Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1896-05-14
REPUTATION or RELIGION.
Spiritual Things Not Exempt from the
Approach of CoYetouaneAs.

Approach OF Covetousness.
Men are anxious for the reputation
| of wealth, taste, culture, originality, ell
oquence, and, not the least of all, the
reputation of religion. Just because
religion is religious does not exempt it
from the need of every sensible care
| that the soul can furnish to anything
else. Just because prayer is speech
with God does not protect it from be-
| ing valueless speech at times, and the
fact that the Bible is Gods word does
| not prevent it from being meaningless
and mute to the soul without atten-
ton. The soul may become as un-
worthy and unhealthy and feverish ia
it's attempt to be thought religious as
| in it's other attempts, and the desire for
the reputation of righteousness may
be as immoral as the desire for any
other show unaccompanied with real-
| ity. The love of the fame without de-
votion to the fact is always immoral.
Many soul is far more anxious to
| be thought religious, and to gain the
| approval of religious people, than really
| to be religious. Many are the devices
| by which the soul tries to thrust itself
| into the number of those whose
| names succeed. God is sometimes al
| most forgotten in the attempt We are
| terribly sensitive lest our spiritual life
| be not appreciated when we look out
and see the fame that has come to some
one else that has served God. Now that
in these latter days it has been found
that no reputation is of more force in
the world than the reputation of the
truly spiritual man, men who were si-
lent about their religion before are
rushing to gain the lists of spiritual
honor before they are closed. They are
never closed, and they are never opened
except to the pure heart and purpose.
But spiritual things are not exempt
from the approach of covetousness
when once they have established them
selves. The world has come to realize
that no power is so lasting, so great,
as that of a great spiritual genius; and
once the worlds great heart has yield
ed up it's honor to such one, men have
found spirituality marketable, and can
not be spiritual enough. The church
world is full aof regulations of people
who have felt something or done some
thing or organized something that
grew, up in their hearts and had to find
expression, and in their train followsat
once host who are feverish to organ
ize or~to invent or to say something.
There are many to-day who are plead
ing with oblivion more than they are
pleading with God. We do not want
to end our work without record or
monument.
This is the era of the badge and the
button, of earmarlls and catchwords,
of anything that shall give us a
little distinction from our fellows. The
lady who thanked the art lecturer, at
the end of his course, that he had
taught them "all the catchwords of
art" so that she could go out and talk
about it, has her counterpart in MANY
soul who is seeking religious power
in the same way.
Great souls have forged out great
words for themselves, by which their
thought reached the souls of men, and
men try to link themselves with their
power by using their vocabulary. But,
before we use any word, we need the
of a heart in it, and to experience it's
meaning. Regulations for religion
have been made by the persistent use
of an approved vocabulary, and greater
regulations have been refused by men
who refused to use any word that had
not by experience approved itself to
them. And we estimate so many
things in the spiritual world by their
power to take, we judge so many fresh
and vital utterances as valueless, sim
ply because we do not yet know what
other people think of them.
Men have gotten regulations by high
strung criticisms of the Christian life,
by scorpion corrections of Christian
plumbers. and by the call to a rarilied
and impossible Christian life, but these
things are no more the gospel than art
and literature are. The desire for d
reputation of orthodoxy may be as low
and selfish as the desire for reputa-
ton of being liberal. Neither is in it
self religious, and the only desire that
is religious is to find and know what is
in Gods heart as the truth. No man
can help his own soul or feed the souls
VI OthCi Win HdlneS Ut a1l yUnlng snort
of vital experiences.
Man after man has felt the hollow
ness of reputation, and come back to
God with an eagerness that made his
life glow with new fire. Happy is
the man who comes to know that no
opinion of him N SO iInportanta as his own
and Gods. The wear of fretfulness. of
spiritual envy, inevitable when man
is only seeking a reputation; of the in
cessant holding up of what was meant
to hold us up; the straining to be
thought something instead of the old,
soul-resting eagernes, to be something
under God and with God-this is one of
the worst burdens of the soul.
There is tremendous independence
and restfulness in the man who has
reduced the audience whose approval
he is after to two-God and himself.
1t is like being born again, when one
goes back to God from the husks of
the ufot io,, Of bo ,;nor boa, @Loro