Article May 31, 1900 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Isaac Penington, John Wesley

The need of a more universal adoption of the actual Christ-like living is being urged on all sides. On this subject the Universalist Leader says: "What if all Christians of every name were suddenly to begin to believe the Gospel, that the angels sung the truth in their Bethlehem-song, and should all go forth to re-echo that song in the ears of the world. instead of going forth to hunt for men and things to find fault with? What if all Christians should suddenly be possessed of the spirit of Christ, and start out to minister and not to be ministered unto, and should seek for opportunities to do good instead of seeking for a chance to get? What if all Christians were really to be the children of our Heavenly Father and partake of His nature and grow into His likeness and do unto others as they expect God to do unto them? Well, why not? It is a strange thing that men do not do that which will not only make others happy, but give to them the sweetest joy ever known. Why can we not be Christian as well as to think Christian and talk Christian? Some day we shall all come to ourselves and rise up and go unto Our Father."

The New church Life published a sermon by Rev. J. E. Bowers recently from which we take the following: "It is quite evident that if those who have occupied the position of preachers of the gospel during several centuries past, had taught according to the gospel, as given in the New Testament; if they had taught the people the necessity and importance of keeping the commandments of God, as given in the Word, instead of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, the doctrine of substitution and vicarious atonement, as based on the erroneous idea of the tripersonality of God; if they had been good shepherds, according to the admonition to feed the lambs and to feed the sheep,—the world of mankind would be in a vastly different state from that in which it is at the present time."

Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, the Brooklyn preacher whose outspoken criticism of the Presbyterian creed recently started the movement for a restatement of faith for that denomination, said in a sermon published in the Homiletic Review: "God means man to be the sole proprietor of himself. It was never intended that he should not know what his occupations or plans should be until circumstances came together and made up their decisions. A thousand times better be a slave for the meanest man than become the slave for dead circumstances."

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