The herald., 1898-12-05

SVCCtSsCS tHub udNe ~ AL Rdtuy lOI tHOSc WIN
have not, but such as are in want-they will
see and feel for the needy. 1t is the poor
who pity the poor And pity, what is it
but the groundwork of Gods kingdom?
Fifty is part of love and love means justice
and sacrifice. Such qualities are heaven.
At the Church of the Covenant Rev. Burt
Estes Howard took his text from Matt Ills
John Al: HE that hath ears to hear let
him hear" Beloved,
seat on Author believe not every spir-
ity in Religion it, but test the spirits
whether they are of
God" "All men are religious. The few
exceptions only serve to prove the rule and
advertise themselves as monstrosties.
Whatever form of religion man or peo-
pie holds, whether it be the rudest fetish
ism or the most spiritual Christianity, it is
invested with most substantial authority.
So we have all of us been casting about for
an infalible form, sort of spiritual yard
stick by which we can take the moral meas
ure of things. The effort has been less to
gain spiritual dseernment and moral in
sight than to secure a sort of mechanical
contrivance to take their place. The old
dctum that whatever is held by the
church everywhere must be true has re-
ceived too many staggering setbacks to be
of any value save as a theological curio
There have been scores of things held by all
the churches everywhere, and all the time
that the grim facts of science have proven
false. The charred bones of martyrs who
were cauterized and afterward canonized
are poor argument for the infallibility of
the church.
;,to tlo tbouoLt Of
the world through human channels. The
great prophets of the world have been men
of like passions with the rest of us. No
truth, therefore, gets into human life that
does NOT partake of the liabilities of the
b man. agent through which it finds ex-
preston
This same blending of the divine and the
limited human is found in the Bible. But
no book was ever written which has given
rise to so many divergent theories as the
Bible. The Bible is Gods book for man,
written with a mans pen and a mans
tongue Out of its pages divine truth
flashes and flames. kindling the soul of men
into holy fire. Aspirit quivers and pulses
in the book that touches the heart of the
world with a new, strange power and lifts
the race out of itself into larger and di-
viner life. 1t is not the Bible that is to be
given up. 1t is the theory of universal in
fallibility and of universal inspiration,
which places Esther on a level with Isaiah
and represents Eccesiastes as written by
the same spirit as the noblest of the psalms
and exalts page of imprecations to the
rank of the Sermon on the Mount. There
is a wide difference between granting to a
book authenticity and authority and grant
ing to it infallibility. 1t is because We
have too long insisted on the universal in
spiration and ipfallibility of the book that
we have created an army of skeptics.
''In order to get what God is trying to
speak to men, we must appeal past the let
ter of the Bible to the spirit that fingers
in its leaves, the spirit that attests itself
to our diviner selves. For after all is said,
it is the man himself who is the final
authority not the church or the book. In
nature there is no force but Gods, in con-
science yet unspoiled, there is no light save
his. In every age the great prophets of
God have been the men who have not hand
cuffed their consciences with any external
formulas, but men who have listened to
the spirit that speaks in the deep silences
OF their own soul. God is not anxious to
save unto Himself an institution or a book,
but a race of sons"
David Walk, in the Church OF Christ, on
Eighth street near Central avenue, read
Second Kings, xxi:
A Great $40, and announced
Discovery "A Great Discovery"
as the theme of his
sermon. The temple of God It ruin, the
Bible lost and the nation abandoned TO the
grossest idolatry. Such was the inheritance
of King Josiah, the son of Anon and the
grandson of Manasseh, two of the worst
monarchs of the ancient world. He was
but years old when he came to the throne,
l6 when he began the herculean task of the
reformation of his kingdom and 26 when he
resolved upon the rehabilitation of the tenn
pie. And it was in the prosecution Of this
pious task that the great discovery was
made.
Hid away in the rubbish of some neglected
cloister, Hlkiah, the high priest, found the
book of the law of the Lord given by Moses
True, they did not have printing presses in
those days and Bibles We're not scattered by
the million as they are now, but if there
were but a single copy extant it is mar
velous that it should have been lost. What
were the priests doing for the morals of the
people that such a circumstance should be
possible? Apparently, even the high priest
himself had never before seen the sacred
roll The simple truth is that the word Of
God stood in the way OF both priests and
rulers 1t is to the eternal discredit of the
Christian era that in the sixteenth century
the Bible was almost an unknown book and
that it finally made its way among the peo-
pie in spite OF the priests.
The mere multiplication of copies of the
word of God is not to make it effective in
the regeneration and salvation OF the peo-
pie. 1t must be taken into the heart of the
individual and its precepts must mould the
life OF the nation. And this is the verdict
OF the best and greatest men Of modern
times. A man need not be Christian" to
see this. According to orthodox creeds.
Abraham Lincoln was not Christian, and
yet he said that he had read the Bible from
his earliest boyhood that he always carried
a copy of the New Testament with him and
that its teachings were all for liberty. And
his immortal aphorism, This country can
not remain part slave and part Free"
breathes the spirit of that book and shaped
the policy OF the martyr president
Rev. c. j. X. Jones, at the Church of the
Unity, announced his text from First Corin-
thians, xii:4: Now
whether Jews there are diversities
or Greeks of gifts but the same
spirit"
"lf We shall take this teaching by Paul
and connect Herewith Jesus' 81 nve God