1925
Easter's Revelation Has Opened New Vistas
Natural Science Silent in the Presence of the Great Belief and Expectation
Easter brings completion to the sciences!
All the secular sciences conduct man as far as death, and there they stop. The door of the tomb is a wall, tall, strong and insurmountable by them. Geology, geography, astronomy, chemistry, physiology, biology and its other divisions bring us on, with an always increasing precision, to an understanding of life's functions and activities, up to that point. There they drop us, for beyond death natural science has not learned to travel. It has no formulae to express anything on the other side of the closed door of death.
And after much bruising of brain, and vain beating of hands against that obstacle, it confesses itself beaten, it has come to an impasse, it declares that because it cannot pass, that there is no passage, nothing beyond — the tomb is the end of all!
Either that, or it accepts the Easter miracle — as it must, if it will be fair towards evidence, towards historical revelation and towards theology, "the queen of all the sciences" — and acknowledges that Easter's revelation crowns all human knowledge, and opens before it new, endless vistas for exploration and future progress.
It would be a sorry conclusion to all science if it brought us only to an ending in the corruption, the annihilation of death. And an unsatisfactory ending! For the great majority of mankind never has, and never will believe that the closed tomb ends everything! Life here is too full of inequalities to make that just! The analogies in nature, which find no definite ending for anything else but life, help to prove it untrue! And justness and truth are the keystones upon which natural science builds up all its theories to arrive at ultimate fact.
Science, which is perhaps the projection of the ripest and best of humanity, needs Easter.
For Science cannot avert death! Men live to their threescore and ten, or beyond that for a few years of labor and sorrow, as they did in the Psalmist's days, before science had traveled very far along the roads of development. But since Easter rolled away the wall from the tomb, science may now claim to bring men onto the threshold of a new and glorified life, the resurrection life. The tomb is now but an episode in lives which were — always were — immortal.
Easter shows the tomb is open on the other side from us — open onto a new garden of Edenic soul life, the Paradise of God. And someday it is to open on our side also, and let those blessedly resting ones out into renewed bodily life, which cannot be bound between a birth and a death.
For one man actually, undeniably went through the tomb into that Paradise, and came back at Easter with an everlasting, undying body!
Just as the little crocus looks up stiff and straight, as a prophecy that all the temporarily dead bulbs and roots and seeds will arise in their own time.
Science teaches the imperishability of matter, and it is true logically endowed when, advancing a step, it teaches also the immortality of man.
Then there is but another step onward, to a grateful acknowledgment of the truth taught by the well attested fact of the Resurrection, that as He rose so shall all our dead also arise at the great Easter, which shall fulfill the promise of all the Springs!
It is the mission of the Church, which is His body here and now to complete the thus inspired teaching of the natural sciences, and show us that everyone who really desires so to do may spend eternity along with its King and Owner, after the last Easter has opened forever the tomb of death! — Montreal Family Herald.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Worry Causes Death
Illinois, 1916
Mrs. Marie C. Mueller, 43, wife or the Rev. E. L. Mueller, pastor of the German Evangelical church at Eight and Henry street, Alton, died of apoplexy yesterday at St. Joseph's hospital, in Alton. She had been suffering from a nervous breakdown which physicians thought was brought on by overwork in the church and by worry over the opposition of the members to her husband as pastor.
Three years ago, after her husband had been pastor of the church about five years, she received an anonymous letter telling her she was the cause of the members not liking the pastor. She is said to have worried constantly over that. Ten days ago the opposition to the pastor crystallized in a petition of thirteen members requesting his resignation. Before this petition was presented to the church the pastor handed in his resignation and it was voted on, the vote being 80 to 20 in favor of the pastor remaining.
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, Illinois, April 14, 1916, p. 2.
Mrs. Marie C. Mueller, 43, wife or the Rev. E. L. Mueller, pastor of the German Evangelical church at Eight and Henry street, Alton, died of apoplexy yesterday at St. Joseph's hospital, in Alton. She had been suffering from a nervous breakdown which physicians thought was brought on by overwork in the church and by worry over the opposition of the members to her husband as pastor.
