New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1874-02-15

| 1Of mere are IucU Will AOItys mtys huu q
| hundred millions. And so if you 60 from
human love up through the angels till you
| get to God-if God is rich God, the in
finite, whose experiences are never less
wide than infnity-when he is rich, how
vast must be the riches; what must be the
love expressed in the words when it it said
that God is rich. If noble, heroic
woman is rich in the quality, carry it up
through saintship, through angel
hood; carry it up through principali-
ties and powers to God, and when
God is rich what must it be to
him? Is there any such conception OF God
as this? Is your God rich? don't mean
whether he has great deal Of power, or
whether he can make stars as boy makes
snow-balls, but is he rich in his soul?
What are the reasons for this comparative
poverty of the conception of God? One
reason is that men are more looking upon
the external revelations of God and
through nature, and less upon the internal
nature of the divinity through human ex-
perience. / believe that in our day God
is revealing himself through natural phil
osophers; am not alarmed at what might
be called the personal infdelity of these
men; they are all workers together, though
they do not know it. Go with me into
silk factory and ask them to take down
some OF the most exquisite patterns of
silk. Mr.. Beecher then briefly reviewed
the process by which the fabric reached
its last stage of perfection, and showed
that the loom, the spinners, the dyers,
the girls that reeled off the CO.
coons, and back of them again the worms
were all engaged in making that beau
tiful silk; and if human agencies were as
diverse in the accomplishment of an OBJ
ject, who should place limit on those
that were divineS Continuing, he said:
So minister or deacon that knows all
theology, and is of blameless life, keeps
Sunday and observes all the proprieties
of the sanctuary, lives an admirable life,
breaches doctrines regularly, and men
look on him and say, That is what call
a regular churchman, good Christian
man, good churchman;" and ! present
to them Herbert Spencer. He to be men
toned in the same day with that Christian
man? mention John Stuart Mill. Why,
he did not believe in God, even; and so
when you saw the dirty dyer dyeing the (
silk you did not believe in color. What |
fools we are. God is working by all men,
whether men know it or not, and so l re- I
joice in all'stellar discoveries, in all things
that the microscope reveals or the things |
that the telescope brings forth, and it is |
to me very little whether the individual
workers believe just as do or not. All |
these men are bringing out that |
side of the divine nature which is /
the material; and if man have !
only scientific God, God formed out of |
the alembic, or chemistry, or dynamics,
be has God, but it is not the God that
makes heaven rich. Men are taught to
regard God as a God of law and justice.
That is preached out of all proportion, so
hat men come to regard God as they do
Judge Noah Davis, who sits with his law
books and administers the law Just as he
inds in his books, and says, 81 am very
sorry, gentlemen, but that man has trans
crossed, and the law says he must be pun
she'd" God is no such administrator.
he is large enough to say, 81 will have
mercy on whom l will have mercy" but
till we have a legal God. Men may ad-
nire justice, but no man ever yet loved 1t.
That side of God that represents matter
loes not draw men; they are touched
through the social feeling In most of
he preaching fear was appealed to first,
nd then love was to come in afterward.
There was some truth in this sys-
EN-; it was in the world as in the family,
nd there was no family that was not
he better for having a stick in it. There
we're some children that seemed to be
'orn into the wrong world they were so
God, but most of them die; if they live
hey are not saints, and if they are saints
hey don't live. A Connecticut woman,
,hen asked how she had brought up eight
trapping boys, said she brought them up
4 the fear of God and the horsewhip
'ut efficacious as was the rod, it was not
he most powerful element; there was
othing so powerful as love. A mothers .
Ear was more than Noah's food to those
Id sinners Then mems conceptions of !
rod were as limited as ones conception of &
rairie flowers. Mr. Beecher gave an &C. {
ount Of his first experience of prairie !:
overs, and said it seemed as if shutdown
ad dropped down on the ground and
aimed it with its colors. 1t was beyond ,
j imagination; and SO it would be with I
cd, when He should be seen face to face,
i past thought of Him will die dimly :
way, and there will be love, bounty, t
goodness, a transcendent richness of the '
cart that will fill every soul. Silence
i'll be the first charm, and then the rap /
ire will break out, made of heaven and l
heavenly images-that new song which .
one can learn except they have a new E
rth. -Ne,o York World. E
l n