Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-04-05
ACTION IS NECESSARY
TO INCREASE VALUES
SALVATION COMES ONLY BY
SELF-SACRIFICE
Rev. E. S. Hodgin Declares to Save
Anything It Must Be Lost or
Merged Into Something
Greater

In a sermon on salvation and evolu-
ton at the First Unitarian church
yesterday morning, Rev. e. stanton
Hodgin said in part:
"a florist has a large number OF
rose buds that are beginning to open.
He says to his assistants in the morn
ing, We must work rapidly and save
those flowers. We watch the work
men to see how these flowers are TO
be saved. We expect to see them
stored away in herbariums where their
form and color and odor may be pre-
served for years. To our surprise they
collect them into punches and send
them by fast train to the city and they
are rapidly distributed to the various
homes. They adorn the tables for av2
evening and are then cast into the gar
bage pile. That was really one of the
quickest courses that could be taken to
destroy them. If they had simply left
them where they were and darkened
and cooled the room they could have
saved them many times as long. And
vet we know they took the right
course. They did save the flowers in
the best sense. They brought joy and
comfort and satisfaction and cheer in
to the homes of people. They minis
tered to human nature. They entered
into the lives of men and women
They We're translated into soul power
ana were LIuS SdNSu III liiS HiSHSi
sense instead of simply being pre-
served.
Here we have the essence of the
idea of salvation. The flowers were
saved by being lost in the service of
man. That is the only wayfanything
is saved, by being lost in service, by
being finally merged into something
greater than itself. Many of the mob
lest of men and women have been
saved and have saved their fellows by
being beaten down and being appar-
emily destroyed in thankless service
for their fellows, by being cast as rub
bish to the void
Action Is Necessary
1--WE are getting farther>apd farther
from the old idea of saving by hoard
ing or preserving. The modern econ
omic conception of saving is the very
antithesis of the old conception-which
was that of boarding. Hoarding today
means economic stagnation, economic
death; the breaking down of our en-
tire system. Everything must be kept
in service. People used to think the
way to save themselves was to hoard
themselves and so those who were de-
sirous of being especially holy with
drew into solitary places and into con-
vents. This conception dominated the
old notion of heaven. Heaven was
looked on as a sort of spiritual store7
house in which the souls of the elect
were boarded for the glory of God, just
as the miser boards his gold in a
strong box for his own glory.
I'VE now know that the way to lose
the value of anything we have, Wheth-
er it be wealth, personal power or
spiritual capacity, is to hug it to our
selves. The only way to keep it or to
get anything from it is to put it to
service. The salvation or life of in
dustry depends on confidence or faith.
When people have confidence in the
economic world they put their personal
power, their wealth and whatever they
possess unhesitatingly into it. 1t
passes rapidly and permeates all in
dustry and gives it renewal of life;
an dthe faster it passes the more SER
vice it renders and the surer are the
returns. But when people lose con-
fidence in the economic world they
hesitate about putting anything into
it, They hold aloof and hide away
whatever they have in old stocking
legs and sit down and wait for better
and ruin come on us just in proper
ton as that state Prevails.
1.-THE higher life or the higher saliva
ton is of exactly this same character.
We are saved by faith-rational faith.
If we have faith in ourselves, faith in
our fellows, faith in the society of
which we are a part and faith in the
future, then we throw ourselves I'M
hesitatinsly into life"
-@~p-