The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1897-12-16

will be represented not by Talmages,
but by Parkhu1sts; not by men who deck
ancient dogmas in flowery rhetoric, and
bind them together with wisps of
metaphor, but men who take the corrup-
tions, and shams, and shames of the day
and hour, and hold them up before the
people in all their ugliness and deformity,
and deal hard blows at the men and
measures which make it possible for them
to exist and tester in the political and
social world
Several years ago young woman of my
acquaintance, moved by her inherited in
stincts and fondness for its mode of wor-
ship, joined the Episcopal church. and
she afterwards told me her experience.
She frankly told the rector that she was
by conviction an evolutionist, and that
consequently there were statements in
the creed to which she could not assent.
zionist, and that her mental attitude to-
wards the creed was very much like his
own, and that it offered no obstacle to
her entrance into the fellowship of the
church under such mental reservation as
she saw fit to make.
Now there is, in fact, but the remotest
harmony of meaning between the Apos-
ties Creed and the beliefs which are
based on the principle and methods of
evolution as now almost universally accept
ed by the enlightened world, theological,
as well as scientific. And it is not mere
inference that in the churches of to- day
the doctrinal formulas are subordipated to
til vital truths and burning problems of
the times. The statement rests upon
facts.
In the estimation of the churches of to-
day, moral character, and the services of
humanity, are frankly recognized as the
highest and safest credentia Is of Chris
tian life so that the person who once might
have been saint, would now perhaps be
considered a sinner; and another who
might have been wept and prayed over as a
sinner in peril, would now be acknowledged
as disciple of Christ. The churches no
longer claim to be bands of saints but or
ganized bodies of men and women whose
legitimate and real motive is not to es
cape retlibution and gain felicity in fu-
ture state, but to add the weight of their
influence to level up the moral sentiment
OF the community and lend hand to the
work of lettering the condition of society.
| The periodical revival season has almost
wholly given way to steady effort all the
year through, and by means of educating,
refining and humanizing agencies, to
keep the moral faculties and the religi-
Gus sentiments from lapsing into indiffer-
ence and inactivity.
The good men in Bible stories showed
their humility by covering themselves
with tow cloth, and sitting on ash
heaps, and disfguring their persons. If
they should try to do so now we should
send them, as Holmes says, to an insane
asylum; and if one should begin to trend
his garments it would suggest the need
of strait jacket. The good man of the
days of our fathers showed his humility
by public confession of sin, and asking
the prayers of his neighbors, met with
him in prayer meeting. The good man OF
to day does nothing of the kind. He does
no. go about with sanctimonious counte
nance, and ''better than thou air. He
does not grovel before his neighbors in a
public confessional. He is citizen of
the world, good neighbor, man of So
briefly, who gives full count, and weight,
and measure of all commodities he han
dies; pays his debts, and has compassion
on his honest debtors. He does not go to
prayer-meeting to tell everybody what a
miserable sinner, lin theory he is, but
whenever he goes to church, or about
town, he shows by his life that he is try
ing to be an upright man. One man OF
that stamp in community is of more
value than score of self styled saints. A
sound character and a righteous life con
stitute an argument for religion which
makes all skepticism absurd, and all in
difference unreasonable.
Such are the churches of to-day, and
such is the character of the service they
are trying to render to the whole world,
and such is the type of citizen whose true
place is in some church, and whose office
is to represent the highest moral and re-
ligious ideal of to- day. And no more i'm
portant duty rests upon the well-inten-
toned citizen than that of helping te
sustain the churches, and broaden thei
influence and power for good.
In making this plea for the churches
have in view not primarily the ascendenc,
of the churches merely as churches, bu
rather the moral and material we'll bein,
of the community. The churches repre-
sent the hope and aim of mankind for
better and happier state of existence il
this world, and that ought to be ampl