Show MAN MADE DEITIES The Sermon of the Rev Mr Carroll Delivered at the M E Church on Sunday He Chooses For His Text Canst Thou I by Searching Find Ont God And The World by Wisdom Knew Not God An Interested Audience On Sunday last the Rev Mr Carroll preached to a deeply interested audience on the subject of U ManMade Deities choosing for his texts Job 117 Canst I Thou by Searching Find Out God 1 and 1 Cor 121 The World by Wisdom Knew Not God The speaker said that the intellectua achievements of the past decade have been so great that intellectual pride had resulted and many men arrogated to themselves powers and capacities above the ability of man He would not yield to any one in admiration of the wonderful wonder-ful intellectual conquests that man had made in the domain of nature He had accomplished so many seemingly seem-ingly impossible results that we begin to admit his ability almost to do impossible thing We certainly may find enough to admire ad-mire in him without attributing to him power that he does not possess and never will possess while mortal Afnna intellectual nq troll fil liis physical capacities are limited There arc splendid fields that he may enter and win profitable success there are others where his efforts will meet with inevita ble and often alas disastrous defeat Some will assume to decide by their own unaided judgment that this or that portion of the Bible is to be accepted as true or rejected as false thus claiming superior wisdom to the inspired author i of this incomparable book Some con fess that the Bible is superior to any other books but affirm that God did not inspire its writing thus 1 deciding what God would or would not inspire His servants ser-vants to write having found out the Almighty Al-mighty to perfection How modest Others that Christ is not Divine bo cause they cannot understand how Deity and humanity can be united in one being Of course they cannot understand under-stand how out of the black slime of the pool nature produces the lily but this is beneath their high abilities nothing loan than Infinite problems are worthy of their genius We do not condemn free independent thought only those who think are men But let the thinkers remember the errors of the ages and be modest and let not men who are not even acquainted i with the rudiments of history decide what Christ has done for humanity Men have been perpetually engaged in formulating conceptions of Deity when I a moments consideration should teach us that if God is Infinite a finite mind cannot comprehend Him though he may be made aware of His existence He is so far above us as to be our Creator Can anything that man can create understand or comprehend man 1 Some discovering design in nature and the existence of a systematic order have thought to construct therefrom the idea of Deity Thinking in their foolish pride of intellect from Gods half obliterated obliter-ated footprints in the clay of nature to develop the idea of Deity as easily as from footprints in the rocks geologists reconstruct the monsters of the pre Adamic world One investigator tells us all things are fortuitous they occur by chance Another that all things are regulated by fixed and fated laws that Nature in the language of one acts with fearful uniformity Stern as fate absolute as tyranny merciless as death Too vast to praise too inexplicable to worship too inexorable to propitiate It has no ear for prayer no heart for sympathy no arm to save Of those who seek a conception of God from the remains of the lost image of God in the soul some conclude there is no God others in the language of Schel ling that The souls of men are but the innumerable individual eyes with which tile Infinite would spirit behold himself The nature of the question and the in abilitY t man have rendered all SIIPh enoits fail ures The sadness of so many wrecks and ruins should warn us to avoid their folly and seek knowledge of God through His appointed way The speaker said I call your attention to the results of investiga tion by great minds unaided by the Word I Greece has taught all the rest of the i world in some department of th inking even in the Iflth Century Hear the Greeks say what is God The speaker here showed that men may create intellectual idols as well as idols of marble and bronze and gold He described somewhat at length the Greek conceptions of Deity given here only in 1 word Thales said that water was the univei sal and highest principle Another after him denied this conclusion and affirmed that air was the supreme principle Pythagoras said that it was number Number one was Deity number three righteousness Heraclitus that fire was the eternal and supreme But the Materialists Concluded that fire air earth and water were together primi tive and supreme The Stoics that God was the soul of the world and the world the body of God In this the Brahmin and Greek agree All things come out of and go back to Brahm the absolute The speculators in this domain who have had the Bible and discarded it have hardly improved upon the conclusions of I he old pagans Spinoza said the absolute is all things reduces all things absorbs all things Comte said that knowledge of the jhenomena of nature was mans hilhest I wisdom and man himself the highest deity and ended his speculations bv calling upon Frenchmen to worship a woman of questionable reputation America has had few