OCR Text |
Show PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Christian View of Adversity Gives Hope and Work to Do. At St. Paul s Episcopal church Bishop Spalding prsacbed a sermon Sunday evening eve-ning from St Luke xvll . 1-2: "And he said unto his disciples. It Is Impossible but I hat occasions ol stumbling should come, but woe to him through whom they coma, it wan! well for him if a mju- Hlnno were hanged about hi neck and he were thrown Into the sea. rather than that he should cause one of these lltilo on.-s to stumble." "It Is not possible to take the optimistic optimis-tic view of life which men of the eighteenth eigh-teenth centurv took." said the speaker. Wo oannot (eel that 'what in. Is right;' nor that this is the best of all possible worlds ' Our world Is a larger world than theirs; the study of nature has revealed re-vealed the HXlStl nee of physical Suffering as a nece.sur part of evolution ana WO feel a new niC of responsibility. Nor do we feel tint wa CSS1 be pet-simlsts and declare that ths onlj mending Is In the ending. In our perplexity we ask y for the view of Jesus, and we find that ho Heats the question In a divinely unexpected unex-pected way 'Yes,' he says, 'there will always be causes of stumbling, but there is something so much worse than such troubles that they seem as nothing, namely, name-ly, to become a cause of stumbling yourself, your-self, a worthless, polutlvc thing, fit only to be thrown Into the sea.' "The moment this view Is presented tho moral question enters and with It a sense of personal responsibility to do the right thing, a feeling that there must be a power making for righteousness In thc world which -trengthens the man In his struggle to nv. ld moral defeat Then the. depressing feeling or the meanlnglessnesi of trouble civ. s nla.-e to a sens" of faith and tTUSl in God, who knOWS best, and I exp.ots each man to lo his part bravely. Hope comes bark not the old hope of having an easy life, but the new hope of developing atrODg character and with the feeling of thi difficulty of the struggle, amid the trials and temptations of life there comes a new ambition to remove the stumbling blocks from the lives of other men. Thus- the Christian view of adversity gives hop.- and work to do, and what earnest man wants more"" |