Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-08-13

Extracts from sermon by O. Il. rockingham, New
Peace comes from the assurance that things
are, as they are, by cause in other words,
that events come in the order Of nature, by the
will of God; that nothing walks with aimless
feet. BE not alarmed : amnOt about to take ref
uge in that mythical idea of special PrOvi-
dence. This belief in Providence has been SO
abused that one hates to deal with it at all.
When | speak of the actual condition of
things, the actual facts OF too day rs provlden-
tial, mean simply that they stand where
they do because they could not but stand
there; they exist by the constitution of the
world; they refer back to facts on facts with
out number, every one OF which must have
been otherwise, in order that this should have
been otherwise. They are links in the steel
chain of history. 1t was nobody's dongs; it
was the untathomable, unbelievable logic of
history. 1t was the regular working out Of
the sum OF the universe that such figures, as
you and |, are set just wherp we are set, and
are made to count tor precisely SO murh.
But this, you tell me, with pale face and
white lips-thiS, you tell me, is fate. Yes,
that is what men always say when Providence
becomes too large to keep pace with their
walking through life.
SO long as God is a person like themselves,
whom they can talk with, walk with, eat with,
advise with, closet with, chat with tamllarly
about time and eternity, they call Inn God;
but when he rises to his infinite proportions,
and fills the world with "a presence that has
no outline: when his features become CONT
nents, his eyes consultations, his breath the
air that fills the interStellar spaces, his speech
the inarticulate harmOnies OF the spheres, his
word the hierOglyphics Of the universe; when
his movements become SO large that only one
the history of a race, and his acts Of volitioE
flash upon US in the laws that govern the de-
velopment OF planets, and regulate the rising
and setting of suns, and his separate thoughts
require centuries on centuries for their I'M
folding; when God becomes infinite spheral
eternal, distancing thought, imagination, w0r-
ship; when he becomes more and more God,
then he is not called God any more-then he
is called Fate. Very well give me the larger
God, and call him what you please. call
HIM FATHER! The vaSter he is, the more |
am at home with him. The more unfathoma-
bic he is, the more faithful my reliance. The
more comprehensive, and exact, and int1eXi
bic, and stupendous he is, in the scale Of his
operations, the deeper my peace, as one sub
ject to them, and involved in Them
If l thought that anybody could have pre-
vented that which Is, and caused it not to
have been; If L could detect the slightest
crack, by which chance could have thrust in
finger; the ground Of my repose would
tremble under my feet But assured as l am,
that, at this hour, the world could not have
been further advanced than it is; assured that
as the aatumnal leaves take their tints by a
power as Inevitable as it is mysterious, and as
beautiful as it is inevitable, so the hues that
lie on each ones lot, that stain the fortunes OF
communities, that spread their crimson dyes
over the conditions of states and nations
start out under the action of divine chem.
lstry' the Key to whose laboratory
no mortal ever held, or will hold
assured as l am that as the autumnal leat
drops to the ground not before, nox behind
its moment, but just at its moment, and melt,
into the soil precisely as it does, because 4
was decreed from the time when each tree
bore seed after its kind, so the leaves on tn,
! tree of humanity drop to the ground, wrench