Show U a s INSPECTED AND PASSED if you are particular whether you eats eafe diseased meats see that the above alamp Is on the meat you purchase you tou can not afford to tiko any chances time has never nover verified the verdict of the church on this point not once not ono one of the men to whom it has biu applied the term has deserved it on the contrary if there have been in it human history any men man of faith at all those so called infidels belong in the first rank of any such list that could be made some of thorn them were ardent theistic stis others were heists deists none of them denied the existence of a god and even it they had done so that would not have made them infidels for infidelity Is not a matter of belief or opinion provided such belief or opinion Is honestly held hold infidelity belongs wholly to the world of morals and it Is in that realm that the crusade against the infidel must be undertaken der taken it it is to be successful no man can decide by act of will what he will believe or what he will not believe A mana mans will has nothing to do about making a thing reasonable or unreasonable no man has any tiny moral right to promise to accept any doctrine or teaching or plan of salvation nor has any many or body of men a moral right to ask for such acceptance cep tance the time will surely come when the immorality of such things will be universally red recognized zed but the frank acceptance of the ide idea a that infidelity is entirely a matter of morals moral involves the most radical change that is conceivable in the whole constitution and activity of the church and in the whole thought of religion conceiving religion as having baying to do with a certain plan of the universe a plan definitely and minutely determined before the dounda foundation tion of the world by a divine person conceiving of the bible aa as a revelation of that plan infallibly making known its details and its laws and conceiving of man as a fallen creature under the displeasure of an offended deity whose only hope of salvation lies in accepting the terms laid down in the bible you can see bee how everything should be made to hinge binge on a mana mans intellectual acceptance of the doctrines of the church or the tn teachings ch of the bible but when in the light of 0 science and reason we discover that no such cut and dried plan exists arid add that life everywhere and always must be what we make it not what some power outside of us arbitrarily decides it shall bo be regardless of our volition but what hat we the human race the social body say sav it shall be and in some degree what each individual in a condition of freedom chooses to make it when we make such a discovery as that we must see what an unspeakable radical change ia is impending the idea of an external authority over human life a moral or spiritual or intellectual authority apart from reason and will la Is an untenable idea the world cannot too soon discover that its destiny la Is in its own hands that it can decide what life shall be and that all the divinity there la to in the universe which the human mind can know and the human life utilize is within rather than without the circumference cum ference of humanity indeed there could not be a clearer manifestation of dod than in the exhibition of intelligence telli gence and moral purpose in the united action of men infidelity then Is a matter of morals moral s entirely so I 1 am not an infidel because I 1 disbelieve any proposition that is offered for acceptance if it I 1 am an infidel it Is because I 1 am untrue to my deepest and highest convictions vict ions it is because I 1 am unfaithful to something or somebody and if I 1 can be ibe unfaithful to any one it is because I 1 owe a duty to that one in other words infidelity implies moral relationship suppose there were a tl man in our city who was regular in his attendance upon religious services but who did not evince any sense of moral relationship lation ship or obligation in bis his daily dealings with other ot hermen men in the world of industry had no thought or care for his consequences of this or that industrial process or business act to other men and women such a man Is not an infidel according to the com coar mon definition of the church on the contrary it if he seems deeply interested in jn religious affairs if he devotes time in so called religious activities I 1 if f ho he gives liberally to religious work he is counted a man of faith and his example Is commended to the emulation of the world but is he a man of faith Is there anything he can do under the roof of a church building or within the lecog religious activities of our churches which is conclusive on that point Is there anything he can do or anything he can say under the roof of a church building which expresses the fact of his moral relationship to other men Is it not rather out yonder on the street in the shop or factory in buying and selling in all the fabric of his commercial life yes and in the clothes he wears and me food he eats and in all that his hands bands handle that he is consciously or unconsciously expressing some kind of moral relationship to his fellow beings Is it not in these so called secular employments that men and women must inevitably find the very acry texture of their moral life Is it not liere litre of all places that they prove their infidelity or their faith here is a truth which has not thus tar far found much expression in the re 1 ligion which church and creed and doctrine have symbolized the truth that w we are social beings members one of another members of one universal brotherhood by a law that Is as deep as the roots of our moral life as deep and firm and abiding as goil god himself and band wo we cannot disown or violate that relationship that fact facts that truth without infidelity it must be evident to the densest mind that we can never be conscious of our brotherhood one tor for another upon a basis of theological agreement all attempts to realize brotherhood or in other words to acknowledge ledge our innate innate ma moral ral relationship on the basis bails of a common creed a common interpretation of the mystery of existence a common accept acceptance anco ot of some external authority are futile men alen c can an never como come to any such common belief they can never think alike to say they do is to make themselves hypocrites they can never nevor agree on any external authority about nothing have men fought more bitterly or hated one another more deeply and wrathfully wrath tully than about god brotherhood does not lie that way it la is in an unexpected direction that men are beginning to look for the demi dem and realization of human brotherhood for the fulfillment of religion reat roat no where is th that at truth of life being so wonderfully and clearly disclosed as in industrial evolution the man who can today witness the solidarity of labor I 1 mean the fact that all the production of the world its whole industrial machinery is being run by the operative cooperative co action of the whole body of laborers the tho man who can witness this fundamental necessity of cooperation among producers the world over in order to supply the commonest needs of life and not know that brotherhood is the deepest and di dl venest fact of human life materially morally spiritually is blind to one of the most luminous and