Article March 20, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Jacob Merrifield, James Martineau, W. A. Nichols, G. E. Martin, Phillips Brooks, Thomas A Kempis, H. W. Beecher, Bishop Galloway, R. A. Torrey, Kate W. Hamilton, Tenney

Christianity does not authorize us to promise an external heaven to any soul as the reward of virtuous experience here. It does not sanction any manipulation of its claims on the love and service of mankind which involves this idea of a reward for that service outside of what it brings itself to the soul. It would deepen in a man a love of righteousness not by any gift or promise outside itself, but by the inestimable benefits it confers on every sincere follower. The penalty which accompanies it, in like manner, is not suffering in a hell of external torment hereafter, but in the darkened condition and moral suffering of a soul that refuses its highest good. These are the motives and inspirations which hold chief sway in the Gospel, and on which must be based the appeal for personal righteousness to prove of the highest avail in the conversion of sinners—not "the hope of heaven and the threat of hell." Until these obtain recognition as principles of the Gospel and are taught as such, and the religious appeal based upon them accordingly, one of the important elements in true religious progress will be necessarily absent.

The Universalist Leader.

Moral triumphs result mainly from obscure battles fought in silence and in the dark,—the great battles of discipline, patience, love, and self-suppression and control, by which the pit is finally avoided, or at least filled up. They are held in the closed arena of the soul, where we struggle not with dragons or giants, but with worse foes,—the primal tendencies and instincts of our own nature. No one conquest, however great, will lay the old enemy within us. Again and again we may leave him for dead on the battlefield; and presently there he is alive and alert, watching to trip us in his lair.

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