1900
One of the papers tells of a woman at an old man's coffin. She kissed him and wept over him. She told the people how good he was. But he took it all very coolly. He was dead. He was old and poor and she was young and rich. She had ten rooms, but no room for her father. Yet he made room for her when he had only two. He was not educated. She was, at his expense. He had fed and clothed her and sent her to seminary and college, until she grew refined and married a rich man. Now she kissed him and cried by his coffin and buried him handsomely. But everybody said this did not make up for her want of kindness in the years of his old age.
—The Ram's Horn, March 17, 1900, p. 14.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Influence of God's Love
1900
The Sunday School Times says: "Love ever goes out from God, as light and heat over go out from the shining sun as the great central orb of our planetary universe. We can shut away ourselves from the blessed influence of God's love, but we cannot change, or cause to cease, the blessed and ceaseless love of God."
—The Ram's Horn, Nov. 17, 1900, p. 21.
The Sunday School Times says: "Love ever goes out from God, as light and heat over go out from the shining sun as the great central orb of our planetary universe. We can shut away ourselves from the blessed influence of God's love, but we cannot change, or cause to cease, the blessed and ceaseless love of God."
—The Ram's Horn, Nov. 17, 1900, p. 21.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Supremacy of the Soul
1911
Link soul with all that is worthy, with all that is true, with all that is good, with all that is noble and then when you go out into the world of nature you will be enabled to say, I have walked with God upon the hills and have seen each morn arise new, bathed in light of Paradise. — Rev. E. L. Powell, Louisville.
Love Your Enemies
The call from the great teacher to love even enemies is really a call to get acquainted with folks as they really are. — Rev. A. G. Singsen, Congregationalist, Providence.
Link soul with all that is worthy, with all that is true, with all that is good, with all that is noble and then when you go out into the world of nature you will be enabled to say, I have walked with God upon the hills and have seen each morn arise new, bathed in light of Paradise. — Rev. E. L. Powell, Louisville.
Love Your Enemies
The call from the great teacher to love even enemies is really a call to get acquainted with folks as they really are. — Rev. A. G. Singsen, Congregationalist, Providence.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Patriotism and Religion
1917
Draw a little circle around your personality and it will include your family; draw a larger circle and it will include your friends; a still larger circle takes in your fellow countrymen; the last and largest circle of all embraces all humanity.
As the circle enlarges the objects of our love increase in number and the intensity of our love naturally diminishes. We are not bound to all mankind as strongly or as tenderly as we are to our fellow countrymen. We are not bound to do for all our countrymen as much as we are bound to do for our neighbors next door or on the nest street or in the next township. Our highest human obligation is to those of our own household.
The supreme duty we owe to One, and One alone, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." — Christian Herald.
Draw a little circle around your personality and it will include your family; draw a larger circle and it will include your friends; a still larger circle takes in your fellow countrymen; the last and largest circle of all embraces all humanity.
As the circle enlarges the objects of our love increase in number and the intensity of our love naturally diminishes. We are not bound to all mankind as strongly or as tenderly as we are to our fellow countrymen. We are not bound to do for all our countrymen as much as we are bound to do for our neighbors next door or on the nest street or in the next township. Our highest human obligation is to those of our own household.
The supreme duty we owe to One, and One alone, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." — Christian Herald.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Clerical Idol of Young
1914
Presbyterian Minister Inaugurates "Lovers' Night" At His Church
Philadelphia, Jan. 5. — Being the product of an era in sympathy with his advanced religious ideas, the Rev. Zed Hetzel Copp, pastor of Cohocksink Presbyterian church, is fast becoming the clerical idol of the community and the special favorite of the younger generation. A distinct hit with the latter has just been made by Mr. Copp in inaugurating a "lovers' night" at his church.
The Rev. Mr. Copp recently decided there was more talk about love in churches than there was of the presence of the commodity itself. His plan is the throwing open of the church doors every Friday evening to the young men and women who are "keeping company" or desire to do so, and of providing for them suitable opportunity to make love under proper conditions.
