The copper era., 1909-07-22
What is ReIieiOn?

IN Ao au CAhA dOI VI lnC
 sermon preached at the Baptist
 Church last Sunday.
 Religion-What is it? To many it
 means practically nothing. One man
 in England before the Reformation
 defined religion after this manner:
 Religion, if you seek it. you won't
 find it; if you find it, you won't know
 it; if you know it, you haven't got it; if you have it, you can't lose it; if you lose it, you never had it." That
 is what many men think today, and the fault lies not so much in the men as in the church which has given a wrong conception of religion. Some have compounded religion with wor- ship. Then they have thought of it as temples and churches and Sundays and prayer meetings. But religion is not worship. Worship is the lam guage of religion. Others have con- founded religion with creeds and dogma. And they have said it con sisted in believing something, as the Westminster or Apostles creed. But creeds are not religion. They are human definitions of religion and subject to error. Still others have mistaken some certain experience for religion. Experience is not religion but the fruit of it. The flower is not the plant; the form is not the intellect; and the lyric is not all of love. Religion is relationship between a personal God and a per sonal man. It is the family life of the soul. It is something which can not be put on or off and belongs to every mans life. Every man there fore must have some religion.
 Now a man may reject his Heaven ly Father; he may disobey Him; he may deny Him: he may try to forget, yea he may forget Him, yet this does not alter the relationship. He is still the child of God. You may have read in last weeks paper of young man who left his home in Cali fornia and went to New York to make his fortune in Wall Street. During the ten years which followed his parents sought diligently for h ID, Lut in vain. At last his father died. His mother to settle her mind travelled. Stopping one day at the Astor Hotel in New York, she recog- nized in the young man who waited on her, the image of her son. After dinner she inquired the name of the waiter. It was Henry Roberts. She had him sent to her room and then when she called him Henry, he re- turned to her arms and answered | Mother" He had lost all he had in Wall Street and had become a hotel 1 waiter to earn his living. He had | forgotten mother, but she dld not | forget him. You may have forgot ten your Creator Parent, yet never | will He forget you. Back in New | York state have the best father on | earth. He has always been kind to | me. Now I might deny toithe people | in Clifton that he is my father, would | that make him any less my father? You may deny your relationship to your Heavenly Father, but He is still | your God. You may have wandered | away like the Prodigal Son. May be | you are separated from the family, | ike the lost sheep on the mountain. The Great Shepherd is watching and | longing for your return and He has sent His Son in search for you. Will you be found? "Turn ye, turn ye for why will you die Though a mother nay forget the child of her bosom, yet will I not forget thee, saith the Most High.''
 JOHN G. DEININGER.