Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Things I Know in Religion a Preface to Faith

Things I Know in Religion a Preface to Faith

Newton, Joseph Fort

Paperback

Religion General

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 140677331X
ISBN13: 9781406773316
Publisher: Dodo Pr
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.44 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Things I Know in Religion To FREDERICK W. NORWOOD My Beloved Successor in the Pulpit of the City Temple With Admiration and Affection CONTENTS THINGS I KNOW IN RELIGION i WHY WE BELIEVE 21 GOD OUR ETERNAL REFUGE 43 WHEN GOD Is NEAR 57 THE CRISIS OF CHRIST 67 THE RETURN TO THE ALTAR 85 RELIGION IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS 103 OUR NEIGHBOR 119 THE NEXT STEP IN RELIGION 135 WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES 147 THE CHALLENGE OF LENT 161 THE IMMORTAL LIFE 175 Vll FOREWORD F THE SERMONS HERE SELECTED, ONE Ap peared in the Atlantic Monthly and two in The Christian Century, while the title ser mon formed a part of a symposium entitled What Religion Means to Me, edited by Sherwood Eddy, who kindly allows me to use it. The first two sermons have been used effectively in various colleges and uni versities Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Iowa, Vassar in chapel services and group discussions. The under lying emphasis all through is an appeal to experience, as over against outward authority and arid argument, as the basis of faith, seeking the roots of religion in the nature and need of man, and its fulfillment and verification in the struggles we pass through in fellow ship with God and our fellows, J, F. N. St. Jamess Church, Philadelphia. Things I Know in Religion THINGS I KNOW IN RELIGION Now I know m part but then shall I know even as also 1 am known. i Cor, 13 12. IT. PAUL DID NOT PROFESS TO KNOW EVERYTHING. IN REGARD TO MANY THINGS OF VAST IMPORT HE HAD HONESTLY TO ADMIT that he did not know. He saw in a glass darkly, he prophesied in fragments. That is to say, respecting much that he deeply desired to know, he was a Chris tian agnostic, as we all must be. Our human mind is limited, our vision is dim. On this bankand shoal of time we can see but a little way ahead, and every ray of light is tipped with darkness. There was a time in the life of St. Paul when he knew much more than he did when he wrote this Hymn of Love a time when he knew more and loved less. Like some of the rest of us, St. Paul had been trained in a system of theology in which little was left un known. His teachers knew the nature of God, the names and number of the angels, and the end of all things. As often happens, his knowledge made him narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, as if it were not sure of itself. Uncertainty lies at the heart of all intolerance, doubt is the basis of bigotry. Happily, an explosive ex THINGS I KNOW IN RELIGION perience had blown the old theology of St. Paul to bits, leaving his house of dogma an utter and hopeless wreck. He was never able to pick up the pieces and put them together again. Nor did he care to do so. Old things had passed away all things had become new. Something strange and wonderful had happened, defying analysis and baffling speech. Life had now another basis, a deeper meaning, and a new dynamic. He himself was a new creation as he tells us, living in a new world of lengthening vistas and lifting skies. If he knew less and loved more, finding in love the way to the truth most worth knowing, the things he now knew were far more vital and profound than the dogmas of other days. He humbly admitted that he knew only in part, perhaps, a tiny part, but his knowledge was not only more real as far as it went, but, somehow, more vivid and satis fying. If he still had a habit of trying to prove by logic what he had learned by love, it was hardly more than a habit. His argument always ended in ananthem, and often in an ecstasy of joy. A Christian saint here used the same word that a modern agnostic uses, albeit with a different accent and emphasis. Much depends upon the tone of voice and heart in which we say that we do not know. It may be said in a tone of sad finality, if not dogmatic denial, implying that there is nothing to know, and that we are doomed to perpetual spiritual idiocy. Such an atti tude was alien to the mind of St. Paul, who was neither negative nor neutral, as so many are today...

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