The Ogden standard. [volume] (Ogden City, Utah) 1902-1910, 1909-01-04
SERMON B Y
REVEREND
BROWN
lever CHANGING, EVER GROW
ING RELIGION" DISCUSSED.
Recent Fearful Tragedy in Sicily Com
pared With Tragedy Of Our In
dustrial System.

with the tragedy of our own Industrial
system. where five hundred thousand
men and women aud children are
either killed or manned every year.
and that the real tragedy of Sicily,
and of Italy. too. as of Russia and all
Christendom. is not that precipitated
By nature, but that tolerated by hui
man ignorance and greed, Mr.. Brown
spoke as follows:
Think what this tragedy in the
sphere of religion is and what creates
it. 1t is the attempt, In the name of
authority. TO palm off on men and
women as religion something which
is not religion. something which is
indeed the denial and the defeat OF
religion And that attempt is being
made simply because men fail utterly
to understand that immutable law
Which determines religion, as it does
everything else. / mean the law of
growth. the law Of change All reli-
gious institutionalism tends inevitably
10 represent religion as something
fixed, Interchangeable, barking back to
remote antiquity, established By eX-
ternal authority. Examine any creed
In Christendom or think OF any lit
Wey any set Of so-called religious
rites that are being practiced, and
name for me one single idea OF one
rite or form which derives its mean
ing or its sanction from any need or
demand which human life by its own
nature feels or implies. The thing
can not be done.
''In all these endless quarrels be-
tween warning Christian sects OF
which the history of the Christian
CHURCH is simply record. what has
been the unyarying claim of each and
every party to the quarrels2 The un-
varying claim Of each has been that
its validity was established. not by
the standard of anything to be found
IN human nature or human life to-
day, not in anything which such sect
could show of positive RESULTS in the
Individual or In society, but by the
5landard OF some legend or tradition
Of distant past. The conclusive Al
Gument has been that OF apostolic sue
cession, never the convincing argu-
nent which a succession of real apos-
ties would have been. And that
tnelI III lht VI lhCS'
teachers, Of superstition religion is
something which does not change.
And yet, nothing is So perfectly
clear in all the history Of religion, OF
this whole human search for religious
verify, as change. Even the Bible
itself bears all through its pages the
unmistakable marks of radical and
faT-reaching changes changes in the
whole conception of God and man and
iite- Think OF the change which the
ave hlndred years from Solomon to
the ugophet Micah registered. In the
of the dedication of Solomon's
temple, we are told that Solomon sac
rificed to the Lord two and twenty
thousand oxen and hundred and
twenty thousand sheep That was
the very acme of religious expression
In that age But listen to the words
OF one of the prophets who made our
Bible, man who lived five hundred
years after Solomon: 'Wherewith
shall l come before the Lord? VIII
the Lord be pleased with thousands OF
rams or with ten thousands OF rivers
Of oil2 He hath Showed thee, o man,
what Is good. And what doth the
Lord require of thee. but to do JUS
tice, add TO love mercy. and to walk
humbly with thy God?'
Nothing can be more vitally I'M
portant to your life or to mine than
that we shall see exactly what rela-
ton to real religion these institutions
claiming the name and functions OF
religion actually sustain. and what re-
ligion now and here is. Perhaps we
can not get better possession of these
two facts than by an illustration
from histor On the seventeenth OF
February. 30, the city of Rome wit
messed hcourse OF men such as
the grea, city on the Tiber, accus-
toned as has been to imposing spec
tadIes tt lghout Its history, has
rarely 81 But this time the crowd
had not thered to greet triumph
ant CAD I at the head of his yicto-
rious III jns, Hor yet to gaze at the
so-calld Jvicegerent of God on earth.
the alleged vicar OF The peasant
Christ of Palestine, In all the pomp OF
clerical retinue. These men who
crowded the Eternal City had come
from the ends OF the earth-the flower
Of twentieth century science and phil
osophy and llfe-to do honor to poor
wandering knight of the spirit. who,
alter eight years Imprisonment in
dungeon, suffered death at the stake
at the hands and by the order of that
church which then and now claims an
unbroken authority and succession
from Jesus and the apostles-had come
In m nf
Giordano Bruno on the very spot
where, three hundred years before,
q tumultuous and checkered human
lite ended ON a pile OF fagots. That
spot had become and will TO the end
OF time be considered sacred spot
hone more sacred In all that ancient
city-becauso the man who died there
exemplified. as the church which put
him to death never and nowhere In
its history has done. the deepest, high
est, noblest, truest spirit OF religion
why did the nineteenth century.
Just before 1t closed its doors. think
ii must pay precisely this man an
homage so pure and so enthusiastic
The answer is found in the TACT that
Bruno, more than any other OF MS
time. embodied and expressed that
spirit OF genuine religion which we
Of the twentieth century are bound
to recognize. That concourse
thronged Rome to do honor TO this
martyr-prophet OF the sixteenth CEN
tury because all men today who are
awake. who are using their minds.
who have any consciousness OF what
life and the world mean. are seeing