the block of marble in his
studio, so do your ideas of what God
is mould the motives by which you
act.
No folk on the face of the globe, for
illustration. could be more sturdy.
more sternly honest or more like bar
Of steel than our puritan fathers. No
lover of his kind can withhold the
need of administration which their
unyIelding loyalty to their conyc-
tions evOkcs, nor can he resist a GER
tain degree of repulsion which makes
their example impossible to follow.
You cannot doubt the absolute purity
of tleI motives when they burned at
the stake the poor creatures whom
they thought possessed of the devil.
and yet you would not for worlds en-.
courage the same course Of action in
our day. They were at once the best
and the worst eXponents of religion.
! No man was ever more unswervingly
true to his convictions than he /:
neither did any man ever sacrifice
more for what he believed to be the
will Of God and yet they pursued
a policy Of uncharty and harshncss
with iron hands and stony hearts.
What they lacked was a knowledge
Of the love of God. Their theology
of IA tempest mingled with thunder
and lightning. The thunder filled
both heaven and earth with its ter
rible reverberations and the lightning
flashed destruction in every quarter.
There was no fatherhoOd Ia their
creed, not a scintilla of pity-only a
wrathful vengeance against evildoers.
The Cruciiction, which represents
the sacrifice of the Lord in behalf OF
the tempted and tried, was practi-
cally a dead letter. 1t was covered
up In the darkness Of the background
was the awful fact that God hated a
fallen race and "for His good pleas
nre" chose some for eternal bliss and
doomed others to eternal misery.
With such ideas of God how could
that generation OF men been other
than they were? When you think of
your Maker as tyrant how is it pos.
sible for you to be generous or even
just to your fellows? Your theory OF
the ways of Diety must decide what
your own ways shall be. Nothing Is
more clear than the tendency to make
the government OF God the basis Of
earthly government, and II you have
been taught that He will utterly re
pudiate you unless you accept certain
formulas OF faith it is inevitable that
you should follow the example ant
punish, even with death, those wlt
reject what you believe. So true Is
this, so entirely in accordance will
the law OF cause and effect, that |
you know what kind OF theology pre-
walls ip a given age and among a giver
people you need make no mistake al
to the spirit of that time or the gen
eral character of that people.
It's infinitely important, therefore
that you should understand Gods re
lation to you personally, because II
that way alone can you understand
your own relation to the world II
which you live. Gods love for y0l
begets love within you for all man
kind, and firm conviction that H
, is so anxious to save you from harm
that he stands ready to put "His ever
lasting arm beneath you" will max
anxious to save others by kindl
words and generous deeds. You
J theology makes you or unmakes yot
You are controlled by your idea, 70
! ideas create motives.
In our judgment II is well nigh ur
pardonable to associate the clemen
! OF wrath, as VIC understand 1t, wit
y Deity. You thereby malign HI
= goodness, the goodness which hu
!. shown itself In q Thousand expcr
y ences during your life, and at I'll
same time you lower your conccptlo