The Russellville Democrat., 1889-02-28

and in September dips the branches into the vat of beautiful colors and swings
 them ia the hazy air. No whim of mine is this: Without Him was not any thing made that was made" Christ writing on the ground. If we could see His hand in all the passing seasons, how it would illumine the world All verdure and foli-
 age would be allegoric, and again we | would hear Him say as of old; "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;" and we would not hear the whistle of quail, or the cawing of raven,
 or the roundelay of brown thresher without saying: "Behold the fowls of the air, they gather not into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them" and dominic hen of the
 barnyard could not chuck for her brood,
 yet we would hear Christ saying as of old:
 ''How often would have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathered her chickens under her wings" and through the redolent hedges we would
 hear Christ saying: 'I am the rose of Sharon;" we could not dip the seasoning from the salt-celar without thinking of the divine suggestion, ''Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt have lost it's
 savor, it is fit for nothing but to be cast
 out and trodden under foot of men," Let us wake up from our stupidity and. take the whole world as parable. Then, If with gun and pack of hounds we start off
 before dawn and see the morning coming | down off the hills to meet us, we would cry out with the evangelist; "The
 day spring from on high hath visited us;" | or caught in a snow storm, while strug- gling home, eyebrows and beard and ap- 1 parel all covered with the whirling flakes,
 we would cry out with David: "Wash me
 and 1 shall be winter than snow" In a
 picture gallery of Europe there is on
 the ceiling an exquisite fresco, but people
 having to look straight up, it wearied and l dizzied them, and bent their necks almost | beyond endurance, so a great looking glass was put near the floor, and now | visitors only need to look easily down
 into this mirror and they see the fresco
 at their feet. And so much of all the I Heaven of Gods truth is reflected in this world as in mirror, and the things that are above are copied by things all around l us.
 What right have we to throw away one | of Gods Bibles, aye, the first Bible He
 ever gave the race? We talk about the
 Old Testament and the New Testament,
 but the oldest Testament contains the lessons of the natural world. Some peo- l pie like the New Testament so well they discard the Old Testament. Shall we like l the New Testament and the Old Testa-
 ment so well as to depreciate the oldest, | namely, that which was written before
 Moses was put ahoat on the boat of leaves | which was calked with asphaltum, or re-
 ject the Genesis and the Revelation that
 were written centuries before Adam lost
 a rib and gained a wife? No. no; when
 Deity stoops down and writes on the | ground. let us read it. 1 would have no l less appreciation of the Bible on paper
 that comes out of the paper mill,
 but I would urge appreciation of the l Bible in the grass, the Bible in the sand hill, the Bible in the geranium, the Bible
 in the asphodel, the Bible ill the dust.
 Some one asked an ancient King whether
 he had seen the eclipse of the sun. "No." | said he, ''I have so much to do on earth,
 have no time to look at Heaven." And if
 your faculties were all awake in the study
 of God, we would not have to go much l further than the first grass blade. have
 no fear that natural religion will ever
 contradict what we call revealed religion.
 I have no sympathy with the followers of
 Aristotle, who, after the telescope was invented, would not look through it, lest
 it contradict some of the theories of their | great master. I shall be glad to put | against one lid of the Bible the micro- | scope, and against the other lid of the Bi-
 ble the telescope.
 But when Christ stopped down and wrote
 on the ground. what did he write? The
 Pharisees did not stop to examine. The towards, whipped of their own con-
 sciences, fed pell mell. Nothing will fay
 a man like an aroused conscience. Dr. l ,,. l.. ap tn4I. l ltn,,, '
 says that when Rev. Benjamin. Abbott, of olden times, was preaching, he exclaimed ''For a1ght 1 know there may be mur- l derer in this house." and man rose in the assemblage and started from the door and bawled aloud, confessing to murder he had committed fifteen years before. And no wonder these Phsrisees remind | ed of their sins, took to their heels. | But what did Christ write on the | groundl The Bible does not state.
 Yet, as Christ never wrote any thing l except that once, you can not blame us | for wanting to know what He really did write. But l am certain He wrote nothing | trivial, or nothing unimportant And will | you allow me to say that think know what He wrote on the ground? judge 1 from the circumstances. He might have written other things, but, kneeling there | in the temple, surrounded by pack of | hypocrites, who were Q self-appOinted constabulary, and having in His presence persecuted woman, who evidently was very penitent for her sins, l am sure He wrote two words, both of them graphic and tremendous and reverberating. And 1 the one word was "hypocrisy," and the other word was Forgiveness" From the way these Pharisees and scribes vacated the premises and got out into the fresh air, as Christ, with just one l ironical sentence, unmasked them, know | they were first-class hypocrites. It was then as it is now. The more faults and | inconsistencies people have of their own, the more severe and censorious are they about the faults of others. Here they are twenty stout men arresting and arraign. ing one weak woman. Magnificent busi- ness to be engaged in. They wanted the | fun of seeing her faint away under a heavy | judicial sentence from Christ, and then after she had been taken outside the city and fastened at the foot of precipice, the | Seribes and Pharisees wanted the satis- | faction of each coming and dropping | big stone on her head, for that was the | style of capital punishment that they | asked for. Some people have taken the
 responsibility of saying that Christ never
 laughed. But I think, as He saw these
 men drop every thing, ehagrined, morti- l fled, exposed, and go out quicker than
 they came in, He must have laughed. At
 any rate, it makes me laugh to read it.
 All of these libertines, dramatizing in-
 dignation against impurity. Blind bats
 lecturing on optics. A flock of cows on
 their way up from carcass, denouncing
 carrion. Yes, think that one word writ
 ten on the ground that day by the finger
 of Christ was the awful word Hypocrisy.
 But am sure there was another word in
 that dust. From her entire manner 1 am
 sure that arraigned woman was repentant | She made no apology, and Christ in no | ,,S.a balitiIad hsr sin Rut her sttp,,If -