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we are rejecting to the incalculable hurt of the
influence of the Church, and who is responsi
ble for this attitude? The discovery has pos
sibly been made that this command is also
"extraneous to the recognized mission of the
Church on earth," in which case we should
not urge it.
But aside from a few short citations, we
have, over and above all, the spirti of the New
Testament, the spirit of the personality of
Jesus, his gospel, his teaching, permeating
every page, so unmistakable that false and mis
leading interpretations of certain texts for a
thousand years past have not destroyed it. As
the Old Testament is saturated with wars, tlio
New Testament is saturated with peace, not
only the "peace of God which passeth under
standing," but also "peace on earth, good will
among men." There seems to be too much
preaching of the Old Testament in modern pul
pits. Doubtless many beautful and useful pass
ages arc found in the prophets and elsewhere,
but there is not found there the peculiar and
distinctive spirit of the New Testament. Let
us hear more of the preaching of the spirit
of the New Testament, the gospel, and we
will begin to see very soon how in quiet but
invincible ways the Church may influence the
opinion of mankind more and more on such
subjects as war, social vice, the drink evil,
Christian education, abolition of poverty, and
possibly other matters of importance covered
by the text and spirit of the New Testament.
A brother prominent in the councils of the
Church says that he "has 110 zeal to enlarge
the business of the Church." This is a gener
ality which, while not very glittering, is
equally as misleading as some others. No one
has proposed to enlarge the business of the
Church, but rather to enlarge the Church by
such largeness of view, largeness of spirit,
largeness of sacrifice, largeness of service, as
we find in the teaching and example of the
Lord Jesus and his apostles. Let the whole
Christian Church be filled and inspired by the
New Testament spirit, let it employ its avail
able agencies for the creation of a wholesome
and exalted public sentiment, and we would
soon begin to see the waning power of the great
race vices, which would come more and more
under the ban of the law, national and interna
tional.
It is not expected that this will bring in the
Millennium, or that it will prevent the growing
together of the good and evil until the Judg
ment Day arrives, but it will accomplish more
and more that transformation which the
Church has already to a large extent accom
plished in the world, which, therefore, is the
mind of the Lord concerning an important
function of the Church in the world ? and who
is he that will arise up and say to him, "What
doest thou?"
Barber, Va.
A NEW YEAR SERMON.
X
By Rev. W. M. Sikes, D. D.
"Neither do men put new wine into old
bottles; else the bottles break, and the wine
runneth out, and the bottles perish; but they
put new wine into new bottles, and both are
preserved." ? Matthew 9:17.
The difficulty about putting new wine into
old bottles lay in the fact that the old goat
skin bottles had become hardened by age and
were liable to burst under pressure of the gases
generated by the fermenting wine. New wine
skins, on the other hand, had more or less elas
ticity in them and were capable of expanding
sufficiently to accommodate the gases without
bursting. Now Christ was using this figure
to illustrate the impossibility of successfully
putting the new spiritual life of Christianity
into the old Pharisaic forms of religion. Phar
seeism was a stiff, formal, worn-out kind of
life,, with no flexibility or elasticity about it.
But the new life in Christ is much larger and
freer in its workings. It has an element of
elasticity in it that bursts the bounds of the
old legalistic life and sets a man free. The
next life that comes through Christ cannot,
therefore, be shut up within the hardened and
stiff old wine-skins of Phariseeism. It must
have room to enlarge itself.
We stand to-day on the great divide between
the old and the New Year. As we look down
the slopes of the past there are many old hab
its and forms of life that cannot be carried
over into the New Year. The old year is now
stiff and inflexible in its history; we cannot
change the things that have been ; they must
forever remain the same. But the future is
pliable in our Viands ; we can mould it largely
to suit ourselves. Thus in the New Year that
is before us your life and mine may rise and
swell and burst the bands of narrow drudgery,
and enter upon a larger and happier existence.
But in order to do this we must not carry
the old sorrows and troubles of the past over
into the new year. Leave them behind, and
let them pass with the passing year.
