The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1912-04-04

partake of this celestial food are fellow
members of one body; they are Joined
together by social compact of the dear
est and hottest character because they
all commune with the same glorious
Head"
Quincy will acknowledge that Jesus
came to put an end to the Jewish dis
pensation, and yet he quotes wholly from
the Old Testament in support of silent
worship.
Perhaps all classes might come little
nearer to the truth by ruling out such
sentiments as some object to on very
good grounds. No one can object to the
following by J. j. Quincy, an orthodox
Friend.
''Under the pardoning love of the
Father, the procuring cause of our ac-
ceptance with God and of our final saliva
ton is Christ alone, received into the
heart of the believer as the sole object
of his confidence and ruling there by his
spirit. A law is written with the finger
of God on the hearts Of all men by which,
in various degrees, the natural conscience
is enlightened and guided. The more
use we make of the light bestowed upon
US, the more will that light be in
creased" All Christians stand around
a common center. 1t is by using Ian
guage which exaggerates their real
thought that they get so far apart.
Howard N. Brown, Unitarian, explains
the Trinity in way that can not be
criticised by the most orthodox. ''These
words (the command 10 baptize all
nations in the name of the Father and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost) were
first spoken long before the theology of
the church had crystallized into dog
matte form. They provide kind of
summing up il single phase of the
great truths which Christ had taught
the fatherhood Of God, the divine sonship
of man, and the close presence of
folding every human soul. The Jews
had not yet come to consciousness of
something within them which establishes
bond between their souls and the su-
preme majesty of the skies, and none
had told them to claim as their father
him who held their lives in the hollow of
his hand. God incarnate in Christ, re-
produced in him as the likeness of the
Fathers mind and spirit, nay be repro
duced IN a son; and this one supreme in
carnation the type and symbol Of God S
work in the hearts of all his children,
when that work can be made complete
such, as nearly as we can state it In the
language OF today, we may assume to
have been the thought with which
Christianity began. The hard frozen
buds of winter might as well assume
equality with midsummer open and
Respondent flower as for US to think that
we have come near the moral and spirit
ual attributes of the mind of Christ. The
world is full of wondrous presence of
which we try to make no exact image in
our thought We do not think of this
formless spirit as being the whole of
God. 1t is as it were the hand of God
especially reached out to US; it is the
power of God put forth to enlighten and
cleanse our souls; it is the living bond
between that mysterious One who sums
up all being and that other equally mys-
ferrous unit of existence which each one
calls himself. The energy of TIE sun
reaching our atmosphere is light to our
eyes and vital heat to all that lives. So
the Holy Spirit is God to our present
human world, God round about US in
these Swallowed ways, the healer, the
Comforter, the inspirer of this earthly
life" We may dream with Tennyson:
II dreamed that stone by stone
l reared sacred fame, temple,
Neither pagoda, mosque. nor church,
But loftier, simpler, always open-doored tt
every breath from heaven,
And Truth and Peace and Love and Justice
came and dwelt therein"
In all places of worship whether pa.
CODA, mosque or church, we find degree
of idolatry because only one man ever
lived who had true conception of the
Father. He taught that the spirit in
him, variously called in scripture Holy
Spirit, Comforter and Spirit of Jesus,
would shine as light in all his followers.
He was the word Of God, because he act.
ed under the Fathers direction. Read
all his teachings and see how his rules
for human conduct correspond with the
sacred temple of which Tennyson dream.
ed.
GEO. M. COLE,
Husum, WASH, Mar. l, 1912.