The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-10-09
A FINE SERMON ON
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
L .aa lcontinued from ffth paga.l

miraculous, and, on the other, nothing is
superhuman. AS it seems today, many
of the pendulum, and some who once
dared to lay claim to something of this
power, are beaten back by the opposite
claims and are rapidly being driven into
Journalism, liberalism. atheism and ag-
Mysticism. Then, as these people, now
numbering many thousands, and others
who hold similar views of divine healing,
go here and there preaching their doc
trine, and practicing this healing, peo-
pie readily exclaim: Did not Jesus say
this power should be lodged with His
people? These must be they-I will go
s. to them. 1 want to be in the church
that has this power" My people laugh
at me for believing in divine healing, and
yet Jesus said: These signs shall follow
them that believe in Me-" Thus situated,
there are thousands of people today who
feel that in regard to this matter they
are placed in an inconsistent position
and are driven back, ministers and ALL
into mere Journalism, to believe only in
natural law, to be tossed on the hillows
balls of destiny Hence the cry comes
up, us there no balm in Gilead?" us
there no physician there?" "Then why
is the health of the daughters OF my
people not recoyered?" where is the
power of Elijah's God?'' ITO whom shall
we go?" And standing thus, they are
like children crying in the night.
For your observation has taught you
| this, beloved, that such meetings as the
vola~fashioned class meetings in the Meth
odist Church, and the experience meeting
= in the Baptist Church. are largely things
of the past. Many Baptists, who years
ago listened to the testimony of the new
born soul with heaving bosom and tear
full eye, now ridicule these things as
out of date. The Methodist Church was
born in a revival, and yet numbers Of
Methodists who, twenty-five years ago, in
the camp meeting, were wont to shout
praises to God and won glorious VIC
tories over the archenemy, in seeing men
and women born into the Kingdom of
God, are today almost ashamed for these
things to be known. Could those meet
ings be reproduced today, under the ex-
listing circumstances? We answer, mo"
The churches are so engrOssed In the
world and the membership so composed of
Instances, vital godliness is almost
thing of the past. So much is this true
that in all the churches in certain large
cities, during the whole year, you can
count the conversions on the fingers of
one hand In this backsldden state, and
having shaken hands in final parting with
? all that is miraculous, Christian people
ridicule those who dare maintain these
higher views of spirituality and speak
such views as the vaporings of an un-
sound mind. 1t is now common to refer
to the beautiful teachings of the Son of
God as Mysticism-the miraculous is
Ianaticism. The old Book is not what it
once was. The faith of the fathers seems
not possible for the children. If Christian
Science has done away with personal
devil, we, too, have either taken him out
of the Bible or made him the butt of rid
icule. The young men, and even those
who are older sit down and talk TIGHTLY
about the age having outgrown all this
nonsense, and, as with the Romans and
their gods, our God is laughed out of ex-
istence The world will listen to you as
you quote from Mahomet, from Confucius,
from Buddha, and take a few beautiful
selections from the sermon on the mount,
and clap it's hands in approval so long
as you let Jesus Christ stand on the same
platform as those other philosophers and
all the false systems; but when you exalt
Jesus of Nazareth above Christian Sci
ence and false systems of philosophy, and
say to them the Bible, and the Bible
alone, is the sole authority dis
closing to the soul, it's doom
then, as with the Saviour on
one occasion, when the people turned
and went back, the prophet of righteous
ness stands alone. History tells us that
in entering Jerusalem as a conquerer in
the year Ga B. c., Pompeii, the Roman
general, determined to explore the re-
cesses of the temple. In vain did the
people try to restrain him from such
irreverence. Thrusting them aside, he
passed beyond the sacred veil, and en-
tered into the Holy of Holes. Now
imagine his astonishment as he stood in
this place, so zealously guarded, staring
first in one direction, then in another,
for that visible glory of the unseen which
he had expected to find but to the eye
of the heather all is emptiness and
vacancy Yet there dwelt the unseeable
jehovah. The same is true of the world
today-they cross the threshold of the
blessed old Book, draw aside the cur
tains from off the cherubim, walk through
the length and breadth of it, pass by the
high divinity cleaning on it's pages, and
yet see nothing but desolate and dreary
waste. Now, what of all this? What do
the people really want to see? Where
there is no vision the people perish. This
Book speaks in the Name of prayer
answering God. What the people want
to see is not reed shaken by the wind;
they want to see a man that is more
than a prophet-one that is in communion
with God. Why this drifting from God
on the part of the People? Why by the
pillows of unbelief are they thus beaten
back? Why was it that a mother, in
agony of soul, at the hour of midnight,
watching the last breath of her child,
passed by the home of a minister and
asked a good man next door to pray for
her? Why is it that people turn away
from us as ministers and pass our doors,
and the doors of our churches, and go to
Christian Science and other systems for
relief? Oh, what a rebuke! l will tell
you why it is: 1t is because they have
asked for bread and we, in too many
instances, have given them stones. Like
the Greeks who came up to Phillip, and