Phineas F. Bresee - A Prince In Israel - Media Sabda Org

My text is a most comprehensive and startling utterance. It is a command embracing all thinking,
experience, and life.
Of the existence of God all thoughtful creatures agree. The great, necessary thought of Cause,
efficient and sufficient, drives every man to the thought of God. Everything that would stop man on
his way breaks down. Spontaneous generation stopped man a little while. Evolution did so also.
Every one comes soon to stand in the midst of the universe and say, "The heavens declare the glory
of God." The necessities of our being reach out to know this. Our thinking stretches out its hands
toward Him. Here is the history of all philosophy. Here is the basis of all religions. Here are heard
the deepest outcries of the human soul. Here men have builded hierarchies and ecclesiasticisms, have
reared magnificent cathedrals, and builded innumerable altars; here they have made their costliest
sacrifices, and paid their richest devotions; and here their most appealing cries have found utterance.
Here Job cried, "O, that I knew." It is the deep, the deepest, cry of every human heart.
When the mystery of our being is upon us; when the struggles of life are about to overwhelm us;
when we feel near the borders of desperation, how there comes up a cry to God!
An Unholy Being
We can scarce put ourselves in the place of a heathen, who has seen the sun and moon and stars,
and built an altar and offered sacrifices upon it. We are Christians. We are born into the light of a
divine revelation. From the time we have opened our eyes in this world, we have been taught of God,
infinite in holiness, power, wisdom, love, and mercy; of His incarnation, of His redeeming grace;
of His eyes of glory, looking through and through us; of His loving longing for us. We have been
taught to look for His presence, to listen to His voice, and to feel His touch. And yet all this teaching
does not satisfy us. We cry out with St. Augustine, "Thou, O God, hast made us for Thyself, and the
heart is restless till it rests in Thee." An unholy being can not love or abide in a holy being. A holy
being may love an unholy being, for he may conceive of him outside of his sinfulness, in his possible
separation from evil. But a sinner in his very being is in antagonism to holiness: he can neither love
it nor dwell in it. As an intelligent being, there may be to him things which have their source and
inspiration in holiness, and that he admires. There may be heroism, unselfish devotion, deeds of
valor, benevolence, altruism, things of sentiment, artistic and poetic things, which he admires, and
which his sentiment responds to.
It is in this field that a worldly church operates. Here are the intellectual and moral activities of
an unspiritual ministry. Into this field are brought the altruism, the benevolence, the unselfishness,
the service for others, of the Christ and apostles. Into this comes the service for men, and the heroic
doings of men, with their achievements in art, poetry, hierarchies, the winning of influence position,
etc. It is in this field that we find social Christianity.
The Divine Presence
But the door is not opened into the divine presence. While these may have their fountain in divine
personality, they are separated from divine manifestation, grafted into human experience. They
become a man-centered religion, and divine manifestation is not sought or desired.