Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 222, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1910 — The Pulpit’s Message for Today [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Pulpit’s Message for Today

seeded message for any day will be unwelcome; beX mIL % cause It will necessarily be uncompromisingly hostile " >,v il sa to and destructive ©f most " widely cherished and fatal errors. Those who profit by the propagation of those errors will appeal to every popular superstition'and passion against the truth which threats eus their destruction. But few will (endure patiently the sound teaching In the matters concerned. The .needed message for any day will be unwelcome, because it will condemn sinful aud degrading Indulgences, and seek to divorce men from them. Just In the measure that widespread errors ar® fatal, and their Influence degrading, will the message of the reformer be needed, and while men are human the need of and desire for It I*lll vary Inversely. Paul’s adjuration to Timothy to “preach the word” was chiefly prompted by the fact that It jWas distasteful to the hearers of that day, and the young preacher might prefer to speak smooth things. As in the case of spoiled children, of dyspeptics, of pleasure-seekers, of mischiefmakers, of wrong-doers and wrongthinkers of every sort, what they most needed they least wanted. He who has a message worth while will need to pray for courage that he may open his mouth boldly and speak as he ought to speak. The Real Message. The pulpit message for all days, “even unto the end of the world," is the gospel of Christ, “for It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that belleveth.” "To every one”— ja personal message of salvation to (every man that has lived or ever shall (live till “the end of the world.” The |man steeped In and stupefied by sensual indulgence Is prone to be oblivi'ous to his need of salvation, and to jreßent any effective measures for attaining It, but (and this fact will suggest where the emphasis should be I put upon the "pulpit message for to--day”) the man steeped ln and spiritually stupefied by Intellectual Indulgence is apt to be. even more oblivious [to his need of the salvation offered In the gospel. The carnal mind Is not only enmity against God, but against man. While Its servants are not so (offensive and pitiable as the slaves of carnal appetite, they work more social ruin In our day. Philosophic cynicism, intellectual pride and avaricious cunning are robbing this generation of Its best ideals, of Its faith In God the father, and of Its “Inalienable right to life, liberty and the ■pursuit of happiness." Carey called the attention of the camp of God’s spiritual Israel to the long-neglected marching orders of the captain of the world’s salvation. He and a few heroes of his kind gave Protestant Christendom the pulpit message for the last half of the nineteenth century—the message of foreign missions. Are there not Indications at .present that the heat of controversy and zeal of advocacy have caused to be magnified to the neglect of some other things of vital, perhaps equal, importance? Has not the zeal of some of its propagandists become so little according to knowledge that they are ready to make the observance of Christ’s other explicit orders, and even the question of his deity, subordinate to the furthering of missions? Are there not those who In their zeal to go and teach all nations, are ready to modify, and compromise upon, what Christ commanded to be taught? The special message for any day, in science, In politics, in religion, is in danger of becoming like the farmer’s mettlesome horse /hose “natural gait was running away.” Essential Teachings.

As already Intimated, the “pulpit message for today”—the essential teaching of the Scriptures which needs special emphasis and repetition. Is that concerning the deity of JeSus Christ, his superhuman origin and divine, superhuman, miraculous power. In our day the carnal mind, self-con-scious intellectuality, denies and derides this teaching, in the name of science. It Is a strange sort of “science” which bases a dogma not upon what It knows, but upon what it does not know. It makes In effect the absurd declaration that there can be no truth which cannot be discovered and demonstrated by the human mind by physical means. Whatever it, by search, with physical senses and appliances, cannot find out, or verify, t» non-existent It la strange that not a few of those who profess to be ministers of the gospel have taken a leaf, many leaves, and even whole chapiters, from this non-sclentiflc, agnostlo teaching.

Logically enough this agnostic cult, based upon a denial of all things iwhlch so transcend human experience as to depend upon revelation, flourishes most In our great educational centers, and hurtfully affects many ministerial students who are subjectltd to its influence—thoee having most Intellectual vanity being notoriously most susceptible. While the chief priests ot this "modem” cult talk Charmingly of “divinity” and “spirituality,” there Is nothing more of either of them in it than there was In the paganism which expressed Itself la exquisite Greek architecture and statuary.—Christian Standartj. Never is happiness more clear thaa when founded on clean-beartedness.