One day as I stood on Graybeard and looked
away toward Mount Mitchel there lay before
me the crest of a lower mountain that ex
tends in a northerly direction. To the east
of this ridge a dark cloud was rising, and in
the by and by it seemed to edge itself right up
to the crest of the ridge and stop there. The
storm was raging and the lightning was play
ing on the peaks of the mountains, while the
dark cloud trickled its tears down the cheeks
of "the everlasting hills." But on the western
side of the ridge a beautiful panorama
stretched itself before my view while the sun
in all its glory shone with splendor right up
to the crest of the ridge. There was a splendid
line of demarcation between the cloud and the
sunshine as they met on the crest of the ridge.
It was as though the darkness and the light
had come face to face and each was unable
to "comprehend'' the other. On the one hand
darkness and ierror seemed to cover the earth ;
and on the other, sunshine and happiness
reigned supreme.
So to-day as I turn my face along the di
viding line between the old and the new year
I see the clouds of many heavy hearts over
hanging the past. Sufferings of body and an
guish of mind and pangs of the spirit have
cast a shallow over the year that is gone. Many
tear-drops have fallen from human eyes as
they wept over the aches and the pains and
the sorrows and the cares that make up the
year that is dying. These are the things that
we dare not carry with us over into the new
year. "Let the dead past bury its dead,"
while we look to the future for better things.
And into the new bottles of the coming year
let us put the new wine of aspiration, and hope,
and courage to make it the best year that has
yet been ours.
This morning I want to bring you a mes
sage of good cheer and encouragement as we
ctoss the border-line from the old into the
new year.
First of all I would urge you to make the
mistakes and failures of the past to become
stepping-stones to better things. There is not
one of us who has not made mistakes and
failures during the past year. Our ambition
was to attain some great things; our desire was
to have life filled with all joy and no sorrow.
Possibly in many things our will was to do
good, but by some unforeseen misfortune or
weakness we did the bad. But why should
we let these things haunt us like Banquo's
ghost wherever we go? Why not trample them
under foot and make of them stepping-stones
to better things during the coming year? Let's
strike off the shackles of the past and enter
the new year with a determination not to be
discouraged by the things that have fallen out
to us. The best of life is yet before us if
we will only make it so.
The rocks in a man's field are but hindrances
to the progress of his plowing, but when placed
under our feet at the street-crossing they be
come stepping-stones to the solid ground. That
is what I am urging you to do in the moral
and and spiritual realm. Why should we let
the rocky places in life be a continual hin
drance in our way? Let us turn them into
means for reaching better things. Tennyson
has said in his "In Memoriam":
"I hold it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."
A poor crippled boy sat by his window and
watched some active, strong, and wealthy boys,
playing on the ball field. His heart grew bit
ter with envy as he thought of how he was
deprived of the same pleasures. But a young
man beside him, seeing his discontented look,
said, "You wish you were in those boys' place,
don't you?" The answer was, "Yes, I do; I
reckon God gave them money and education
and health to help them be of some account
in the world." But the man beside him said,
"Did it never strike you that he gave you your
lame leg for the same reason, to make a man
of you?" The thought burned itself into the
boy's heart and kindled hope and courage
there. With a determination he went to work
to fit himself to rise above his deformity. And
under the inspiration of that new hope and
courage he became one of the best Christian
physicians in the whole community around, and
was the means of bringing health and happi
ness back to many hearts and homes from
which they had taken their flight.
But what was true of that boy's lame leg
is also true of all the difficulties and hindrances
and hard conditions of life. They are God's
means of making us of some account to the
world. When the disciples saw the man who
was born blind they said to the Master, "Who
did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was
born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath
this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the
works of God should be made manifest in him."
Then Jesus anointed his eyes, and he was made
to see. Ah, my friends, your misfortunes and
mine have come to us, not always because we
have sinned, but because the works of God
are thereby to be made manifest in us. There
fore, let us resolve to-day that whatever mis
takes and failures may have come to us in the
past we are going to turn them into stepping
stones to better things in the future.
Again, I would urge you to believe with me
that the best of life is yet before us. Heathen
peoples speak of the Golden Age in the long
ago, but I want to tell you that for the Chris
tian world the Golden Age is still in the fu
ture. We sometimes hoar people speak of the
"good old times of our fathers," as if the pres
ent times were going to the bad. But if the
days of our fathers were the "good oldeu