The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-01-18
BIG CROWDS NIGHTLY
AT ST. DAvID'S CHURCH TO HEAR
FATHER HUNTINGTON.
TO-Norrow at Noon He Will Talk at
Christ Church mt the Request of
Prominent Citizens.

Father Huntington. superior of the Order
of the Holy Cross. of the Episcopal Church,
has been in the city all week, preaching at
st. Davids Church, corner of Talbot ave-
nue. and East Twenty-fourth street. His
preaching has created very deep impress
sion, not alone by reason of the charm Of
his manner, but also from the clearness
and forcefulness of his thought and the
ripeness of his scholarship. There have
been large audiences nightly at st. David's.
The theme of Father Huntington's dis
course last night to a crowded house was
"venial and Mortal Sins and Their Effects"
He showed how persistence in small sins
puts one In condition to commit larger
sins by rendering one insensible to their
enormity. He offered a definition of sin,
saying: 'It is the contradiction in thought
or word or deed of the holy word of God
by the free will of the intelligent creature"
A very sharp line was drawn by the speaker
between faults committed without intent
or with slight intent-and wrongs done
deliberately. He said, however, that there
is but hairs breadth between venial and
mortal sin, and the devil loves a venial
sinner because he knows that If he persists
in his course he is always within easy
reach.
MORTAL. SIN DESCRIBED.
Father Huntington gave the following
vivid description Of a mortal sin:
"If you have done wrong with your
eyes wide open, done it against your con-
science, done 1t against the pleadings of
the Holy Spirit, then you know how you
felt-the sense of having lost content with
being a strange world
the sense of being cut off from God-you
did not know yourself, as it were, after you
had committed that sin. Perhaps you were
already feeling something of the pleasure
or 1t, the unjust gain or the revenge you
had taken-and they say revenge is sweet
and yet, in spite of that consciousness of
pleasure, there was deeper than that a
consciousness of pain, a wrench, tearing
of yourself away from your true center, a
consciousness of misgiving and perhaps
fear. L appeal to your own conscience and
your own memory whether that is not so,
whether you did not feel, perhaps even an
hour after you had committed that wrong,
that you would give anything in the world
IL you had not done Ii. Perhaps in that
hour you were laughing and talking and
carrying on gaily with those about you
but there was a feeling of bitterness in
your heart-you had lost your sense
peace, you had lost your sense of being
right with God. Now. that is mortal sin"
The minister then stated the effects of
mortal sin in this world to be five: Cd 1t
cuts the soul off from God, CD destroys all
previous merit, CD makes it impossible for
the soul TO merit grace and favor with
God, (D ruins the soul. co brings penalty
and guilt.
AN IMPRESSIVE SCENE.
Before entering upon the second division
Of his subject-the effect Of mortal sin upon
the soul after death-Father Huntington
asked the congregation to send up silent
unworthily. The scene was very i'm
pressive. The ensuing discussion of the flu
ture life was prefaced by some strikingly
original observations:
Now, in considering that subject, my
friends, we have first of all to take stock
or ourselves, to know where we stand. Are
there any reasons why5we should be likely
to be biased in regard, to this matter? Yes
there are three reasons why we should be
very likely to look at this matter in a one
sided way-not in an impartial and just
spirit. The first is that we live in an age
that has gone half mad with pity for phys
ical sufferings, pity for temporal woeS-an
age when We are compassionate to a fault
1 do not mean every one, but 1 mean to
say that the spirit of the age in which we
live is spirit that is keenly sensitive to
suffering on the part of other people. More
is being done to-day for the alienation of
suffering of others than has ever been done
C.
sympathy; sometimes ii is weak and fool
ish. There are women to-day who will send
bouquets of flowers to murderers; who will
be so filled with a sense of regret for their
unhappy fate that they will make them the
objects almost of their adulation, as If
they were heroes instead of felons. And in
an age that is sensitive to suffering We
are very likely to be biased when we come
to think of suffering that has no end
Then, again, we live in an age that has
made enormous advance in knowledge OF
the external world. We have found out
great many things about the universe in
which we live that we did not know before,
and in an age in which scientific knowledge
is so vastly increased we are very apt to
suppose that we are much wiser in all mat
tiers than our fathers were, but that Is not
true. While we have greatly increased our
knowledge in regard to the material uni
verse, we have not increased our knowledge
one whit in regard to the spiritual universe.
FATE OF THE SOUL
GAS to what befalls the soul after death
we are in no better position to know than
men who lived 1900 years ago We are not
advanced in that direction. We have had
no facts brought in from that field. / am
not forgetting the assertions of certain
among us who claim to be in direct connec-
nection with the unseen world. but can
they point to one contribution made to
human knowledge or art or literature from
those realms from which they purport to
have messages? Has one noble poem been
added to our literature? Has one secret of
another been revealed? Has one truth they
have not held before dawned upon the
human mind? 1t seems to me not too much
to say that in regard to the knowledge of
the soul after death we have not advanced
anything through all the Investigations of
the human mind, through all the philoso-
pliers that have made their clamor in the
world for 1880 years. And there is another
thought that must always be present when
we come to consider the condition of the
impenitent soul after death, and that is
that we ourselves are sinners, and that sin
is pleasant and penitence is hard. There is
no doubt about it, sin is pleasant and peni-
tence is hard and therefore We would be
very willing to believe that sin is not dam
gerous and penitence is not necessary. If
you had to impanel a jury to decide this
case where would you find your twelve
impartial men? Where would you find your
twelve men who had not some bias in the
matter and who would not be glad to be-
lieve If they could that sin bore no fruit of
everlasting misery and that penitence is
nothing but bit of melodrama?
In concluding his sermon Father Hunt
ington said Some one wrote to Voltaire,
the celebrated unbeliever: i have at last
proved the impossibility of hell Voltaire