The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-11-14

supply the spiritual impulse which is
necessary for carrying on those great
enterprises which relieve the distress,
distress of body and distress Of mind,
which so disturbs the world and so ex-
cites our pity among those men partic-
ularIv who have not had the advan-
taces of fortune or Of economic oppor-
tunitv. And vet I believe that this is
only very small part of the business
&C the church. The business of the
church is not to pity men. The bust
ness of the church is not to rescue
them from their suffering by the mere
means of material relief, or even by
the means of spiritual reinsurance.
The church cannot afford to pity men,
because it knows that men, If they
would but take it, have the rich
est and completest inheritance that it
is possible TO conceive and that, rather
than being deserving Of pity, they
are TO be challenged to assert in them
selves those things which win make
them independent of pity. No man
who has recovered the integrity of his
soul is any longer the object of pity,
and it is TO enable him to recover that
lost integrity that the Christian church
is organized. TO my thinking, the
Christian church stands at the center,
not only of philanthropy, but at the
center Of education, at the center of
science, as the center of philosophy. at
the center of politics; in short, at the
center of sentiment and thinking life.
And the business of the Christian
church, of the Christian minister, is to
show the spiritual relations of men to
the great world s processes, whether
they be physical or spiritual. 1t is
nothing less than to show the plan of
life and men s relation to the plan of
life''
The task DR.. Wilson assigns the min
mister is to interpret "the plan' not
only Sin terms that will satisfy the
man of science and the deeper students
of theology, but also in terms and from
point of view that will aid the man
in the street who can see only a little
part of the plan. - BY showing men
that there is plan, and showing "that
plan to them ultimately in it's COM
pleteness, the minister may "discover
for men their spirits We read
further
81 sometimes think that men in our
age are either losing their spirits or
thinking that they have lost them. 1t
is very confusing age for a man of
conscience. In the modern organiza-
ton of economic society, for example, |
no man is complete whole, every man
is fraction. No man is an integer.
His conscience has to reckon out for
itself what part the fraction plays in
the whole and what possibility of indie !
pendent action there is for the fraction. |
The understandable fraction lies en- /
bedded In the mass and cannot be en- |
tirely Disseminated from it, and men |!
have allowed their consciences to run
down because the mechanism in them !,
seemed to be affected by great mag |
nets outside, which made it impossible [
for them to work Independently. All /
their little individual compasses were |
disturbed by great masses-chiefy of /
gold-in their neighborhood, and they |
have asked themselves how they could
disengage their consciences and become
independent instrumentalities in the
sight of God. The task is so tremen-
dous and so perplexing that many men
have adjourned the effort and have de- !
cided that all they can do is to drift :
with the general movement of the mass. /
They are craving to have some one re- +
discover their spirits for them. j.
"What the minister has to do is to !
reveal God to men, reveal God
to them in their own spirits, reveal God
to them in thought and in action, re-
establish the spiritual kingdom among
us by proelaiming in season and out of
season that there is no explanation for /
anything that is not first or last al
spiritual explanation, and that man
cannot live by bread alone, cannot live /!
by scientific thought alone; that he is
not only starving, but that he knows
that he is starving, and that digestion
of this dry stuff that he takes into his
mouth is not possible unless it be con-
veyed by the living water of the
spirit. -