Modern Christianity; or, The plain gospel modernly expounded

Front matter

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Foreword

THIS volume is not published at the request of those to whom the sermons herein contained were preached, as, judging from their prefaces, is usually the case with volumes of printed sermons. It is published so as to preserve, in a form more permanent than the spoken word, certain things which I have felt moved to utter, which do not seem to me to have been altogether said by others. The sermons here published do not formally constitute a body of theology, but they have been selected and arranged with a view to presenting, in some sort of sequence, and with some regard to the due proportion of emphasis, the essentials of Christianity— the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the re-incarnation, if I may so put it, of the spirit of Jesus in His followers. I think I may claim that the doctrine expressed in these sermons is ancient, orthodox, and Catholic; but the mode of statement is modern, and the emphasis doubtless different from that to which some of my hoped for readers are accustomed. Not myself a good reader of sermons, nor even always a good listener, I have hesitated long in publishing my material in sermon form; but after careful consideration I have concluded that it will be on the whole more intelligible to and more readable by my desired public in this form than if rewritten as a theological or ethical

V vl Foreword

treatise, under some such title perhaps as A Modern Interpretation of Christianity. Accordingly, these sermons are presented to the outside world almost in the form in which they were originally spoken to my own people in St. Michael's Church or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I have described these sermons as " orthodox " ; but I apprehend that because of their very orthodoxy some of them may sound radical, if not revolutionary. Especially, I fear, will this be the case with the series of addresses contained in the second part of the volume, which are a literal, not a conventional, interpretation of our Lord's social teaching by one who is technically a Bible scholar rather than a theologian.

John P. Peters.

St. Michael's Church, New York.

St. John Baptist's Day, 1909.

Part I Doctrines Of The Church

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Sons of God ....

. 18

. 25

' 39

The Resurrection of God .

. 48

. 56

. 68

. 86

Big Thief and Little Thief .

• 95

The Real Hell .

. lOI

Forgiveness of Sins .

. 115

Rites and Sacraments .

. 127

Priests and Prophets .

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Free Church . . . ,

. 153

Sabbath-Sunday ....

. 162

Wisdom (to young men) .

. 171

Little Foxes (to young women) .

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Contents