Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1890-07-12

ness; but if you find yourself with nothing
BUTT name of life, While dead in tres
passes and sins, arouse before the door is
Shut. That gilded profession-the world
may notb able to see through it. but in the
day of divine reckoning it will be found
that You have no cloak FOR your sin.
furthermore. outward morality will be no
covering for the hidden iniquity of the
Spirit. The Gospel of Christ makes no as
sault upon good works. They are as beauti-
ful inGGod's eye Us III ours. Punctuality.
truthfulness, almsgiving. affection and
many other excellences of life that might
be mentioned will always be admired Of
God and man, but we take the position that
good works cannot be the ground of our sal
walton. What we do right cannot pay for
what we do wrong. Admit that you have
all those traits of character F,hlch give
merely worldly responsibility anC influence.
you must at the same time acknowledge
that during the course of your life you have
done many things you ought not to have
done. How are these difficult matters to
be settled? All, my friends, we must have
an atonement. No Christ, no salvation.
The great Redeemer comes in and says 1
will pay your Indebtedness" So that which
was dark enough before is bright enough
now, The stripes that TIVE deserve are fallen
upon Christ On His scourged and bleed
ing shoulders He carries us up over the
mountain of our sins and the hills or our in
EQUITIES. Christ's good works accepted are
depending on their own, must perish Traits
OF character that may make us influential
on earth will not necessarily open to us the
gate OF heaven. The plank that will be
strong enough for a house floor would not
do for q ships hulk Mere morality might
be enough here. but cannot take you
through deaths storm into heaven harbor.
Christ has annOuncedfor all ages: L am the
way the truth and the life: him that cometh
unto me will in no wise cast out" But
1 J,. 4 L. Al
condition OF that man, though he may have
given all his estate to benevolent purposes,
and passed his life in visiting the distressed,
and done much to excite the admiration of
the good and the great, if he have no init
m 2attee relation to Jesus Christ. There is Q
pride and depravity in his soul that ne
has never discovered. A brilliant outside
will be no apology for depraved inside. 1t
is no theory of mine, but an announcement
OF God, who cannot lie: BY the deeds Of
the law shall no flesh living be justified"
Open the door Of heaven and look in. How
ard is there, but he did not secure his en-
trance by the dungeons he Illuminated and
the lazzarettos in1o which he carried the
medicines, Paul is there, but he did not
earn his way by the shipwrecks and i'm
prlsonments and scourgings. On a throne
overlapping perhaps all others, except
Christs, the Old missionary eXclaims: by
the grace Of God am what l am"
Again, exalted social position will be no
cloak for sin. Men look through the
Wicket-door of prisons, and seeing the in
carcerated wretches, exclaim: oh, how
much vice there is in the wOrld!" And
they pass through the degraded streets of
city, and looking into the doors of novels
and the dens of corrupt on they call them
God-forsaken abodes. But you might walk
along the avenues through which the opu-
lent roll in their aourishing pomp, and into
mansions elegantly adorned, and find that
in, No DIN; r-olI aft 70 Safo
works mischief and death. The first temp
tation Satan wrought in q garden. and he
understands yet most thoroughly how to
insinuate himself into any door of ease and
splendor. Men frequently judge of sin by
the places in which it is committed, but
iniquity in satin is as loathsome to God as
iniquity in rags, and in the Day OF Judg-
ment the sins of Madison avenue and Elm
street will all be driven in one herd. Men
cannot escape at last for being respectfully
sinful. You know Dives was clothed in
purple and fine linen and Jared sumptu-
ously every day, but his fine clothes and
good dinners did not save him. He might
on earth have drunk something as rich as
champagne and cognac, but at last he asked
for one drop of water. You cannot trade off
your attractive abodes here for a house of
many mansions on high, and your elegant
shade groves here will not warrant you a
seat under the tree Of life. When God
drove Adam and Eve out of Eden he showed
that merely living in garden OF delights
and comforts will never save a man or a
woman. By giving you SO much earthly
luxury and refinement He intim dted that He
would have you enjoy yourselves, but He
would not have you wrap yourselves up IN
them as cloak to hide your sins. God
now walks in your garden as he did in
Eden, even in the cool of the day, and he
would make your comfort on earth a type Of
your rapture in heaven.
Furthermore, mere soundness of re-
ligious belief will not hide our iniquities
There are men whose heads are as sound
as Jonathan Edwards or John Wesleys,
whose hearts are as rotten as Tom Paine s
or Charles Guiteaus. 1t is important that
we be theoretical Christians. 1t is utter
folly in this day for u man to have no
preference for any one form Of faith when
it is so easy to become converSant with the
faith of the different sects. An intoxicated
man staggered into my house one night
begging for lodging, He made great pre-
tensions to religion. I asked where he
went to church. He said: Nowhere; /
belong to liberal Christianity" But there
are those who never become Christians, be-
cause their obstinacy prevents them from
ever taking fair view ofWhat religion is.
They are like a brute beast in the fact that
their greatest strength lies in their horns.
They are combatant and all they are ever
willing to do for their souls is to enter an
ecclesiastical fight. have met men who
would talk all day upon the ninth chapter
of Romans. who were thoroughly helpless
before the fourteenth chapter of John. But
there are those who, having escaped from
this condition, are now depending entirely
upon the soundness of religious theory.
The doctrines of mans depravity and
ChrlSt'S atOnement and Gods sovereignty
are theoretically received by them. But,
alas there they stop. 1t is only the shell
of Christianity containing no evangelical
life. They stand looking over into Heaven
and admire it's beauty and it's song, and
are so pleased with the looks from the out