How will it end? Can families worship together till
it does end?
* * * * *
'I have let myself be cheated out of my Sunday, by going to
hear Mr. ----. As he began by reading the first chapter
of Isaiah, and the fourth of John's Epistle, I made mental
comments with pure delight. "Bring no more vain oblations."
"Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." "We
know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because he hath
given us of the Spirit." Then pealed the organ, full of
solemn assurance. But straightway uprose the preacher to deny
mysteries, to deny the second birth, to deny influx, and to
renounce the sovereign gift of insight, for the sake of what
he deemed a "_rational_" exercise of will. As he spoke I could
not choose but deny him all through, and could scarce refrain
from rising to expound, in the light of my own faith, the
words of those wiser Jews which had been read. Was it not a
sin to exchange friendly greeting as we parted, and yet tell
him no word of what was in my mind?
'Still I saw why he looked at things as he did. The old
religionists did talk about "grace, conversion," and the like,
technically, without striving to enter into the idea, till
they quite lost sight of it.
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