The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1895-12-23
YESTERDAY At THE CHURCHES
Large Congregations at Various
Places of Worship
MANY CHRISTMAS SERMONS
An Able Discourse by the Rev. Bnrt
Estes Howard
MANY CHRISTMAS SERMONS
Address Of Rev. J. ,. Thomson at Unity
Father McAuliffe In the Cathedral-The z
Theosophists-Church Notes

| The Rev. Burt Estes Howard delivered
| his Christmas sermon at the First Presby-
terrain church yesterday morning from the
text: "That they may be one, according
as we are one; in them and thou in me !;
that they may have been perfected into
one. John xvii, % and %. In part he
said: Zone of the chief difficulties in get
ting men to understand certain forms of d.
vine truth has arisen from the haze of I'M
reality with which we have invested spirit
ual facts and processes. Science brings it's
findings to the thinking world, and how
ever much of hypothesis and supposition
| may be involved in the method by which
| the results offered may have been obtained,
| there is a predispOsition to cretlence be-
cause the knowledge presented is in form
| that appeals 10 our reason and to our
senses. But when theology offers its find
ings to the world it stands at the outset at
q serious disadvantage, for which it is
itself partly to blame. Its appeal
| il not to the same set of faculties
to which Silence addresses itself. Theology
repudiates in a large degree the scientific
| method, it refuses to recognize the unity of
natural and spiritual truth, it discredits
reason for the sake of maintaining the
ory of revelation apart from reason, it
| substitutes dogmatism for criticism and
| insists that between the natural and the
spiritual there ia fixed boundary sepa-
| ration. If Jesus taught anything most
clearly, and if his life and work are a con-
slant insstence on one thing over and
over again, it is the mighty fact that we
are just beginning to see, that the natural
| and the spiritual are but different mani
festations of one divine power. A remark
| ably large part of Jesus teachings is taken
up with what he calls the "kingdom of
the heavens" We lose the force of the
phrase when we translate it, as we always
do, the "kingdom of heaven" 1t imme-
diately becomes remote and vague. 1t is
really plural-the kingdom of the heavens:
and speech of Jesus? To the
| heart of tho Master all aquiyer with
| the consciousness of God the heavens were
| one vast revelation of the divine order and
harmony and love. He felt the thrill of
the divine pulsing through all the universe.
| The will of God sweeps out through the
| limitless ether, and all the myriad hosts
| of the heavens that are scattered like
golden dust behind the chariot wheels of
| night catch the rhythm of the divine heart
| beat and move IN obedience to the power
that has brought them into being. He saw
the wondrous City of Nature and the
| mighty web of love on which the system of
created things is woven. His whole life
can be interpreted truly only as we regard
| it as given up wholly to blending all things
|
reign supreme and his teaching and his
ministry were alike trying to get men to
recognize the essential oneness of
Gods kingdom, whether that king
dom is manifested in the mate
rial universe or in the soul of humanity.
To Jesus the kingdom of the heavens was
an ever-present reality. 1t was at hand. 1t
looked down from the skies. 1t looked up
from the flowers of the field. The air was
} charged with the life of God and the earth
was stepped in the Divine vitality.
"Ihe Divine Presence still whispers
among the trees of the garden and dwells
| in every bush. 1t was to get men to believe
| this, and to make their lives respond to the
divine that envelopes them and stirs in
them, that Jesus wrought. 1t was to get
men to become living part of the King
| dom of God that was all about them close
at hand To Jesus there was no grim dis
tinction between the natural and the spir-
| itual. 1t was all one vast unity pervaded
by the one Divine Spirit.
1--WE have been slow to learn the lesson.
We have failed to see that the force that
| distributes itself through all worlds,
natural or spiritual, is one force and one
only. The fact is that the power that pro-
| duces effects in the world outside ourselves
| is not different power from the one that
produces effects in the world inside our
selves, or in our soul.
at has, no doubt, seemed to many of
!
sermon, but it seemed to me that these
thoughts were necessary to lay the way for
| the single purpose want to leave in your
minds as the Christmas lesson. We have
| seen that there is but one power in all the
| universe, operating by the same fixed laws
in both natural and spiritual things; that
| God is striving to get mems lives into cor
respondence with the love and harmony
shown in His kindom of the heavens; that
Jesus was constantly teaching the near
ness of the spiritual to the natural, and
vice versa; and that He was all the time
| trying to persuade men to come into deep
and vital unity with the one God and
| Father OF all.
| "In the fragment of prayer that forms
the text for today Jesus said: That they
may all be one;' this is the end sought.
He added: Il in them and thou in Me-
this was the method. You notice the
relation that Jesus sustains to God and to
humanity in this process.
The Christ-spirit of sacrifice that filled
the soul of Jesus is the mighty co-ordinat-
ing power that gathers up into one, when
it is received by the world, all the isolated
| elements of society, all the separated in
dividualities, all the chaotic longings and
possib lities of each human:soul, and lifts
| them I'D into the sunlight of the Fathers
| face, blending them and Him together into
| perfect Wilderness. And it is only as this
same Christ-spirit incarnates itself in us,
dIlu ID DOuLou lOEtl tuo VdIlcu dllu HOW
vexed relations of men 1T is only as the
| mind that is in Jesus becomes the mind
that dominates us-that the kingdom of
the heavens shall possess the world and
the sigh of separation between man and
God, and man and his brother, shall cease.
~ in them end Thou in Me-" herein is the
secret of unity.
Unity Church
sermon on Herod's Murder of the
Children in Bethlehem was preached by
the pastor of Unity church, j. S. Thorn
son, yesterday morning. from the text,
"This is the heir; come, let us kill him,
and let us seize on his inheritance."-
Matthew, 81 :3S.
History and mythology inform us that
men and gods attempted to put infants to
death lest they should grow up and con-
| quer and dethrone tyrants, or lest they
| should be leaders in reforms that might
| destroy hoary error and wrong. Some
| prophet, or magician, or dreamer, said
! these children would be dangerous to con-
ventional oppression in church and state.
| It is worthy of note that most of the heroes
! who were prosecuted as infants and youths
had q god for father and a mortal
woman for a mother, and that all of them
were of royal descent. Juno presented
| Laton4, Semele and Alcmena, who were
mothers of Jupiter's children. Apollo.
i Bacchus and Hercules. These prosecuted
mo@hers were princesses. Ishmael,
| Cyrus. Joseph and Moses were exposed to
terrible prosecutions in their youth.