Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1905-12-01
THE Personal TOUCH.

BY Henry r. Cope
And a man shall be as hiding
place from the wind, and a covert
from the tempest; as rivers of water
In a dry place, as the shadow of
great rock in weary land.-Isaiah
xxxii:2.
A man needs men more than he
needs spirits. You can no more salts
fy the human heart with departed
souls than you can appease hunger
with kitchen odOrs. People want peo-
pie to love. No matter how perfect
from the pedagogical point of view,
your plan of uplifting the masses by
ideals may be you will always find
that they prefer to take their ideals
on two legs and with the light of life
in their eyes. They would rather as
sociate with the most mediocre men
than with the most highly interesting
mummies, and you will find them get
ting more out of common people on
the street than out of the most per-
lONl llOllltS lDC al
No matter how perfect your church
worship may be in its artistic and its
intellectual appeal, its sensuous as
poets alone will never satisfy that
strange hunger of the human heart
that longing that leads men to the
place Of worship week after week.
The church may have much success
as club, as an exposition of style.
fashion, and refined sentiments, and
yet fail utterly as church unless It
comes near to them and opens itself
to them so that they feel here are
hearts that understand and ears open
in sympathy, here are warm hand
grasps, here is the life giving touch.
Ordinary people cannot worship alb
stractions. The gods built of fancy
win only the worms of worship. You
might as well call on men to fall be-
fore the books of Euclid set on an al
tar as to expect humanity to worship
the hypothetical being whom some
call the god of heaven. Still less can
men be brought to adore the PROPOSE
tions of theology. For worship is but
love, and you can never learn to love
a syllogism.
Ideas alone have power as they be-
come personal. Many man is wor-
Shipping the good in his mother, the
gentle and sublime in some other
woman, or the heroic in some man;
and these constitute his religion.
These are people, and they satisfy
him as postulates and principles and
the properties of worship never could.
They not only set the good in tue
glowing frame of life but they touch
his life with theirs; there is some
thing other than their goodness, their
fine characters; there is that which
makes them one with him.
A God far off from man has always
meant man far off from God And
come near to us. 1t is more than a
figure Of speech that the Bible uses
when it speaks Of the most High as n
man. father. a nelghbor, a friend; 1t
is an indication Of the closeness Of
God to ourselves, of his reality, of his
identity with us. We need not think
Of him as an OvergrOwn man, sitting
on top of the clouds; yet it is better
that he should be embodied in some
image Of the form that has always
meant personality to us than that we
should lose sight Of the possibility OF
approach and communion with him
.as friend with friend. Better to think
of God as man with us than not to
know that the one over us all is in
living touch with us all.
This is the great truth that Jesus
came to give the world. There is no
need to define what it may mean that
God was manifest in the flesh If we
but see in the man of Nazareth the
expression of all that God is to man.
fIe walked our ways Of earth to re-
mind us that the Father is still liv-
ing with his family here; he touched
the sick and comforted the sad that
men might remember the hand Of in
finite tenderness and power that
reaches from heaven for our constant
neip and consolation.
Men could see the man Jesus; they
knew him as man; looking in his
eyes they felt the thrill Of a human
life; in word, he was real, personal,
and human to them. The simple
hearted and clear eyed among them,
longing for love, were drawn to him.
BY the personal touch he taught them
the way of life, and when they came
to teach their new found faith to 9TH
ers it simply amounted to telling the
story of their friend and to tell Of
him as one still near to their lives.
TO them it was no strange thing
that he should say, If you have seen
me you have seen the Father. They
had come to know that. God had be-
come more than q theory or an histo-