Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-12-18
THE LAMB OF GOD.

THE LAMB OF GOD.
Sermon Preached by Rev. r. r. Riddell,
the New Pastor of the First Baptist
Church, Last Evening.
Last evening Rev. r. r. Riddell, the new
preacher at the First Baptist church. de-
livered an interesting and instructive dis
course taking his text from John 1: 90.
"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world" The sermon
was rather long but the following may
be regarded as faithful synopsis:
We scarcely enter upon the, history of
man before his ruin is recorded. The
dream of Eden is abruptly broken, and we
wake to the consciousness of the presence
of fearful moral malady in human life.
moment We tread the blooming fields of
Eden; we reval in its beauty; life in the
air; life in the earth; life in the sea and
sky; undying, bloom-unwasting beauty
everywhere and in everything. A moment
and all is changed. Death in the air, in
the fields, in the flowers. Death in all,
and through and over all-ruin everywhere.
Blight and mildew ON all about US; the
canker eating at the heart of all life, all
joy, all beauty. Sin everywhere! For
brief day humanity walked amid bewilder-
ing beauty amid the undying
and poisonless, felt the full tide harmonies
of all life flowing serenely about
it; heard no Cry of distress,
saw no sight of suffering, felt no jar of dis
cord-then broke from God-and ever
since we have been cropping amid graves,
wandering in the clark mountains" and
growing in distress. The paths of the
wilderness are wet with the tecrs of brave
men and noble women, where every effort
is struggle, where every breath is sigh.
Toll and care and pain is the sad heritage
of man, but never for a moment-never
from that hour of dreadful daring, when
the child forsook the father and broke his
commandment the disobedient, sin
ming race been left without hope. Side by
side with the sentence of Punishment
stands the promise and assurance of res
toration. The gates of paradise had
scarcely closed ere the altar of atonement
was erected at its entrance, and the flame
Of the cherubim's sword at the entrance of
Eden blends with the light of the consum-
ing sacrifice for mans atonement. The
storm of Gods wrath and condemnation
gathered black and awful, but across its
murAy bosom arched the bow of prom
ise-wrath and refuge walked side
by side. Doom and deliverance moved
parallel. By every Sodom there stands a
Zoar-a city of refuge, with angel hands
to help US across the burning sands. Close
by the side, yea, in the very midst of sin
and uncleanliness, God has found foun-
tain for sin and uncleanliness. Up from
the poisonous level of every desert of sin
and shame rises the rifted rock; for every
stormy wind covert; for every angry sea
a harbor of security. Mingled with every
warning is an invitation. Tell me, O man,
my brother, is not God kind? Justly are
we condemned; justly had God dealt with
us if he had Abandoned US, as we had him,
altogether; justly had he done if he had
withdrawn himself completely from the
race and yelled his face in everlasting
darkness from US, and left US to GO down,
down into the ever increasing darkness of
our shame, into the ever multiplying mis-
cry, into which sin, unchecked by him,
would have led US. Justly indeed had he
dealt with us, if he had given US up to
the desires of our hearts, and let
the race drift on upon the turbid stream
of its own sinfulness, faster and faster
until in roar of hate, amid the surges
of unchecked lust and sin we went down to
a darkness such as Dante never dreamed.
But 'He so lored the aOorld" And by rea-
son of that great love-a love so great as
to be the establishment of angels, he fol-
lowed us in our destructive course, bring
ing with him and placing at our very feet
in an agony of supplication, the mercy
seat bathed in the sacrificed blood of his
own son. "When there was no eye to pity;"
when there was no arm to save" he came
to US. Tell me o man, my brother, is not
God kind?
l. The manner in which he came is an
nounced in the text: "Ihe Lamb of God.''
No language could have been more
clearly understood, and no simile could
have so strikingly conveyed to the minds
of the people, whom John the Baptist ad-
dressed, the character and mission of
Christ. For ages had the Offering of a
lamb for sin been familiar to the world. At
that time, all the traditions, histories
and religious thinging of the people,
clustered around this one great central
fact-the propitiatory offering of lamb.
The pious few, had, all through the CEN
turtles, by priestly meditation, come year
after year and laid the purest, whitest,
most perfect of his flock upon the altar;
and as its innocent blood flowed forth,
and its life ebbed out, solemn sense of
the import of the act possessed his soul.
Placing his hands upon the head of the
offering, he confessed to God his sins, and
believingly transferred his guilt to the
victim, and in that transfer he beheld the
only possible alienation of his own dis
tress. Inwrought into the very nerve and
fiber of the religious thought of the age
was the idea and conviction that if their
sin and faith be not horne nv q sfainless