Three years ago, after her husband had been pastor of the church about five years, she received an anonymous letter telling her she was the cause of the members not liking the pastor. She is said to have worried constantly over that. Ten days ago the opposition to the pastor crystallized in a petition of thirteen members requesting his resignation. Before this petition was presented to the church the pastor handed in his resignation and it was voted on, the vote being 80 to 20 in favor of the pastor remaining.
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, Illinois, April 14, 1916, p. 2.
Presbytery Questions
1916
New York, April 11. — The New York Presbytery is today on record 64 to 3 that the biblical story of the virgin birth of Christ and other Bible miracles are not to be accepted too literally.
The action was taken in accepting as ministers three graduates of the Union Theological Seminary, who both orally and in writing refused to affirm the virgin birth story and singly and jointly refused to acknowledge the raising of Lazarus from the dead or the narrative of Jonah and the whale.
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, IL, April 11, 1916, p. 7.
New York, April 11. — The New York Presbytery is today on record 64 to 3 that the biblical story of the virgin birth of Christ and other Bible miracles are not to be accepted too literally.
The action was taken in accepting as ministers three graduates of the Union Theological Seminary, who both orally and in writing refused to affirm the virgin birth story and singly and jointly refused to acknowledge the raising of Lazarus from the dead or the narrative of Jonah and the whale.
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, IL, April 11, 1916, p. 7.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Pastor Steals a Kiss
1916
For kissing the pretty daughter of a trustee of his congregation, Rev. J. Lewis Evans, pastor of the Congregational church of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, was ordered to resign "at once" by a resolution adopted at a meeting of the standing committee and the trustees. Miss Maude Jacobus, daughter of Edward J. Jacobus, a trustee, was not at the meeting.
The kissing incident is said to have occurred while Mr. Evans was moving his household goods into the parsonage. Miss Jacobus was carrying a framed picture upstairs. Mr. Evans, who is 55, was coming down. The stairway is narrow. They met in the middle and, in squeezing past, Miss Jacobus said the pastor threw his arms about her, hugged her tightly and kissed her "right on the lips."
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, IL, April 7, 1916, p. 2.
For kissing the pretty daughter of a trustee of his congregation, Rev. J. Lewis Evans, pastor of the Congregational church of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, was ordered to resign "at once" by a resolution adopted at a meeting of the standing committee and the trustees. Miss Maude Jacobus, daughter of Edward J. Jacobus, a trustee, was not at the meeting.
The kissing incident is said to have occurred while Mr. Evans was moving his household goods into the parsonage. Miss Jacobus was carrying a framed picture upstairs. Mr. Evans, who is 55, was coming down. The stairway is narrow. They met in the middle and, in squeezing past, Miss Jacobus said the pastor threw his arms about her, hugged her tightly and kissed her "right on the lips."
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, IL, April 7, 1916, p. 2.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Self-Surrender
1902
There will come to every manly man times in his life when he will see that there is something which is legitimately his, something which he has a right to, something which nobody can blame him if he takes and enjoys to the fullest, and yet something by whose voluntary and uncompelled surrender he can help his fellow man and aid the work of Christ and make the world better.
Then will come that man's trial. If he fails and cannot make the sacrifice, nobody will blame him; he will simply sink into the great multitude of honorable, respectable, self-indulgent people who take the comfortable things which everybody says they are entitled to, and live their easy life without a question. But if he is of better stuff, and makes the renunciation of comfort for a higher work, then he goes up and stands humbly, but really, with Jesus Christ.
He enters into the other range, that other sort of life where Jesus Christ lived. He is perfectly satisfied with that higher life. He does not envy, he does not grudge, the self-indulgent lives which he has left behind. He does not count up what he has lost; he does not ask whether he is happier or less happy than he would have been if he had kept what everybody said he had a right to keep. It is not a question of happiness with him at all, but gradually, without his seeking it, he finds that the soul of the happiness which he has left behind him is in him still. Like fountains of sweet water in the sea it rises up and keeps him a living soul. He has left the world's pleasures and its privileges only to draw nearer to its necessities, which are its real life.