benefi clent truths that man can know it Is the fact that a mans supreme moral relationship Is to his fellow man not just to the man who lives next door ajor npr to the man who occupies the next pew nor to the people of the same political division of the earth propinquity la 19 not the basis of relationship neither are nations or governments the natural or moral partnerships of men A nation or a government sometimes stands for a falsehood it is for ojo thing the assertion that there is or may be an essential conflict of interest between the people of one ont nation and the people of another As a matter of fact there never was any such conflict of i interest it sometimes happens that the men of one nation engage in killing the men of another nation Is it because the soldiers of one nation have any reason as men to hate the soldiers of the other nation certainly not they do not know one another they kill one another r z without mercy they display the most fiendish passions of which human nature lg Is capable surpassing anything to be found in tho annals of private murder merely because they belong belano to two arbitrary political divisions and because a very few men in these arbitrary political divisions will profit in a material way arom from such wholesale murder the real partnership of men lies deeper than anything a nation or a government has ever yet stood tor for we are partners in producing things which go to make up our life and the simplest of these are our material necessities and luxuries we are partners in the creation of wealth which in its real meaning signifies welfare and our moral relationship must necessarily essa rily concern these material things it is here that our faith or our infidelity has had its beginning there is the place where a beginning must be made to eradicate infidelity and learn the lesson of faith itar it s in the texture of this social and industrial relationship that we are faithful or unfaithful to one another and it Is for thise reason teason that the whole problem or production and distribution is so essentially and vitally a moral problem it ought not to be difficult to see that it if this material product of the worlds vast partnership of producers is inequitably distributed so that those who labor long hours in close factories to produce the various forms of wealth are forced to go without the necessities of life there is certainly infidelity somewhere there may be no individual malice or wrong intent there is very little it if any but there Is at least failure in carrying out the manifestly just conditions of such a partnership and the result Is that hatred springs up and grows between man and man why Is it that men of the same nation sometimes show a hatred or hostility toward each other as deadly aa as that which manifests itself between the soldiers of different nations on the battle field la Is it because as men they have reason to hate each other or is it not as in the case of two hostile nations that an unnatural and untrue arbitrary di division viston exists which i declares that the interests of these two classes of men are not identical two truths stand out clearly before our minds today the first one is this you and I 1 possess the power of thinking and feeling we reason we admire we love we aspire we worship that la Is the phase of ofir our life which shades off so 80 wonderfully into the ini infinite finite and eternal it Is herein thought feeling chopo aspiration lovo vision that we ve are most deeply con of the Ina immeasurable measurable possible ties of the human soul here no fetters can be placed upon ua us without gravest injury here we mastbe must be freo free it if we are to live at all we cannot think feel hope aspire or love at the beck beck or command of any power human or divine I 1 cannot say I 1 will think as you think or feel afi as you feel or hope as you hope or oi love as you lovo love no matter bow how deeply you may desire that I 1 think as you think that desire cannot affect my thinking but that is not all of life for be sides thinking and feeling and aspiring and loving and the rest wo we must work we must produce the things that are necessary to the maintenance of life we ve must cat and drink and sleep and live we have bodies as well as minds and there Is between that which Is divi in our nature and all material things a vital and necessary relationship so far as this tills earthly life is I 1 concerned the life of the body Is the pedestal upon which rises the nobler structure of the soul the moment we touch material things the moment wo we attempt to produce things thin gr the moment we begin to give a material form to the imaginations or dreams of our souls that moment we come into vital moral relationship with our fellow men I 1 that moment we assume consciously and unconsciously a moral response clity tor for the well being of our fellows fel I 1 for wo we cannot give any sort of material expression today to any impulse or thought of our minds without laying our fellows under necessity of aiding us I 1 may think or admire or hope or love and in the process I 1 may in no tangible or perceptible way touch or affect or hinder the life of a single other human being but the moment I 1 attempt to put these spiritual impulses into some material materia 1 form the whole situation is changed and the change Is if you will think of it the one supremely godlike change our life can know one of the new tea tes cament writers has said that tha god Is love when he said that he was not thinking of ah infinite abstraction that inhabits eternity such a being cannot be called love he was thinking of one who manifests himself in time and life a being who has relations with men A god can have any moral meaning at all only as he be comes into relationship with men I 1 in like manner it Is only when a man brings his thinking or his aspiration or whatever else marks his personal soul life into contact with material things into social relationship that the diviness div inest possibilities of his life have opportunity to emerge god can have moral quality only billy in relationship with others beside himself and the same is true of men they are moral beings only in the process of their material relationships the one thing to vach ch our thinking this evening has brought bought us inthis in this that the life of unfaith or infidelity is the lifee and the life of faith Is the brotherly life here is the problem which the church of the twentieth century need sn 0 st seriously to consider here la Is its opportunity and it cannot find a bolfer hol r one its problem Is to establish estable rot herly relations between man and ma man rand and that Is its opportunity the qu es alon with which it Is its duty to lives of men and women is not the old question do you bell believe eveV but the new and vital question of a living faith are you a brother and is your relationship to your fellow men a brotherly rot herly relationship we are members of a coope co ope dative world it id i not a matter of choice any more than our coming coining into this world is it is a tact fact which we cannot escape and all the morality and all the faith we have or can have depends upon our adjustment to this our moral environment itching bleeding pio protruding or blind piles yield to doans ointment chronic cases soon relieved finally cured druggists all sell it 11 |