The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-02-21
CREDENTIALS OF CHRIST
ID. p. BALDWIN CONSIDERS THE NAZ-
ARMIES PERSONALITY.
Secret Distrust of Church iowa
Miracles a Dangerous Sign
of the Times.

Tered prayer. Mr. Baldwin said in part:
Our Savior was the most colossal egoist
IN all history. Nowhere else from the lips
OF man have we d series of such amazing
personal pronouns. For example, He says,
without the slightest hesitation or tremor
IN his voice, / am the light Of the world
4 am come that We might have life as we'll
as Immortality Il will raise you up at the
last day. He does not hesitate to speak of
himself as God Among His promises of the
hearafter is one in substance like this: Ye
snal see me at the last day surrounded
with legIons of angels 1 will then judge the
world He alone of all human teachers of
whom we have any knowledge never used
the word reason He appealed to himself
as the only and ultimate authority for His
system or ethics and religion. He never
argued. The question is-was He otherwise
imam an almost inspired dreamer Of dreams,
VINO believed the world was about to come
to an end and who imagined that He was
goa MADE flesh! or was He what He
claimed to be?
No one can correctly study our Savior's
NE ana teachings without attempting at
least TO solve this question of His amazing
egolsm, which is so natural as does not
even excite comment. There are three great
credentials that He presents to uS-EIis mir
ACES, HIS message, and, greatest of all,
himself In part, the church is to blame
for the growing distrust of the world in
miracles. 1t unwisely insists upon our hold
ing as absolute truth all of the legends of
Ihe Old Instrumentation example, those OF
samson, Goliath and Jonah-all of which
are clearly the prints of human fingers upon
the sacred page, and are supported by our
creuuilty rather than by our faith. If the
church was strong enougr and brave
enough TO treat these as legends the world
would have a great deal more confidence in
the beautiful miracles of our Savior. There
are slXty-nve or them in ala plexus of
spotless and fawleSs diamonds. They show
beyond dispute that Jesus Christ was Lord
OF nature, and master of life as well as of
death; 1t is very difficult to prove these
miracles in the ordinary acceptation of the
word proof as we use it in courts of justice
Nineteen centuries have elapsed All the
witnesses are interested and not always
consistent; and yet believe that the body
of these miracles are as we'll authenticated
as any other great fact in history. The
PROOF, however, belongs to the higher and
more subtle ranges of evidence. These are
acter of the religion itself and especially
the character and message and personality
or the man who introduced it, When we
come TO closely examine these credentials
OF our savior we shall find that they are a
trinity. There Is no diScOrd between the
three; me miracle corresponds to the man
ana the message; the message corroborates
the miracle and the man, while the Master
ana his character are just such as we
would expect in a supernatural being
NO more dangerous sign of the times
EXISTS than the growing and secret distrust
OF the church toward miracles. Thousands
OF excellent Christians are disposed to
treat them as SO many fairy tales. If our
savior was not Lord over death, what be-
GENES Of his promise to raise us at the last
day from the dead? If He was baffled by
the diseases of the body and could not
make the blind see, or the lame walk what
OF the soul? If His miracles are myths.
what becomes of the great principle of au-
thor1ty upon which His whole system is
founded? Subtract His miracles from His
message, and He becomes simply a teacher
and must take His chances with the other
great teachers of the world Socrates, Pla-
10, Kant, etc. Religion, minus the mira
cles dwindles into philosophy. Philosophy
plus the miracle, becomes religion. Our Sa-
yior's miracles are the cornerstone of
Christianity. Without them it is only one
OF the innumerable philosophers that hui
mainly has originated
TRANSCENDENTALE ETHICS.
IF we examine our Savior's moral code
we find ourselves confronted by such i'm
practicable and unavoidable precepts as
these: Give to him that asketh of thee
and from him that would borrow turn thou
not away Take no thought for your life,
what we shall eat or what we shall drink,
nor for your body what We shall put on
Sell all thou hast and give to the poor
When thou makest feast, invite not
those who will invite you in return, but go
into the highways and hedges and compel
the poor and the blind and the halt to come
In. Love your enemies bless them that
curse you Now each and all of these i'm
to obey. If we should give 10
him that asketh. civilization would
the death of wealth Worse than that it
would be the death of charity. The first
axiom of true benevolence is to make peo-
pie help themselves. Nothing ruins charity
so quickly and certainly as indiScriminate
and emotional giving. What would be-
give to the poor? No people more persist
emily disregard these commands than our
churches our preachers, and the disciples
of Jesus Christ. The church wisely ignores
these extremes. 1t diluteS and adaptS our
Saviors teachings to human nature as it
actually exists. Instead of selling all and
N
property and sees in this command nothing
but a strongly worded injunction for per-
petual and educated charity.
THE great teacher who uttered these i'm
peratives was perfectly sincere and died for
their sake. We can easily see, however.
that these precepts do not belong to earth,
but are a code taken from another and a
better world. Reading them, we have no
trouble in hearing the 'whirr of angels
wings the sound of celestial voices and in
breathing the atmosphere of heaven. Clear
ly these transcendental commands We're not
Gefeo Dy bev ref an 10 t5pf 10
kingdom which our Savior proposed to es-
tablish as finality, to which ideal king
dom human society is slowly drifting. 1t
is not fatal to the lower notes taught by
the church that those words of the Master
are as yet ideals. We must remember that
and women who accomplish the
most in this life are those who
1 mSst rand dnas cherish and ind t fS
transcendental code of our Savior-not of
earth but of heaVen-demonstrates that it's
author was not earthly but divine. These,
for the present, ideal ethics of His are part
and parcel Of His environment They har-
moniZe with His miracle working power
well with His personality, and prove
that He was in truth and in fact what He
claimed to bean object of worship and not
mere teacher.
THE SAVIOR'S DEMOCRACY.
when the baptist was facing DEATH he
naturally wanted to know whether or not he
had been mistaken. He rightfully sent a
messenger and demanded the Masters Gre
dentials. Christ. without hesitation. pointed
to His miracles and then added: TO the poor
the gospel is preached Our Savior the
first of all great teachers. brought to light
and emphasized the great lesson OF the COM
mon brotherhood of all mankind. AS we are
all children of a common father. how can
we be anything else than brothers? Our
Savior Enthusiastically taught that govern
government. Lincoln caught the echo of
This superb doctrine when he spoke with
so much emphasis of a plain peoples gov
ernment' There is no doubt that the world
is steadily and rapidly tending TO d govern
ment of the people, by the people and for
racies long enough and the world is heart
ily tired of them. How glad would Ger
many be to-day to be rid of that foolish
Hohenzollern, who has no more sense than
about the divine right of kings? How glad
would Russia be to exchange her Car for
a crowned republic like that of England
where the Queen is only a social power and
the royal family wholly eschew politics?
Our Savior was Just as severe upon misgOV-
nd oil of nc