Comment: I probably should add that the phrase "to make love" back then meant something entirely different than now. It could be simply being together, sitting together without parental supervision. Or holding hands, looking at the moon together, etc. Even in the '60s, when Elvis sang "It's time to make love," he also meant these more moderate romantic exertions, kissing on the beach probably in his case, going by his movies. Although the song "Do Not Disturb," from which that lyric comes from, does say, "Hang a sign on the door," which is getting more serious. So the pastor's plan back in 1914, while apparently on the daring side, wouldn't really have amounted to that much. Sitting in the same pew sort of like a married couple.
Presbyterian Minister Inaugurates "Lovers' Night" At His Church
Philadelphia, Jan. 5. — Being the product of an era in sympathy with his advanced religious ideas, the Rev. Zed Hetzel Copp, pastor of Cohocksink Presbyterian church, is fast becoming the clerical idol of the community and the special favorite of the younger generation. A distinct hit with the latter has just been made by Mr. Copp in inaugurating a "lovers' night" at his church.
The Rev. Mr. Copp recently decided there was more talk about love in churches than there was of the presence of the commodity itself. His plan is the throwing open of the church doors every Friday evening to the young men and women who are "keeping company" or desire to do so, and of providing for them suitable opportunity to make love under proper conditions.
Comment: I probably should add that the phrase "to make love" back then meant something entirely different than now. It could be simply being together, sitting together without parental supervision. Or holding hands, looking at the moon together, etc. Even in the '60s, when Elvis sang "It's time to make love," he also meant these more moderate romantic exertions, kissing on the beach probably in his case, going by his movies. Although the song "Do Not Disturb," from which that lyric comes from, does say, "Hang a sign on the door," which is getting more serious. So the pastor's plan back in 1914, while apparently on the daring side, wouldn't really have amounted to that much. Sitting in the same pew sort of like a married couple.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Evangelist Works In Love; "No Blacksnakes" About Him
Lincoln, Nebraska, 1904
BLACKSNAKES
Evangelist Rowland Has None Concealed About His Person, but Deals in Kindness
There were four professed conversions in the young people's meeting yesterday at the Second Presbyterian church. This service is becoming a force in East Lincoln for a Christian life that is making many glad.
The meeting of last night was a sweet, spirited one and simple, clear directions were given for entering the better life. No evangelist who ever visited Lincoln excels Mr. Rowland in ability to guide an enquirer. He was a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Moody in several of his great meetings, having charge of inquiry meetings, a work the great evangelist never entrusted to any but the ablest men. In one thing Mr. Rowland differs from most evangelists and pastors. He has absolutely no blacksnakes concealed about his person for any one. What he can not do by kindness and love and gentle persuasion he refuses to attempt to do at all. The feature of the meeting last night was the presentation of requests for prayer by people who were burdened for friends.
Rev. Long said he had the names of forty-seven in a little book for whom he was praying. Perhaps it is revealing a confidential message, but the pastor did not sleep much last night on account of some of these people whose names are in his little book. Second church people feel that they are getting back into regular work of an apostolic sort in having fifteen or twenty services a week. Back to the days of which it is said, "The Lord added to the church daily such as were being saved."
Rev. Long assured his people last night that in some one of the three services held daily some one was being daily led to Christ. The subject for tonight will be "The Man Who Lacked But One Thing."
—Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, Nebraska, Nov. 16, 1904, p. 6.
Note: Evangelist L. P. Rowland began the evangelistic campaign Sunday, Nov. 6, 1904, at Second Presbyterian church, also called Second Presbyterian Temple, corner Twenty-sixth and P streets. The Rev. Barzillai M. Long was the minister.
BLACKSNAKES
Evangelist Rowland Has None Concealed About His Person, but Deals in Kindness
There were four professed conversions in the young people's meeting yesterday at the Second Presbyterian church. This service is becoming a force in East Lincoln for a Christian life that is making many glad.
