The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-29

III
understand that old Hebrew work. tenantless,
no life or IL.
Here dear friends, we plant ourselves this
morning. here science and revelation coincide in
the affirmation of the proposition that there was
q time when no life did exist, or could exist, on
this planet We come back, therefore, to this
great fact, everywhere conceded, that life for
ever comes from life. There is no problem to-
day settled moro certainly than this. Wipe out
a species and you wipe out that species on this
entombed in this earth no one has reappeared.
Nature cannot reproduce them. No fact is more
certainly fixed than this. Now, when I talk
this / have reason for it. l want
to say dear friends, that we are
here upon the confines of the supernatural
/ want to say that nature has no power to pro-
duce life except from life. l want to say that
both science and revelation carry us back to
period when no life existed; and for the benefit
of the young that are carried away by specula-
lation in the domain of science Whence came
life, l submit and have to meet. and every
man that thinks must meet it, whence came life
on this planetl l plant myself here, dear
friends, and feel that | stand upon most solid
basis in accepting revelation on this subject /
stand, my friends, COMPOUNDED at the ease with
which men have been carried away by the spec
ulations of modern scientists at the desolation
that has swept over our country by this very
power, the power Of this speculation with regard
to the evolution. Given an oak and you can
produce an acorn and with an acorn an oak. But
when you have neither oak nor acorn, produce
your oak and your acorn, if you can, and you
can as easily create a universe. And nature can
do it no more easily than you can, without life to
begin with. Here, my brethren and friends, we
bone back to solid ground. Only on super
natural grounds can we account for the origin of
life on this globe. No reason is sound except
that which carries us up from nature into the
domain of the supernatural. In Him was life;
not in Him is, which is true, but in Him was
life. And here, mark you, is just where all
modern scientists are forced to stand in account
ing for the way life came upon this planet 1t
is mysterious and indescribable to US, and there
fore we are compelled to admit the existence of
the supernatural in the Inauguration of life on
this planet.
My Christian friends, the very moment you
admit the necessity of the supernatural in the
origin of Gods universe, you have admitted the
very basis upon which this Revelation plants
itself. And if you can believe in the supernat-
ural origin of life, what difficulty in believing the
supernatural of revelations You have accepted
the ground work upon which the whole revela-
ton rests itself as superstructure Here,
then, my book unfolds to me the sublime origin
of this universe. SIN the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth" While 1 may admit
development here, still get back to this as
origin of life in its various forms. John
says: I'm the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God" But
he says more than that: SAIL things
came into being by Him, and without Him was
not anything made" Or nothing came into ex-
istence without Him. He is the source Of life.
A stream cannot rise higher than it's fountain
If the stream is that of matter then the fountain
must be that high; if the stream be that of ami
NAL life the fountain must be that high; if the
stream be intellectual then the fountain must
be that high; if it be spiritual the fountain must
be that hight may be infinitely higher, but
that high it must be. In this intellectual uni
verse it is the negation of all reason to assume
e.
or to assume that intelligence can exist here
without the pre- existence of divine source
or intelligence. | take out my watch, and
| say that watch grew in my garden Intel
ligence would smile at that intelligence says
that that watch is the product of an intelligent
gence is the cause for the existence of the tele-
graph, of the steam engine that brought me on
my way yesterday. You will not agree that less
than intelligence can be the source OF these
things. You tell me that the beautiful work
Hamlet" is the result Of intellectual power that
those beautiful poems ascribed to Homer are the
result not OF chance but of intelligence. Now,
dear friends, here is the question: That if
ton Of my watch, the production of
this building, the production of the
steam engine, the production of those magnif-
cent works of intellect, of Homer, of Byron, of
Milton, Of Shakespeare; if these bespeak the
presence of intelligence, is it not absurd to look
over an audience of intelligent beings and say
that came from dead matter?
l only allude to these primary elements for the
sake of letting the young who are fascinated
with this false philosophy see that, after all,
when you press these things back to their pri
mary sources there is no reason for them. They
are founded in gross absurdity. Here, then, we
come to the source of all life; life in Jesus
Christ; life intellectual From Him all things
came into being, and by Him, and without Him
was not anything made that was made.
I come to speak of man. Of him we
may predicate three states of life-the
natural, the perternatural and supernatural.
Man spent his natural life in the garden of
Eden--a life of joy and peace in the presence of
God. Surely we live not in the natural position
that God meant. He meant not that in the be-
ginning we should live life of suffering. pain,
and anguish, and death. The great God did not
mean to place US in this position primarily. We
full garden; the garden of God, With its various
trees for beauty, for food, to find man in his
true state. Adam and Eve were placed there
that they might behold Him, and commune
with Him face to face, with the stain
less soul. With perfect intellects, 50
far as perfection, created, may be contemplated
with perfect physical constitutions. There he
walked amid the garden of Eden, conversing
face to face with God, was mans primary condi
ton and the condition in which he would have
remained eating of the tree of life but he was
placed in condition where his immortality
depended upon his obedience to God. Neverthe-
less he was prohibited, as you know, from eating
of one single tree. Tempted by that fend, he
ate; he fell. and was expelled from the tree of
life and from the beauties of the garden of God
out into the world of sin; into world of sorrow
and of pain, and of death he passed. Man did not
die immediately. God said: ''In the day thou eat
est therefore thou shalt surely die" God appointed
sacrifice. He meant to teach man that he had
forfeited his life; that he lived by substitute;
that he had respite granted him; that he lived
by the life of that substitute 1t is on this con-
dition that we can distinguish be,w Able and
Cain Why was it that the one was of faith and
the other act of disobedience? This and this
only: the was of divine appointment. You
have forfeited your life and you live by the life
OF substitute. Able obeyed this divine condi-
ton; his offering was accepted of God Cain did
not obey this divine condition: his offering was
rejected. Thus you have the distinction of the
two all along. BY centuries of sacrifice God has
kent I'D with the intention of teaching this fact