The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1890-03-08

infants himself deserves to lose heaven.
do not think any good man could admit such
o possibility. What Christ will do with all
the babies in the next world I conclude from
what he did with the babies in Palestine when
he Rugged them and kissed them. When
some Of you grown people go out Of this
world your doubtful destiny will be an EN-.
barrassment to ministers officiating at your
obsequies, who will have to be cautious SO 40
not to hurt surviving friends. But when the
darling children &c there are no ifs, or
good John Calvin was q logician and a me
taphysician and by the proclivities of his
nature put sorne things IN an unfortunate
way. Logic has it's use and metaphysics has
it's use, but they are not good ut making
dewy fresh, but q severe botanist zones to
you with q rose and says: II will show you
the structure OF this rose And he proceeds
to take it apart and pulls of the leaves and
says: There are the petals" and he takes out
the anthers and he says: Just look Mt the
and then he cuts the stem to show you the
juices Of the plant. So Logic or Metaphysics
takes the aromatic rose OF the Christian re-
lgion and says: II will just chow you how
this rose Of religion was fashioned" and it
pulls of oft o piece and says: '"Thnt IL the
This is Gods will, :" and another piece ard
says: This is sovereignty" and another
| piece and says: 'This Is free agency"-this
is this and that is that And while I stand
looking at the fragments Of the rose pulled
apart, one whom the Marys took for q gar
rose, red as blood, and says: "Inhale the
sweetness of this, wear it on your heart and
YEA it forever" must confess that I pre-
fer the rose in full bloom to the rose pulled
apart. What a time We have had with the
dogmatics, the apologetics and the hermen-
N<rn0 III 81 T. ----1- /.
that they try to tell us all about the DEGREES
of God. Now the only human being that was
ever competent to handle that subject was
Paul, and he would not have been
competent had he not been inspired.
1 believe in the sovereignty of God,
one can harmonic the two. 1t is not ncces-
sary that he harmonic them. Every SER
mon that ! have ever heard that attempted
such harmonization was to me as clear as q
london fog, as clear as mud. My brother
OF the 18th century, my brother OF The 10th
century, give us Paul's statement and leave
out your own. Better one chapter of Paul
on that subject than all ofCalvin' g institutes,
able and honest and mighty as they are.
Do not try to measure either the throne of
God or the tbu%nderbolts Of God with your
little steel pom. What do you know about
the DEGREES? You cannot pry open the door
plain the mysteries of Gods government
now, much less the mysteries of his govern
ment FIVE hundred quintiIlion of years age.
l move for a creed for all our denominations
made out Of Scripture quotations pure and
simple. That would take the earth for God.
That would be ~impregnabls against inadel.
would be. beyond human criticism,
The denomination, whatever it's name be,
that can rise up to that will be the church Of
the millennium, will swallow up all other
denominations and be the one that will be
the bride when the bridegroom cometh. Let
us make it simpler aud palmer for people
to get into the kingdom of God. Do not
hinder people by the idea they may have not
been elected. Do not tag on to the one es-
sential Of faith in Christ any OF the in
Vulnerable non-essentials. A man who
heartily accepts Christ is a Christian and the
Christian, and that ID oil there is to it. He
need not believe in election or Reproduction.
he need not believe in the eternal genera
tion o: the Son. He need not believe in
everlasting punishment. He need not be-
lieve in infant baptism. He need not be-
iieve in plenary inspiration. Faith in Christ
is the criterion, is the test, is the pivot, 10
the indispensable. But there ore those who
would add unto the tests rather than SUBJ
tsact from them. There are thousands
who would not accept persons into church
membership if they drank wine or if they
smoke cigars or If they attend the theater or
j they play cards or ii they drive a fast horse.
Now l DO not drink wine Or smoke or attend
the theater, never played q game Of cards
and do. not drive q fast horse, although I
would i'll owned one but do not substitute
tests which the Bible does not establish.
There is one passage of Scripture wide enough
to let oil in who ought to enter and to keep
out all who ought to be kept out: "Believe
in the Lord jesus Christ and thou shalt be
saved" Get q mans heart right and his life
will be right. But now that the old creeds
have been put under public strutiny, some
thing radical must be done. Some would
split them, some would carve them some
would elongate them, some would abbreviate
them. At the present moment and in the pres
ent shape they are q hindrance. Lazarus is
alive, but hampered with the old grave
clothes. If you ant one glorious church
free and u~nencumbered take off the cere.
ments of old ecclesiastical vocabulary. Loose
her, and let her gol
Again, there are Christians who are under
sepulchral shadows and hindered and hop
Piled by doubts and fears and sins long ago.
repented OF. What they need is to under
stand the liberty of the sons OF God. They
spend more time under the shadow Of Sinai
than ut the base of Calvary. They lave been
singing the only poorhymn that Newton ever
wrote:
IT'S o point I long to know,
Oft 1t causes anxious thought
Do / love the Lord or no,
Am | his or am | not? T.
Long to know, do yon? Why do you not
find out? Go to work for God md you will
very soon find out. The mon who is all the
time feeling of his pulse and looking ut his
tongue to see whether it In coated, is morbid
and cannot be physically well. The doctor
will say: go out into the fresh air and
into active life and stop thinking OF yourself
and you viii! get well and strong" So there
are people who are watching their spiritual
symptoms, and they call it Differentiation
and they get weaker and sicklier in their
faith all the time. Go out and do some.
thing nobly Christian. Take holy exercise
and then examine yourself and instead OF
Newton's saturnine and bilious hymn that l
first quoted, you will sing Newton's other
hymn: 49,
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound ,
That saved q wretch like mel
/ once was loat, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I zee.
What many ofy0u Christians most need il
to get your grave clothes of. I rejoice that
you have been brought from the death ofsin
to the lite of the gospel, but You need to get
your hand loose and your feet loose and your
tongue loose and your soul loose. There is
no sin that the Bible so arraigns and pune
lures and flagellates as the sin OF unbeliej
and that ID what ID the matter with you.
Rent In a Boys Breaches.
The following story is told about
the editor of one of Names most
prominent dailies:
When q small boy his father, now.
one Of the most prominent men in
the State, was running q printing Of
fee and publishing o weekly paper in