Hide Article Text (OCR)
E.ILrought from the timbers of the crushed rail train. In a little while it.will be too lat*.Come for God’s sake! Co ne right away! “No, «a\s the doctor, *‘not uutii websvil'3iilefhoneer'osusn-part K inr dolern-it ofirri-UgH.liftend;willtorywillli go not torn ned-likalealoriles. .•on-t to loraup.em--ins .*ast or-i as-ih?”havesettled whether the meJicme on that top shelf was rightly mixed. I say there were too many drops of laudanum in it, and this other man says there were too many crops of camphire, we must get this question settled before we can attend to the railroad accident.”And one doctor takes another doctor by the collar and pushes him back against the counter, and one of the druggists says, “If you will not a.lmit that I aru right about that one bofje I will smash every bottle in your apothc«_ury store,” and he proceeds to smash. Meanwhile, on the lower shelf, plainly marked and within easy reach ara all the medicines neede 1 for the helping of the sufferers by the accident, and in that drawer, easily opened, are bandages an i splints for the lack of which fifty people are dying outside the drug store. Before Iapply this thought every one sees its application. Here is this old world, and it is off track. Sin and sorrow have collided with it. The groan of agony is fourteen hundred million voiced. God has opened for relief and cure a great sanitarium, a great house of mercy, and all its shelves are filled with balsams, with cathoiicons, with help—glorious help, tremendous help, helpso easily administered that you need not get upon any step ladder to reach it. You can reach it on your knee* and then hand it to all the suffering, and the sinning, and the dying. Comfort for all the troubled! Par-don ror all the guilty I Peace for ali the dying! But while the world is needing the re-es?”ofbus•eat a of lomeonlief and perishing for lack of it, what of tha church? Why, it is full of fighting doctors. On the top shelf are some old bottles, which several hundred years ago Calviu or Armiu-ius, or the members of the synod of Dort, or the formers of the Nicene creed filled with holy mixtures, and until we get a revision of these old bottles at d find out whether we must take a teaspoonful or tablespoonful, and whether before or after meals, let the nations suffer and groan and die. Save tbrbottles by all means, if you cannot save anything else.ingMidiugOIUingnotudslaybeds,, to ink—Isti-tlyest ing me ho deity al-ioe itli ms ral ive •ad ich .nd es-of •ed i a ley in-all;htehu-imiwte-ofheooire■reies::*ohew.ididis,atr-edlt;?yo!-ererismsinndofndm-•al•al)e-he•h•rs,n-b.e'Urheastotopss-?s.ldierweNow, what part shall you and I take in this controversy which tills all Christendom with clangor? My advice is, take no part. In time of riot all mayors of cities advise good citizens to stay at home or in thetT places of business, and in this time of religious riot I advise you to go about your regular work for Got1 Leave the bottles on the higher shelves for others to fight about, andtake the two bottles on the shelf within easy reach, the two battles which are all this dying world needs; the one filled with a potion which is for the cleaning of all sin, the other filled with a potion which is for the soothing of all suffering. Two Gospel bottles! Christ mixed them out of His own tears and blood. In them is no human admixture. Spend no time on the mysteries! You, a man only five or six feet high, ought not to try to wade an ocean a thousand feet deep. My own experience has been vivid. I devote! the most of my time for years in trying to understand God’s eternal decrees, and I was determined to find out why the Lord let sin come into the world, and I s**t ont to explore the doctrine of the Trinity, and with a yardstick to measure the throne of the Infinite.As with all my predecessors, the attempt was a dea l failure. For the last thirty years I have not spent two minutes in studying the controverted points of theology, and if I live thirty years longer I will not spend the thousandth part of a second in such expioration.I know two things, and these I will devote all the years of my life in proclaiming—God will through Jesus Christ pardon sin, and He will comfort trouble.Creeds have their uses, but just now the church is oreeded to death. The young men entering the ministry are going to be launched iu the thickest fog that ever settled on the coasts. As I am told that in all our services students of Princeton an I Union and Drew and other theological seminaries are present, and as these words will •ome to thousands of young m in who are soon