Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-08-08

treasures. Instead of that, many of us
put our hands behind our back, and walk
up and down in front of the mine of eter-
| nal riches, and say: ''WeIl, if 1 am to
! be saved l viii be saved; and if [ am to
| be damned, 1 will be damned, and there
! is nothing to do about it. - Why, my
| brother, do you not do that way in bust
ness matters? Why do you not to-mOr-
row go to your store and sit down and fold
| your arms and say: If these goods are
! to be sold, they viii be sold; and if they
are not TO be sold, they will not be sold;
| there is nothing tor me to do about it. -
No, you dispatch your agents. you print
your advertisements, you adorn your
show windows, you push those goods, you
use the fundamentally. Oh that men
were as wise in the matter of the soul as
they are wise in the matter of dollars and
cents This doctrine of God IS sover-
eIgnty, how it is misquoted and spoken of
as though it were an iron chain which
bound us hand and foot for time and
eternity, when, so far from that, in every
fiber of your body, in every faculty OF
your mind, in every passion of your soul,
you are free man, and it is no more a
matter of free choice whether you will to-
morrow go abroad or stay at home, than
il Is at this moment matter of free choice
whether you viii accept Christ or reject
Him. In all the army of ban
ner bearers there is not one
conscript. Men are not to be
dragooned into heaven. Among all the
tens of thousands of the Lord IS soldiery,
there is not one man but will tell you:
~ chose Christ; 1 wanted Him; I de-
sired to be in His service; l am not
conscript-I am a volunteer - Oh that
men had the same common sense i'll mat
tiers of religion that they have IN the
matters Of the world-the same concen-
tration, the same push, the same en-
thusiasm. In the one case, q secular
enthusiasm; in the other, a consecrated
enthusiasm
THEY MAKE HASTE SLOWLY.
Again [ remark: We want mora COM
mon sense III the building up ana enlarg-
ing of our Christian character. There
are men here who have for forty years
been running the Christian race, and
they have not run quarter of mile.
No business man would be willing to
have his investments Unaccumulative.
If you invest dollar you expect that
dollar to come home bringing ano other
dollar on its back. What would you
think of a man who should invest ten
thousand dollars in q monetary instItu-
ton, then go off for five years, make no
inquiry in regard to the Investment, then
come back, step up to the cashier of the
institution and say: ''Have you kept
those ten thousand dollars safely that I
lodged with YOU? but asking no question
about the interest or about dividend.
Why, you say, "'Ihat is not common
sense. Neither is it, but that is the
way we act in matters of the soul. We
make far more important investment
than ten Thousand dollars. We invest
our soul. Is it aeoumulative? Are we
growing i'll grace? Are We getting better? |
Are we getting worse? God declares |
many dividends, but we do not collect |
them, we Go not ask about them, we do |
not want them. Oh that IN the matter of |
accumulation we were as wise in the mat |
tiers of the soul as We are in the matters |
of the world!
COMMON SENSE IN SCRIPTURE READING. |
How little common sense in the reading |
of the Scriptures! We get any other |
book and we open it, and we say: ''Now !
what does this book mean to teach me? !
1t is a book on astronomy; it will teach |
me astronomy. 1t is book on political |
economy; it viii teach me political econ
omy. - Taking up the Bible, do we ask |
ourselves what it means to teach? 1t /
means to do just one thing: get the world |
converted and get us all to heaven. That |
is what it proposes to do. But instead of
that, we go into the Bible as botanists to |
pick flowers, or we go as pugilists to get
to fight other Christians with,
or We go as lOgiciaus trying TO sharpen |
our mental faculties for a better argu-
ment, and we do not like this about the
Bible, and we do not like that, and we
do not like the other thing. What would
you think of a man lost on the mountains?
Night has come down; he cannot find
his way home, and he sees light in d
cabin: he goes to it, he knocks
at the door; the mOuntaineer comes out
and finds the traveller and says: Well,
here l have lantern; You can take it
and it will guide you on the way homer
and suppose that man should say: 81
don t like that lantern; l don't like the
handle of it; there are ten or fifteen
things about it ] don L like; if you can t
give me a better lantern than that 1
won It have any
Now, GOD saws this Bible is to be a
lamp to our feet and a lantern to our
path, to guide us through the midnight
Of this world to the gates of the celestial
city. We take hold of it in sharp criti-
cism, and depreeiate this and depreciate
that. Oh, how much wiser we would be
If. by its holy light, we found our way to
our everlasting home!
Then we do not read the Bible as we
read other books. We read it perhaps
four or five minutes just before we retire
at night. We are weary and sleepy, so
somnOlent we hardly know which end of
the book is up. We drop our eyes per
haps on the story of Samson and the
foxes, or upon some genealogical table,
important in its place, but stirring no
more religious emotion than the an
that somebody begat some
body else, instead of opening the book
and saying: NOW must read for my
life. My eternal destiny is in
Yolved IN this book. -
WE SHOULD PRAY sENsIBLY.
How little we use common sense in
DraYerl We say: ''Oh, Lord, give me
his, D and ''Oh, Lord, give me that, -
and 'Oh, Lord, give me something
9lsei - and we do not expect to get it,
II, getting it, we do not know we have
t. We have no anxiety about it. We
10 not watch and wait for its coming.
As merchant you telegraph or you
Vrite tn some other CITY for g hill Of