Part 25

Let us now ask of the application. That it means something to us when the Lord says about God's not forgetting one of the sparrows sold in the market-place of Jerusalem is a matter of course. What does it mean? The doctrine of God's providence is, we would thus consider it first, a stern and restraining truth. Consider for a moment,--there is nothing about you, or in you, or of you, but God knows and sees it all, the thoughts of your mind, the desires of your heart, the motives of your deeds. He spieth out all your ways, He understandeth your thoughts afar off. Yesterday, for example, He saw you when your eyes first opened to the light, and He traced your steps till they closed once more in sleep. You know what you did, and He also knows. You may have thought yourself unobserved, and some things there are which you should prefer to forget, wish that you could conceal them, ashamed or afraid to have them known. God does not forget, from Him you cannot conceal; all the while you are standing in the concentrated blaze of a light, brighter than the brightest sun, and eyes that see everything are reading you through and through. That is, as stated, a stern and awful truth. But let us not deceive ourselves concerning it. Let us remember that there is no privacy anywhere for us, though we may long for it, and many live as if they had it. Our follies and vanities, our erring steps, our ugly temper and evil disposition, every idle word that you spoke, every oath that has fallen from your lips, every vile action, every dollar you have wasted in luxury, folly, or withheld in miserly selfishness, every influence you have exerted, apt to lead a brother or sister astray,--God sees and knows them all. You are read like a book by the Reader of the lives of all men. Man, my beloved hearers, needs a check upon him, a hand to keep him straight. He has it in this belief. A person cannot go far wrong who believes that God sees and knows all. The sense of His nearness is a moral force, a thousandfold greater than any other that can be named. He that thinks thus of His God is ever putting to himself the question whether God approves what he is about at any given moment. That saves him; it acts as a constant check; it is a lantern to his feet, a light to his paths, a bridle to his lips. And God knows we all need to be so held in. That communities are defiled, that the social order is imperiled, that men are shocked at the growing ravages of sin, and souls are ruined one by one, we may trace these things to their sole cause, the losing sight of the fact that God's eye is on them always, and that they are accountable to Him for what they do. Let the doctrine of God's providence be generally rejected, and it is only a question of time till that comes to pass again which once occurred in the days of Noah, when God saw that the wickedness of man was great, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Here, then, is a truth which may be called the beginning of the moral law, the foundation of Christian ethics, the Alpha and Omega of Christian practice. The doctrine of God's providence is a stern and restraining doctrine.

But there is another side to the picture. To that shall we turn for the greatest comfort and peace that mortal man can know. "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" "Ye are," continues the Master, "of more value than many sparrows." If one of them cannot fall to the ground unnoticed by our Father, how much more in His thoughts, (that is the evident line of argumentation,) are we, His children, made in His likeness, redeemed by His own precious blood. What should there be for us each day and hour but loving, unwavering trust. It cannot fail to impress every reader of his Bible how it dwells continually upon this very point. Our Lord knew what a burdensome world this is, and how easily perplexed men are. He has sought in all possible manner and ways to bring home to us the truth we are considering. He has given us precious and numerous promises. "Trust in the Lord and do good," is one of them, "So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." Another is: "Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe." Still others: "My grace is sufficient for thee:" "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." These might be multiplied from the Scriptures by the score and hundred. And again He has sought to impress His divine providence upon us by numberless examples. There is, for instance, Noah. Noah trusted Him, and lo! when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floods rose, and millions of the ungodly sank into a watery grave, sheltered and shut in by God's protecting hand, the ancient saint outrode the deluge in safety, with his family. Elijah, alone yonder in the wilderness, in time of famine, trusted Him, and, behold, even the ravens, divinely bidden, came flying with bread to feed him. And so David, and Daniel, and Peter, and all of God's illustrious saints whose biography the Bible records, put their trust in His governing providence, and never were ashamed, and their experience has been the universal experience and testimony of all who have ever really put their faith in Him, and that applies as much to us as to them. Come what will, the true and trusting child of God feels secure. "Have we trials and temptations, is there trouble anywhere?" Is ghastly pestilence mowing down its victims? Is financial depression over all the land, labor unobtainable, wages low, and bread scarce? Has sickness prostrated one? Has death broken the family circle, and is the heart bleeding under bereavement? In the midst of it all the Christian sees the wise, loving, all-governing providence of God, the almighty and all-gracious hand of His own divine heavenly Father; and in this assurance, that God is thus in all that befalls him, his soul is filled with abiding calmness. There is nothing, amid it all, which is more calculated to banish our cares, to throw sunshine across life's path, to make us more content, than the belief that our God holds the reins of universal rule, and that all is controlled and guided by His wise and kind hand.

