Morning journal and courier., 1880-06-28

Though the moral are. leSs oDtruS1Ye, they l are none the less sure; though slower in their ! working, they are none the less energetic. | Their energy is greater, resembling in this, | those subtler agents of matter which though | they glide into one another in secret hiding | places and under Protean phases, are for that l very reason most easily gathered for fearful retribution.
 | Within this vast enginery of force and law | man stands in his weakness and his strength. l The spectacle of this enginery is sublime and every day is making it more magnificent, for l every day reveals something new in force or 1 law, each manifesting more of the thought and
 power of God But while man is continually | finding his strength in his power to interpret by scientific thought the forces and laws | which-had been before unknown, he Is there l by made more and more sensible of his weak l ness in his augmented apprehension of what I is unrevealed He is beset with fear lest he shall make some fatal mistake Hence he asks earnestly, is there nothing more? If there is | nothing more than force and law no man is l so much to be pitied as he-the man of sci entifc knowledge and scientific imagination, for man feels so lonely and helpless as he. He is alone, alone as he muses upon the vast ness of this great solitude, peopled though it ! be with the enormous agents that haunt and l overmaster him with their presence, but are without a thought or care for his personallife | Could he not see behind these forces a per-
 sonal being like himself, and capable of di- recting both force and law to issues of bless l ings to men, how welcome would that knowl- 1 edge be to his lonely heart. That God he may see and find if he will. He is suggested I by his own personality which is his nobler,
 nay, his essential self. He is demanded by | the weakness and limitations of his own na- ture- Why should not there be a personal and living God behind this machinery of l force and law which we call nature? Why l should not know living spirit well unknown force and definite law, and why l should not accept personality in God as the | best explanation of both? There is, there must be such person he fills this vast soh | tude by his immanent presence and his ami l mating life. He directs the forces which cannot control. While dare not transgress 1 the known manifestations of his will in force and law, can trust myself to his personal | care, where I cannot rely on my own knowl- 1 edge or foresight
 What natural theism thus suggests Chris 1 tian theism declares for mans guidance and comfort. The living God becomes our Fath- CT in Heaven, the guardian of our life our | ever present friend, who understands our most secret thoughts our weakest fears, our | blush1ng shame, our conscious guilt, and who | can bring to each and to all the sympathy | and comfort and guidance of personal | friendship and an assured blessing. In what words of sublime condescension and simple pa- l thos have these truths been declared Even l the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Ye are of more value than many sparrows.
 
 Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all things. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you" These aIe words of Him who spake as never man spake. Nor did he speak them alone. He lived them in his life, exemphfying them in look and de- 1 meanor and showing their import by his lov- ing trust. The same revelations of God were confirmed by his resurrection, and his as-
 cending majesty as he went into the presence of his Father and our Father of his God and | our God. From that presence we hear the | assuring words: ''He that spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give all things. Be careful for nothing but in every thing by prayer and supplcation with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Je-
 sus" In this faith in God as the guide of our personal life, Christian believers by myr- iads have lived and died. In this hope the living stand.
 V. The man without God is without hope for future life. For such a man, at best, another life is simply possible. He has no
 rational assurance that 1t is certain The uni verse is so vast and mans dwelling is so con tracted; it's inhabitants are so manifold and one among them is of so little moment the distances are so enormous, and mans power to traverse them is so H1nited the histories of the prehistoric ages are so gigantic in their forgotten details, and yet the title of each chapter reads as an inscription over millions of the dead, that men tremble before nature, as when child gazes on the face of an over hanging cliff, or peers over the edge of 8 yawn- ing gulf
 Man shudders before nature's remorseless insensibility. He notices how little she makes of the dead, and how little she cares for the living, how she mocks at and trifes with sen sibility and with life. An earthquake swal- lows up tens of thousands of living men. The jaws of the gulf that opened to receive them
 swing back to their place ,and forthwith flow CTS adorn the ghastly seam, as if in mockery of the dead who are buried beneath A great
 ship founders in the ocean, freighted with thousand living souls. AS they go down they raise one shriek of anguish that it would seem would rend the sky. But the cry is over, and the waters roll over the place as smoothly as though those thousand lives were not sleeping in death below. Of anoth-
 CT life there are no tidings and few sugges- tions, possibility, or perhaps proba- bility, but no hope.
 Nowadays even this possibility is denied by many, and the probability against such life is hardened into certainty, and men strive to prove that they are not immortal as for great prize. All the analogies of nature are interpreted to prove the extinction of mans
 being. Those who acknowledge no God but mysterious force, those who deny to God
  tion and sympathy, most reasonably find no
 evidence ln nature for future life, for when they look in her stony and infexible face they find all the evidence to be against it.
 Let such man awake to the fact that God IS, that he lives personal life, that nature is not so much his hiding place as it is a gar ment of the revealing light that the forces of nature are his instruments and the laws of nature his steadying and eternal thoughts, that man is made after Gods image and can interpret his thoughts and commune with his living self that life is mans school every ar rangement and lesson of which points to a definite end, that this end is not accomplish ed here,-then not only does there spring up in his heart the hope that this life shall be continued in another, but this hope becomes almost certainty. But this hope is a cer- tainty so long, and only so long, as this life is interpreted by the light of Gods thought and Gods personality. So long as this light con- tinues to shine, every difficulty that would make against another life is turned into an argument in it's favor, every new doubt sug- gests the necessity of a new hope. Every roughness that has cast shadow on the picture reflects a gleam of light, and the hard, inexpensive face of nature herself becomes radiant with promise and hope.
 Let now God be seen to break forth from his hiding place, and to manifest himself in the Christ who conquers death and brings the immortal life to light through his rising @AAAN tNooSAAoAOA1 4OpO 1A4dG Adtu Deon reached as conclusion of fassured conviction is shouted forth in the song of triumph Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefled and that fadeth not awayn
 l know that this argument respecting the 1 hope of another life is set aside by the ag- nostics by the denial that another life is of | any value, or that men care for it. The next 1 step is to argue that it is weak and ignoble to l expect or desire it. The next is to substi- tute for it an ideal existence in the lives of others by the continuance of our thoughts | and activities in those of others, in whose | life we thus may continue to live Let | those accept this substitute for a future life I who can, and find in it what satisfaction they | may. They will certainly confers that this 1 fancied contentnent with personal annihila- 1 ton falls immeasurably short of what men | call hope, and preeminently of the Christian | hope that is full of immortality
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