The meeting of last night was a sweet, spirited one and simple, clear directions were given for entering the better life. No evangelist who ever visited Lincoln excels Mr. Rowland in ability to guide an enquirer. He was a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Moody in several of his great meetings, having charge of inquiry meetings, a work the great evangelist never entrusted to any but the ablest men. In one thing Mr. Rowland differs from most evangelists and pastors. He has absolutely no blacksnakes concealed about his person for any one. What he can not do by kindness and love and gentle persuasion he refuses to attempt to do at all. The feature of the meeting last night was the presentation of requests for prayer by people who were burdened for friends.
Rev. Long said he had the names of forty-seven in a little book for whom he was praying. Perhaps it is revealing a confidential message, but the pastor did not sleep much last night on account of some of these people whose names are in his little book. Second church people feel that they are getting back into regular work of an apostolic sort in having fifteen or twenty services a week. Back to the days of which it is said, "The Lord added to the church daily such as were being saved."
Rev. Long assured his people last night that in some one of the three services held daily some one was being daily led to Christ. The subject for tonight will be "The Man Who Lacked But One Thing."
—Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, Nebraska, Nov. 16, 1904, p. 6.
Note: Evangelist L. P. Rowland began the evangelistic campaign Sunday, Nov. 6, 1904, at Second Presbyterian church, also called Second Presbyterian Temple, corner Twenty-sixth and P streets. The Rev. Barzillai M. Long was the minister.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Test of a Fine Character
1902
The test of a fine character is attention to the minutiae of conduct — to do the little commonplace service of love, the cheerful word, the cup of cold water, when rendered not grudgingly or of necessity. — Friend.
Vacant Churches
We have a distressing way of talking about "vacant" pulpits and "vacant" churches. It is an unfortunate part of our overemphasis of the place of a minister in our various systems of church polity, it is of a piece with the talk about "Dr. Blank's church." A church is not vacant until the Holy Spirit has left it. As long as through humble hearts there is evidence of the divine indwelling a church is great and rich. A log cabin with a simple hearted layman's prayer and exposition of the word of God may rise to the dignity and glory of a temple, while a gorgeous architectural pile with a superb organ and an intellectually gifted preacher may be "vacant" indeed. — Congregationalist.
The Main Battlefield
The main battlefield is the one which moves about with us, go where we will — ourselves. So dingy and inglorious oftentimes that we would like to flee it altogether and lose ourselves in some great campaign which should keep us from over being reminded of it again! Great things have sometimes been done by men who never won the battle of their own natures, but they are the standing incongruity and puzzle of the moral world. When the thing we want to do has outrun the thing we want to be, our thought about life has ceased to be real and moral and essential, and God and men will forgive us all the delay that is necessary in order for us to go back into that battlefield of our own souls. — Sunday School Times.
The test of a fine character is attention to the minutiae of conduct — to do the little commonplace service of love, the cheerful word, the cup of cold water, when rendered not grudgingly or of necessity. — Friend.
Vacant Churches
We have a distressing way of talking about "vacant" pulpits and "vacant" churches. It is an unfortunate part of our overemphasis of the place of a minister in our various systems of church polity, it is of a piece with the talk about "Dr. Blank's church." A church is not vacant until the Holy Spirit has left it. As long as through humble hearts there is evidence of the divine indwelling a church is great and rich. A log cabin with a simple hearted layman's prayer and exposition of the word of God may rise to the dignity and glory of a temple, while a gorgeous architectural pile with a superb organ and an intellectually gifted preacher may be "vacant" indeed. — Congregationalist.
