Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-15

God changed his mind about tSodom six
times. He had determined on its destruction.
| Abraham asked him if he would not spare it if
| so righteous people were found there; and, mar
! rowing down the number if As people were
found there; if 40 people if 80 people; If 20 peo-
! pie; if ten people were found there. And each
of the six times the Lord answered yes. oh,
! why didnts Abraham go on Just two steps
further and say if five be found there and if
one be found there, for then for the sake of Lot.
! its one good citizen, think Sodom would have
] been spared. Eight times does the Bible say
| that God repented when he had promised pun
ishments and withheld the stroke. Was it a
slip of Paul's pen when he spoke of Gods cut
| ting short the work in righteousness? No,
PauPs pen never slipped There is nothing in
| the way Of prophecy to hinder the crusade l
have proposed for the last decade of
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
The whole trouble is that we put off the COM
| pletlon of the worlds redemption to such long
and indefinite distances. The old proverb that
| what is everybody's business is nobody's busi-
ness, might be changed a little and be made
truthfully to say what is the gospel business of
all the ages is the gospel business of no age.
We are SO constituted we cannot get up much
enthusiasm about something 500 years from
now or l, 900 years from now. We are fighting
at too long a range. That gun called the
| Swamp Angel" was a nuisance. 1t shot six
miles, but it hardly ever hit anything 1t did
| its chief destructive work when it burst and
killed those who were setting it off. Short
| range is the effective kind of work, whether 1t
| be for worldly or religious purpose.
Some man with his eyes half shut drones out
| to me the Bible quotations: "a thousand years
are as one day. that is ten centuries are not
| long for the Lord. But why do you not quote
! the previous sentence, which says that one day
| is with the Lord as a thousand years? That is,
| he could do the work of ten centuries in "A
| hours. The mightiest obstacle to Christian
work is the impression that the worlds evan
| gelization is away of. And we take the tel
IN fhrOnph centuries
until we see two objects near each other, and
we strain our vision and guess what they are,
! and we call great conventions to guess what
] they are, and we get down our heaviest theo-
| logical works and balance our telescopes on the
| lid and look and look and finally conclude that
they are two'beasts that we see, and the one
has hair and the other has wool, and we guess
it must be the lion and the lamb lying down
together. In that great cradle of postpone
ment and somnolence we rock the church as
though it were
AN IMPATIENT CHILD,
and say, Hush, my dear, don't be impatienti
Don't get excited by revivalsl Don't cry!
Your Fathers coming! Don't get uneasy! He
will be here in two or three or ten or twenty
thousand years" And we act as though We
thought that when Macaulay's famous New
Zealander in the far distance is seated on a
broken arch Of London bridge sketching the
ruins of St Paul's his grandchild might break
in and jolt his pesciI'by asking hIm if he
thought the millennium ever would appear.
Men and women of the eternal God! Sons
and daughters of the Lord Almighty! We
may have it start in the decade that is soon to
commence, and it will be done if we can
persuade the people between now then to get
ready for the work.
What makes me think it can be done? First,
because God is ready. He needs no long per-
suasion to do His work, for if He is not willing
that any should perish, He is not willing that
any of the people of the next decade shall
perish; and the whole Bible is chime of bells
ringing ont Come, come, come, and you need
not go round the earth to find out how much
He wants the world to come, but just to walk
around one stripped and bare and leafiess tree
with two branches not arched, but horizontal.
But He is waiting. as he said He would, for the
cooperation of the church. When we are
ready God is ready. And He certainly has all
the weaponry ready to capture this world for
the truth, all the weapons of kindness or de-
vastation. On the one hand the gospel and
sunshine and power to orchardize and garden
ize the earth, and fountains swinging in rain
bow and Chatsworthian verdure and aromas
poured out of the vials of heaven, while on the
other hand He has the weaponry of devasta-
tion, thunderbolt and contagration and forces
planetary, solar, lunar, stellar meteoric, that
with loose rein thrown on the neck for second
would leave consultations and galaXies so
many split and shivered wheels on
THE BoULEvARD's OF HEAVEN.
And that God is on our side, all on our side.
hour when through Jesus Christ my sinful soul
made peace with him!
If you continue to ask me why think that
| the world can be saved in the final decade of
the nineteenth century, reply because it is
lot great undertaking, considering the num-
| Der of workers that will go at it, if once per
| shaded it can be done. We have sifted the
| 500 100000 of workers down to 100000 600, and
500 OOOO, 600, and 2OOOOO,OOO and 100000, and
| to 100000. l went to work to cipher out how
| many souls that number could bring to God in
! year, and If each soul so brought should bring
| another each succeeding year. l found out,
| aided by professor in mathematics, that we
| did not need anything like such number of
workers enlisted. You see it is simply ques-
tion of mathematics and in geometrical pro-
! gression.
Then 1 gave to the learned professor this
| problem: How many persons would it require
! to start with if each one brought soul into
| the kingdom each year for ten years. and each
one brought another d Go zach o succeeding year. in
! population of the earth at present? His an
swer was 2,754, ,S75 workers. So you see that
when sifued the SOC, ,OO0, 600 nominal Christians
| of the earth down to 50,000000 and stopped
| there retained for this work a., ,000 600 people
| too many. There it is in glorious mathematics,
| Quod erat tdemonstrandum. Do you tell me that
God does not care for mathematics? Then you
| have never seen
| IdE . CAOoEWAK
where God shows disregard for the hexagonAl
in whole ranges of rocky columns with six sides
and six angles. Then you have not studied
the geometry of a bees honeycomb with six
sides and six angles. Then you have not no.
ticed what regard God has for the square; the
altar of the ancient tabernacle four square, the
breast plate four square, the court of the TEN.
| pie in EzekiePs vision fouEsquare, the New
! Jerusalem laid out four square. Or you have
not noticed His regard for the circle by making
| it Bis throne. "sitting on the circle of the
earth" and fashioning sun and moon and stars
| in a circle, and sending our planetary system
around other systems in circle, and the whole
universe sweeping around the throne of God in
a circle. And as to His regard for mathemat-
| ical numbers. He makes the fourth book in His
| Bible the Book of Numbers. and numbers the
! hosts of Israel and numbers the troops of Sen
nacherib and numbers Solomon's hewers in the
forest and numbers the spearmen and numbers
the footmen and numbers the converts at Pen
! tecost and numbers the chariots of God rolling
down the steps of heaven.
So have a right to enlist mathematics for
| the demonstration of the easy possibility of
bringing the whole world to God in the coming
decade by simple process of solicitation, each
one only having to bring one year; although
| l want to take in 10000. and know men now
| alive who l think, by pen or voice, or both,
| directly or indirectly, will take hundreds of
thousands each. So you see that will discharge
some of the 2754, ,S75 from the necessity of
! taking any,
ANOTHER REASON
Why know it can be done is that we may d.
vide the work up among the denominations
| God does not ask any one denomination to dc
the work or any dozen denominations. The
work can be divided and is being divided up
not geographically but according to the TEN
peraments OF the human family. We cannot
! saw to one denomination, You take Persia an6