The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-09-14

main. 1t is a.Bible full of miracles,
or a meaningless collection of false
stories.
The manifest and avowed purpose
of this new thought or higher criti-
cism is to get rid of the supernatural
in religion and to so present it to the
world that it may be received and
practiced by those who think they do
not believe in miracles.
The task is a hopeless one. The
belief in self existing uncreated God
is a belief in miracle. The same is
true of the belief in any kind of i'm
mortality.
The admission that there is or ever
was any kind of revelation from
| God to man is the admission of
miracle. Indeed, this very attempt
to humanize Jesus confronts us with
the most unreasonable of all miracles
that of religion SO great as Christi
anity founded upon the false claim of
mere man that he possessed divine
powers. No greater miracle than this
could be suggested in this or any
other age. For nearly twenty CEN
turtles, the bed rock of Christian faith
has been the bodily resurrection of
Jesus. To now assert that this foun
dation has been false all the while,
and then try to account for the growth
and blessings of Christianity, is to
ask the world to believe a miracle far
more unreasonable than the resur-
rection of Jesus, the shilling of
tempest, or the feeding of a multi
tude. Since this 80 called new thought
cannot possibly accomplish the pur-
pose it processes, why should it be
laid in the way as stumbling block
to the babes in Christ? or be present
ed to the enemies of the church as a
weapon of warfare against our Zion?
We are told by these philosophical
disciples that we should be more
practical in matters of religion, and
not hold in such reverence its theories
and creeds.
They forget that it is not creed
or theory that we are contending
for, but for the foundation upon
which the entire institution rests. In
all religious thought there is nothing
more intensely practical than the
miracles and bodily resurrection of
Jesus. These were his credentials
from God, without which faith
was impossible, and without faith
there is no life reaching heavenward;
no divine saving from sin. Ac-
cepting Christ's wonderful and SUI
pernatural works and resurrection as
Gods seal of truth upon the message
which he bore, and that message then
becomes the very voice of God to us,
saying: "This is my way, walk ye in
it." In order to be practical, let us
hope that the world will obey God
when his will is undo rstood, present
Jesus as the only and perfect expo
nent of that will, and place the au-
thority of Jesus where God placed it,
upon what he did and what he was,
and the fact of his triumphant resur-
rection from the grave. Give the
world to plainly understand that
we speak that which we have
received from Christ and that the
God of the universe was behind
all that Jesus did and said. This
method of presenting the practical
side of religion may belittle those
philosophers who, with natural pro-
cesses, have sought to find God, the
way of life. and answer the problem
of human destiny and have failed;
but it exalts that matchless one who
said he was from heaven, whose life
was the only perfect ever lived, and
whose death, instead OF being his end
was the beginning of an inexplicable
force which is rapidly moving the
world heavenward, and filling it with
peace and beauty.