WEEK-DAY RELIGION.

Evening Star, Issue 3821, 24 May 1875, Page 2

WEEK-DAY RELIGION.

Last evening in the Congregational Church, Moray Place, the Kev Dr Koseby delivered the third of the series of lectures on Weekday Religion. The special subject of last night’s lecture was “The Tongue,” the text selected being Prov. 18th chap., 21st ver. : —“Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Dr Roseby, in a very able lecture, denounced the vain and foolish talk so common in society—the mere babble of words which passes current for conversation—and above all the manner in which the tongue is employed to traduce, malign, and scandalise, to retail slander and extol the faults and weaknesses of others. He commented on the account of the tongue given by St. James as a world of iniquity, and as being set on fire of hell. In the course of his lecture he referred to the amount of talk there has been in the Church, and the evil which had arisen from the attempt to reduce the thoughts of men to a set form of words : he said

From the beginning men have differed, and to the end of the chapter they will differ ir their religious opinions. I do not expect that the keen, incisive, remorselessly logical intellect of a man like President Edwards will acquiesce in the same statement of the Christian faith with such a mild and gentle spirit, with whom the heart counted for so much more than the head—as the late John M’Leod Campbell. Compare Charles Spurgeon with Dr Pusey—both men of the deepest Christian feeling, and most fervent piety; but, who can conceive of the two men expressing their faith in the same little ecclesiastical formula ? You might as soon expect the violet to take ou the asperity of the thistle, or the blade of grass to change colors with the rose. And there are not enly personal differences, there are national differences, there are traditional differences, there are ingrained differences of race; and do what you will these differences will assert themselves. For 300 years Rome has been trying to teach Germany, and for 1,000 years to teach the Greek Church, <o say Shibboleth; for 300 years the Catholic and Psotestant have been angrily glaring at one another, and banging their heads together; for 200 years the Churchman and Puritan have been in the wrestling wring; for 200 years (and longer) the Calvinist and Armenian have been trying each to bring tho other to a sense of bis error, and where are we now ? Just whore we will be 1,000 years hence. Instead of uniting the divisions of the Church grow more numerous and more pronounced every century. ‘ ‘ Oh, do I take so gloomy a view of the future ?” How, gloomy? I do not expect the very nature of the human mind to change. I have never looked upon Christianity as proposing to unmake meu—to change them from men to angels. And so long as man remains man, so long as the fundamental character of the human mind persists and endures, so long men will differ. And what matter? What matter, so long as they hold the Head, so long as they fear God and are disciples of Christ, and love each other! I think I can even see a blessed and divine discipline in this diversity, 'ihe beautiful rainbow arches the river in its sparkling agitation, the ice throws its fetters upon its stagnation. It may seem a great deal to get all men to agree to the Westminster Confession of Faith, but I think it is a greater thing to Iteach men that Oue is our Father, even God, and that all we are

brethren. It may seem a wonderful achievement after which to strive to persuade all men to receive the forty stripes, save one imposed U) .011 its members by the Anglican Church, but # .1l ems inen that, above sdl forms of faith, and bearing on her serene brow tho °* P re -eminence in the sisterhood of Christian eraces, sits the fair form of Charily. Alas, how different from this has been the spint and conduct of the Church of all Churches I She has held her councils age after ave, but, instead of the mild and motherly instruction which distinguishes the First Council mentioned in the Acts of the'Apestlos, which closed with the words of blessing, “Faroyewell ” there has never been a council held but what the Church has embittered her longue with freso anathemas. One reads ecclesiastical history ; and ns the story is told* all tho way down the ages ring and resound with these texiible cursss of Chnstiftn men dsunning 1 ono another “If any man teach otherwise, lot him be accursed.’ “ The tongue,” says James, “can no man tamo : therewith bless we God” (there is no question about the sincerity or piety of these contending parties anathemiaing one another); “and therewith curse we men who are made after the S'militude of God,” Christian men have failed to see the absurd unfitness of all this. I will not convince any man that lam right by cursing him. I will not recover the wandering sheep by calling down fire from heaven upon it. I might just as well try to lay in ruins the houses upon the Manse reserve, by standing on the otner side of the street and arguing with the bricks and red pine, as try to persuade a man that I am right by an argument of anathema. For a man to use force with the human conscience is precisely the same kind of idiocy as for a man to use argument with beams of timber or road metal. There are not two ways of winning men, but only one. You must convince them. An anathema, then, is, after all, not so much a terror as it is a laugh-ing-stock.