, 1886-03-14

the brawling children, dirty, filthy and
vicious, are healthy pestilence comes into the
neighborhood and the good mans children
are slain. They that could bring them up to
honor and usefulness, lose them, and
they that bring them up to vice and violence,
keep them. Is there no discrimination to
be used toward the good or the badl And you
look through the allotmcnts of society, what
we call the ordinary providentinl events.
While we may believe in the generic provi-
dence, yet we. are stumbled every day in the
specializatioh, and say; why did God
strike that mani md why did he sparef' Is
there anything but an undiscriminating
providence after ALI This is the wall of an
tiquity; this is the cry all through the book
of job; this Is the cry in some Of the Psalms,
where the psalmist says that the wicked pros
per and that the righteous wrung out
tears, as it were fountain Of tears, and he
stumbled in his whole fnith until he went into
the sanctuary Of God. Then / saw their
end, usually interpreted as the special end of
particular people, but ] give it a much
broader Interpretation than that, saw the
end of the whole divine economy the result
and final outworking Of that system that God
had developed In this world. And that Is
precisely the feeling also which is developed
in this eighth chapter OF Romans. 1t
is very evident that the apostle in
writing on this subject had in his mind not
things us they were Mt the particular stage at
which he saw them, but he had illumination
given him, revelation, foresight OF what was
the meaning of this whole world; of its slow
progress, of its gradual ripaning and of it's
relations TO the eternal world that lay be-
yond; and that in view of the past and the
present and the promised future, and
the eternal fxityi OF things there,
it would appear that God was a God
of love, irradiating the whole universe by his
presence, and that, therefore, these steps,
although not seen by us how they bore upon
#, yet by and by it will become plain 10 men
how the steps of men, through pain, through
all m~ischances, through commissions, looking
at them at large, were steps that were build
ing, building the great universe for the flu
ture. Uf .rrI..Ir
How beautiful that house is, how glow the
lights through the windows, how nimble the
feet are that bound within. You stop to
catch the strains and melodies. And how
day and night the house is entered and left;
how joyful it seems, And one thinks, wander
ing along the other side of the street, il-clad
and il-fed, sob, if l only had such "a
home as that How was that house
buildedl Men found in the field banks
Of clay, and calling work1nen they
shoveled it out Ahd doubtless if the clay
could have spoken it would have said: What
do you meant Here I can settle down. 1t is
hard enough to make me as / have been
made, but now that l have settled relations
here, what are you doing with mei Why are
you shoveling mo out in that way, beginning
with violenceF' But by and by it is carried
into the yard, and being put on the wheel
TINT r~evolves and moistened, the wheel brushes
it and brushes It until it is ground to mush,
and still It cries out: ''You told me that /
was TO be made beautiful, is this what you
mean by beautiful If you are to listen TO the
voice Of the clay when it is under the wheel
you viii not think Of beauty. But it is
gathered out from there, and that which lay
free and wild in the bank is shut up in little
Axe chambers and roughed up in that way
"Oh, give mo my liberty again. saith each.
brick. Give me my liberty again. And
that is not the worst Of it again. 1t is
upset and stacked up in the sun and
loses its breath and life almost. And
that is not the worst of it It is stacked up
in the kiln, and now begins the fire to blow
underneath the arches, and rs 1t shoots up
through all the way, the clay says, ''Vyhere is
your prophecy, where il the beauty, where is
the happiness, where is anything but
misery and wretchednessF1 Yet some
body might say, Patience, patience;
you are on the way to beauty;
great beauty we are on the way tor And
it is gathered and carried out and carried by
and by to the hand of the mason, nd at last
we begin to sec the brick, what Exalted and
gloriied in each individual brick, made
beautiful 1t is laid in seamy mortar and
raped down with the trowel and measured
and kept plumb every way, and built up and
carried up, little by little, and IL has nothing
in it except new bondage, new oppression,
new burdens aud weights, until NJ last the
roof is put ON it and the windows are
placed and the floors are laid, and then
the cleansing comes, the water and the
%scrubbing brush, and then the furniture, and
then the romping and laughing children, and
the happy family. Now at last the scaifolding
all taken away, the rubbish all removed and
the plants blossoming and exhaling, and sweet
fragrant flowers ON every side it is beautiful.
But it came to it through a long way OF
turmoil, turbulence and oppression and suffer-
ing. God is building our home hereafter.
We are but clay, and we are going
through the several processes by which
we are fashioned for that house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
And as we can see in the transmission of
bank clay through all tho stages of prepara-
ton that that which must seem 10 it oppress-
i've, cruel, harsh, hard, rough, that there is a
final end that will redeem the whole of it, so
the apostles mind seemed TO think that look
ing at the whole creation groaning and ira
vailing with pain until now, that it
was not mad 80 from tho will of
man, it was made so from Gods
will, because Of hope-that is, because of the
future. He secs what is the outcome of it.
And life is but the beginning Of things, and
has not been 50 far unfolded as yet that we
can see from the things in us and around us
what Is the destiny nor what sorrow does,
nor what repentance does, nor what
stumbling does, nor what expressions
and wrongs do. There is to be a time of dis
closure, when the ends have come, and all ex-
pertinent OF unnumbered centuries has been
wrought out, and we are all gone from here
and become airy spectators of the closing
work in the other life. God knows that then
The whole interior history Of man, and provi-
lence, and experience will themselves de
clare. "God is good and the end CROWN the
beginning and the whole work.
Well, that is not our only difficulty in this
declaration Of Gods love. II the declaration
was that God was lovely, that might be
easily expounded and beautifully. But the
declaration is that he loves, II Il is that he
loves the lovely. That we understand per-
fectly well WHO does noti II the declara-
ton is TINT he loves the perfect,
that we can understand. That Is
the old Grecian theology; that is the
old C%alyanistic theology. He loves a
man after he has become lovely, and there
fore it is the business Of every man to get
himself out OF homoliness into loveliness as
soon as possible. But hero the declaration is
that God loved the world that was lying in
lin. For a just man no man would
be willing to die. For a good man
preadventure some one might dare to
lie. But God commended His 1--we to
Us, in that while we were yet enemies,
IN fiagrnnt disorder, and in tumultuous passion