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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 23, 1916)
9 WAY OF RELIGION IS FOUND IN PASSIVE FIGHT ON EVIL Dean Ramsey Declares That Biblical Knowledge of Critics Is as Wrong-Headed as Their Interpretation of Modern Needs Is Superficial and at Variance With Progress. TITE SUNDAY OKEGOXIAX, rOETLAXD, JAXUART -23. 19JG. BT DEAN IL M. RAMSEY. St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral. Let all thlcra b dona daceatly and in Srdar. I Cor. 14-4U. IF ONE could accept the position of some writers at the present time. Christians, of all people, and his torical Christianity, of all forms of that religion, know least about the Chris tian religion. Te are, Riven to under- tian religion. we are given to under stand that It has been an error to of the Tlr- 4 ? 5 lili. speak toes of Christiani ty theological, cardinal, or any other kind for the simple reason tnat there la just one virtue which sums vp the entire teach ing of Jesus and that may be de scribed as passivi ty of spirit. -T Vi . mnat find- tlve sttitude a true1'" """'J' follower of Jesus could assume would be one of passive resistance. The pur pose of this kind of exposition of the Christian religion is to present it as a weak, fanatical phenomenon in human history. To substantiate their claims, these writers know how to quote cer tain expressions of our Lord, insisting that the method of teaching in other lands and among different types of people shall be interpreted according to the literal standards of the Western mind. And they understand the value of suppressing other aspects of the doc trines of Christ. These critics of our belief, whose knowledge of the history of religion is as wrong-headed as their Interpretation of modern needs Is superficial, have concluded that the teaching of our lord with Its Insistence on the cross, ' on humility, and patient endurance is hopelessly at variance with the wants of a progressive generation. Instead of studying the characters of such men as St. Paul to determine the meaning of the paradoxes of Jesus, they picture the Christian saint in subdued light, unwilling and afraid. By such efforts. Christianity, radiant as It is in the lives of its most char acteristic exponents with adventure and heroism and breadth of experience, is represented as a reflection of the Buddhist idea that the devotee should allow himself his will and personal ity to be absorbed in dreamy senti ment Christianity leads to unreal al truism. We have had enough of crosses and martyrs. Teaching ef St. Paal Cited. Christianity, then, must be to fit the Procrustean bed of our opponents pre conceptions. As a matter of fact, the Christian theory is that the love of Christ so far from extinguishing self hood and personality heightens and emphasizes it. The method, so little understood, is that which is found everywhere in human experience. To Kain something, you must take a risk. To find your true self you must give yourself away. Self is dethroned that It may be received back from the Master broadened and ennobled by the splendor of his life who has become Its Master. It was St. Paul, whose words I have quoted, who first gave literary form to the Christian teaching and who Is. therefore. In the best position to give lis a truer conception of the attitude of the Christian to life. He is himself one of the most vigorous and efficient characters In all history. Indeed, It would be difficult to instance a man in whom those elements of success en thusiasm for humanity and living, en ergy in the realisation of his ambition and efficiency wera mora splendidly manifested. The keynote of his life may very well have been: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me." He knew how to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. He had made the great renunciation and found him self a new man in insight and power. Henceforth his life was to be a gam ble, an adventure, anything but the drab tedium of those lives untouched !by the love of God. Through the dis cipline of Christianity he had himself in hand. He was a little impatient lot dull wits. Those who oppose the iwork he had to do he would with j stand to the face. If he was meek, las he undoubtedly was, it was with the meekness that inherits the earth. His eye spanned the Roman empire for atrategio places to plant the prin ciples which would turn the world to Christ and fuller life. His success is a matter of record. If he knew how to be obedient unto death he under stood, no less, how to abound unto life. . Expertsaeat Trte4 la Coriath. ' In the city of Corinth, a business center of that part of the world, the Christian experiment was being tried in a congregation of very human peo ple, with very doubtful success. The particular events which drew irom St. Paul the words I have taken for a text had to do with the kind of wor ship in the church. There were certain adherents of the cause who arrogated to themselves certain gifts which were spiritual. They were very proud of them, and they all apparently desired to exercise their individual gifts at one and the same time, lest someone should appear to excel them In endowments-It was a rather bald and unlovely exhibition of individualism. The result was very confusing, as you can easily imagine. St. Paul laid down the prin ciple that such services should be for the edification of the church rather than for the exaltation of the gifted people. The gift of tongues, for in stance, seems to have been exercised for the purpose of astounding the out siders. i Whatever It may have been, happily it fell into disuse, only to be revived in assemblies where the