The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1904-12-20
FRANK [. HOWE, Editor and Publisher
God Out of the Fog.

place breaks out and tells the truth
plainly enough so that anybody who
can read can understand. In SER
mon before Harvard students last Sun
day Rev DR. Lyman Abbott penetrated
the mist with which SO many good
christians surround their Creator and
spoke as follows;
81 wonder" he said. ''if you stud
ents in Harvard will understand me
when J say that no longer believe in
a great first cause. Tomorrow the
newspapers will get hold of this and
brand me as a hereto Ny God is d
great and ever present force which is
manifest in all the activities of man
and all the workings of nature.
~ believe in God who is in and
through and of everything an alb
sentee God whom we have to reach
through Bible or priest or some
other outside aid, but a God who is
closer to us than hands or feet. Sci
ence, literature and history tell US
that there is one eternal energy that
the Bible no longer can be accepted as
the u innate truth, that many of its
laws were copied from other religions,
that the Ten Commandments did not
spring spontaneously from Moses, but
were, like all laws, "A gradual growth,
and that man is creature, not Gre
alton
"No thinking man will say there are
many energies. The days of polythe
ism are past. There is only one ener,
gy. That energy has always been
working. 1t is an intelligent energy.
No scientist can deny it. 1t was work
ing before Christ's time even as it is
now. For three years the clou Is
broke and the light flashed through.
Then they closed again.
''Yet God has personality. We
recognize 1t as we recognize the per-
sonality OF Titan or an Angel.
Only God is always working, always
creating, whereas their work is done.
God stands near US. The mother of
deaf dumb and blind child gives rer
daughter one, two, three gifts without
being recognized. Finally there breaks
through the child's intelligence the
fact that these gifts, so kind, so low
ing, spring from the same source. 1t
ltCiS luc luOtiltI ldACi
then throws its arms around her neck
and kisses her. Even so we, ever in
the presence of God, come to realize
His proximity and love. Goa makes
for good, mans progress is aprogress
upward, Each day is letter than the
first"
The older we get the more thoroughly
con inced we are that God and relig-
ion are palmer propositions than has
been taught during the past odd thous-
ands of years. No one need uproot
any time favored form of church SER
vice to grasp the truth either. The
simple truth is that God is the power
that permeates the universe and all
there is or should be to religion is the
development of good to the perfection
that is ultimately attainable.
Justice, truth, purity are the same
wherever nurtured. There is no one
sacrifice that will atone for all evil.
There is no one way, either narrow or
broad, crooked or straight.
There is no one system of theology
suitable to all ages and all conditions
any more than there is one environ
ment suited to all natures aud all tenn
peraments.
"God Of God, Light of Light, Very
God Of Very God, begotten not made,
Being of one substance with the Father
bywhom all things were made" is sob
to which we may all give birth by
out the upward tendency inn
plan ed in every human heart by God
Of whom it is an ever present part.