The Possible Life, and Other Sermons (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897. Excerpt: ... NO BACKWARD STEP. For some months I have been hearing much of Dr. Gordon's new book, "The Christ of To-day," and have anticipated great pleasure in the reading of it when the convenient season should arrive. Reading it very carefully, I finished it some days ago; and I propose to make it the subject of my discourse this morning. But why should I do this? Because the book is one of the most significant that have recently appeared; because it is particularly significant to the Unitarian body, for which it has the finest lot of compliments this body ever has received from such a source, while at the same time it is invited to gird itself like one in solemn haste for its return to the rock from which it was hewn and the pit from which it was digged, --the orthodox conception of Jesus, who is called the Christ. Its author, Dr. George A. Gordon, is the minister of the Old South Church in Boston, the most representative Congregational church in that city, and, consequently, in the United States. He is a man of great ability and culture, a writer of great force and brilliancy, the master of a noble rhetoric and a happy gift of illustration, a preacher whose habitual note is one of profound moral earnestness and spiritual invitation. Moreover, his book is not an isolated product. It is one of many which in these last days are coming in upon us like a flood, --the characteristic books of what is sometimes called Progressive Orthodoxy and sometimes the New Theology. (The second of these names is certainly the better, because "Orthodoxy" and "Progressive" are mutually destructive terms. Orthodoxy ceases to be Orthodoxy the moment it begins to be progressive. Progress ceases to be progress the moment it becomes orthodoxy; i.e., a doctrine which is a dogma because it is ...