So what he gave he keeps a thousand fold in this present time, and eternity is still before him, in the end everlasting life. — Phillips Brooks.
There will come to every manly man times in his life when he will see that there is something which is legitimately his, something which he has a right to, something which nobody can blame him if he takes and enjoys to the fullest, and yet something by whose voluntary and uncompelled surrender he can help his fellow man and aid the work of Christ and make the world better.
Then will come that man's trial. If he fails and cannot make the sacrifice, nobody will blame him; he will simply sink into the great multitude of honorable, respectable, self-indulgent people who take the comfortable things which everybody says they are entitled to, and live their easy life without a question. But if he is of better stuff, and makes the renunciation of comfort for a higher work, then he goes up and stands humbly, but really, with Jesus Christ.
He enters into the other range, that other sort of life where Jesus Christ lived. He is perfectly satisfied with that higher life. He does not envy, he does not grudge, the self-indulgent lives which he has left behind. He does not count up what he has lost; he does not ask whether he is happier or less happy than he would have been if he had kept what everybody said he had a right to keep. It is not a question of happiness with him at all, but gradually, without his seeking it, he finds that the soul of the happiness which he has left behind him is in him still. Like fountains of sweet water in the sea it rises up and keeps him a living soul. He has left the world's pleasures and its privileges only to draw nearer to its necessities, which are its real life.
So what he gave he keeps a thousand fold in this present time, and eternity is still before him, in the end everlasting life. — Phillips Brooks.
Sermons the Preacher's Deepest Thoughts
1902
"Almost no preacher to-day dwells exclusively upon sin, salvation and the relation of Christ to the sinner," says the Congregationalist, of Boston and Chicago. "Important as these themes are, other aspects of the mission of Christ in the world and of the purpose of Christianity are being brought to the front. We regard this as extremely desirable.
"Preaching is something more than the reiteration of traditional truths in conventional ecclesiastical language. A sermon is the embodiment of a man's deepest and most real thought, phrased in words which everybody can understand and addressed to the real needs of real people.
"Jesus Christ was a popular preacher. He employed parables and talked about the lilies and the clouds, the barrel of meal and the play of little children, and weighed carefully all His words with a view to making the truth which filled and flooded His own soul plain, winsome and powerful in the eyes of others."
"Almost no preacher to-day dwells exclusively upon sin, salvation and the relation of Christ to the sinner," says the Congregationalist, of Boston and Chicago. "Important as these themes are, other aspects of the mission of Christ in the world and of the purpose of Christianity are being brought to the front. We regard this as extremely desirable.
"Preaching is something more than the reiteration of traditional truths in conventional ecclesiastical language. A sermon is the embodiment of a man's deepest and most real thought, phrased in words which everybody can understand and addressed to the real needs of real people.
"Jesus Christ was a popular preacher. He employed parables and talked about the lilies and the clouds, the barrel of meal and the play of little children, and weighed carefully all His words with a view to making the truth which filled and flooded His own soul plain, winsome and powerful in the eyes of others."
Mother
1902
God gave us but one mother. Remember, she has borne for you that which no other human being has or can. Remember that in the natural course of events the grave will in a few years, at most, close over her, leaving you behind. Remember that, when she is gone, you will think of her faults and her failings with pitiful tenderness, and want to cover them from all human eyes. And remember, also, that the deepest sting which sorrow has for us is hidden in those soul-harrowing words. "If I only had!" or "had not!" It would be blessed to live, no matter what the provocation, so that, standing beside an open grave those words could have no sting for us. - Mrs. G. R. Alden.
God gave us but one mother. Remember, she has borne for you that which no other human being has or can. Remember that in the natural course of events the grave will in a few years, at most, close over her, leaving you behind. Remember that, when she is gone, you will think of her faults and her failings with pitiful tenderness, and want to cover them from all human eyes. And remember, also, that the deepest sting which sorrow has for us is hidden in those soul-harrowing words. "If I only had!" or "had not!" It would be blessed to live, no matter what the provocation, so that, standing beside an open grave those words could have no sting for us. - Mrs. G. R. Alden.