The Main Battlefield
The main battlefield is the one which moves about with us, go where we will — ourselves. So dingy and inglorious oftentimes that we would like to flee it altogether and lose ourselves in some great campaign which should keep us from over being reminded of it again! Great things have sometimes been done by men who never won the battle of their own natures, but they are the standing incongruity and puzzle of the moral world. When the thing we want to do has outrun the thing we want to be, our thought about life has ceased to be real and moral and essential, and God and men will forgive us all the delay that is necessary in order for us to go back into that battlefield of our own souls. — Sunday School Times.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Mother's Day — A Most Sacred Day
Oklahoma, 1922
Of all the special days set apart by law or custom Mother's Day is the most sacred and merits the observance that has come to the universally accorded it. It is seldom indeed that a man sinks so low into degradation that he does not reverence his mother if living or cherish her memory if she has passed away.
A thought of his mother has deterred all of us from committing unworthy acts and on this day set apart to her memory causes the most hardened to pause in the mad rush of life and give thought to the memory of her to whom he owes everything worth while. In the law of nature there is nothing as lasting as mother love. There is no sacrifice the mother will not willingly make for her child. She guides his uncertain footsteps during the days when his mind is trying to grasp some of the problems of life. She rejoices in his successes and sympathizes in his times of misfortune. If he forgets her training and wanders off into crime she is by his side in the hour of retribution, even to the foot of the scaffold, and would gladly lay down her own life, if it would save her wayward son.
Tomorrow Mother's Day will be observed at the churches of Ada. Whether one believes in the Christian religion or not he still believes in his mother and should attend a service in her memory if she is no longer among the living or in her honor if he is still fortunate enough to have her guidance.
—The Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, May 6, 1922, p. 2.
Of all the special days set apart by law or custom Mother's Day is the most sacred and merits the observance that has come to the universally accorded it. It is seldom indeed that a man sinks so low into degradation that he does not reverence his mother if living or cherish her memory if she has passed away.
A thought of his mother has deterred all of us from committing unworthy acts and on this day set apart to her memory causes the most hardened to pause in the mad rush of life and give thought to the memory of her to whom he owes everything worth while. In the law of nature there is nothing as lasting as mother love. There is no sacrifice the mother will not willingly make for her child. She guides his uncertain footsteps during the days when his mind is trying to grasp some of the problems of life. She rejoices in his successes and sympathizes in his times of misfortune. If he forgets her training and wanders off into crime she is by his side in the hour of retribution, even to the foot of the scaffold, and would gladly lay down her own life, if it would save her wayward son.
Tomorrow Mother's Day will be observed at the churches of Ada. Whether one believes in the Christian religion or not he still believes in his mother and should attend a service in her memory if she is no longer among the living or in her honor if he is still fortunate enough to have her guidance.
—The Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, May 6, 1922, p. 2.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Universalist Preacher Takes up the Origin of Religion
Cedar Rapids, IA, 1897
OF ITS ORIGIN
Rev. Pratt's Splendid Sermon at Universalist Church.
Takes up the Origin of Religion and Pleases a Large Audience of Former Parishioners and Old Friends by His Strong Philosophy — The Evening Service.
The services at the Universalist church yesterday morning were exceptionally interesting, the parishioners and old friends of Rev. Pratt assembling in large numbers of hear their former pastor. The church was beautifully and tastefully decorated with flowers and the greeting accorded the speaker was cordial and sincere. Rev. Pratt spoke extemporaneously for forty minutes, holding his audience attentively. The following is a brief synopsis of the address:
REV. PRATT'S SERMON.
"Where Did Religion Come From?" was the question considered by Mr. Pratt. Paul's words, "The spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God," was used as a text. There is a system of interpretation which limits the application of the text to those who are members of the visible church on earth; those who have accepted, "using the language common in the religious world," Christ and his salvation. They only have the witness of the spirit.
The same rule of interpretation is applied to that magnificent outburst of Paul wherein he speaks of the enduring nature of the Divine Love.
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
This it is said applies only to those who are members of the visible church. Nor can any others claim the promise or assurance "We know that if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens."
Did Paul mean to thus limit the divine love and that dearest of all hopes, the hope of immortality? One can hardly think it, when it is remembered that Paul was the apostle who gave to Christianity its universalistic trend, saving it from degenerating into a narrow Judaism which would surely have been its fate, had Peter's influence and spirit molded it and given to it a final form.
