SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 794, 18 April 1910, Page 9

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

SERMON BY BR. GIBB. THE. THIRD OF A SERIES. : Last night Dr. Gibb delivered to a crowded congregation tho third sermon of the courso ho is now. preaching on "The Signs- of tho Times." The theme was "Tho New, God," a development more ominous of ovil than even the now names given to tho old enemy —sin. Man had ever been an adept'at the making of gods. Mostly it had been a bad business., Man's roligious instinct—the greatest and noblest thing in human nature —had been pervorted by sin. The study of comparative religion did. indeed reveal that in .his search after God with only nature to guide him,' man; had even amid tho darkness of paganism and of modern heathenism seen gleams of tho true light—broken lights of God. But tho gleams wero few and far between.. As a matter of unchallengable .fact, whatever a few philosophers may have held concerning God, the gods of the nations—tho ethnio godshad been • gross gods, vile gods. St. Paul's indictment was only too. true. Men, said tho apostle, had .become utter fools, so that instead of worshipping the, imperishablo Gorl,' thoy had worshipped images, resembling perishable man or resembling birds, or beasts, .or fishes... Tho truth was that man's spiritual instinct had becomo so .perverted by. sin that the one living and true God must seek and find man if man is to find God. - There was at this moment no .God worthy of the great and hallowed'name, save the Father revealed in. Jesus Christ our Lord;

; At_ the lowest, .man had not -merely' imagined his god, but actually made him. Isaiah's burning irony on the process of manufacturing gods was referred to, and then-it was pointed out that; though the modern man does not make a god out of a piece of wood, he is nevertheless expert in this manufacture. . Dr. Gibh specified a number of tho gods of to-day—the god of the pantheist, the god of the monist, the god of tho pluralist,- the. god of the philosopher who doesn't know that there is a God at all, yet contrives (as - was said .of : Herbert- Spencer)- to tell you more about the Unknowable than the Christian can: about the'living God—and so on. Perhaps the best way of disposing of .these gods of modern imagination was Russell Lowell's way of satire: "God vanished long ago, I wis, ' A mere subjective- synthesis; - A doll stuffed out with hopes and fears, Too' homely, for us pretty dear-si Who want one. that, conviction carries Last make of London or of Paris, He gone, I-felt a moment's spasm, But calmed myself with protoplasm." There was, however, a new god. And the'new god was man himself—man exalted to the . place of God, enthroned upon the pinnacle of his own achievements, and, saying exultingly, "What hath man wrought." Did any of his hearers think if, absurd to suggest that .man could- by any possibility worship himself. Well, let them" wait and-see.. Though he. had. called. this tho new god—and new it was for many reasons —as. a matter of philosophical speculation this god had been heard of in last century;.' According to the cult of what was called Positivism, man was the only god .we can know, and • therefore the only god ,we can worship. And at least one place of prayer had existed in London. for the . worship'of Man, or humanity as it was .called.

I -Positivism- had,' however, never • atj.traefced. the masses, but-the scene ; had' 'Changed, with a- vengeancey? Not' 'from the philosophers, but from' all sorts and' conditions of men, allegiance, was to-day' being proclaimed- to -the new- god.' Hero .was-the motto of the new cult:', "Mankind is coming at last to the realisartion of his divinity.Mankind is 1 ' coming .to feel that it does 'not need to bo divine by proxy any longer." Dr: Gibb then referred to a remarkable book entitled "The Number of Man," by Phillip Mauro, in which, they would find an-extraordinarily able presentation and scathing condemnation of the new god and the new worship. The new theology represented by R. J. Campbell, of Loudon, and Dr. Gordon, of Boston, declared its faith in:tho now god. Its watchword;_ was fundamentally this: "The individual is one with the whole race' and with God;" The Modernists, in the Church' of Rome believed in the', new god, even as tho Pope had declared._ They sought' the unification of. hnmanity through its own. inherent powers. . Allegiance to the now god had been declared on the part of the representatives of. capital and the consolidation aimed at on behalf of capital. It had been equally affirmed by Socialism. Brotherhood was. the cry, but: a . brotherhood on.the basis of .a purely earthly relationship from which God had been excluded." Here were' some of the declarations that had been made: "All humanity will be .at one.with God,, and every man"will be'a god." "We believe that mankind does not need to bo divine by proxy any longer." "Labour. is the living God;" From many of the Chairs, of many universities the same abominable and deadly heresy was being maintained. This was the cry: ."Mankind is Christ ; retried, recrucified, recrowncd." ''No god for a gift: God gave us, Mankind alone can- save us.!' • There, were , many who wero looking for tho coming of. tho super-man in whom this vile'.wOrship would" be centred. Perhaps the super-man would come, and, if so, he would bo tho man of sin of whom St. Paul had spoken, in the letter to the Thessalonians, "tho man who opposcth himself to, and exalteth lumself against, all that is called God or is worshipped; so that he sittetll in tho temple of Gck], setting hiniself forth as God." Tho man of sin was not a sensualist or murderer, . He is an apostate, a rebel, against God, a usurpor who claims not-tho palace,'but the temple for his own. This Gcd-defj'-ing -pride was the . utmost "length' sin' could go. Did they wonder at his hesitation the_oth<Sr. evening to admit that the ivorld is growing 'better even though in many ways it is less coarse than,for-, ttierly?. -The'egoism of the present'day was a phonoinenon of' dreadful augury. The sermon concluded -with an . impassioned appeal to the hearers to clear their souls of a .worship which would end only in ! destruction; He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.. The Lord shall have them, in derision. Not to bo aj god, but to be accepted by the Gcd and Father of Jesus Christ, to be forgiven and saved by Him, was the chief end of man's existenco. .