The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-05-10

Righteousness, or dealing rightly with our
God, and hope or aspiration for a nobler
and diviner life. Or we turn TO James, and
we shall find him saving, pure religion and
undefiled Is this: To visit the widow and the
fatherless in their affiiction and to keep
ones self unsDotted from the world Then
religion Is purity and philanthrofhy. OR we
turn back TO the four gospels and we find
Christ saying: All commands of God, all in
SEPARATIONS that come from God are summed
up in these two things: Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy mind, and heart
and soul and thy strength and thy neighbor
as thyself Then true religion is love toward
God and love toward man. If We take these
definitions and very like ones which we shall
find scattered through the Bible, we shall
frd religion never defined as a system of
thought, never defined as a Kind OF ritual
never defined as church order, but always
as spiritual life. 1t is reverence toward
God, the father of all the living Ii is re-
pentance for sin and turning away from
Ii because ii is loathsome to the soul il is
the finiing in the spiritual experience Of 9TH
er men something to which the soul answers
and responds, and, pre-eminently. finding
them in this book of spiritual experiences,
and SO being inspired by this book; it is
ing In Christ one worthy to follow and hav-
ing that kind of faith in Him which leads
one to become follower O. Him. ii is COM
ing into fellowship with God, walking with
Him, having His companionship, recognizing
Him friend. living in His household as
child; IL is feeling with ones self certain
quality that cannot die, and because of that
intense consciousness Of .undying quality
looking forward with hope beyond the grave
for ones self and for ones loved ones. This
is religion.
THE BUSINESS OF THEOLOGY.
'It is the business OF theology to give us
such definitions of God as ii can; but the
reverence comes first, and the definition aft
erward. 1t is the business of theology to
define sin and to tell us, if it can. how 1t
came into the world but it is the prior bust
| ness of the soul to turn with loathing from
whatever it knows to be wrong. 1t is the
| business Of theology 10 explain, il il can
| how IL is that this book has been so pre-
| eminent in the history of the world carry
ing with it everywhere the light of nober
| and diviner civilization; but before that
comes the answering throb of the human
soul 10 the noble and inspiring words which
| this book utters. 1t is the business of the
ology to define, if it can, Christs pace in
human history; but before that comes the
| spirit that bows before Him. reveres Him.
| loves Him and follows Him. 1t is the bust
ness of theology TO interpret. if 1t can, how
sinful man can come into fellowship with
| an infinite and holy God; but not until man
has come into that fellowship can he define
the coming. 1t is the business of theology.
| II 1t can, TO explain how IL is that the soul
| snail go ON in another life when this body
| has mingled with the common dust; out be-
fore 1t can explain that phenomenon, the
soul itself must be conscious of its immortal
| life and feel the divine promise within My
| object, then, in this course of Sabbath even
| ing sermons, is not to make you evolution
| lists, it is not even to revolutionize your the
| ology, Ii is not to ask you to take new
one-it IS to try 10 show those Of you who
| are perplexed by doubt, whose mind has got
this thread loose that runs through all the
| phenomena of life, and whose religious
teaching has seemed inconsistent with 1t; it
| is to show you that by change in theology
| you may hold fast your faith, in God
| your consciousness OF sin, your fellowship
| of Christ, your hope of Immortality. The
evolutionist believes in God and i'm a per-
| sonal God. That is, he believes in a God
| who thinks and feels and wills, but he does
| not believe in a great embodied King, sit
| ting somewhere en- a great white throne,
| running His telegraph wires all over the
| universe, pressing the button and doing the
work by mechanical methods. He does not
| believe in great King. sitting on a great
| white throne. to whom we pray by kind
| to find Him if We can; he believes that God
| Is In the universe; he believes that the re-
| lationship of God to the world is far more
| like the relation of the soul to the body than
like the relation of an engineer to an en-
| CINE. or carpenter to a box. He recognizes
that all such parallels are imperfect and
| inadequate. but he believes that the one
great force which expresses itself through
| all the multifarious forces of nature is the
force cf Gods own will; that what we call
| laws of nature are laws of Gods own being;
| that the actions of nature habits and
methods of the divine. and that God Himself
manifesting and revealing Himself by the
forth putting of His wisdom and His power.
He thinks. therefore, that every Gay is a
again. Let there DE light and light comes
back to flood the world; that every spring
He again carpets the earth with grass and
ocean, the earth and the air; that God a.
ways has been. is and always will be. a
speaking. working, revealing. disclosing God
He believes that in this process OF self
manifestation God has wrought man. and,
so far as we know-observe the qualifica-
fruit of Gods creation-the finest work yet
wrought certainly in the history of this
globe.
''He believes that man is the product oil
that process which Is at once evolution
and divine manifestation, for all growth is
He believes that man is Gods own son, but
Gods son in the making. He looks upon
the world as the factory where this max
ing is going on. and it is full of the dust
and the chips, and the statues are none
of them finished. He sees man emerging
from the animal conditon-half man, hall
animal. In Coles picture of the expulsion
from the garden a great wall divides be-
tween the garden and the wilderness-a
flowers and fruits within, all weeds and
thorns and thistles without. The evolu
ZIONIST sees no such sharp line, but the
wilderness makes it's incursion into the
garden, and the garden makes its incur
sion into the wilderness and the world i:
made up Of tareS and wheat growing to-
gether, not only in society, not only in the
| cnurcn, out III every. lnQlVldual. Eacn one
of us part tare, part wheat; no man SC
good that there Is not some evil left In
him; no man so evil that there is not lef
some seed of good in him. He believes
that sin enters every human life when the
animal nature predominates over the spir
Il itual He does not look back six Thousand
| years for a first sin. He does not throw
the responsibility of the transgression of
upon poor, laundering, sinful Adam; he rec
ogniZes that he himself is carrying around
| the elements of sinful nature in him
| seventh
, of Romans, and cries out again, with Paul
In me-that is, in my fiesh-I see no goot
thing. Does this make penitence less gen
, uine, less real, less sincere, less deep? j
! every time the flame of passion mounts Il
| your tongue and you utter the sharp word
. you recognize that it is the tiger remain
ing in you; il every time you are conscious
of a vanity that would lead you away from
the path of sterling uprghtness, you know
some remnant of the peacock is in you
If every time you find yourself devotini
! your life to mere acquisition, not wonder
, ing what you shall do with what you &C
quire, you find yourself degenerating to
. mere bee ant; If every time your prid
is rampant in you, IL every time any evi
crops out in you, you see somewhere tn
trail of some animal still wrestling in you
, soul-will IL make sin less distasteful, vii
, il make you hate 1t less? Does il not max
pie with sin? / can only say it does wit
= me. The evolutionist believes that God
who Is the source of all life, who is tn
!, one universal force who dwells in all ma
ture, is brooding the human race. He
: | the Father and the Mother of humanity
. | Inspiration is the inhreathing of God an
God breathes on all the souls He has eve