If the apostle did thus limit the divine love and the immortal hone we cannot follow him for we know that all men are children of a common father, and heirs of a glorious immortality.
Strike the religious history of the world where you will and you will find evidence of the religious sentiment.
The crude form and right of savage tribes, the temples now in ruins in the civilizations that greet us at the dawn of history, the mystic's dream, the Quakers' silent devotion, the worship and practical benevolence of the nineteenth century all declare that religion is an imperishable sentiment, and that man has ever had a dim realization of the relation he sustained to the eternal power that makes for righteousness.
Facts unmistakable unite to affirm that man has ever been a child of God and believing as we do that the aegis of his protective love is over all worlds it is the language of faith to declare that man will be forever a child of God and the object of his mercy.
Where did this universal religious sentiment come from? An answer quite commonly given the question would be something like this: "Religion is in the world." Religion is in the world because the church is in the world. Religion is in the world because there is a sacrificing priesthood ordained of heaven and the critics of Lyman Abbott would declare that religion is in the world because God has given us a revelation and confirmed it by such wonderful marvels as the swallowing of Jonah by the whale. We are told that we must believe that or we cannot believe the Old Testament. If we cannot accept the Old Testament we cannot accept the New. If we do not believe the New Testament we do not believe in Christ and if we cannot believe in Him we cannot believe in anything.
Upon the acceptance of Jonah's experience as literal history, Christ's law of love ultimately rests and religion stands on the divine foundations.
Foolishness can go no further. Lyman Abbott's critics seem to need some kindergarten lessons in common sense. Religion is not in the world because of the Bible, the church, or the priesthood. Say rather that these are in the world because man is a religious being and they are the outward expression of his religious nature and life.
Where did religion come from? Max Muller and his school would answer, "It was born in the nature myths so common in the childhood of the world." Man gave to nature's forces a personality, the nature myth became the hero myth, and in a later development was given a moral significance. Thus religion was born.
Where did religion come from? It was born, says Darwin and Lubbock, in superstition. It came with ancestor worship out of the belief of early tribes in ghosts and spirits. In this field you search will be rewarded if you seek to find where religion originated.
These theories are all inadequate. Religion is in the world because man is a child of God. It is the development of his spiritual nature.
Growth and change then are its law and method. Like all life, philosophy, and science it comes under the sway of the law of evolution. There is a fiction current in some organizations of Christendom that the church possesses a fixed theology. The only way to have a fixed theology is to deprive man of the power of thought. The century that makes the assertion of a fixed theology furnishes the refutation of the claim. Consider it only on the dogmatic side.
What a softening down of religious dogmas there has been in the past one hundred years. What has become of the good old doctrine of election? Oliver Wendell Holmes says that when he was a boy it was preached in New England that only one in two thousand were to be saved, and that a serious dispute arose in the town of Medford, which had at that time about 2,000 inhabitants, as to whether the deacon or the minister stood the best chance of receiving at last the favor of heaven.
The Calvinists seem to realize now that to ask men to enter upon the Christian life and be loyal to high ideals, when it is ordained from all eternity as a decree of high heaven that they shall go the other way, is as Father Taylor once said, "A good deal like inviting the gravestones home to dinner; it is impossible for them to come." Realizing this, Calvinism has quietly taken a position on Arminian or Methodist ground, and declares that "whosoever will may come." The change which has come over the spirit and dream of theology is evidenced by the changed nature of the hymns in modern worship. What lurid hymns our fathers sung:
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead;
What horrors seize the guilty soul
Upon the dying bed."
Or again:
"And are we sinners yet alive;
And do we yet rebel?
'Tis wondrous, 'Tis amazing grace,
That we are out of hell."
In the place of these lurid hymns of the olden time we sing:
"Yes for me, for me, he careth,
With a Father's tender care;
Yes with me, with me, he shareth,
Every burden, every fear."
