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Show ATTACKS ORTHODOX BEUB10US TOME Rev. William T. Brown Says It Creates Dream of an Imaginary World. "The Moral Significance of Jesus to Orthodoxy and to Llberaliam" was the theme of thn .sermon delivered Sunday morning I3y the Hev. William Thurston Brown, at the Unitarian church. The' sermon was thorough in the discussion of tho theme and was listened to with Intense In-tense intuitiut by th large assemblage of the niembern of the church in attendance. attend-ance. "It is no misrepresentation, but a mere Mtatemen of fact which anyone can verify veri-fy for himself, thai orthodox religious teaching is obliged to create In the minds of men and women Die fiction, ihe dream. ! of an Imaginary world -n world which In their daily life they know nothing about before It can make them converts to its faith. It cannot and does not take j human life as it finds It and chow right j there the roo(K of religion and the germs of faith. It does not build upon the foundation of the world which all men 1 can se and know. J "It Is the imaginary world of Christian theology. It declares that a perponnl I God at a definite tlni' created tho world. miKli as a man builds a hous. Tlilr. i God makes man at tho very beginning v. i th all the powers of mind and body he ! nnvv possesses. Man sins and is thence- j frvrth ii doomed creature. To be sure, he , didn't ask to be created. He had no j nore seiitf or me icarriii lssue-j oi ins , llff than a new-born btibo. God didn't , foresee what man was going to dn and the whole thing seems likely to pi-ove ; i failure. So be arrange to have his opIi f-n make good tho Father's mis- ! take fhnt Son shall icnve heaven, take j upon himself the form of man. live a simulated life among men. seeming to be , wha' he is not. and finally suffer the very limit of sbartie end indignity and then, i as many as shall be willing to accept i this sacrifice for their slue shall be 1 saed thai is. shall go to heaven when i j they die mid be hnpfiy ever after Th" I ! whole Iden and conception of the death I I of lesus as acriflcitil In tin survival of an age when men slaughtered wholo flocks of sheep and goats and bullocks, and even tlielr own first-born children, to expiate the supposed wrath of a power whlfh they had never seen a creation of their own ignorance and fear. "It is perfectly Idle for men today to suppose tliev can ever enter the comradeship com-radeship of .lesus. can ever become really acquainted with him. by the fiction of making him tlielr savior cither from sin Iitc or loss hereafter, or even by seeking seek-ing to Imitate his example. "But If the lifo of Jesus was a beautiful beauti-ful or noble tiling, as the world regards ir. It Is Impossible to escape the feeling-that feeling-that it was an unspeakable misfortune fnr any life in his day to miss the Joy of such a fulfilment; for any lift- to bej unresponsive to tho same realllie?. un-thrlllod un-thrlllod by the same hopes and visions, unhallowed by the same heroic endeavor. And Is it not. the monum Vital hypocrisy of t lie Christian church, which claims Jesus as Its head, that It Is nol here In the twentieth century leading men Into their religious fulfillment: that it is utterly unconscious of any tasks comparable com-parable to that which created the soul of Jesus, blind to any such vision a he had? "We give pensions and plaudits to the men who received bodily Injury In some stupid, needless war some war which was itself the result of cowardice and immoralllv of the founders of the nation na-tion We build costly monuments to perpetuate per-petuate the memory of those who died in these wars. We. elevnte its leaders to the rank of heroes and as really worship them as the Greeks did the dwellers In their Pantheon. But these men and women and children whom we sacrifice In this development of the country's resources re-sources more of them In a slngl" year than In four years of civil war with bullets bul-lets and bombs and bayonets and dls-eaSfn dls-eaSfn order that we may have our Newports. our Atlantic City's, our stock exchanges our Sklbo Castles, our Fifth avenues and our slums, and all the wanton wan-ton luxurv of our day. which everywhere is a symptom of disease and everywhere corrupts and undermines character: for these men and women and children, these martvrs of our heartless greed, im memorial me-morial days, no pensions, no flowers, no care, no praise. They die as the fool dieth. Tliev die as the other beasts of burden die." even as they lived as the other beasts of burden lived. And yet. thore are millions of people., outside of Insane asylums, who Imagine we can have anvthir.g worthy to be called religion alongside of the morally aimless, degrading degrad-ing materialism!" |