And this, to conclude, also gives a Christian strength and encouragement in his work. The thought that God is near us, the feeling that He is working with us, gives an impulse, a force which nothing else can impart. To rise in the morning with that sense of divine presence, that God sees all our endeavors, is to take up one's work with an entirely different mood than where that feeling is missing. Nor are we then easily discouraged; it gives us renewed inspiration, the courage required for long, steady, earnest work.

We have considered a glorious truth of Christian doctrine from the lips of Him who never exaggerated, never erred. Lay hold of it, believe it, not languidly, but as a power in your lives, and be happy in such belief. Amen.

EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.--_1 Tim. 6, 20._

Everything in this world is liable to be spoiled. There is nothing safe against the doings of corruption. The holiest things are often perverted, the richest flowers blasted in their bud. Man himself, as the Psalmist tells us, was made but a little lower than the angels, but his glory was soon tarnished, and he frequently sinks a little lower than the brute. There is none, though he appear as a veritable saint among men, who is beyond the reach of danger. And it is so also with religion.

Beautiful as is religion, and pure as it is, coming from the mind and bosom of God, it is liable to be spoiled in the hands and hearts of its professors. Such at least is the teaching of the text and the testimony of experience. Just like the crystal mountain stream in its course from the virgin spring down to the ocean gathers some of the unclean and filthy deposits of the shores it washes, so the waves of religion, in flowing through many lands and hearts, have taken up some of their noxious and poisonous ingredients; while purifying and refreshing the earth, the noble river contracts some of its corruptions. The Jews, for instance, had a pure religion, communicated to them by the patriarchs and prophets, but heathenish elements were continually mingling with it. Moloch and other hideous idols would now and then stand in the very presence of Jehovah's temple, and the priests of Baal oft took the place of the sons of Aaron. When Christ came, the Jewish religion was exceedingly tainted and corrupted with Gentileism and other defiling influences. The Christian religion in its turn has fared no better, starting out on the pure basis of its divine Master's directions; but it has been subject to the same influences. It was given to the world as a plain, simple system. But when kings and emperors began to take it into favor, magnificent outward ceremonies were instituted, privileged orders were appointed; bishops and other high authorities were set up, claiming extraordinary power, and at last what started as Christianity became little more than baptized heathenism. Masses, penances, and confessionals took the stead of Christ and His righteousness. In place of the old heathen gods were placed patron saints. Venus of the Greeks became Mary of the Christians. The true glory of the Church was gone, until God in His mercy turned back the tide to His own Revelation and Book, the Holy Bible. That was in the days of the Lutheran Reformation. But that did not settle matters; the soil of misguided religion and of man's perverted opinion has been defiling, and is still defiling, its pure and holy waters. It need not be. Christianity is as simple as simplicity can be, its teaching is as clear as is the sunlight in its noonday radiancy; but, of course, it must be guarded, protected against corruption on the part of man's delirious and sickly reason.

This is the caution St. Paul makes in our text to his beloved pupil Timothy, when he directs him: "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith." There are two classes of science falsely so called that have erred concerning the faith. The one is the worldly science, and the other the Christian Science, and concerning both classes I would ask for your most careful attention.

