The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1909-11-01
D|SCARDS TWk|N'S
PICTURE Of LIFE
Rev. William ThurSton Brown
Says Ii Is Not So in
Religion.
"F0R WHAT DO YOU LlVE?"
MINISTER DELIVERS THOUGHT
STIRRING SERMON.

What Are You Living For? or An
Adequate and Rational Purpose for
Life" was the subject of sermon by
the Rev. William Thurston Brown at
Unity hall Sunday. He said in part:
No man of modern times has better
described the sort OF existence which
rails to the lot of unnumbered millions
IN this world than Mark Twain in the
following words:
A myriad of men are born; they la
Dor and sweat and struggle for bread;
they squabble and scold and fight; they
scramble for little mean advantages
over each other; age creeps over them;
infirmities follow; shanes and humili-
atoms bring down their pride and their
Vanlties; those they love are taken from
them, and the joy of life is turned to
aching grief. The burden of pain, care
misery grows heavier year by year; at
length ambition is dead, pride is dead.
vanity is dead longing for release is in
their place. It comes at last-the only
imprisoned gift earth ever had for them
and they vanish from a world where
they were of no consequence; where
they achieved nothing; where they were
a mistake and a failure and foolish
ness; where they have left no sign that
they have existed-a world that viii la
ment them for day and forget them
forever
Then another myriad takes their
place, and copies all they did, and goes
the same profitless road, and vanishes
as they vanished-to make room for
another, and another, and a million 9TH
er myriads, 10 follow the same arid
path through the same desert, and ac-
complish what the first myriad and all
the myriads that came after it accom-
pliShed-nOthing.'
1T is needless to say that what Mark
Twain here describes is not a religious
world, is not a world patterned on any
plan to which the term religious can by
the widest stretch of the imagination
be called religious. The religious prob
lem is not how you can in your little
home or among the circle of your con-
genial friends have religious conscious
ness, believe in a God and worship him.
That cannot be the religious problem
today because the inevitable tendency
of all our human thinking and all our
complex life is to identify God. not with
some inscrutable force, nor yet with two
or three individuals, but with the whole
race of men.
THE time has gone by when thinking
people could have a God, or unthinking
people care for a God, outside of hu-
man life itself
What is it that supTemely differen-
tiates the human race from the insect,
from every lower order of animal? Not
accumulation. Not ingenuity. Not eff
ficiency. Not the power of reproduc-
ton, fatheThood and motherhood. All
these insects possess. No, il is the pos
sibility Of immeasuTeable improvement,
morally, spiritually.
''The ant Hill of today does not differ
from that which Moses or ZorOaster
may have seem The honeycomb of to-
day shows no structural improvement
over that which bees made before man
existed on the earth Merely to emu
late the gifts of these dumb relatives of
ours does not make you and me religious
beings.
Suppose you could address to a score
or more of the representative people of
this city this vital question of religion
for today: What are you living for?
What does the world seem to you?
What makes you do the thing you arc
DOING? Here are in this city, as in
every city of its size, representatives of
great many pursuits. Here are mer-
chants, lawyers, salOOnkeepers.
Here are teachers, diVe-keepers,
preachers. Here are bankers and gam
bers. editors and agents of the white
slave traffic. dresSmakerg and women
of the street. and so on to the end of
the list of business pursuits. What
ny NY ta ANHA9 " 9DhA 4uED-
ton?
The merchant would say: I am in
business for the profit it affords I
was born into a world which provides
for merchants. in which they seem TO be
necessity. I am meeting a plain de-
mand of the social order That is ex-
actly what the keeper of a saloon, the
preacher, the brOthel keeper the bank
CT, the gambler, the lawyer and all the
NEOnf6 oil
feet justice say: Il am d saIOOnkeeper
because it is a profitable business. 1
am gambler because gambling is a
respectable fascinating. popular. and
sometimes very profitable pursuit 1
am banker because the system calls
Tor bankers / am a lawyer for the
same reason l am a dealer in prosti-
tutes Of one kind because there is a
demand for them. / am a woman Of the
street because the wages are much
higher than 1 can get in any other oc-
cupatiOn open to me. I am a minister
because religion is a recognized indus
try and answers a widespread demand
These answers are all practically
alike in one respect; they denote that
all these occupations relate solely to a
certain economic system. All these
? people accept the world as they find it
and adapt themselves TO that world
But that is not religion. Religion means
adapting ones self to a very different
world, TO a world of ever-enlarging
moral purpose, a world of higher values.
I am not saying that some of these
occupations are not all right as far as
they go. But / do want to say, and
this ought to be said, and will some
time be said. TO every boy and girl in
the public schools by those who cali
themselves educators, that not one of
these occupations ought TO be considered
by anyone as an end in itself, as if it
could satisfy the need or capeity of
the human soul. The time is coming
when every human being that comes
into the world in the confines of civili-
cation will be made to understand that
the real vocation OF a man or woman
is not accumulation nor political or
economic power over others-that II is
rather the creation of an ever-greater.
ever more beautiful. ever holier, com
pieter nobler human world. To know
such vocation as that is to be re-
hsious. We men and women live at
all only as we link our lives with that
divine spirit of progress. of improve
ment. OF evolution toward higher and
better things, which alone is God
-S-
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