Los Angeles herald., 1907-08-12
"THE GOOD OLD WAY" is
REV. C. C. PlERCE'S TEXT
Minister Declares That Picture of True
Life Is an Old One-Calls
jeremiah an Advanced
Thinker

At the Memorial Baptist church yester-
day Rev. C.. C. Pierce preached on ''The
Good Old Way" taking for his text Jere-
miah 6:16: ASK for the old paths"
He said during the course of his sermon:
1.-THE picture of the true life, as way
in which people walk, is very old one.
Bunyan used it, Paul used it, Jesus used
it, jeremiah used it, Isaiah used it, and
David also. The people to whom Jere-
miah spoke were perfectly orthodox They
were perfectly sure of this. They prided
themselves upon believing things which
were aged and sacred with tradition.
But as is still the case sometimes their
their orthodoxy did not make them what
they ought to be. They were correct in
their creed, and careless In their lives.
They claimed great reverence for God,
but were avaricious and cruel. They were
like some people of the present day who
build churches with one hand and rob the
helpless with the other.
Jeremiah was a religious enthusiast, an
advanced thinker. He insisted that cor
rectness of belief did not amount to much
where men continue to do things displeas-
ing to God. He held that true religion
was matter of life. He insisted that the
real thing was not so much a matter of
what they said, and the claims they made.
as the things which they actually did.
consequently he was promptly voted
to be hereto; he was accused of being
practical and 'unspiritual.' AS an ac
cused hereto, he was one of numerous
and illustrious class including such men
as Paul, Wickliffe, Huss, Savonarola,
Luther Knox and many others.
Points to History
Jeremiah met the accuse ton by point
ing them back to the real things. He
appealed to the history, of the people of
God. He insisted upon that which was
fundamental He pointed out the old way
made secure by the experiences, the tri-
umphs and the failures of the past, and
insisted that they should not only talk
about this old way, but walk therein.
There are plenty of people today who
are crying back to the old things who
do not mean what they say at all. One
man says give us the old things and
means the things that his father believed.
Another means the things that his grand
father held to. These are old but not old
enough. Some would go back oven far
ther than this. Some would go back a
hundred years or two or three or five hun
dred years. The real thing is not so much
a matter of time as of the truth and the
right and the fundamental, To find the
really true thing we must dig down to
the very bedrock-Christ himself.
For me, give me Christ and his vision
of the truth, ahead of all his interpreters,
ancient or modern. For me let me go
away back beyond the middle ages, away
back beyond the heroes and the saints and
the post-apostolic fathers back beyond
the apostles themselves back to the
Christ himself.
Let me stand in his pure light, let me
drink from the very fountain head. All
these others can perhaps help me. He is
a fool who ignores the experiences of
those who have gone over the way ahead
of him, but he is more foolish still who
supposes that any other mans view of the
truth or any other mans conception can
answer for personal view of the great
original gained only by those who will
look upon him for themselves. No mere
man, no saint of other days is my God
or my Judge, burt there is one who leads,
and there would / ever follow, for this is
the one way, the way of life.
On the Threshold
ITO the man with the vision of Christ,
we stand yet but upon the threshold.
Whatever may be the special thing which
as a follower of Christ may claim his at
tention, however broad, however narrow
he may consider the gospel work and the
mission of the church, though he may
consider that as a follower of Christ his
one work is to be, as has often been said
that of a preacher of the gospel, and
though he may confine this gospel to the
fewest and narrowest considerations and
make his definition only large enough to
include one or two brief statements, and
the acceptance of this gospel to mean
nothing more than the selfish regard of
an individual soul. for his own future sal
walton, or If on the other hand he con-
siders the gospel as including all that has
to do with the advancement of the human
race, and though he considers the, work of
the church to include all forms of truth
and that it should lead along all avenues
of human progress, however narrow our
conception of the work of the church may
be or however broad, all agree in one
thing, and that Is that the work is but
fairly begun and all unite after nearly
two thousand years of Christian truth in
deploring the fact that SO great portion
~ human life is still untouched by the