When speaking of science, it must be observed at the outset that true science and the Revelation of God are not at variance. How can they be? The Book of Nature and the Book of Religion have been written by one and the same Hand, and cannot contradict each other. What man by investigation can find out in nature cannot be of a character to make him doubt or deny the truthfulness of religion as laid down in the Bible. But this is what some of the men of supposed higher learning are doing. They look askance at religion. They shake their wise heads, and, putting on their eye-glasses, superciliously state that the Bible is not what people think it is. They are willing to admit that it is a book of much good history, a book of sublime poetry, a book of excellent moral precepts, a book which admirably describes human nature, a book from which all men may gather a great deal of practical wisdom and comforting promise, but many of its texts are spurious or faulty, it is not altogether up to date in their opinion. The geologist has bored into the earth, and found that the various compositions must make it much older than Moses seems to say. The astronomer has put his telescope into the heavens and finding our planet, the earth, the smallest among heavenly bodies, considers it too insignificant to be the object of all that divine concern the Bible speaks about. The anatomist has examined the skulls of dead men, and comparing the one with the other, questions whether they have all proceeded from one human pair. The natural historian has never found a race of snakes with power of speech, and so he puts down the account of the serpent in Eden as a myth. The people of the earth speak hundreds of languages, and hence it must be a mere dream that there was once a time when "the whole earth was of one language and one speech." Miracles, they say, are so contrary to the general experience of mankind that they must be rejected as falsehood and fiction, and thus might we continue to give the objections of these wiseacres, called scientists, who are looked up to with undisguised admiration by numbers. It would lead us too far, though nothing might afford us greater pleasure to examine these objections in their true light.--We will only ask, How do these wise people know what length of time it took the almighty God to form the various strata which compose the crust of the earth? How can they tell that this world of ours is too small to engage Jehovah so deeply for its welfare? How can they prove that the human race and language do not extend back to one common stock? How dare they deny the credibility of miracles in the face of the many wonders which are spread about them every day, and appear every season in their sight? What authority have they for their high-sounding, but hollow assertions? They think themselves wise, but in fact they are but babes in these matters, and those who follow them are their senseless dupes.

The truth is that with all the advances of knowledge which have so wonderfully marked the last three hundred years, searching heaven and earth and sea, knocking at every door and gathering wisdom from every source, there has not come to light one truth to contradict these holy records, or to require the relinquishment of one word in all the great volume of God. Only a few instances to prove what I state. It has been but a few years since Newton laid open the laws of gravitation, and yet the Scriptures spoke of the earth being hung "upon nothing," as if familiar with the whole subject, before human science had begun to form even the feeblest guesses in the case. Again, take the theory of wind currents, and of the circulation of the blood, why, read the 1st, 6th and 12th chapters of Ecclesiastes, and observe where Solomon describes it at least 2,500 years ago. And so in every case. You may lack understanding or research, you may fail to grasp its truth, by reason of its being too wonderful to you, but as far as being false and spurious, let no man dare to raise that charge against God's religion and Book. Our wisdom, at best, is only fragmentary, as St. Paul says, "We know only in part." No man, not even a scientist, is the personification of all wisdom, and ought not so consider himself. Let every man be a liar, but never accuse God's truthfulness. Avoid such, as St. Paul says in our text, as being profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called.

