St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1903-07-15

we come for comfort, for strength, Tor
shelter, for help, for inspiration; we
come to be steadied and to be more
firmly founded in our faith. These
things all of us need, some at one time,
some at another, some of them always.
We look to the preacher for aid 10 these
things and we have right to expect It.
1t would be extremely presumptious in
me to even hint how you should give Us
this aid even If know. but can very
properly tell you some things we care for
and some things we do not care tor.
My first is by an illustration. Nearly
two years ago that foul tragedy was
enacted at Buffalo, and for several weeks
in various church services all over the
land our attention was particularly
called to the serene and hopeful death of
our President and the note of surprise
at such death was everywhere mani
fest. What did you expect, gentlemen
Did you expect man who had lived 40
years or more by the religion of our
Lord Jesus Christ to repudiate it on his
death bed, or was the surprise, that this
religion could really Sustain in the dying
hour? But that is the religion we people
believe in and one we want to have
preached to us; no uncertainties. no
doubts, no guessing, no polite modi6ca-
ton, but the word of our God that
abideth forever.
Every little while you have your minis
ters' meetings in which you discuss the
great questions OF theology and the
higher criticism and philosophy and
other subjects, the names of which, even,
do not come trippingly off the tongue.
We like to know you think OF and pom
der these weighty subjects, as recrea-
ton, but we do not care to have them in
church on Sunday. Frankly, we do
not care straw about any of them ex-
cepr as they help you to declare more
clearly, more convincingly. and more
personal---very., the gospel. We are glad
to have the result, but we care little
for the process. For the past thirty
years or more many of us can recall the
hundreds of painful efforts in the pulpit
to reconcile science and religion and
every little while we were assured that
we need not fear. that our religion was
safe. So! We've never been scared
about it and the attempt to prove to us,
by digging hole in the ground, that the
star by which we were guiding our lives
was still shining, had its pathetic as well
as its humorous side. Please do not
think am undertaking or saying any
| thing against science or scientific
| thought or the historical method, or the
influence all these things are having on
the thought of the day. / am only say
ing that we in the pews do not care for
| L,k Df %L.v,rr t,,+ 1o r,,,1,st fnr - IS
only few of us that can afford such
luxury. And you ought to rejoice over
this, for what benefcent thing it is that
| the two elements in this worlds lie so
| far as we are concerned, God and man,
are Interchangeable and not affected in
their essential being by the varying
modes of thought which are simply
flashes of new light or light upon new
places, and that the method of God with
| his creature in the moral world has all
been given us, written out for us We
need to study our chart, our guide book
more and more thoroughly. have on
my bookshelves two recent books written
| by splendid man, with an honest effort
to reconcile man and God with evolution.
He has had abundant leisure to do this
for he is pastor of what we call in New
England one ofour monumental churches,
where the people come out once week
to see il the Inscriptions are all right and
the monument safe. His argument runs
along smoothly and coherently from
star dust, or whatever the starting point
of the theory is, up to the place where
spiritual, as we call it, is needed, and
then, presto You make big leap and
there you are. Star dust or something
else, clod of earth, tadpole, mon
key, and then-the breath of God. We
learned it much shorter in Genesis years
ago, we accepted the statement there
that made us sons OF God. and the con-
firmation OF it by our Christ, matches
Son of God, and have been living in the
light OF that truth. 10! these years. The
process by which we were first made
sons? That matters little to us.
Men and brethren! We are in the
stress of Lille, striving, if we may, to real
ize day by day our high privilege of sons
OF God, and to bring our fellow men tc
the same blessed realization. We neec
the consultations of God in our labor. thu
sure word of faith. We believe that into
your hands the Master has put the breac
of life as he did to his disciples of old
We believe it is more than sufficient fol
our wants and that his blessing is upor
it. We look to you to break it unto u:
to the end that, being we'll nurtured, WI
may have strength to bring men to 6
conscious acceptance of that which brings
health and soundness to us. Shall we b.
disappointed?