type of de corum seems to be an exact revival of the unreformed Corinthian model. In closing the subject in his authoritative communication to that church. St. Paul sets forth the fundamental law of wor ship and the principle there enunciated made liturgical worship the normal service of Christian people. "Let all things be done decently and in order." The word which is translated decently is explained by Meyer, a Protestant commentator, as "in a seemly way, de noting ecclesiastical decorum." The Idea is that in the universe, which is God's revelation of certain aspects of his character, beauty and harmony prevail; and that the same things ought to be made the basis of public worship. "In order" is said to be a military term, expressing preci sion and discipline. It is apparent that St, Paul's approval could hardly be cited. In favor of slipshod methods of worship, which have in aome unac countable manner usurped the adjec tive simple. The principle which is here applied merely to the worship In the church is one which admits of broader appli cation. It would make an admirable motto for life in general, and expresses excellently the way of success in Chris tian living. For that success is the result of a due proportion in things. Failures In that life are to be traced to a wrong emphasis. The whole uni verse Is the artistic production of a God who is the king in his beauty. That proportion, which is one of the elements in artistic production, must be felt and expressed In the beauty of human character. And to create, one must have the ideal before the mind. The difficulty with these Corinthian was that they- bad so stressed certain manifestations of the spirit that the balance of the spiritual life had been upset and eccentricity, bordering on anarchy, ruled in their church. Sanity was to be restored by the wholesome recollection that their gifts, so highly valued, were subsidiary to the common good; that a contemplation of the na ture and works of God would restore the balance and furnish the pattern for their devotions. Saint Paul understood very well that in the composite nature of man as spirit and body there lay the possibility of failure. It was in the due subor dination of bodily powers to spiritual ends that the true way of living lay. The division of life's duties and privi leges must be accomplished with that fact in mind. The smallest upset in balance would, if continued, be dis astrous. Life must be regarded, St. Paul would say, in principle as an ath lete's training or a soldier's experience. There must be positive rules of life stringently adhered to if failure is to be avoided. It is no child's play. The spirit must predominate the body. It must be taught and trained and ruled. The will must assert Itself. It must have its instruction. Man must be brought in relationship to God. The religious exercises must be conducted on the pattern of the training which gives the soldier and runner control of themselves. Back of all God was to be felt as the inspirer of all effort and in the ivmnwry or nis world there was model for man's development of himself. The value of the principle here enun- STATE IS INVESTIGATING HOUSEWIVES LEAGUE - r f . 1 it t - - - - - A DEPUTY ATTORNEY-GENERAL of New Jersey is investigating the National Housewives' League of .which Mrs. Julian Heath, of New York is the head. . Charges have been made that this Institution, supposed to be purely philanthropic and organized for the purpose of reducing the high cost of living and other worthy objects, was actually a semi-commercial organiza tion and that Mrs. Heath lent its influ ence for a price to a purely commer cial organization called the housewives' educational committee organized under the laws of New Jersey. Mrs. Heath is charged with getting $50 a week for supervising the publica tion of a magazine for the committee. Mrs. Heath was photographed while she was engaged recently on a crusade to encourage individual -marketing in New York City. ciated is often partially demonstrated in various sides of human nature. The hard thing is to force ourselves to make it thoroughgoing. That order and law are the first rules of success is a commonplace of ordinary life. Sys tem is indispensable to business achievement. Why should it be so hard to realize that on the same process the value and success of our religious aspir ations depend. It is a matter of every day experience that men have learned to devote themselves with abandon to the working out of systematic plans which are looked upon as perequisites to success. Military precision could not surpass the way in which some men's time is divided and their work ar ranged. There is no question as to the order of many a man's business af fairs, but how about the condition of that part of his nature which we term religious? Is the system introduced there? Just take a man whose busi ness methods are above reproach for efficiency and who is showered with un stinted praise for it, is his life decent In the Pauline sense? Does it corre spond with his true nature? Is there that happy recognition of his duty to his God. his fellow man. as well as to his business? Is it becom ing In the nature of things that there should be such devotion exclusively to temporal ends on the part of one whose being-Is not only related, through his body, to the world we see: but also to the being of God, through his spirit? From the Christian standpoint there is something essentially sordid about such an existence, even if generosity may find expression there. Is it common sense to cultivate certain aspects of life with every artifice and Jeave others, no less important, to chance or -in en