The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1900-04-24
THE DOCTRINE OF
PREDBSTINATI0N.
Receives Attention In a Sermon
At the First Reformed Church
"A MOST CRIMINAL DOCTRINE
Rev. Nau Discourses on the Theory of Cal
vanism and Election, and states His
Views icalIy-subiimest
Doctrine Is Fat h erhood.


Doctrine Is Fatherhood.
The evening services in the First Re-
formed church in East Tuscarawas
street were very largely attended Sun
day, as 1t had been announced that
Rev. f. G. Nau would open a series of
sermons, the first sermon TO be delivered
Sunday night, on the subject: "The
Christians Conception Of God" Rev.
Nau prefaced his remarks on the Lords
prayer, saying that 1t contained more
life, directness, pith and spirit of devo-
| ton than any prayer ever recorded. He
said it was given by Jesus as a rebuke
to the long prayers of the Jewish people.
He referred to the first clause in the
prayer and analysed 1t: Jesus did not
want to teach the disciples that God
was a personal being, but he wanted to
give the Jews and especially the Jewish
disciples, new idea of the personality
of God. God to them was n person, not
a force. He wanted to clothe this per-
son with fatherhood, wanted to give TO
this personality the loving heart of
kind and indulgent father. In this day
when people are taking such great in
terest in physical science, 1t is needful
personal God to cling tenaciously to
the one thought, that above all things
God is a person, and as a person he is
a father. God is king, but he Is the
father of kings. God should not be used
by us as a great Caesar who rules the
universe as a tyrant would rule it for
selfish purposes; must not be used SIM
ply as a system of laws or an aggre-
ont nf
at a flower, or a tree, or the mountains,
you see God. Pantheism strips God of
his personality and he is simply an i'm
personal being without heart. You
know that gravitation, that electricity,
that cohesion and chemical action can
not help; what you want is a personal
| God assistance, love that will heal ev
cry wounded heart and wipe away eve
ry tear.
"The early church laid little stress on
fatherhood and in the works of the
ology he was used as a monarch. The
parental idea of God is altogether lost
sight of. In these days men state that
authority comes from kings. That Is
where they make a mistake. The
child's first notion of authority It gets
| from the father and not from any king
| under which the child might live. The
| father rules and commands the child
| and wields authoriy over it. 1t is uni
versal that the first conception Of au-
| thority was from the idea of father
hood, therefore is it not perfectly correct
and legitimate to say that the primeval
source of fatherhood and of all things
| is God? Then God is a father, because
all authority comes from him.
To-day we are reading a great deal
| about heterodox teachings. The Pres
| byterian church today is attacked and
shaking at it's very foundations be-
cause of certain utterances of young
| ministers from the pulpit. You no doubt
have read in the daily papers about a
certain sermon on election or predesti-
| nation that was preached by DR.. Hills
of Brooklyn, N. Y. The Presbyterian
| church said that sermon was against
| the Westminster confession. That doc
| trine of election is a fundamental
| doctrine of the Westminster confession.
That doctrine of election means that
God, because he Is an absolute judge,
and thus demands absolute justice,
| must, for the sake of being satisfied,
consign the great majority of the hu-
| man race to suffering and destruction,
| because the human race has sinned
against Him; that in no otherwise can
| the justice Of the absolute Judge, the
| absolutely righteous king, be satisfied.
do you think that John Calvin, If he
| had based his theology upon the father
| hood of God, would have written such
a doctrine? He got his idea Of God
| from the government of France under
whichhe lived, not from the old testa-
ment. If his idea Of God had been the
idea Of Jesus and had been gotten from
the Lords prayer, his whole theology
would have been different, and the doc
trine Of election would have never
found its way into the Westminster
confession.
| God the father cannot consign some
Of his children to everlasting torture
and destruction because in their youth
they have been disobedient unto him
No father would make his children suf-
fer in later days because they in their
youthful days committed some errors
and had been disobedient unto him. That
doctrine of election is the
MOST CRIMINAL DOCTRINE
which has ever been held by any mer
or by a church. The great majority OF
the Christian ministers today denouncs
it and stigmatize it and consider 1t un.
worthy-unworthy of God. but worthy
Of Satan. God the Father fsmercy
and surely his mercy Is greater than hi.
justice; therefore there is hope for ev.
cry man. No child, man or woman
need fear that they have been consigned
to everlasting torture and eternal dam
nation because their forefathers sinnet
against God.
II believe in the fatherhood of God
then my conception of human worth II
changed. The old standards Of human
worth are revolutionized by the doc
trine of the fatherhood of God. Ac