God's Mercy
1902
The more we fear crosses the more reason we have to think that we need them. Let us not be discouraged when the hand of God layeth heavy woes upon us. We ought to judge of the violence of our disease by the violence of the remedies which our spiritual physician prescribes for us. It is a great argument for our own wretchedness and of God's mercy that, notwithstanding the difficulty of our recovery He vouchsafes to undertake our cure. Let us, then, draw from our afflictions a source of love, of comfort and trust in God, saying with His apostle: "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." "Blessed are they that mourn, and sow in tears, because they shall reap with joy the harvest of eternal glory." — Fenelon.
The more we fear crosses the more reason we have to think that we need them. Let us not be discouraged when the hand of God layeth heavy woes upon us. We ought to judge of the violence of our disease by the violence of the remedies which our spiritual physician prescribes for us. It is a great argument for our own wretchedness and of God's mercy that, notwithstanding the difficulty of our recovery He vouchsafes to undertake our cure. Let us, then, draw from our afflictions a source of love, of comfort and trust in God, saying with His apostle: "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." "Blessed are they that mourn, and sow in tears, because they shall reap with joy the harvest of eternal glory." — Fenelon.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Talks on American Sunday
1902
Cardinal Gibbons Declares That the Rich Man Desecrates the Day by Newspaper Reading
In his sermon on the American Sunday at the cathedral at Baltimore, Cardinal Gibbons, among other things, said:
"It has been the boast of our country that in no nation of the world was the Christian Sabbath better respected than in the United States, but a close observer cannot fail to note the dangerous inroads that have been made on the Lord's day in this country during the last 30 years.
"The average business man of America is in a state of habitual feverish activity. He rushes through life at full steam. The one aim of his existence is to become rich. Money making is not the means, but the end, of his life. He increases his wealth, not so much for the love of it as from the fascination attached to the accumulation of a fortune.
"On Sunday mornings, as he is debarred from the conventionalities of life in going to his place of business, he seizes the morning paper and devours its contents of 20 or 30 pages, its news of stocks and bonds, or pleasures and amusements, of crime and scandal, until his whole being is saturated with this unhealthy diet. Like animals gorged with food, he spends the morning in a comatose condition."
—The Indiana Democrat, Indiana, PA, Nov. 26, 1902, p. 5.
Cardinal Gibbons Declares That the Rich Man Desecrates the Day by Newspaper Reading
In his sermon on the American Sunday at the cathedral at Baltimore, Cardinal Gibbons, among other things, said:
"It has been the boast of our country that in no nation of the world was the Christian Sabbath better respected than in the United States, but a close observer cannot fail to note the dangerous inroads that have been made on the Lord's day in this country during the last 30 years.
"The average business man of America is in a state of habitual feverish activity. He rushes through life at full steam. The one aim of his existence is to become rich. Money making is not the means, but the end, of his life. He increases his wealth, not so much for the love of it as from the fascination attached to the accumulation of a fortune.
"On Sunday mornings, as he is debarred from the conventionalities of life in going to his place of business, he seizes the morning paper and devours its contents of 20 or 30 pages, its news of stocks and bonds, or pleasures and amusements, of crime and scandal, until his whole being is saturated with this unhealthy diet. Like animals gorged with food, he spends the morning in a comatose condition."
—The Indiana Democrat, Indiana, PA, Nov. 26, 1902, p. 5.
A Turkey's Opinion
1902
"What dost thou think of drumsticks?"
I asked a barnyard bird.
He grinned a turkey grin, and then
He answered me this word:
"They're good to eat, they're good to beat,
But sure as I am living,
They're best to run away with
The week before Thanksgiving."
—Anna M. Pratt.
"What dost thou think of drumsticks?"
I asked a barnyard bird.
He grinned a turkey grin, and then
He answered me this word:
"They're good to eat, they're good to beat,
But sure as I am living,
They're best to run away with
The week before Thanksgiving."
—Anna M. Pratt.
