The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-08-21
FLESH AND SPIRIT.
SYNOPSIS OF 4 TALK 1T BROOK
 FARM IN NASHVILLE. |.
Given Yesterday by Alexander F. Irvine,
 Pastor of the Peoples Church.

Given Yesterday by Alexander F. Irvine,
 Pastor of the Peoples Church.
 Beware of the dogs; beware of evil workers; beware of the concision; for we are the circumcision which worships God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the 1esh.-Phil iii., 2:S.
 The apostle seems to have lost tenn porarily his delicacy of speech. His dogs are evidently bipeds. The eastern dog is a cur after the gutter and gar bage. He lives in these elements. To the Jew, the gentle was dog" This Jew with a new idea turns the metaphor back on it's maker, and says, You are the dogs Why? Because they lived in the senses. They were bodies tenn porarily tenanted by an insignificant thing called a spirit. They lived on crumbs when the feast was prepared for them. Theirs was husky religion. Beware of the concision,' he says. This strikes at cherished doctrine. Originally a board of health ordinance now an iron doctrine-a fence outside | of which all were dogs"
 This little book of Philippians is a contemporary doctrine, when it utters a thunderous warning against external | ism-ceremonialism and sectarianism 1 A touch of the lancet separtes the Jew I from the outside world. He thought it | did. A slight incision made him holy | so he said. This Is a distinctly modern l curse. The curse of separateness-the ! curse of exclusiveness. The sects are all crystalized around some little lan- cet touch-some infinitisimal doctrine I each one of them having put their l foot down so hard on their special claim to religion that there they stick 1 unable to move. We must not throw 1 stones at these away back people. We | live in glass houses. We live in the l senses-we are largely bodies with slight appendages called spirits. We l spend millions on our own little ern- phasis. We dedicate great structures to our special crochets. We have services l and functions beautifully frilled with form and color and speech-almost en- tirely forgetting that the first charac- 1 teristic of true religion is worship. God l is a spirit, and we are spirits with bodies - temporary enca asements - and must worship in spirit and in truth not in .eXternals. but with the heart and soul. ...' In brief Paul says: Your exclusive covenants-your lordly descent-your
 blue-blood ancestry-your sacrifices of beasts-your burnt offerings avail noth- ing if you do not, as spiritual beings
 worship spiritual God" In the text
 he says" We have no confidence in
 the flesh.p Why not? The body is the
 temple of God--there is a care of il
 which is legitimate and essential: but we all know how it is overdone,w we know
 how its decoration becomes passport We know that they that can stuff il
 in certain way are grouped together as exclusive classes. Verify, we have lots of confidence Iin the flesh! The care. of the mere flesh of man is re- sponsible for all the sins in all the catalogues of all the religions in the
 the world. For every overfed group we have a group of starvelings. For ev-
 cry overclothed class we have naked I class-war, murder, theft, hatred, rnal- ice and all the viDor-brood of kindred
 evils are the direct offspring of "con- fidence in the flesh"
 l What is the matter with the church
 Is it overfed, overclothed? What is this
 warning in the text? It is against ex
 ternalism-it is tremendous plea for spirit. life as over against the prevalent flesh life. Modern religious life has all
 the characteristics of being overfed-
 overclothed. Modern church people
 have need of nothing" for the flesh
 We all need spirit life-spirit fruit 1 spirit work. This will lead us in the
 paths where Jesus trod. It will give
 us his peace-this confidence.