Columbia democrat and star of the north. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1867, 1866-10-24
SERMON OF
Rev. JOHN CHAMBERS.

are being popularized in this country.
The first clause of the ninth verse of the
fourteenth chapter of Proverbs declares that
9 Fools maize a n7ocE at SIR Let the stu
dent of history sit down with his maps be
fore him, aad with the ancient records that
he can select from the most distinguished
and well-furnished libraries in the world,
and ask himself where is Thebes, Babylon
and Athens? Where are those magnificent
cities of antiquity? He looks upon his
map in vain. He comes on down in the
history, of life; he prides to see the lengths
and the breadths and the heights and the
depths of the mighty Roman Empire. The
utmost that he can do in regard to any and
| all of these is, the discovery of broken
shaft or the remnants of magnificent tenn
| pie.
The cities of Thebes, and of Athens, and
of Babylon, and of Nineveh seem to have
| been blotted out of existence and the men
Of those days, and the vast nations that
struggled and contended the one with the
other, have perished And if this curiosity
should lead him to investigate a little more
closely and he should desire to go back to Je-
| rusalem and take look at her, and to watch
the progress Of the Pilgrim from Heaven as
he made his way from town to town and
from village to village; as he met the blind
man, or the leprous man, or the dumb man; ;
and now he stops to ask where are those
traces? Man answereth that magnificent
home of God, with its Shekinah and its
| Holy of Holes, and all that belonged to it
have passed away He beholds the man who
went about preaching and warning the peo-
pie.
There he is in every home, in every birth
| place of the Christian; there he is within
the geographical boundaries of the birth
place of the Son OF the Eternal God he
has gone to the remnants of the place Of
His birth There he is with the Apostles,
and what does he see? What meets his
| eye ?-just one sweeping waste of desolation.
They have followed in the wake of those
great empires-they have gone down and
not trace can scarcely be found Why,
my brethren? Why all this desolation? Z?
Why these ruins? Why scarcely footprint
to be seen upon God s footstool? There is
but one single answer to it all. The people
have become in the generations gone by
blasphemous and ribald, and sin has brought
calamity and ruin upon them No other
answer can be given.
There is no reason why the materials that
built Babylon should not remain. There Is
no reason why the materials putt into Thebes
should not be there. Why is all this? and
why are these nations blotted out, that you
| can scarcely find a remnant Of one Of them?
They We're men as we are, they were intelli-
gent as we are; but they are gone They
have passed away, and everything that be-
longed to them is gone. They are buried
beneath the rubbish Of the earth, and there
is not tear-drop that falls upon the grave
of one of them. And now why all this /?
The people became fools they mocked at sin.
The people became blasphemous and ribald
in their character, and ruin came upon
thom.
The history of one nation Is the history
pretty much Of al nations; other than this,
tha5 to some there must have been a deeper
condemnation than Others, because the light
which they enjoyed was greater than the
others. Around the vast globe upon which
God has placed the human race, the Amer
lean people are known. Springing INTO be-
ing as by magic, and making such wonderful
progress, we are the admiration of the
world. What is sin? l can answer in the
words of Paul, g Sin is the transgression of
the law" Where there is no law there can
be no trangression.
There is Divine law and there is human
law. Sinis the violation of tie Divine law,
as it is the violation of human law. Bias
phemy and ribaldry rise up, and the very
first indication we meet with alarming in its
character, is the disposition of many to
make light Of SIN. You cannot at any mo-
ment take a knife out of your pocket and
make slight incision into your finger with
out pain. You violate law in doing that.
1t is against the law of nature; for nature
has her laws, which must not be violated.
Its therefore q violation Of the law, and
you are suffering the penalty of that viola
ton. So when you come into social organi-
cation. In the first place there is the fam
ily. There are family laws, the violation O
which bring upon US trouble, vexations and
distress and nothing but trouble and dis
tress
Then you go into the community, there
are laws to govern it. We have laws-mu-
nicipal laws-whether good or bad, they are
the laws; and if'men make laws they are
bound to obey those laws as they. made
them. They must do so until they repeal
them and put better ones in their place.
We have general laws-national laws 1t is
the national laws which are bindiag upon
every human being from the Chief Naris-