The herald., 1897-01-18
SELECTIONS OF SERMONS
Rev. Howard on Men of
Fixed Character
SYMBOLISM OF SOLOMON'S temple
Father McAuliffe Disc0ut ses on
Marriage Relations
GOD AND MAN INTERBLE ENDED
Dr.. Bland Occupies the Pulpit at Simp.
son Tabernacle
First Of Dr.. copass' Series Of Sermons on
Things Fundamental
Deluston Of the Advent Explained by
Prof. Bowman - Evangelistic Serv-
ices In the Church of Christ-The
Father McAuliffe DiscOut ses on
Marriage Relations
GOD AND MAN INTERBLE ENDED
Dr.. Bland Occupies the Pulpit at Simp.
son Tabernacle
First Of DR.. Copass' Series Of Sermons on
Things Fundamental
Delusion of the Advent Explained by
Prof. Bowman - Evangelistic Serv-
ices In the Church Of Christ-The
Theory of Brotherly Love.


A very large congregation was present
at the First Presbyterian church yester-
day morning. The pastor, Burt Estes
Howard, took for his text II Tim. i:12'
'I know whom I have believed" The
speaker said, in part:
Grand old Paul! Like an oak, rock
rooted, in the heart of tempest, strip
ped of its leaves and despoled Of its
branches, yet lifting its rugged, splint-
cred trunk aloft in unsubdued majesty,
so he stands there, SCARED, buffeted
and torn, secure in the grip Of granite
conviction. There Is no wavering, or
cropping in a maze of conjecture; no
playing hide and seek with conflicting
views; no timid propping open of back
doors through which he can crawl under
cover of 'peradventure' or perhaps.
He throws no sop to the cerebus of
agnosticism with its hypocritical humil-
ity of confessed ignorance. He does not
juggle with phrases or danGle on slack
wire of guesses. The trumpet gives
forth no uncertain sound. L know whom
have believed he says, and after he
has spoken there is no room for contro-
versy on the question of his position.
"In this day of a multiplicity and end
less variety of supposition, and surmise
and speculation, this word of Paul Is
like wind out of the sea or a breeze
from the mountain top. This is an age
of many opinions and few convictions
The rapid fight of discovery has made
us unstable. The swift procession of
events, the kaleidoscope shift of inven-
tions, the constant demand upon us to
adjust old faith to new fact, make us
unsettled and restless, prey to doubt
and unfaith. Like the children of the
passover, we stand perpetually sandal
ed. with staff in hand, girded for the
journey. In the midst of this fluctua-
ton, which affect all modes of thought.
the soul, feeling after the old landmarks
of its thinking which have forever been
displaced, despairs often of certainty
and permanence. This constant moving
of the boundaries OF our knowledge, this
endless striking of our tents to pitch
them days march further into the land
of the new and strange, neceSSitating
as 1t must a ceaseless passing out
from former views and conceptions into
a bewildering profusion OF unfamiliar
facts, which we have hardly time to
fresh discoveries-this inexorable pro-
cess Of mutation which must mark all
progress, beget in us species of su-
perficiality and fickeness that threaten
to destroy all power to form or hold set
tied convictions. Instead of men of
great force of mind, strong in original
thinking, we are becoming race of
opinion mongers, and such faith as we
have is fastened to some set of views
rather than to the eternal facts which
these views feebly attempt to interpret
There is large room in the world today
for men of Pauls rugged stamp. men
mighty of cOnvictiOn-which Is but an
ether way of saying men mighty Of
faith.
by faith let me be understood to mean
something far other than a persuasion
of the logical integrity of a system or
articulated set of doctrines and opinions
1t has been our misfortune that we have
pinned our faith to theories about the
great fundamental facts of life and have
ignored the facts themselves. The seri-
Gus question of our day is not what we
think of this or that speculation about
the being of God or His attributes. but
in what relation the living God stands
to my living soul. ! do not minimize the
importance of definite ideas and rational
conceptions of theologic doctrines, but
do emphsize the imperative need of a
clear, positive God-consciousness in
every man of us-a consciousness that
brings the Living One into all our life
and that makes all our life sacred with
the inspiration of the Divine Spirit. The
first and great thing in a mans life is
not perfectly wrought formula of opin-
ion with respect to various doctrines
but 1t is profound conviction of the
reality and relationship of the three
fundamental facts that underly all
truth--God is, the world is, and I am.
LAr, thD -
and his life unrolled before him like a
scroll written full, he summed up the
whole of his experience in single propo-
sition that had in it little of dogmatic
significance, but everything of personal
consciousness: L know God What
ever theologic superstructure we may
build--and none of us see things lust
alike-underneath it all must lie this
basal conviction, this ultimate, or if YOU
choose, primary, faith in a God who
can be known and known to me. This is
the root.
but we are confronted by a school Of
thinkers whose dogmas have been quite
popular, namely, the school of agnos-
ticism, whose burden is that God cannot
be known to the mind of man. All our
professed knowledge of God is resolved
by these men into form of superstition
more or less refined God cannot he
known, says the agnostic, because he is
dHV duSOiute ana man Is finite
and relative; and the finite cannot know
the Infinite, nor can the relative know
the absolute. Probably the world has
never witnessed more astounding ex-
ample Of dognpatic arrogance And sure
ly no other dDgmatist ever laid himself
open to jl'Ster charge of defying his
own principles With a superb assump-
tion, the agnostic puts on the robes Of
omniscience in order to fix the limits of
human knowledge, and then coolly pro-
ceedS to build a fence around the nature
of God! II God Is so constituted that he
cannot reveal himself to the thought of
man, how is this divine impotency known
to the agnostic, who knows nothing but
the phenomena of our sensible expert
ence? Surely, in this proclamation or the
divine dumbness,, the agnostic touches
1t once the climax of logical inconsisr-
ency and the height of intellectual pre-
sumption A fundamental error Of ar-
nosticism is that 1t make the infinite
and finite mutually exclusive. The iu-