The Morris County chronicle., 1903-12-18
MORRIS COUNTY CHRONICLE, FRIDAY DECEMBER 49, 1908

| might feel after him and find him. I
But / think if we wish to estimate at
it's real value the religious Importance
and fidelity to the nOn-chriStian faiths
we ought to take them not in their
lowest forms but in their highest
forms. Is it not true, my friends,
that there are lower and higher as
poets Of Christianity? am sure you
and | would not wish the East to
estimate Christianity by some of the
crude proceedings, it may be- among
the ignorant colored people, and of
the illiterate districts in the South or
some OF the most depressed communi-
ties in South America. We would
wish, if any one were estimating the
religious value of Christianity, to have
them consider it in it's best and most
characteristic forms of expression
And, if, applying the same principle,
one has openness of mind enough toI
study non-christian religions in the
presence of their most spiritually
minded and most able representatives.
one feels with new sense Of joy the
honest assurance that everywhere the
wonderful spirit of the living God is
breathing and stirring in the souls of
men the irrepressible yearning for the
infinite. ] felt as never before in the
East the fullness of what our Lord
says when he declared, ''The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou
nearest the sound thereof. but canSt
not tell whence it cometh nor whittier
it goeth; so is every one that is born
of the spirit.
But | should not dare to stop at
this point. even at the risk of weary
ing you, without having spoken of the
religious earnestneSS Of the East, an
earneStness which is so general, which
is SO pervasiye of Eastern life. that
when | came home it seemed TO me
/ | was almost struck with chill, our
Western religious life seemed so cold
and so conventional
And | say although have spoken
thus earnestly of the reality of the
Eastern religious experience. | can
not bear to stop without recording to
you one other and most deeply en-
/ craven impression. 1t is this, of the
absolute universally of the religion of
the New Testament. | mean to say
its absolutely universal application:
that it has a message for the whole
world of man; that it is Gods great
answer to that irrepressible yearning
which he has created and which with
out the knowledge of the Lord Jesus
Christ is expressing itself in so many
/ and in such pathetic ways: that the
revelation Of God in Christ is the
answer to all this yearning of the
world and that Christ is the Saviour OF
the world.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it would
be impossible for me to tell you, with
in the time remaining this evening all
that this means to me in the light of
these experiences. Pardon this per
sonal reference. | was the child of
sacred and reverent parents who gave
to me the evangelical belief in its full /
ness. Then with chat inherited treas /
ure | was flung out, as all other men
in my calling are flung out, into the
wide world of humane influence. But
during these last thirty years there
4 have been tremendous currents of
thought suTging backward and for
ward through the themes Of our reli- /
gion. But God, in his mercy, brought /
me through all the experiences to feel |
once more for myself the absolute I
truth OF that evangelical faith, and I
that ii IS perfectly compatible with |
4 the new knowledge and the recon
1 structiOn of our philosophy. So that
for the second time | stood upon the