RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 242, 11 October 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

RELIGION'S SIMPLICITY.

WHAT IS REQUIRED AND OFFERED.

Dr. Lyman Abbott, of Brooklyn, •preached at Bloomsbury Chapel on Sunday, July 6th. He prefaced- his remarks with the observation that preachers needed a great many opportunities if they were to present the ■whole of Gospel truth; in a single discourse there might be only a fragment. Some, therefore.' might possibly go away after listening to him saying that what he had said was very incomplete. He felt that as he was speaking to them for the first, last and only time, he could not do better than talk about the simplicity of the Christian religion. First, he would ask his hearers to consider what God required; and, secondly, what God offered, as these were the two great questions that lay at the foundation of religion. The answer to the first was to be found in the Ten Commandments, ineiucating as they did reverence for God, the honour of parents and respect for ths rights of one's fellow-men. If they obeyed them. God would be their God, and they should constitute His priesthood and His kingdom. As transgressors of the commandments, whs.. had the prophets to say to them? They had nothing to say about fasting, and penance and sacrifice, but simply the reiteration of the essential principles of the law; they were to love mercy, do justly and walk humbly with God. When Christ came the teaching was the same. He never told men to observe ritual; He required just what the prophets required. Pharisees came to Him. ns did other -sects, but He never enjoined on them any of their respective peculiarities. He bade them go back to Moses, to love God and to love man. His one great word was love. The Temple was in existence, the ritual was performed in all its splendour, but Christ did not, on any single, occasion, send those who came to Him to the Temple to offer sacrifice. His instruction to the penitent was, '"Go and Bin no more." When one read what was written by Paul,-the great theologian, there was the same teaching, the requirement of sober, righteous and godly lives. Whether one appealed to* Moses, to the prophets, to Christ or to Paul, there was no difference as to what God required. "What then."8 said Dr. Abbott, reaching over the pulpit and pointing to the cups on the Communion table, "what then is their meaning? What of Gethsemane—of the crucifixion? Are they not a part of Christianity? Are they not the heart and centre? Shall we drop sacrifice out? God forbid!" Paganism always taught that sacrifice was needed to propitiate anger—it was so in Greece and Rome—but the Scriptures taught the very reverse. Man was not required to offer a sacrifice to God, but God offered a sacrifice to man. ''God offers and man receives," that, in a word, was the Christian religion. The Apostle John, who knew most of Christ, expressed it in a sentence

vh.n he said, "Hereby perceive we i;i _-..ve of God, because He laid down J*!..:'.':_- for us. and we ought to lay dov_n our lives for the brethren."