A Sermon preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent, a.4., in Union Church, Tientsin, Sunday Evening, May 8.
Text: Psalm XIV. 2 and 3; "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, T'o see if there were any that did understand, That did seek after Gud, They are all gone aside; they are together become filthy.
There is none that doth good, no, not pose to preach four sermons. It is very unflattering to men. People indeed complain that the Bible has the unenviable monopoly of saying such depressing things of ottr human nature. They would all read it if only it_ wouldn't say such nasty things about us. They call the Bible doctrine of sin a dogma as a kind of nickname implying that it has neither reason nor experience to back it. M. Renan is reported to have said, we "suppress sin to-day." So we try to do. But, judging by the state of the world, it docs not look as if our efforts were a huge success.
Now I have been put on the track of these four sermons by no less a person than Mr.
Wells and his "Outline of History." Mr. Wells, I believe, makes no pretence of being an orthodox Christian. Hence you will be surprised to hear that Mr. quite agrees with David, that the words of my text are a true description of all respectable audience es like this, and indeed of the whole race; God "looks down from heaven," and cannot find one who is not "filthy," one who doth good."
Before I tell you what Mr. Wells says, let me explain, You know we all complain of the way God has made the world. He is held responsible for all our troubles. Men say, why did' not He stop the war? You know what men say about all the evils of life, how we load the responsibility for them on God. Now Mr. Wells has occasion to describe a certain point of time in history and this is what he says. His meaning is that man had a grand chance of bringing in the millennium, but fooled it away by his sin and folly. Here it is. He says: "These stories of Alexander and his mother have to be told because history cannot be understood without them. Here was the great world of man between India and the Adriatic ready for a union, ready as it had nev been before for a unifying control. Here was the wide order of the Persian empire with its roads, its posts, its general peace and presperity, ready for the fertilizing influence of the Greek mind. And these stories display the quality of the human beings to whom these great opportunities came." Then "We are beginning to understand what the world might be, hing of what our race might On this unflattering text I pro-} become, were it not for our still raw humanity, Make man only sufficiently jealous er fearful, or drunken or angry, and the hot red eyes of the cave man glare out at us to-day. We have writing and teaching, science and power; we have tamed the beasts and schooled the lightning; but we are still only shambling towards the light. We have tamed and bred the beasts, but we have still to tame and breed We are Nor Ricur.
There you have it. Mr. Wells is not a theological professor, nor a local preacher, but he does not "suppress" the idea that we are sinners. He agrees with David. The world is right enough. It is we who are not right. It is our "raw humanity," that spoils everything; our jealousies, lusts, ambitions, hatreds, our selfishness. The "red eyes of the cave man" peep out of the sockets of us all, of kings and presidents, of cabinets and Parliaments, of Trades Unions and of Churches.
If God were twice as infinite as He is (if such a thing were possible), He could not make.a world proof against the sins which men have had experience of, of which they know the ruinousness and yet which they will commit. Of course there are mistakes men make, because they are not infallible and God does not expect men to go on without making mistakes. But these are not the things that fill the world with misery. The things that do that are things the fruits of which we all know are ruin. It is the "raw humanity" in us, tempers, lusts, passions, jealousies, that create the world's troubles. But for them life would be a picnic. We blind ourselves, we refuse to learn by experience, we land ourselves in pits that have swallowed up generations of men and then we begin to criticize the world and God's government of it as if that were all wrong. It is we who are wrong. "The Lord looks from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any that understand and seek after God; He looks on the whole tragic history of mankind, en us here, on our countries, on all ages, and He sees that "there is not one that doth good, no, not one."
Entrrtty Our Own Facur.
I want to try and shew that the, world's troubles are not due (I.) to want of chance to go right; (LI.) to want of divine inspirations and helps; (III.) to want of sufficient ability; (IV.) to an unsuitable environment. We take the first to-night, the chances God has made or allowed for man to get out of his troubles. What is a chance? A good dictionary calls it "an undesigned coincidence;? it is a fortunate and unexpected coincidence of favourable circumstances. We often talk as if chances had no reason behind them. But that is wrong. There is a reason, if you can find it out. In any case they come and all agree that it is the part of wisdom to take them, and of folly to let them slip. Plenty of men had Rockefeller's chance of making money, but he took it. So in history, God opens the way for a better state of things. But man's "yaw humanity" makes him refuse to take the offered chance.
We will take first a case or two in which the way was obviously open if men had been "men of good will," as the angels said the first Christmas day. There is Mr. Wells's case of Persia and Greece. As he says, Persia in the days of Alexander the Great and his father Philip was creat and rich. She held a magnificent empire stretching from the Aegean Sea, that is, from the west coast of Asia Minor to India. A_ rich country then, far richer in cities, in forests: in all products in 350 B.O. than it is now, such has been the sin and folly of man by his wars and devastations.
Persia had posts, a quite fine civilization, Greece had brains. "greece had blossomed: out with glorious works of art, had created a drama, had founded physical science. Aristotle, Plate and others are known to us all. And Mr. Wells's idea is a great one; I have never seen it named before. Oh, if only. Persia and Greece could have united! The deficiencies of one would have been supplemented by the gifts of the other. The world might have started on a career of unspeakable happiness. But Philip the father of Alexander, a most able man who forged the weapon, the Macedonian phalanx, with which his son conquered the world, got drunk; he had no control over his family,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.