The Brookhaven leader., 1889-04-25


God Is Father, and some Of Us know what
that means, and some tirae whsn we have
promised cbastisement and the child
deserved 1t, the little darling has put her
arms around our neck and expresses such
sorrow and such promises of doing better,
that her tears landed on the lips Of our
kiss, and we held her q half hour after on
our knee, AMI would as soon think OF
slapptng an angel in the face as Of even
striking her with the weight OF our little
finger. God is a Father, and while He
has promised His world scourgings, though
they were to be for a thousand years or
tve thousand years, He would, X The
world repented, substitute ben ediction
and Divine caress.
God changed His mind about Sodorri six
times. He had determined on its destruc-
ton. Abraham asked Him IL He would
not spare 1t if fifty righteous people were
found there; and, narrowing down the
number, II fOrty-five were found there,
if forty people; il thirty people, If twenty
people. II ten people were found there.
And each of the six times the Lord an
swered yes. Oh, why didn't Abraham go
on just two steps further and say IL Ave
be found there and il 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
punishments and withheld the stroke.
Was 1t a slip of Paul's pen when
ne spoke Of Gods cutting short
the work in righteousness No,
Paul's pen never slipped. There is
nothing in the way OF propEesy 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
pletion of the worlds redempt ion to such
long and indefinite distances. The old
proverb that "what is every body's busi-
ness is nobody's business" might be
changed 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 can not get up
much enthusiasm about something FIVE
| hundred years from now or one thousand
years from now. We are fighting at too
| long range. That gun called the Swamp
| Angel" was a nuisance. 1t shot six miles,
but it hardly ever hit any thing. 1t did
its chief destructive work when 1t burst
and killed those who were setting it off.
Short range is the effective kind of work,
whether it be for worldly or religious pur-
pose,
Some man with his eyes half shut
drones out to me the Bible quotation: IA
thousand years are as one days" 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
! twenty-four hours. The mightiest OBJ
stacle to Christian work is the impress
sion that the worlds evangelization is
away off. And we take the telescope and
look on and on through 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 theological works and bal
ance our telescope 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
postpOuement and somnolence we rock
the Church as though it were an i'm
patient child, and say: "Hush, my dear,
don't be impatient! Don't get excited by
revivals. 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 fam Gus
New Zealander in the far distance is seat
ed on a broken arch of London bridge
sketching the ruins of st. PauPs his
grand-child might break in and jolt his
pencil 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
and then to get re ally for the work.
II you continue to ask me why think
the world can be saved in the final decade
of the ninete nth century, reply because
it is not a great undertaking, considering
the number of workers that will go at it, II
once persuaded that it can be done. We
have sifted the five hundred million work
ers to four hundred million, and three
hundred million, and two hundred mill
/ ion, and one hundred million and fifty
million. I went to work to cipher out
how many souls that number could
bring to God in ten years if each
brought one soal every year, and if each
soul so brought should bring another
aided by a professor in mathemat-
les, that we did not need any
any thing like that number of workers en-
listed. You see it is simply question of
mathematics and in geOmetrical progress
sion. Then l gave to the learned profess
sor this problem: How many persons
would it require to start with if each one
brought a soul into the Kingdom each year
for ten years and each one brought an
other each succeeding year, in order to
have one billion four hundred million
people saved, or the population of the
earth at present? His answer was two
million seven hundred and fifty four thou
sand three hundred and seventy-fi
workers. So you Sc that when l si*ted
the five hundred million nominal Chris
tians of the earth down to fifty million
and stopped there, l retained for work
forty seven million people too many.
There ii is in glorious mathematics Qu0d
erdt demOnStrdRdum.
Do you tell me that God does not care
for mathematics? Then you have never
shows His regard for the hexagonal in
whole RANGES of rocky columns with six
angles. Then you have not studied the
geometry of a bees honeycomb with six
sides and six angles. Then You have not
noticed what regard God has for the
square; the altar of the ancient taberna-
Gle four square, the breast-plate four
square, the court of the temple in EzekiePs
vision four square, the New Jerusalem
laid ont four SQUARE, Or you have not