The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-12-08
in THE CITY'S PULPITS
REV. J. CUMMING SMITHS SERMON
AT THE TABERNACLE.
Peoples Congregational Has New Pas
tor I'm Rev. John s. Sch ofieId-
Other Church Services.

Rev. J. Cumming Smith in his sermon
last evening at the Tabernacle had for his
theme Bricks without Straw" Exodus v.
He said:
''In many unconscious ways the crime of
Pharaoh has been repeated. Wherever
people have extorted from others what they
have not given others the power to produce
there has been the same species of social
tyranny. To get something for nothing
or as near nothing as possible, to grind
others down to the lowest form of bondage
by exacting from them what lies beyond
their capacity-how far this cruel instinct
permeates the complicate world of human
relationship
1--WE expect morality to manifest itself
without foundation Of spirituality, as if
human virtue in the long run could exist
without profound spiritual faith. To be
sure. there are moral people who are
agnostical, but on the same principle as a
car moves or with the momentum given it
by the engine that has been uncoupled from
It. moral unbelievers owe their virtue to
spiritual ancestors. Take away the sub
marine beliefs In spiritual universe and In
q short while goodness would expire and
penitentiaries would be superfuous
world. 1t is a negative and a nonpro-
ductive I'm itself. 1t is a protest against
overdogmatism sometimes. 1t involves a
vast sincerity In human bosoms as we
stand on the precipices of mystery and
peer into the surrounding silence How
ever. IL Is negation. 1t can carry no in
spiratfon. Its creeds of void and vacancy
can cheer no heart in the cold and marshy
conditions of life and If any bloom of vir-
tue beauties this arid realm of thought
of warm, vitalizing faith that brings the
summer Of heaven down into human con-
ditions.
Some men seem devoid of the very ca
pacity of believing beyond their shadows.
They are constitutionally impervfous to
appeals from afar. They are as the dug
outs which are a refuge from the wasting
cyclones. but which have no windows and
no suggestion of stretching landscapes.
Other types of men consider the world as
hopelessly depraved and dungeonal. and
they look forward TO future heaven as
a happy escape by and by They resemble
the towers I have climbed by spiral stair
ways. and during the arduous ascent no
windows, or at the best only few stinted
spidery windows, relieved the dinsiness.
and the only ray OF hope was that after
mounting for a long while in the darkness
and bask in the glorious light and COM
mand a view Of golden sceneries These
types are partial; There is a third sort OF
native and essential as the mountain air
and ozone to Alpine climbers. They are
large. absorbing, luminous minds with a
predominating desire for far-ofr develop
ments. Paul. Moses. Maurice, Swedenborg.
Milton and a thousand others in lofty and
lowly spheres of life find a reality where
gross or materialistic minds find emptiness.
q live populated realm where inferior minds
find at best ghostly realm of vagueness.
q heaven everywhere, while right beside
them and perhaps right within their own
home circles are friends who grope along
the earthly pathway as II not a sunbea m
from the supernatural encircling universe
greeted their eye. Most people live i'm the
catacombs. Their mentality is cavernous.
Their voices are cavernous. Their eve has
q Dantean gloom and deadliness But there
are Alpine minds. They are imaginative
in the rich old sense of that term. They
walk In the light that battles and en-,
swathes and irradiates our terrene life
they are fountains of perennial cheer and
goodness as reality; They remind me
nences that seldom the miasmic mists chill
or shadow. full of windows and every win
dow framed as wide as possible. as If il
would press the very stars of the sky into
its spacious hospitality.
WELLS OF INSPIRATION.
Now say what we will. these are the
wells OF inspiration. Let these dry and
the glory of earth has passed away Faith
I'm the larger sense. aerial imagination
that reyels not In the backyard gossip
but in the communications that come drip
ping from a living. radiant universe. from
God artesian In love, from heaven
of love that is slowly simmering down into
cruel human conditions, as sunlight down
into dusky forests. from the grandeur OF
the human spirit sublime i'm its struggle to
throw OF the enthrallment OF sin-these
verities are under all progress. A church
without dogma will mean next generation
a world without virtue order.
I'VE trace all beauty and excellence
tSgk TO the evolution OF the spiritual life
I'm men and spiritual life without basic
principles OF a personal God OF unbounded
wisdom and love, as Jesus manifested Is
as contradictory as the sea without a
planet to bear up its weight or a tranquil
twilight without a Western horizon TO sup
port IL Dopounce narrow metaphysical
creeds as much you Will and | will be
hotter than you in the denunciation; but
remember that there are magnificent creeds
there are ageless dogmas that emancipate
and II you throw these away. IL you spirit
away your Bible and your God and your
Immortality and denude or destroy the in
visible world. you plunge the world In
death From the fluent. fippant tone OF
much OF our skeptIcism nowadays one would
not be surprised at a sensational headline
I'm the morning papers-God was drowned
in Fall creek last night
How can you manufacture municipal
morality out OF a municipal skepticism and
paganism? Is not our city full of the love
dest heathens who abreast OF some cur
rent cultures, but who stand aloof from
eur earnest religious causes? Who cares
FOR honor I'm mayor or city council IL re-
nG1eu - 6y1aS or found only in the buried