The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1889-05-01

for then for the sake of Lot its one good
citizen, I 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
it slip Of Paups pen when he spoke of Gods
cutting short the work in Righteousness No.
Paul's pen never slipped. There is nothing
in the way of prophecy to hinder the crusade
! have proposed for the last decade Of the
| Nineteenth century.
The whole trouble is that we put OFF the
,! completion Of the worlds redemption to such
long and indefinite distances. The old pro-
verb that ''what is everybody's business is
nobody's business" +" might be changed Sttle
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 five hun
dred years from now or thousand years
from now. We are fighting at too long
range. That gun called the "Swamp
but it hardly ever hit anything. It did its
chief destructive work when it burst and killed
those who were setting it off. Short rangeis
the effective kind of work, whether it be for
worldly or religious purpose. Some man
with his eyes half shut drones out to me
the Bible quotation: "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 twenty-four hours The
mightiest obstacle to Christian work
is the impression that the worlds evan
gelization IS away of. And we take the tele-
scope 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,
md "a pyb
they are, and we get down our heaviest theo-
logical works and balance 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 postponement and somnolence we rock the
church as though it were an impatient child
and say: "Hush, my dear, don't be impa-
tient! Don't get excited by revivals! Don't
cry! Your Fathers coming Don't get un-
easyi He will be here in two or three or ten
or twenty thousand years" And we act as
though we thought that when Macaule7s
famous New Zealander in the far distance is
seated on a broken arch of London
Pauls his grandchild might break in
and jolt his pencil by asking him if he
thought the millennium ever would appear.
Men and women of the eternal Godl 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 ready for the work.
What makes me think it can be done?
First, because God is ready. He needs no
long persuasion 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 a
chime of bells ringing out "Come, come.
come" and you need not go round
He wants the world to come, but just to walk
around one stripped and bare and leahess
tree with two branches, not arched, but hori-
zontal. 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 cap
ture this world for the truth, all tho
On the one hand the Gospel and
enize the earth, and fountains swinging in
rainbow, and Chatsworthian verdure and
aromas poured out Of the vials of heavens
while on tho other hand he has the weaponry
of devastation, thunderbolt and condagra-
ton and forces planetary, solar,
lunar, stellar, OF meteoric, that with
loose rein thrown on the neck for
galaxies so many split and shivered wheels
on the boulevards of heaven. And that God
is on our side, all on our side. Blessed be
His glorious name! Blessed was the 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
not a great undertaking, considering the num-
of baa will Tn q
persuaded it can be done. We have
sifted the five hundred million of work
ers down to four hundred million and
three hundred million and two hum
dred million and one hundred million and to
fifty million. / went to work to cipher out
how many souls that number could bring to
God in ten years, if each one brought soul
every year. and if each soul so brought should
bring another each succeeding year. | found
out, aided by a professor in mathematics, that
we Gid not need anything like such number of
workers enlisted. You see it is simply ques-
tion of mathematics and in geometrical pro-
gression. Then l gave to the learned pro-
fessor 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 each
succeeding year, in order to have fourteen
hundred million people saved or thepopulatlon
million seven hundred and flfty-four thousand
three hundred and seventy-fire workers. So
YOU see that when I sifted the five hundred
million nominal Christians of the earth down
to fifty million and stopped there, I retained
for this work forty-seven million people too
many. There it is in glorious mathematics,
auod erat demonstrandum. Do you tell me
that God does not care for mathematics
Then you have never seen the Giants Cause
Sn1 Tic
hexagonal in whole ranges of rocky columns
with six sides and six angles. Then you have
not studied the geometry of bees honey.
comb with six sides and six angles Then
you have not noticed what regard God has
for the square; the altar of the ancient
tabernacle four square, the breastplate four
square, the court of the temple in Ezekiels
out four square. Or you have not noticed
his regard for the circle by making it his
throne, "sitting on the circle of the earth" :"
and fashioning sun and moon and
stars in circle and sending our planetary
system around other systems in circle and
the whole universe sweeping around the
throne of God in circle. And as to His
the fourth book in H. Bible the Book Of
Numbers, and numbers the hosts of Israel,
and numbers the troops of Sennache-
rib, and numbers Solomon's hewers In the
forest, and numbers the spea'rSlnen, and num-
bers the footmen, and numbers the converts
at Pentecost, 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 want to take in forty
thousand and know men now alive who, I
think, by pen or voice, or both, directly or
indirectly, will take hundreds of thousands