Mr. Pratt then traced at length the development of religion through Animism, Polytheism, Monotheism, Cosmic Theism, to the final thought of the fatherhood of God, and asked the question whether it would pass away.
Evolution to him but established more firmly the fact of the imperishable nature of religion. Religion had nothing to fear from it, but it sounded the death knell of the old Latin theology.
It abolished the line that had been drawn between the natural and the supernatural, so that in this beautiful world we now had a vision of the "fullness of the Godhead bodily." The universe was not dirt. All matter was resolvable into force and will, and force and will are spiritual.
The final words were unity and love. "And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." He closed with relating an incident in the life of Gounod, the composer, which illustrated the noble unselfishness of the man, an unselfishness and kindness that made him even more worthy of admiration than his art. This love illustrated in his life and in all who mediate the divine love to humanity is the grandest, greatest thing in this world or any world. It is the power that holds society together and if all were obedient to its law, our earth would become more beautiful than that mythological Eden with which it is affirmed that man began his terrestrial journey. Love is the golden ladder by which man ascends the heavenly heights.
—The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, May 24, 1897, p. 5.
OF ITS ORIGIN
Rev. Pratt's Splendid Sermon at Universalist Church.
Takes up the Origin of Religion and Pleases a Large Audience of Former Parishioners and Old Friends by His Strong Philosophy — The Evening Service.
The services at the Universalist church yesterday morning were exceptionally interesting, the parishioners and old friends of Rev. Pratt assembling in large numbers of hear their former pastor. The church was beautifully and tastefully decorated with flowers and the greeting accorded the speaker was cordial and sincere. Rev. Pratt spoke extemporaneously for forty minutes, holding his audience attentively. The following is a brief synopsis of the address:
REV. PRATT'S SERMON.
"Where Did Religion Come From?" was the question considered by Mr. Pratt. Paul's words, "The spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God," was used as a text. There is a system of interpretation which limits the application of the text to those who are members of the visible church on earth; those who have accepted, "using the language common in the religious world," Christ and his salvation. They only have the witness of the spirit.
The same rule of interpretation is applied to that magnificent outburst of Paul wherein he speaks of the enduring nature of the Divine Love.
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
This it is said applies only to those who are members of the visible church. Nor can any others claim the promise or assurance "We know that if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens."
Did Paul mean to thus limit the divine love and that dearest of all hopes, the hope of immortality? One can hardly think it, when it is remembered that Paul was the apostle who gave to Christianity its universalistic trend, saving it from degenerating into a narrow Judaism which would surely have been its fate, had Peter's influence and spirit molded it and given to it a final form.
If the apostle did thus limit the divine love and the immortal hone we cannot follow him for we know that all men are children of a common father, and heirs of a glorious immortality.
Strike the religious history of the world where you will and you will find evidence of the religious sentiment.
The crude form and right of savage tribes, the temples now in ruins in the civilizations that greet us at the dawn of history, the mystic's dream, the Quakers' silent devotion, the worship and practical benevolence of the nineteenth century all declare that religion is an imperishable sentiment, and that man has ever had a dim realization of the relation he sustained to the eternal power that makes for righteousness.
Facts unmistakable unite to affirm that man has ever been a child of God and believing as we do that the aegis of his protective love is over all worlds it is the language of faith to declare that man will be forever a child of God and the object of his mercy.
Where did this universal religious sentiment come from? An answer quite commonly given the question would be something like this: "Religion is in the world." Religion is in the world because the church is in the world. Religion is in the world because there is a sacrificing priesthood ordained of heaven and the critics of Lyman Abbott would declare that religion is in the world because God has given us a revelation and confirmed it by such wonderful marvels as the swallowing of Jonah by the whale. We are told that we must believe that or we cannot believe the Old Testament. If we cannot accept the Old Testament we cannot accept the New. If we do not believe the New Testament we do not believe in Christ and if we cannot believe in Him we cannot believe in anything.