original specula tors in this field but she has had imita toes of every school Parker Frothingham and Potter follow the Germans and Emerson with some originality and much poetic genius does the same It has been left for the people called j Mormon to originate a conception of God I Christian in name but pagan in fact a I I huge passionate brutal polygamist who has no mercy for women and counts II I children as the farmer does his cabbages I The Mormon God is hardly more like the I Christians God than Moloch was like Jehovah Unaided reason and pretended revela ions have both wrought the ruin of myriads of souls and with the examples of the ages before us let all take warn j i > njr i njrReason Reason alone is like one wing to the SOUlFaith Faith and reason are the two angels of i the soul i Faith without reason is fanaticism and reason without faith is blind and helpless I Let faith and reason like two angels on either side of the seeking soul conduct if I o to the temple door of Revelation Aye across the threshhold until like the sick of the palsy he is present before the Lord of life Let him linger there until Christ speaks into the heavy ear touches the blind spiritual eyes and the leprous heart and says thy sins be forgiven theeand he hears the voice of the Infinite In-finite Maker the melody of life in the soul 1 linger until the Holy Spirit comes in to abide and then the soul is a blind misguided disappointed seeker no longer but the newfound spiritual vision sees Gods finger prints on every field of nature and hears his voice in every activity of the Universe and every epoch of human history He may follow now the sceptical geologist geolo-gist down into the secrets and mysteries of the words history and structureand when his guide sees nothing but the activities of force and behold with wonder how God has built his world home strata above strata story above scory each with rich deposits of vegetable and animal growth transmuted by His wondrous alchemy as the ages have rolled on into choicest treasure for mans use while here and there with a full hand He has sown the strata the secret places of this treasurehouse with silver gold and wondrous jewels and given man the key to unlock and possess Then turnnig his gaze upward see in wider fields displayed the wondrous architecture of God and not like the shorter visionetl ancients think of Jehohah as riding on the storm with His cloudy chariot but as sweeping across the universe on a gleaming pathway path-way of starry worlds and the vast expanses ex-panses of suns and systems Psalming the wisdom power and glory of God while about you on every side in the minutest lowly forms of life snorting in the dew drop swarming in pool or pona in lake river or great sea depth in grass and flower and tree in fish and bird and beast until on on every side life quivers and throbs and grows and builds and thrives by the imminent presence and I power of God Look back across the flood of years and the growth migration revolutions the conquests and supremacy and even decay and ruin of > empires as they work into and develop the manifold man-ifold plan of human elevation and perfection blaze everywhere of Jehovah like Tabors tc the eye of faith We have been gazing directly on external movements look into the interior and mystery of things of history of life of human life and we enter the holy place where the awe of the manifest presence of Deity hushes the soul into soberest thoughts for in every form of life from the simplest cell to the tallest mammoth there are myriads of little busy builders named Bioplast as orderly as certain and correct as trained human builders erecting the walls of being or weaving the tissues of life activity plan order skill God for look within from the red tides of life see the whiterobed white handed little builders darting 6ut hither and thither on their busy mission to build a nerve of the eye a muscle of the hand a valve of the heart some minute portions I of the great bony frame or even some portion of the minute canal that directs the liquid of life back to whence it came Look further and see nerves sinews bones veins and arteries formed into great intricate systems with varied and delicate duties and organs and faculties eye ear smell touch and taste all mutually adapted and each perfect inaction in-action and we ask for the architect of the author of this and a voice like unto that on the mount directs your gaze to Jehovah Enter the holy of the holies within look and listen star distances and Infinite space are forgotten for the hand of faith reaches forth and clasps the hands of Him whose seat is on the circle of the Heaven and listen and Jehovah Himself speaks in this silent holy of the holies and you hear the In finite spirit bearing witness Now are we the Sons of God and the transfigured soul talks as it were face to face with God Aye more I bow the knee for Je hovah dwells here on the throne of this inner temple and you are in the very presence of the power and majesty of God GodAh Ah The world by its wisdom knew not God By searching it could not find out God but since faith and reason have led the soul through the door of the Word to the Cross of Christ everywhere above around beneath are the foot prints the building the wisdom the thought of God And within God him self and we know whom we have be lieved And now are we the Sons of God |