Excerpt from Topics of the Times There are two radically different ideas of the Church and the Pulpit. By many the Church is considered a sort of fire escape, an institution established for the purpose of saving men from a distant burning prison. The clergyman is regarded as a sort of religious policeman, whose duty it is to hold up before sinners pictures of hell to scare them into doing their duty. He must scourge them into the straight and narrow way with the thong of fear. In other words the Church and the Pulpit are supposed to deal with the future world, t with this, at least t primarily with this. Religion is separated, or at any rate distinguished from Morality, and it is taught that a man may be a moral man, a very moral man, and yet go to hell. On the other hand, many think that Jesus came to save His people from their sins (Matthew i. II); to intellectually, socially, morally and religiously regenerate and elevate men in this world; to save them from the hell of a depraved soul, and from the consequences of such depravity here and hereafter; to convert earth into paradise. They, therefore, hold that the Church and the Pulpit have something to do with the moral aspect of every question, political, social or scientific; that the best way to prepare men for the next life is to make them better in this. They hold that Religion and Morality are twin-sisters. Religion is Morality heightened by emotion; morality based on belief in and love of God and love of man. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and the widows, and all sufferers in their affliction and relieve them if possible, and keep oneself unspotted from sin. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