Upon the acceptance of Jonah's experience as literal history, Christ's law of love ultimately rests and religion stands on the divine foundations.
Foolishness can go no further. Lyman Abbott's critics seem to need some kindergarten lessons in common sense. Religion is not in the world because of the Bible, the church, or the priesthood. Say rather that these are in the world because man is a religious being and they are the outward expression of his religious nature and life.
Where did religion come from? Max Muller and his school would answer, "It was born in the nature myths so common in the childhood of the world." Man gave to nature's forces a personality, the nature myth became the hero myth, and in a later development was given a moral significance. Thus religion was born.
Where did religion come from? It was born, says Darwin and Lubbock, in superstition. It came with ancestor worship out of the belief of early tribes in ghosts and spirits. In this field you search will be rewarded if you seek to find where religion originated.
These theories are all inadequate. Religion is in the world because man is a child of God. It is the development of his spiritual nature.
Growth and change then are its law and method. Like all life, philosophy, and science it comes under the sway of the law of evolution. There is a fiction current in some organizations of Christendom that the church possesses a fixed theology. The only way to have a fixed theology is to deprive man of the power of thought. The century that makes the assertion of a fixed theology furnishes the refutation of the claim. Consider it only on the dogmatic side.
What a softening down of religious dogmas there has been in the past one hundred years. What has become of the good old doctrine of election? Oliver Wendell Holmes says that when he was a boy it was preached in New England that only one in two thousand were to be saved, and that a serious dispute arose in the town of Medford, which had at that time about 2,000 inhabitants, as to whether the deacon or the minister stood the best chance of receiving at last the favor of heaven.
The Calvinists seem to realize now that to ask men to enter upon the Christian life and be loyal to high ideals, when it is ordained from all eternity as a decree of high heaven that they shall go the other way, is as Father Taylor once said, "A good deal like inviting the gravestones home to dinner; it is impossible for them to come." Realizing this, Calvinism has quietly taken a position on Arminian or Methodist ground, and declares that "whosoever will may come." The change which has come over the spirit and dream of theology is evidenced by the changed nature of the hymns in modern worship. What lurid hymns our fathers sung:
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead;
What horrors seize the guilty soul
Upon the dying bed."
Or again:
"And are we sinners yet alive;
And do we yet rebel?
'Tis wondrous, 'Tis amazing grace,
That we are out of hell."
In the place of these lurid hymns of the olden time we sing:
"Yes for me, for me, he careth,
With a Father's tender care;
Yes with me, with me, he shareth,
Every burden, every fear."
Mr. Pratt then traced at length the development of religion through Animism, Polytheism, Monotheism, Cosmic Theism, to the final thought of the fatherhood of God, and asked the question whether it would pass away.
Evolution to him but established more firmly the fact of the imperishable nature of religion. Religion had nothing to fear from it, but it sounded the death knell of the old Latin theology.
It abolished the line that had been drawn between the natural and the supernatural, so that in this beautiful world we now had a vision of the "fullness of the Godhead bodily." The universe was not dirt. All matter was resolvable into force and will, and force and will are spiritual.
The final words were unity and love. "And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." He closed with relating an incident in the life of Gounod, the composer, which illustrated the noble unselfishness of the man, an unselfishness and kindness that made him even more worthy of admiration than his art. This love illustrated in his life and in all who mediate the divine love to humanity is the grandest, greatest thing in this world or any world. It is the power that holds society together and if all were obedient to its law, our earth would become more beautiful than that mythological Eden with which it is affirmed that man began his terrestrial journey. Love is the golden ladder by which man ascends the heavenly heights.
—The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, May 24, 1897, p. 5.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Flood the World with Great Affection
1895
With a Great Affection
He only is great of heart who floods the world with a great affection. He only is great of mind who stirs the world with great thoughts. He only is great of will who does something to shape the world to a great career, and he is greatest who does the most of all these things and does them best. — R. D. Hitchcock.
