The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1908-02-19
THE PULPIT.
AN ELOQUENT SUNDAY SERMON BY
BlSHO? n. C. POTTER.
Subject: The Church and Labor.

Brooklyn, N. Y.-The Rt. Rev.
Henry C. Potter, Bishop of New York.
preached in st. AIMS Church on the
Heights. Sunday. His subject was
THE Church and the Labor Ques-
ticn," and for his text he took the
two passages: ST. Luke $40 to
IA (R. W.: And the multitude
asked Him what then must we do?
He answered and said unto them,
He that hath two coats let him i'm
part to him that hath none; and he
that hath food let him do likewise.
And there came also publicans to be
baptized and they said unto Him,
Master, what must We do?' And He
said unto them, Exact no more than
that which is appointed you And
the soldiers also asked Him, saying,
What must we do?' and He said unto
them, 'Extort from no man by vio-
lence; neither accuse any one wrong
fully; and be content with your
wages" And st. Matthew 11:2 to I:
''Now when John had heard in prison
the works of Christ he sent two Of his
disciples and said unto Him: Art
Thou He who should come or look We
for another?' And Jesus answered
and said unto them. Go your way
and tell John the things which ye
see; the blind receive their sight and
the lame walk; the lepers are
cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up and the poor have the
good tidings preached to them; and
blessed is he who shall find no occa-
sion Of stumbling in Me-" Bishop
Potter said:
wonder if it has ever occurred to
you to ask yourselves the question,
how far the absolute incidents of the
gospels are witness to their truth?
There are incidents like that which
must present itself to you in connec-
ton with John the Baptist, and that
other which occurs at the close of ST.
Matthews and st. Luke's gospels in
connection with Peter which make
us feel that if any one were writing
book in which he desired to present
to us simply a favorable impression
of this or that man there are certain
things in the gospels which would
have been left out. Nothing is finer,
for example, in its way, than the Ian
guage of John the Baptist in connec-
tion with the coming to him in the
desert Of the people, and Of the SOL
diers, and the tax gatherers and the
rest. 1t is a singularly direct and
explicit way in which he lays down to
each group what should be the law
of their life And it is entirely an
other man, if we stop and think a
moment. whom we encounter in the
gospel for the third Sunday in Ad-
vent: Art Thou He that should
come? Really, do not know wheth-
er you are or not
That is the implication of the
words, and I can imagine an unbe-
ieyer using these words as very
effective argument against the belief
of John the Baptist in the divine
claims of Jesus. Here is a man who
has been sent as the forerunner Of
Jesus, who had baptized Jesus, who
was profoundly persuaded Of the mis-
sion and truth and divine character
of Jesus, and yet there comes mo-
ment in his life when he says: "Well,
really, I am not clear about you. You
claim to be the Messiah. You have
appeared to this nation and to this
era in the history of the world with
a revelation of the Supreme Force in
the world. Art Thou He who should
Gomez" But the fine thing about
these two texts is the fact that each
one of them is distinct and explicit
witness to that thing of which you
and I are perfectly conscious in our
selves. That is, that every man and
every woman is made up of two men
and two women; that there are types
of character which are so contradic-
tory and so unlike each other that
abstractly we should say they are abb
solutely irreconcilable and yet they
belong to the same person, Influenced
by different circumstances and chal-
lenged by different perplexities. There
can be no doubt as to the impressions
which had been made by the teaching
and life of Jesus upon John the Bap-
tist in the words l have read. John,
in other words, grasped and seized
with singular clearness and force the
fact that here in the advent of Jesus
there had entered the world an abso-
lutely new law in the conception of
life and of the individuals relations
to other lives about him.
Go back to the beginning of civili-
cation and trace step by step to this
hour and you will be amazed to find
how largely they built on the compli-
cations and PHILOSOPHERS of caste. My
brother CDR. Alsop) might make an
interesting sermon upon the tragic
and dramatic forces of caste in In
dia, whose religions it would be we'll
to remember are older than ours. In
other words, the moment that bar
barism begins to lift itself by organi-
zation, by the creation of the govern
ing society, it differentiates barbar-
ism from civilization. 1t begins also
to emphasize the distinction of caste
Do you know that to-day a Pariah,
one Of the classes in India, cannot
walk on the sidewalk of the street
after 8 o'clock in the afternoon be-
cause it is possible that this Pariah,
whose touch is deflement, might
brush against Brahmin? In other
words, the Brahmin has pushed the
theory Of the isolation Of the caste to
that point where he cannot allow
one not Of the same caste to walk on
the same side of the street with him.
When I was in India l asked a Hindu
on a boat on the Eoogly River to sit
down and eat with me, and he turned
as if l had struck him and said: MY
caste forbids; cannot eat with you
because you are a Christian
Now, Jesus came and John the
Baptist sees first of all that He had
struck at the foundation, at the sys-
tenn of the theory of caste. The The
ory of caste carried with it the right
Of certain privileged people to main
tain a certain autocratic and imper-
ious sovereignty over the lives and
property of others. NO." said John,
having heen long enough in the nres-