The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-03-28
< TAKING ANOTHER KING"
ABLE SERMON BY THE R EY. DE
 PHILLIPS.


 Questions of Life Are to be Met-Chris- tian Life Not a Mother of Forms and Creeds.
 The Rev. Dr. Phillips preached an able sermon on Taking Another King at the Church of the Redeemer last evening. He spoke in substance as fol- lows from the text: I Samuel x, 19: "But ye have this day rejected your God who Himself saveth you out of all your calamities and your distresses; and ye have said unto Him, nay, but set king over us.''
 The long delayed crisis in the affairs of Israel at last had come. Tired of the theocracy represented by simple judges and prophets, of an invisible ruler and scepter out of sight, the peo- pie demanded a monarchy with visi- ble head and the pageantry of a court. The political reason urged with the scandalous conduct of Samuers sons, but the real reason was desire to be  like the other nations. Samuel was not deceived, he perceived that the change amounted to a formal renuncia tion of the form of government under which they were first organized. He pointed out what such a change would mean to them, but in their infatuation they insisted and, when ne sadly yield ed to their importantly, they shouted, God save the king" That was new chorus in Israel whose results for the nation were not yet apparent to those who raised 1t. Samuels disp1easure at this change had in it two elements. The first was personal; their ingratitude cut him to the quick. All his years of devotion to their interests seemed to him at that moment to count for noth- ing; that is usually the first feeling of conservative patriots when the nation begins to break away from them. It is a genuine sorrow, sometimes it is warranted; sometimes 1t is only the evidence of inability to comprehend the spirit and needs of a new age. The second element was that he saw, or thought he did, what they did not, the inevitable change in the whole govern mental idea and system, and in the national tendency, involved. The act itself was not so significant as the prin- ciple back of it; they were abandoning the one thing which made them a pe- cu1iar people and justified their history. The divine purpose for them had been the formation of a nation on new lines, to fashion a government upon the theory that he was real head and ruler, everything else in their national life was secondary and incidental to that. Now they were weary of this distinc- tion, and asked to be brought into line with the nations around them.
 This is the principle that is involved in the worldliness of Christian people. It is not what they do that is of so much immediate, or final, consequence: it is the implied, and often real, aban- donment of their differentiating princi- pie. The church is a peculiar institu tion in the earth in that it is formed around a necessary principle-loyalty to God-and in that it is an organized community, having a special mission; to bring men to a knowledge of God by the revelation of what a right relation to Him produces in men. Nothing is of real importance except that, the wording of creeds, the forms of wor- ship rules of conduct everything which is a mere waving of scepters is secondary and incidental. Herein is the deadly sin of worldliness; it is taking another king, it is abandoning the distinguishing and therefore the essential life principle,
 Questions of department, of business methods, or social life, or reading, of the use of ones time and money and influence, must all be met and answer ed on this high ground. To raise any such inquiry as would you like to die in theater; can you pray after listen ing to an opera?" is frivolous and un- worthy of intelligent men, all such in- uuiries miss the one point that is of vital importance. The religious body that attempts to settle such questions by legislation, though it be prospering as an ecclesiasticism, is already struck with gangrene as a church. Christian life is not a matter of forms and creeds and ru1es-will we never get beyond the need of that teaching? It is life of devotion to truth, of purity of hu-
 
 of lofty faith, acknowledging an ul- innate and supreme allegiance to God in every act and word Rules of con- duct, modes of life and worship do not differentiate the Christian from the non- Christian any more than the wear ing of clothes differentiates man from an ape. A man may have all the drapery of Christian life and still be the veriest worldling at heart, just as he may wear the finest clothes and still be for all practical purposes a silly ape.
 The high and holy loyalty to the things for which God stands in the uni verse, that keeps the spirit lofty in purpose and in action, that clears the spiritual vision, that keeps the thinking clean and sound, that saves the man from lowing in his soul before any other king or lusting for the results of any other service, that makes him in all things a man, but in the essential principle of life above all those who are nothing but men, that is the true distinctive mark to be set upon our own souls and to be searched for and in- sisted on it our fellowmen. We are sometimes too narrow; we sometimes IyoO Oftnr1 nyn111do too