tire neglect? The spiritual side of man's being is frequently treated as a thing to which system and care can have" no vital re lationship. Is it even ordinary decency to go through life with, a right regard for business duties and a fair respect for one's obligation to man and then to leave out of consideration our duty to our own better nature, to our eternal welfare, and to our God? Such a po sition leaves man maimed and crip pled. Nor can It be asserted, as it some times is, that, at any rate, if anyone is injured in the matter it is merely the man himself. Humanity is bound to gether by a thousand chains and every man has his influence which proceeds from him whether he will or no, and every man's example counts. When we succeed, however unimportant we may be, the world and humanity are better for it, and when we fail the whole world suffers. One reason for the neglect of the spiritual training of our higher natures ia the fundamentally false doctrine of conversion which has been promulgated and has wider influence than you might suppose. According to this teaching everything in one's religious life de pends on a cataclysm. in the Individual existence which is supposed not only to make a new man of one but to do everything for one and demand little but passive acceptance." If that were true, you need neither the (rospels, nor the church, nor Christian example to guide you nor any other assistance. The whole business of your religious ex perience is taken out of your hands and you become a law to yourself alone. You cannot bring the day of your con version forward nor can you very well retard it- Under the delusion of this form of fatalism one can go on mis using his nature without any particu lar responsibility for it. So religion is removed from. God's world and placed in a new unreal light unrelated to man's experience or God's revelation of his own nature or of man's. There is some kind of law in every other department of God's activ-i ity and man's endeavor; but in religion there Is no coherence with life in gen eral, no low, no system. The "spiritual" Corinthians were right. Let us exalt the gifts that the Individual may flour ish and let confusion reign. Let every thing but religion be done decently and in order. Beyond question this false representation of conversion is respon sible for a large amount of the criti cism of Christianity as a weak and misshapen philosophy of life,- and has reacted on the ordinary man's concep tion of religion, leading him, on the one hand, to despise it as a' futile and fanatical perversion of the higher side of human nature; or. on the other, to shift from his own shoulders all re sponsibility for his own conduct. One turns to Saint Paul's character, whole-hearted, energetic, . efficient, manly and philosophic, with thankful ness and relief. For him there runs through all of God's creation a golden thread of reason and law. He had climbed to the very pinnacle of spir itual heights. Everywhere he had found that there was a means of bring ing man. his body, soul and spirit. Into subjection to the will of God. It waa the law of God, based not on the efforts of men but on the divine nature. Let me quote-one who has caught the spirit of Saint Paul In. an unusual manner, the judicious Hooker: "Wherefore that here we may briefly end: Of law there can be no less ac knowledged than that her seat Is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least aa feeling her care, and the greatest as iot exempted from her power: both i.ngels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in differ ent sort and manner, yet all, wlthone consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy." KARSAVINA IS LIKENED TO FLAMING, FIERY BIRD "3r .-V I IK' II '.'-, J ' vStA v if4 r ' " : l jfSs"1 V I VA 'V A NEW, YORK, Jan. 22. (Special.) Hate. love, calm, fury and ay ' qualities "of human nature are de picted in Thamar Karsavina's dancing. Karsavtna shares with Nijinsky the honors of being the principal dancers in Serge de Diaghlleff's Ballet Russe. which arrived in America for tte first tour of the United States recently. Thamar Karsavina evokes with equal skill the still beauty of old Greek legend and wild Greek orgy in "Nar- cisse," the shy ana tender fancies in "Papillons," the barbaric fury of the beautiful, cruel queen in "Thamar1 the exotic and Oriental glamour of the Sul tan's favorite in "Scheherazado," the wild grace : and delicate fire in "L'Oiseau de' Feu." "Flaming with brilliant plumage and jewels and glowing colors, she burns into the vision of the spectators ljke a fiery bird with a human heart," is one critic's estimate of. her. FIRST HALF OF OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET IS HEREWITH SHOWN A 3 V ( x J I 67 fix I I ) ' f T SI (PrfT SAT N OUTLINE AND CLOSE CAT-ST ITCH DETAILS ej0 rfC IJ I J - . So nan; requests have come in tor this old English alphabet that it is reprinted.- This may be used for mark ing table linen, bed linen, towels, and the like. It is to be embroidered in satin stitch or a combination of fancy stitches. The monogram may be made by stamping letters so that they inter twine, or if three letters are used the letter for the surname may be size larger, than the two Christian names. The detail drawing shows the method of working In using the printed de sign from the paper the directions are as follows: If the material is sheer, the easiest way is to lay it over the design, which will show through plainly, and:draw (rer each line with a sharp, hard pencil. If your linen is heavy, buy a piece of impression psper the . kind that does not rub off place the design over it and trace with a hard pencil. i