Article August 22, 1901 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Jane Addams, D. L. Moody, Leonard

But God wants the people to have the light. You are not asked to subscribe to a mere set of formulæ. Christianity is something eminently commonsense—something demanding reason on your part. There is a great deal of talk about Freethinkers, and I remember the time when, if you spoke of a man as a Freethinker, you simply condemned that man to annihilation, to utter destruction, to hell forever and ever. I am going to say that before a man can be a Christian he must be a Freethinker. It is not merely that you may think for yourself, but that you must think for yourself. It is impossible to conceive such an abnormality as a machine-made Christian—that is, if you have any common-sense about you. You cannot possibly understand, if you read your Bible, how a man can be made a Christian by machinery. Hundreds and thousands—ah, millions—of our fellow-men believe that strange and monstrous thing—that by virtue of certain words being said for you by another man you can be made an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ; that without knowing personally anything for yourself of these matters, but by simply taking, as the callow nestling takes its food from its mother's beak, what this man has thought out for you or professes to have thought out for you, you become a Christian. But that kind of Christianity does not work a bit, it is not one atom of comfort to you.

The Watchman.

The Gospels are full of instruction concerning the kingdom of God, or, as it is frequently called, the kingdom of heaven; and this instruction is of a very wide and allembracing nature, comprehending details of every description relating to that kingdom, thus enabling us to know what it is, and to prepare aright for entrance into it.

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