The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1906-12-19
Subject: Personal Experience.

Brooklyn, N. Y.-Preaching at the
Irving Square Presbyterian Chureh
on the theme, Personal Experience"
the Rev. I. w. Henderson, pastor,
took as his text Jno. 4:42: Now we
believe, not because of thy saying;
for we have heard Him ourselves, and
know that this is indeed the Christ,
the Saviour of the world" He said:
The final proof of the value of the
Gospel to the individual lies in per-
sonal experience. The n test which,
above all others, warrants a man to
hail Jesus or to deny Him, is that Of
real knowledge directly acquired. No
! man is fit to launt Christianity as
! a farce who has not first observed
the rules incidental to the living OF.
| the Christ life. He Is the best advo
! cate of the beauties of the Christian
economy who has been loyal to his
Lords. commands.
The consensus of Christians Is the
result of a common experience. We,
as citizens of the kingdom Of God,
! hold fast and together certain for
I mulas of faith because we have, each
| for himself, as individuals, found
valuable for us those working prin-
! ciples that we maintain. The church
| universal represents, in it's funda-
| mental dogmas, the opinions Of myr-
/ lad men who have. through the pro-
| cess of individual experience, reached
a common ground Of belief. The
| church catholic is divided upon Sec
| ondary tenets according to the Vari-
| cites of secondary Christian religious
| experience among men who assert al
| legiance to the central truths. In the
| broad sense, all of us who believe in
! and serve Christ, are Christians be-
| cause we each recognize as a per
| sonal experience the truths which
+ Christianity asserts to be fundamen-
1 tai. I am a Presbyterian and you
/ are a Methodist, not because our
views are different at the vftals, but
! because our secondary experiences
are unlike. The Christian Church
is an aggregation of men who see
| Jesus with the same eye and who find
! in Him and in His power in their
! lives. bonds which link them fast.
I And any sect or denomination OF
Christians Is but the congregation OF
some of the followers Of Christ
around a secondary tenet that is alive
with their own peculiar doctrine, the
result Of an individual experience.
At the bottom of it all the moving
principle is personal experience. No
man Is a good Christian who has not
had contact with Christ. No man
can appreciate the genius OF Presby-
terianism save he who has had the
experience common to all who hold
that creed. 1t is a wise thing for
a man who honestly differs from his
fellow men; it is a sensible thing for
| q Christian who earnestly and reason
| ably disagrees with his fellow fol-
| lowers of Christ; to examine his con-
| clusion-that is to say, his creed, his
dogma, his tenets, as you willard
determine whether or no they mirror
correctly his personal experiences.
But merely because a man finds him
| self at variance with the world OF
men about him is no sign that he has
misinterpreted his experiences or is
wrong. The prophets were perse-
cuted not because they |ere wrong,
but because they framed from the
facts at hand conclusions that the
Hebrews did not care to admit as ten
able. Calico got into trouble be-
cause Ptolemaists thought him crazy.
The world "a called fiat until a
dauntless soul declared 1t round.
Luther would never have nailed the
ninety-ive theses to the door Of the
church at Wittenberg had he not
been true to the truth as he saw it.
And these men were, as are many
men to-day, dead wrong in their be-
liefs as measured by the standards OF
the past.
The results attained in all depart
ments of knowledge are the outcome
of the personal experience OF lndi-
viduals. A scientific law may be the
| declaration by a single man of truth
proven out Of the records of his per-
sonal experience, unaided and un-
verified by the experience of any
other man-not infrequently at first
it is. But this much is sure: that
any law that has the assent Of any
| society is based entirely upon the
experiences of individual men who
| have perceived and been Influenced
by similar phenomena in their sep
arate lives.
All the knowledge that we have
and all the laws that we accept at
second hand are, at bottom, founded
upon the research and personal inves-
| tigation and experience of some sin
gle man or some set of men. To say
that we accept many truths at second
hand in no way Injuries u argument.
All that we receive upon the asser-
tions Of other men is so taken be-
cause we have faith in the validity
of their conclusions as being the d.
rect result of their personal expert
ences. Repetition is never so in
spring or convincing as is the dictum
of the first source. And the only
value that re-statement has is gained
| from the personal knowledge out Of
which it springs. By virtue Of the
multiplicity of the demands on u
time we have to rest much of re-
ceived truth upon the decisions of
other men; but, in the providence Of
God, we may prove accepted truth If
we will in the investigation and the
%delineation of our own personal ex-
periences.
No man, however, is entitled to at
firm or to deny the value of a de-
clared truth unless he has either met
to the full the requirements Of each
condition or accepted the opinion of
some original investigator who has
fulfilled all incidental demands. How
silly 1t would be for a man, untutored
and IMMERSED in the sciences, to set
up his opinion, without deep and
searching investigation, against the
declarations Of a Darwin, a Tyndall
or a Wallace. And on the other
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