The Truth and Right
There has always been, and there always will be, the brave advancing minority, the world's hope, the invincible few — not a remnant, meaning something left over, but a leadership, keeping in the van of thought, bearing and daring for what they believe to be true and right. — John Learned.
With the Right
The broadest and most far sighted intellect is utterly unable to foresee the ultimate consequences of any great social change. Ask yourself on all occasions, if there be any element of right or wrong in the question before you. If so, take your part with the right, and trust God to see that it shall prove the expedient. — Wendell Phillips.
With a Great Affection
He only is great of heart who floods the world with a great affection. He only is great of mind who stirs the world with great thoughts. He only is great of will who does something to shape the world to a great career, and he is greatest who does the most of all these things and does them best. — R. D. Hitchcock.
The Truth and Right
There has always been, and there always will be, the brave advancing minority, the world's hope, the invincible few — not a remnant, meaning something left over, but a leadership, keeping in the van of thought, bearing and daring for what they believe to be true and right. — John Learned.
With the Right
The broadest and most far sighted intellect is utterly unable to foresee the ultimate consequences of any great social change. Ask yourself on all occasions, if there be any element of right or wrong in the question before you. If so, take your part with the right, and trust God to see that it shall prove the expedient. — Wendell Phillips.
Notes on Religion – Love Unites All Graces
1895
Other Anvils
The Standard: Love is like the diamond — pure, white. Other graces shine like the precious stones of nature, each with its own hue of brilliance; the diamond uniting all colors with one beautiful and simple white. Love, uniting all graces, is "the fulfilling of the law," the beauty of holiness, "the image of God."
Presbyterian Messenger: The atmosphere of a house is what makes it homelike. Every living creature has an atmosphere of his own. He can be as chilly and damp and disagreeable as a March wind; he can be as bright, cheerful and charming as a June morning; he can be as dark and impenetrable as a November fog, or as crisp and electric as a day in December.
New York Mail and Express: It has recently been announced that two eminent western clergymen have joined in an enterprise to organize dramatic companies with a view of preventing immoral dramas upon the stage, and thereby to encourage the drama as a moralizing factor in the education of the people at large. The experiment is shortly to be tested at the People's Institute in Chicago.
London Commonwealth: Hebrew is rapidly becoming a living language again. This is one of the singular facts of the age. In Jerusalem and throughout Palestine there is a remarkable resurrection of the language of Moses. The only papers published in Palestine are two weeklies, both in Hebrew. In 1893, a Jewish monthly was started for juvenile readers, and this also was in Hebrew. There are households where only Hebrew is spoken. Here we have a sign of the times. The Jews cannot die out while they keep their old language alive.
Other Anvils
The Standard: Love is like the diamond — pure, white. Other graces shine like the precious stones of nature, each with its own hue of brilliance; the diamond uniting all colors with one beautiful and simple white. Love, uniting all graces, is "the fulfilling of the law," the beauty of holiness, "the image of God."
Presbyterian Messenger: The atmosphere of a house is what makes it homelike. Every living creature has an atmosphere of his own. He can be as chilly and damp and disagreeable as a March wind; he can be as bright, cheerful and charming as a June morning; he can be as dark and impenetrable as a November fog, or as crisp and electric as a day in December.
New York Mail and Express: It has recently been announced that two eminent western clergymen have joined in an enterprise to organize dramatic companies with a view of preventing immoral dramas upon the stage, and thereby to encourage the drama as a moralizing factor in the education of the people at large. The experiment is shortly to be tested at the People's Institute in Chicago.
London Commonwealth: Hebrew is rapidly becoming a living language again. This is one of the singular facts of the age. In Jerusalem and throughout Palestine there is a remarkable resurrection of the language of Moses. The only papers published in Palestine are two weeklies, both in Hebrew. In 1893, a Jewish monthly was started for juvenile readers, and this also was in Hebrew. There are households where only Hebrew is spoken. Here we have a sign of the times. The Jews cannot die out while they keep their old language alive.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
