The herald., 1897-04-26

CITY SERMONS
Some Pulpit Discourses by
the Divines
A CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY
ABLY PRESENTED BY REV. BURT
ESTES HOWARD
CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY
Other Sermons Of Interest - The
Bibles Interpretation Of the
Godhead

Yesterday morning Burt Estes Howard
preached the first Of two sermons on the
theme, "a Catholic Christianity" TAX
ing for his text the parable of the leaven
hidden in the three measures Of meal. He
said in part:
However true it Is that the religion Of
Jesus aims to reconstruct the individual
giving him new motives and diviner
ideals, yet when we come to draw the
outline of what he pleases to call the
kingdom of God we must construct 1t to
a larger scale. One of the most serious
things against which Christianity has
had to contend, and against which it is
still contending, is the attempt of the
church to reduce the kingdom of God
to the scale of one. Hardly has the
church entertained an ideal of her mis-
sion larger than the securing to her
ranks of the individual soul. The broad,
clear lines of a universal rule of right
eousness in human affairs so distinctly
marked out by the Master, have been
overlooked or ignored in the work to
many generations. Intent on the task
of shaping the units of society after her
own peculiar pattern, the church
has apparently forgotten the
majestic unity for which the
units themselves are to be fitted and
into which they are to be formed. What
ever the relation of the church to the
Individual, and it is a vital and essen
-. !, ,to1, y, ,se<t
stitution is called is by no manner of
means fulfilled by the simple CONVEX
sion of single souls here and there in the
community. The kingdom of God is not
an aggregation of regenerate units. 1t
is not, as some one has remarked with
as much truth as wit, an anarchy of
good individuals" The kingdom of God
does not come when there is a CONVEX
sion of all the individuals in the world,
but when there is an inspiration of the
. related life of the world with the Spirit
of God. For it is a fact, as sad as 1t is
evident, that all the individuals on the
face of the earth might be converted
and received into the membership of the
most ultra-orthodox communion, and
yet the kingdom of God have little or no
standing room in the world.
1t has been a serious misfortune of
Christianity that it has been looked upon
and talked about as if it were something
alien to the common life of humanity.
The words religion" and religious"
have been dwarfed into a mere carica-
ture of their true content. By a cruel
and devilish separatism the world has
been shut out from the only force that
can sweeten it's bitterness and redeem
it from its social sins-and all sins are
social sins. A dualism, born of hell
itself, has cleft our life in twain-putting
asunder what God hath Joined together
and setting up that false and fictitious
distinction between the sacred and the
secular The result has been that we
have a function, a mere fragment. of
our affairs and of our time dedicated in
a perfunctory and formal way to God,
while the larger part has been handed
over to selishness and mammon. The
simple faith that makes of every act
a religious ceremony has been set aside
by the hideous and subtle atheism that
robs life of its divine birsl-right 1 say
atheism" for that atheism is not the
most deadly or insidious which bears
the name of Noltaire, or Clootz and
their modern apostles. 1t is the athe-
ism of the shop and the counter; the
atheism of the street and the ballot
box; the atheism that worships God
Sunday and serves self and the devil
from Monday morning till Saturday
right with daybook and ledger with
business and pleasure and politics; the
atheism that leaves God out of the COM
mon affairs that make up the great
bulk of mans life; the atheism that
denies religious, yea. a sacramental
significance to the ordinary transac-
tions of our daily intercourse with one
another. The idea of religion has been
atrophied and shriveled until it has
come to stand in the minds of many of
us, for a sort of one-day institution, an
hour or two of ecclesiastical perform
ance, few stated benevolences and a
couple of women's societies. That large
wholesome, healthy thought of Jesus
which knew no distinction between re-
Hgion and life, to whom in fact, relig-
ion was life; that conception of the Mas
ter which bent the ideas of the world
respecting religion from the perpendicu-
lara relation between the individual
ana God-to the horizontal-a relation
between man and man in the spirit of
God; that full, manly notion which iden-
tlhed worship with work and sanctified
drudgery until the spade of ditch
digger became as sacred as a bishops
crosier; that Christed view Of a religion
for all men and for all life has been
overlaid with rubbish, and narrowness
and ecclesiastical mummery until it has
wellnigh perished from the earth.
The great aim of Christianity is not to
withdraw weakly and wickedly from the
common life Of men, but to press out into
the worlds days and nights, to infuse
ell things with the spirit Of God 1t is
not an exclusive affair, a closeted, clois-
tered arrangement but it is the leaven
of divine vitality gripping alLhuman
relations and organizing them accord
ing TO Gods Righteousness and peace.
Christianity is not meant for the skies.
1t can only live on the level where the
life of men lies. "With actual things.
with humanity in its everyday dress.
with the traffic Of the streets, with
gates and houses, with work and wages.
with sin and poverty, with these things,
and all the things and all the relations
and all the people of the city, Chris
tianity has to do and has more TO do than
with anything else. To conceive of the