to eater the ministry, let me say to such and through them to their associates, keep out of the bewildering, belittling, destroying and an*ry controversies abroad.The questions our doctors of divinity are trying to s -ttle will not be settled until the I day after the day of ju igment. Tt is such a poor economy oi time to spend years an I years in trying to fathom the unfathomable, when in five minutes iu heaven we will know all we want to know. Wait til! we get our throne. Wait till the light of eternity flashes upon our newly ascended spirits. Ic is useless for ants on different sides of a mole hill to try t discuss the comparative heights of Mount Blanc and Mount \\ ashiugton. Let me say to all young men about to enter the ministry that soon the greatest novelty in the world will be the unadulterated religion of Jesus lt;Jurist. Preach that an 1 you will have a crowd. The world is sick to regurgitation with the gnodern quacks in religion. Tne world has been swinging off from the old Gospel, but it will swing back, and by the time you young men go into the pulpits the cry will be coming up from all the millions of mankind, “Give us the bread of life; no sweetened bread, no bread with -ickly raisins stuck here and there into it. but old-fashlonei bread as Goi our mother mixed and baked it!”Now, what is the simple fact that you in the pew an! Sibbath-school class and reformatory association and we iu the puloits have to deal with? Is is this: That Go 1 hassomewhere, and it matters not where, but somewhere, provided a great heaven, great for quietness for those who want quiet; great for vast assemblage for those who like multitudes; great for architecture for those who like architecture; great for beautiful lan i-la?watlikeieichlelisUen*.varsett,threicheidtotoItISrealJ1ids.its-ndiwaoarmies ou white horses, and great for anything that one especially desires in such a rapturous dominion; and through the doings of one who was born about five miles south of Jerusalem an! died about ten minutes’ walk from its eastern gate all may enter that great heaven for the earnest and heartfelt asking. Is that all? That is all. Wliat, then, is your work and mine? Our work is to persuade people to face that way and start thitherward and finally go in. But has not religion something to do with this world as well as the next? Oh, yes; but do you not s*e tiiar, if the people start for heaven on th riv way there they will do all tne good thev cau- They will at the very start of the journey get so much of the spirit of Christ, wnich is a spirit of kindness and self sacrifice an i generosity and burden bearing and helpfulness that every step they take will resoundwith good deeds. Oh, get your religion off Oi stilts! Get it down out of the high towers! Get it on a level with the wants and woes of our poor human race! Get it ont of the dusty theological boobs that few people read, and put it in their ht-arte and lives. Good thing is it to profess religion when you join the church, but every day, bome-how, we ought to profess religion.rPsrA peculiar patchwork quilt was, during the Ctvil War, made by a lady and sent to the hospitals at the front. She had a boy in the army, and was naturally interested in the welfare of soldiers. But what a patchwork quilt she sent! On every block of the quilt was a passage of Scripture or a verse of a hymn. The months and years of the W8I went by. On that quilt many a woundedman had lam And suffered and dieL Bu1 one morning the hospital nu-* saw a patien under the blanket kissing the figure of *!*»; iu the quilt, and the nurse sup:»wl he w i-only wandering in his mind. But n; hs withe son of toe mother who had made ;b-quiltand he recognized that figure of a lea! as part of a gown his mother used to wjar. and it reminded him of home. “Do you know where this quilt c un s from’” he asiei. Th s nurse answered, ‘I can find out, for th-r* was atari pinned fast to it. and I will fin 1 that. Sure enough, it confirmed whit he thought. Then the nurse pointed to a passage of Scripture in the olock of the quilt, the passage which says, “When he was yet a greit ways off his father saw him and ran and fed on his neck and kissed him. “Yea,” said the , dying Soldier, “I was a great way off, but God has met ms anl had compassion on me.” “Shall I write to your mother and tell her that the lost one is found and the deal is | alive again!’ He answered, “I wish you would, if it would rot be too much trouble.” Do you suppose that woman who made that quilt and filled it with scripture passages had any trouble about who Mefchizedok was, or how the doctrine of God’s sovereignty can be harmonized with mans free a gene v, or who wrote the Pentateuch or the inconsistencies of the Nicene creed? No, no; go io work for God and suffering hurnanitv and all your doubts and fears and mysteries and unbeliefs put together will not* be heavv enough to stir the chemist’s scales, wnicn Is accustomed to weighing one-fiftie'h pare of a grain of chamomile flowers. Why to*» a moment to understan 1 the mysteries when there are so many certitudes? * Why spend our time exploring the dark garrets an ; c -al holes of a .cr.-at palace wmeh has r-o-.-v-grouud one hundred rooms floode 1 with sun shine;' It takes ail my lime to absorb war.: has been revealed, so that I have no time t*' upturn and root out and drag forth who has not been revealed. The most of the effort to solve mvsteries and explore the inexplicable and harmonize things is an attempt to help the Lord out of theological difficu ties. Goo ! enough intention, my brother no doubt, but the Lord is not anxious to have you help Him. He will keen His throne without your assistance. Don’t be afraid that the Bible will fall apart from inconsistencies. It hung together many centuries before you were born, and your funeral sermon will be preached from a text taken from its undisturbed authenticity.Do you know that I think that if all ministers in all denominations would scop this nonsense of ecclesiastical strife and take hold the word of God, the only question with each of us being how many souls we can bring to Christ and in how short a time, the Lordwould soon eno^ar for the salvation of ali nations? Why not all at once light all the torches of Gospel invitation? Wliy not riug all the bills of welcome? Why not light up the long night of the world’s sin and suffering with bonfires of victory? Why not unlimber all the Gospel batteries and let them boom across the earth, and boom into the parting heavens. The King is reaity to land if we are ready to receive Him. Why cannot we who are now living see His descent? Must it all be postponed to later ages? Has not our poor world groaned long enough in moral agonies? Have there not been martyrs enough, and have not the lakes of tears and the rivers of blood been deep enough? Why cannot the final glories roll in now? Why cannot this dying century feed the incoming tide® of the oceans of heavenly- mercy? Must our eyes close in death and our ears take on the deafness of the tomb, and these hearts beat their last throb before the day comes in? O Christ? Why tarriest Thou? Wilt Thou not, before we go the way of all the earth, let us see Thy scarred feet under some noonday cloud coining this way? Before we die let us behold i’hy hands that were spiked, spread out in benediction for a lost race. And why not let us, with our mortal ears, hear that voice which spoke peaeo as Thou didst go up, speak pardon and emancipation and love and hollinesa and joy to all nations as Thou co.nest down? But the skies do not part. I hear no rumbling of chariot wheels coming down overthe sapphire. There is no swoop of wiugs. I see no flash of angelic appearances. All is still. I hear nothing but the tramp of my own heart as I pause between these utterances. The King does not land because the world is not ready an 1 the church is not ready. To clear the way for the Lord’s coming let us devote all our energies of body, mind and soul. A Russian general riding over the battlefield, his horse treading amid the dying and dea 1, a wou.ide 1 soldier asked him for water, but the officer did not understand his language and knew not what the poor fellow wanted. Tiien the soldier cried out “Christos” and that word meant sympathy and help, and the Russian officer dismounts 1 an 1 put to the lips of the suffer er a coiling draught. Be that the charmed word with which wo go forth to do our whole duty. In manv languages it has only a little difference of termination. Christos! It stands for sympathy. It stands for Help. It stands forEardou, It stands for hope. It stands for eaven. Christos! In that name we were baptised. In that name we took our first sacrament. That will be the battle shout that will win the whole world for Go I! Christos! Put it on our banners when we march! Put it on our lips when we die! Put in the funeral psalm at our obsequies 1 Put it on the plain slab over our gravel Christos! Blessed be His glorious name forever 1 AmenJ
Newspaper Details
Fisherman And Farmer
Edenton, North Carolina, US
Fri, Jul 03, 1891
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Jenny G.
USA 19 May 2023
Other Publications Near Edenton, North Carolina
Fisherman And Farmer
