Summary of Sermon – Rev. Chaney Sermon based on Mark 15:31

The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) - Mon, Apr 13, 1885  Page 7
The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) – Mon, Apr 13, 1885 Page 7

Last evening at the Church of our Father, Dr. Chaney gave a discourse from Mark 15:31 . “He saved others, himself he cannot save.” What the mockers of Christ said to his shame, Hit followers repeat as his noblest praise. Those mocking scribes spoke more wisely than they knew. He did save others. He could not save himself i.e., he could not give his mind or heart to self-preservation. His thought was for others. From the life and practice of Jesus we may -get a better clue to the meaning of a true salvation than from the men’s report and resetting of His doctrine. It is the life filled with saving work for others; not the life spent in weary efforts to save itself. “He that saveth his life shall lose it.” The example of broad sympathy and free, large minded nurture which Jesus gave to men, was soon lost sight of in the critical emergencies in which the early church found itself. And Christendom to day gets its customary expression from the perils and sorrows of its childhood. As a result we find the grandest causes advocated in the narrowest spirits, temperance intemperately defined and urged; moral reform prudishly pursued; abuses of popular amusements long-facedly rebuked; and sins of frivolity just as frivolously objected to.

The preacher then drew a striking contrast between the self-forgetful spirit and the practice of Jesus and the self- seeking methods of the modern church. While fully realizing the peculiar spiritual deeds of men, especially in their transition from youth to maturity and from maturity to old age, he rebuked the preaching which sought to magnify their fears and increase the excitement of those excitable periods. “I would that men should come of age in the church,” he said, “as they come to maturity elsewhere and only by a deepening of the voice, make known their spiritual stature.”

Oh, that we might have a revival of conscience. The revivals now visible and active seem rather to have come from concert; men struggling together to see how many people they can bring into their several fold. Not what we all know together; our conscience, but what we all think we know separately; that is the basis of this religious agitation.

A revival of conscience; that is the great want of the time. Men, like Zacchaeus waking up with the resolution to restore threefold all they have gained by falsehood! Men refusing to recite or sing in concert what they do not believe apart! Men intending to do what they say they will, and doing it when they say they will. Men who find their joy in ministering, not in being ministered unto! Men who are too intent on saving others to think much of saving themselves!

To promote such a revival as this the church will labor. It will never be crowded, for men are always more anxious to be saved in their sins than from their sins. We have no salvation for such. But what one man can do for another, God helping him, in the worship of God; the promotion of virtue and the recovery of the spirit and life of Christ –that we will try to do for those who come to us.

Mr. Chaney closed his discourse with an illustration of the love and loyalty for Jesus which distinguished the Unitarian church likening it to the love of Cordelia in King Lear, a love too deep for extravagant protestation; a love which would live and die for its Lord, whether it could speak much about him or not.

The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) – Mon, Apr 13, 1885 Page 7
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