Today there was put
into my hands the new Congregational creed. I have just read it, and I
thought I would call your attention to it tonight, to find whether the
church has made any advance; to find whether it has been affected by
the light of science; to find whether the sun of knowledge has risen in
the heavens in vain; whether they are still the children of
intellectual darkness; whether they still consider it necessary for you
to believe something that you by no possibility, can understand, in
order to be a winged angel forever. Now, let us see what their creed
is. I will read a little of it. They commence by saying that they
"believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven, and of
earth, and of all things visible and invisible." I am perfectly
willing that He should make the invisible, if they want Him to. They
say, now, that there is this one personal God; that He is the maker of
the universe, and its ruler. I again ask the old question: of what
did He make it? If matter has not existed through eternity, then this
God made it. Of what did He make it? What did He use for the purpose?
There was nothing in the universe except this God. What had the God
been doing for the eternity He had been living? He had made
nothing--called nothing into existence; never had had an idea, because
it is impossible to have an idea unless there is something to excite an
idea. What had He been doing? Why doesn't the Congregational Church
tell us? How do they know about this infinite being? And if He is
infinite, how can they comprehend Him? What good is it to believe
something that you don't understand--that you never can understand? In
the old creeds they described this God as a being without body and
parts or passions. Think of that! Something without body and parts or
passions. I defy any man in the world to write a letter descriptive of
nothing. You can not conceive of a finer word-painting of a vacuum
than a something without body and parts or passions. And yet this God,
without passions, is angry at the wicked every day; this God, without
passions, is a jealous God, whose anger burneth to the lowest hell.
This God, without passions, loves the whole human race, and this God,
without passions, damns a large majority of the same. So, too, He is
the ruler of the world, and I find here that we find His providence in
the government of the nations. What nations? What evidence can you
find, if you are absol