This, then, as much as worldly science is concerned, and now let us turn to the other species which calls itself Christian Science, but which is neither Christian nor Science,--not Christian, because it has erred from the faith, as our text puts it, and not a science, because, to quote our text again, it is falsely so called. It might be well to approach the matter more closely. In the first place, it must be noted that Christian Science is nothing new; it is, to be candid, a rehash of what is termed in Church History, Gnosticism. In the early Christian Church, about the year 200 after Christ, there arose certain heretics, Montanus and his prophetesses Maximilla and Priscilla, who advocated theories and things similar to those in our days advanced with so much zealousness by the late Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, the founder and high priestess of the Church of Christian Scientists. These heretical views referred to also found adherents in the early Church, so that the excellent Bishop Irenaeus, of Lyons, wrote a book against them called, "The Refutation of Christian Science falsely so called." Mrs. Eddy very deftly succeeded in bolstering up these ancient opinions, and launched them forth in the various editions of her book called "Science and Health, with a Key to the Scriptures." I have carefully gone over that book, and I confess I am overwhelmed with shame to think that any one who lays claim to Christianity or to well-balanced reason can earnestly believe such matter. To mention only a few of her doctrines:--The Bible says 1 John 5, 7: "There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." Mrs. Eddy says: "The theory of three persons in the Godhead reminds us of heathen gods." In other words, she stamps the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as heathenish. The Bible says, Rom. 5, 12: "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Mrs. Eddy calls this an "illusion," purely imaginary; there is no such thing as death. Naturally, then, in line with this, she also rejects Christ's redeeming us from sin, stating that the time is not distant when these common views about Christ's redemption will undergo a great change. In other words, while she mentions Christ's name with seemingly the greatest reverence in her book, she calls Him a fraud and deceiver, because the Bible tells us in just these words that Christ came to save His people from their sins, came to destroy the works of the devil, came to redeem them that were under the Law. But Mrs. Eddy spurns the existence of a personal devil, denies the existence of sin, and rejects redemption. Such passages as 1 John 1, 7: "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin," are "hideous" to her. Her entire system is nothing else than unchristian bosh. I say "unchristian" because, on closer investigation, there is not a single particle of Christian doctrine and belief that she does not openly or indirectly at least overthrow. It is true, she claims "faith in the Bible"; the title of her book is, "Science and Health, with a Key to the Scriptures," but it is a key that binds, but does not unlock. Her comment to the very first verse of the Scripture: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," is this: "This creation consists in the developing of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are grasped and reflected by the unending Spirit." That may be Mrs. Eddy's creation of the world, but it certainly was not the creation which the first chapter of Genesis tells us about.

But let us go on to the second chapter of the Bible. This does not suit Mrs. Eddy, as she expressly states it is diametrically opposed to scientific truth, and "inspired by falsehood and error," and in consequence she rejects the second chapter of Genesis entirely. We could go on at this rate, but enough has been shown to characterize Mrs. Eddy's "Key to the Scriptures." And alas! that men should be carried away with such barefaced craftiness and such thick-coated and consummate falsehood! Oh, may it teach us to love to study our Bible!

But there is still another phase of Christian Science of which we must speak, would we do it justice, and that is the healing phase. Mrs. Eddy claims that she has restored the sick and brought back the dying to life. "Science and Health" and our community have been repeatedly agitated by specimens of this healing ability. It is well known to every one that Christian Science in its treatment of disease starts from the fundamental theory that there is no sickness and disease, as it says in their text-book, "Science and Health": "You call it neuralgia; this is all delusion, imagination. You expose your body to a certain temperature, and your delusion says that you catch a cold or get catarrh. But such is not the case; it is only the effect of your imagination." The consequence of this fallacy is that no medical remedies are resorted to; in fact, to a Christian Scientist ignorance of medicine is bliss. Mrs. Eddy warns against a knowledge of medicine as a hindrance to learning her system.

Stopping here for a moment to show the unscripturalness of all this, I would but briefly call your attention to such passages as Is. 38 and 2 Kings 20, where we read: "And Isaiah, the prophet of the Lord, said to Hezekiah the King, Let them take a lump of figs and lay it for a plaster upon the boil, and he shall recover." Or, turning to an instance from the New Testament, St. Paul the Apostle writes in 1 Tim. 5, 23 to his afflicted pupil: "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities," thus suggesting a medicinal tonic or medicine. Our Lord approved of physicians when He said: "They that be whole," that is, healthy, "need not a physician," which evidently implies that the sick do need a physician, and we know from Col. 4, 14 that there was a physician among the first disciples of the Christian Church, and that was none other than the man who wrote the third and the fifth

## book in the New Testament, namely, St. Luke. It says in Col. 4, 14:

"Luke, the beloved physician, greets you." And moreover, when we read that in the days of His flesh the sick and the palsied and the lame, and those afflicted otherwise, came to Jesus and He healed them, does not Christian Science, denying that there is no sickness, no palsy, and no disease, brand our Lord as a liar and a fraud? God protect us from such abomination!