The Penn's Grove record., 1909-07-16
THE PULPIT.
A BRILLIANT SUNDAY SERMON ~
PROF. HENRY S. NASH, D. D.
Theme: In Gods Likeness.

~ SOAN - - L dLA4 .
when 1 awake in Thy likeness 1
shall be satisfied" He said:
1t seems to me that n of the
happy elements in the life of our time
regarding spiritual questions is this:
That SO many honest, earnest men
and women find themselves unable to
believe in personal Immortality. I
say that that to me is one of the hope
full signs of our generation, for how
ever deep may be our personal pity
for them, who through honest doubt
have lost that which means so much
to US, yet as a sign of the times 1t is a
sign of extreme hope because students
of church history cannot doubt for a
moment that the belief in the world to
come has been ~tragically vulgarized,
that upon that belief in the life be-
yond the craft of priesthood has built
up an immense body of superstition
that appeals to the very opposite in
the hearts and souls of men, and who,
therefore, if he be a student of his
tory, can doubt that God Himself, the
living God who holds in His hands the
reins of history, that it is the living
God Himself who inspires the honest,
earnest doubts and Q-uestionings of
an increasing body of honorable men
and women of our day touching the
belief of immortality, and the great
good He is teaching to the church is
this: that God through that doubt is
bringing His church to book, and is
teaching His church to start where
the prophet started, and not to put
the cart before the horse, and not to
argue for personal Immortality before
they have laid the foundation upon
which that argument should be built.
And every Christian to-day who
thinks, and to whom personal immor-
tally is the very breath of his daily
life says to us, and every Christian
who thinks agrees with the men and
women who doubt Or deny personal
Immortality, that here is where we
all start, whether inside the church or
outside; here, I say, is where we
start; the n thing that we all hold
ourselves responsible for is good
housekeeping, good housekeeping
here upon earth, and in time, in
space. But what do we mean by
housekeeping? And the problem is
how to keep ones loyalty to life Wig
orous, ~recreative and self-renewing
when life brings upon US increasing
burdens of responsibility and disap-
pointments and cares and pain and
death. How to be loyal to lifei That
is the test, and by it the church of
Christ is content to stand. By her
ability to answer that question she
would test her theology and her creed
and her sacraments.
Let us take a parable from the apple
tree. The apple tree is waiting just
now confidently for the springtime.
4 Wn fhnrnvnhIu doubt on1 lon- thai
old saying that Zone swallow does not
make a summer" The philosopher
and the man of common sense have
always affirmed that as If it were an
ultimate truth regarding life. What
a wretched, narrow, perverted, strick-
en- world it would be if the philos-
opher and the t%heologian controlled
this world; if there was not a poet
and a prophet in it! The apple tree
would say. if it knew a little history,
We'll, l am inclined to think that the
agnostic and the infallible theologian
are twins" And it is only because the
church has set up the infallible theo-
Logan as the teacher of the world
that now the layman is putting the
theologian into his place, that now
the layman's work has created the
dogma of the agnostic in order to
counterweigh and overcome the dog
ma of the i~nfallible. l know just a
very little about God, but without
that little I could not live and with
out that little l could not look for
ward to comfortably standing on the
edge of spring, l could not look for
ward confidently to my great task and
joy and privilege to bud and leaf and
blossom and fruit. And the parable
when we translate it into prose would
come down to this: how to be loyal
to life. First of all, we must be I'M
conquerably strong, strong.
And what shall the kind of our
strength be? Two kinds = the
strength to do and the strength to
bear. And of the two, the strength
to bear is the greater, because the
strength simply to do is always beset
by temptation to vanity and to ego
tism.
A preacher knows that he is never
in such deadly peril of egotism as
when he is preaching, the mere joy
of preaching, of the utterance of ex-
preston.
The preacher who knows his own
conscience knows that he is never at
any time SO near to the devil as when
he is in the pulpit, and all of US know
that if you take a man of force, some
man who yields a tremendous bust
ness power, and if one dared to bet
on such a tragic thing one would
wager 100 to / that that man behind
his own door is a tyrant, a tyrant be-
cause the intoxication of power has
gone to his head.
But when it comes to strength in
bearing there is no alIusion there.
When God has given US our burden
of pain, establishment and disap-
pointment, and when by His grace
and the sweet companionship of the
Saviour we have learned to so bear
our burdens that nobody but God
I'VE knows what it is, to so bear it
that the burden in our hearts is
known only to God and not even to
u dearest friends and closest kin,
there is no illusion about that; no
egotism about that.
1t is just as the college boy would
say, ito stand and take it." That is
the kind of strength that is pure
strength; and the problem of life is
how to become strong to do and
equally strong to bear the burdens
that life imposes.
AS the little candle is little brother
to the sun, so aspiration of self
knowledge and self-mastery to us, If
n may so speak-the little brother
of God, the infinite and the eternal,
and we can be strong to bear and
strong to do, because we have God
eternal In our hearts to give us the
needed endurance.
And when We have gone so far,
what are we to say as we look
through doubt and difficulty at the
great question of Immortality? What
TO we say? If we have disencum-
bered our minds both of infaIlibility
Ind agnosticism, if we have cleared
the ships deck, then, like a ship in
the navy, we are ready for action.
saying: Grant me a safe passage
through death and a holy rest and
grant me that when l have crossed
the great divide / may awaken after