The morning news., 1889-02-18


Christ never for a half second
takes his hand off of it, or
it would soon be a shipwrecked world, a
defunct world, an obsolete word, an aban-
doned world, a dead world. LET there be
light" was said at the beginning. ana
Christ stands under the wintry skies ana
saws, Let there be snowflakes TO enrich the
earth: and under the clouds of spring and
saws, Come, We blossoms and make redolent
the orchards: and in September. dips the
branches into the vat Of beautiful colors
and swings them in the hazy air. No whlm
of mine is this "WlthOuu him was not
ANYTHING made that was made. Christ
writing on the ground II we could see ms
hand in all the passing seasons, how II would
ilumine the world. All verdure aud foliage
would be allegoric, and again we would
hear him saw as of old, Consider the lilies
of the field, how they grow" and we would
not hear the whistle of quail, or the cav
ing of a raven, OF the roundelay of brown
thTesher, without saying, behold the
fowls of the air, they gather not into barns,
vet your heavenly Father feedeth them ~
and Dominic hen of the barnyard could
not cluck 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, II am
seasoning from the saltcellar without think
ing Of the divine suggestion: aye are the
salt of the earth, but If the salt'have lost its
SAVIOR, 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 a parable. Then if with qua
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: "Ihe day
spring from on nigh hath
visited u.s." or caught in a snow storm,
while struggling home, eyebrows and beard
and apparel all covered with the whrllng
flakes, we would cry out with David,
Wash me and shall be whittier than snow" ."
In picture gallery of Europe, there is on
the ceiling an exquisite freSco, but people
having to look straight up, it wearled and
dizzied them, and bent their necks almost
beyond endurance, so great looking glass
was put near the floor, and now visitors only
need to look easily down into this mir
ror and they see the fresco at their
feet And so much of all the heaven
of Gods truth is reflected in this world
as in a mirror, and the things that are
above are copied by things all around us.
What right have we to throw away one of
Gods Bibles, aye, the first Bible he ever
gave the races We talk about the Old
Testament and the New Testament, but the
oldest Testament contains the lessons of the
natural world Some people like the New
Testament SO well they discard the Old
Testament. Shall we like the New Testa-
ment and the Old Testament so well as to
depreciate the oldest; namely, that which
was written before Moses was put afoat
on the boat of leaves which was calked
with asphaltum or reject the Genesis and
the Revelation that were written centuries
before Adam lost rib and gained a wifel
a ng md writ
on the ground, let us read it. | would
have no less appreciation of the Bible on
paper that comes out of the paper mill, but
] would urge appreciation Of the Bible in
the grass, the Bible in the sand hill, the
Bible in the geranium, the Bible in the
asphodel, the Bible in the dust. Some one
asked an ancient king whether he
had seen the eclipse of the sun.
"No," said he, II have 50 much
to do on earth, l have no time to look at
heaven And if our faculties were
all awake in the study of God, we would
not have time to go much further than the
first grass blade. | have no fear that
natural religion will ever contradict what
we call revealed religion. | have no sym
pathy 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 | shall
be glad to put against one lid of the Bible
the microscope and against the other lid Of
the Bible the telescope.
But when Christ stopped down and wrote
on the ground, what did he writel The
Pharsees did not stop to examine. The
towards, whipped of their yn cousciences.
fled pell nell. Nothing will flay a man like
an aroused conscience. Or. Stevens, in his
"History of Method sm" says that when
Rev. Benjamin Abbott of olden times was
preaching, he exclaimed: For aught /
know there may be a murderer in this
house. and a man rose in the assem- blage
and started for the door and bawled aloud,
confeSsiug to murder he had committed
fifteen years before. And no wonder these
Pharisees, reminded of their sins, took
their heels. But what did Christ write
on the ground! The Bible does not state
Yet, as Christ never wrote anything ex-
cept that once, you cannot blame us Tor
wanting to know what he really did write
But | am certain he wrote nothing trivial,
or nothing unimportant Aud will YOU
allow me to say that / think know what
he wrote on the ground! | judge from the
circumstances. He might have written
other things, but kneeling there in the
temple, surrounded by pack of hypocrltes,
who were a self-appointed conSta gulary,
and having in his presence a prosecuted
woman, who evidently was very pentent
for her sins, | am sure be wrote
two words, both of them graphic and
tremendous and reverberating. And the
one word was Hypocrisy aud the other
word was Forgiveness From the way
these Pharisees and S cribes vacated the
premises and got out into the fresh air, as
Christ, with just one ironical sentence, un-
masked them, know they were first-class
hypocrtes. 1t was then as it is now. The
more faults and inconsistencies people have
of their own, the more severe and censO-
rious are they about the faults of others.
Here they are-twenty stout men arr ST.
ing and arralgnlng one weak woman.
Magnificent business 90 be engaged IN
They wanted the fun of seeing her
faint away under a heavy Judicial sem
tence from Christ, and then after she had
been taken outside the city and fastened at
the foot of precipice the Scribes and
Pharisees wanted the satisfaction Of each
coming and dropping big stone on her
head, for that was the style of CAPITAL pun
ishment that they asked for Some people
have taken the responsibility of saying that
Christ never laughed But think as ne saw
those men drop everyt ing, chagriaei
mortified, exposed, and go out quicker than
they came in, he must have laughed. At any
rate, it makes me laugh to read Of it, All
of these libertines, dramatizing indig-
nation against impurity. Blind bats lee
turing on optics. A flock of crows on their
way up from a carcass, ,denoumcing carrion.
Yes, ] think that one word written on the
ground that day by the finger of Christ
was the awful word HVDgcTisV Rut | am