A Thankful Note
1902
Let's be thankful that we're livin',
That the good God is forgivin',
That His heaven ain't far above us,
That His world has friends to love us;
That for all its sorrows — sighs,
Weary hearts and weeping eyes,
We can see bright suns arise
In the stormiest o' skies.
Human Vanity
Don't imitate the turkey's strut,
Because he has you beat.
You may be quite as handsome, but
You aren't good to eat.
Let's be thankful that we're livin',
That the good God is forgivin',
That His heaven ain't far above us,
That His world has friends to love us;
That for all its sorrows — sighs,
Weary hearts and weeping eyes,
We can see bright suns arise
In the stormiest o' skies.
Human Vanity
Don't imitate the turkey's strut,
Because he has you beat.
You may be quite as handsome, but
You aren't good to eat.
A World Beautiful
1902
Don't crowd your world with hate, anger, envy, regrets, fears, disorder, discord and disharmony. Every second brighten your world with love and joy and peace and hope, every minute expand your world by unfolding yourself. Every hour open your eyes wider to the grand and beautiful sights in your world; open your ears to the delightful and inspiring strains of divine music which comes of love, brotherhood, tenderness, kindness, gentleness, cheerfulness and contentment. Then from hour to hour, day by day, year by year your world will become more beautiful.
Don't crowd your world with hate, anger, envy, regrets, fears, disorder, discord and disharmony. Every second brighten your world with love and joy and peace and hope, every minute expand your world by unfolding yourself. Every hour open your eyes wider to the grand and beautiful sights in your world; open your ears to the delightful and inspiring strains of divine music which comes of love, brotherhood, tenderness, kindness, gentleness, cheerfulness and contentment. Then from hour to hour, day by day, year by year your world will become more beautiful.
The Way to the Cross
1902
None of us can tell for what God is educating us. We fret and murmur at the narrow sound and daily task of ordinary life, not realizing that it is only thus that we can be prepared for the high and holy office which awaits us. We must descend before we can ascend. We must take the way of the cross submissively and patiently if we would tread the way of light. We must endure the polishing if we would be shafts in the quiver of Emmanuel. God's will comes to thee and me in daily circumstances, in little things usually as in great; meet them bravely; be at your best always, though the occasion be one of the very least; dignify the smallest summons by the greatness of your response. — F. B. Meyer.
None of us can tell for what God is educating us. We fret and murmur at the narrow sound and daily task of ordinary life, not realizing that it is only thus that we can be prepared for the high and holy office which awaits us. We must descend before we can ascend. We must take the way of the cross submissively and patiently if we would tread the way of light. We must endure the polishing if we would be shafts in the quiver of Emmanuel. God's will comes to thee and me in daily circumstances, in little things usually as in great; meet them bravely; be at your best always, though the occasion be one of the very least; dignify the smallest summons by the greatness of your response. — F. B. Meyer.
Sitting Still
1902
To the best comes the time when their very good is evil spoken of. It takes goodness to understand goodness. The pure in heart see God, and only such can recognize the life of God when manifested in the saints. Few trials are more keen than the misrepresentation of goodness. An evil motive imputed to a saintly deed is as the sting of a serpent. The clouds of defamation lower at some time over every saintly heart. The life of the saint is hidden and cannot be understood by the worldling. "Sitting still" is the only possibility. Time exerts a remedial influence, and such remedy that it cannot exert the One to whom the saints are dead will. He will bring out our goodness as the light and our righteousness as the noonday. — Episcopal Recorder.
To the best comes the time when their very good is evil spoken of. It takes goodness to understand goodness. The pure in heart see God, and only such can recognize the life of God when manifested in the saints. Few trials are more keen than the misrepresentation of goodness. An evil motive imputed to a saintly deed is as the sting of a serpent. The clouds of defamation lower at some time over every saintly heart. The life of the saint is hidden and cannot be understood by the worldling. "Sitting still" is the only possibility. Time exerts a remedial influence, and such remedy that it cannot exert the One to whom the saints are dead will. He will bring out our goodness as the light and our righteousness as the noonday. — Episcopal Recorder.
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