The Greeneville daily sun. (Greeneville, Tenn.) 1918-1920, 1918-10-12
HEART TO HEART TALKS
BY REV. OSCAR c. KLINcER.

tNoAaE VA AAtN HAN1NAANA ~ = "a N~@1 ~
demic, should like to talk with you
for a little while on the subject that
now lies nearest to the heart Of the
world. Let us make it reasoning
together, your thought and mine
flowing together along channel of
deepest interest to both. Only so
will these talks be worth the paper
on which they are printed, and their
thought enter as constructive power
into your lives.
| Whether you ask the boys at the
front, or the fathers and mothers in
Lonely homes, or the statesmen whose
genius must guide the ship Of state
Iout of the maelstrom in which it has
been caught, what is the thing of
deepest moment at the present time,
one answer will come from all. They
will say together that the worlds
direst need can be supplied only by
a religion which is sane and rational,
Ithat shall interpret God and immor-
Itality in the length and breadth of
their meaning, that shall visualize the
eternal verities. Warnings are con
stantly sent back from the front by
soldier and chaplain to the church
at home that unless deeper earnest
mess and clearer insight be evinced
Iby the pastors and members, it will
be unable to touch the men who will
return. They have been face to face
with death; they have seen the spirit
world open to receive their smiling
comrades; they have seen hundreds
risking hail Of shot and shell to
rescue fallen comrade on No Mans
Land; they have witnessed heroism,
which is always the last expression
of unselfshness, in thousand forms;
and no longer can the usual platitudes
Of the pulpit touch their lives. They
have looked spiritual realities in the
face and can never again listen to
religion Of human opinion, Thousands
of the boys, too have professed re-
lligion, but not the religion of Christ:
they know God as real, but not His
Son; and only the most virile preach
ing can win them to take the next
step, and the preaching must be ex-
emplified by virile faith in the lives
of the members Of the church. 1t is
worth our while, therefore, to study
together this great thing which men
call religion and get at its basic mean
ing. We must trace its origin; we
must find, if we can, a portraiture of
God and an unfoldment of immortal
Iity, with hint, at least, of the life
in "the undiscovered country, from
whose bourne no traveller returns"
In all things in earth and sea and
sky there is profound and brooding
mystery an invisible Presence, an
Indicated Omnipotence which has i'm
pressed itself on all human life. 1t
pervaded the primeval forests and the
red men called it the Great Spirit;
it filled the land, fog-laden and
gloomy, Of our Teutonic forbears,
and they called it the All-vader; it
d breathed in the skies of Greece and
r they called it the Unknown God.
/, About it the youth of the world spec
d ulated in a childish way and the
q stories they told constitute now the
mythologies of the nations. With this
pervasive mystery all mankind have
believed themselves bound in a GER
tain relation which, whatever varia-
y tions it may have had, always in
e volved obedience. For the human
soul is so constituted as to open out
e toward and feel after this brooding
IS Presence in creation. 1t recognizes
z a kinship to it and instinctively be-
lieves that intercourse with it is a
!. possibility. Hence every people dis
covered on the earth has its deities
and their appropriate cults.
This felt relation between the hui
man soul and the invisible Presence
in all things that are in the basic
principle of religion. What that re-
u lation involves has been the problem
of the ages. At the beginning and
d for many centuries it was inevitable
that all theories on the subject should
be grotesque; the brooding Spirit was
! seen in broken lights and pictured
forth by the fantasy. A thousand
answers were given to the question
how to think about God, myriad
n methods Of approach to Him wers