Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-07-04


have taken your present position from a
| view that you have OF Christ and your
need of Him, rejoice with Joy unspeakable
and full of glory and clap your hands for
gladness, but il you find yourself with
nothing but tho name OF life, while dead in
trespasses and sins, arouse before the
door is shut That gilded profession-the
world may not be able to see through 1t,
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
assault upon good works. They are as
beautiful in Gods eye as In ours. Punctu-
ality, truthfulness, aims giving, uffe ton
| 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
or salvation. Want we do right cannot
pay for what we do wrong. Admit that
you have all those traits of character which
give merely worldly respectability and
| influence, you must at the same time
acknowledge that during tho course OF
! your life you have done many things
YOU ought not TO have done. How are
these difficult matters to be settledl All,
my friends we must have an atonement
| No Christ, no salvation. The great re-
deemer comes in and says: Il will pay
your Indebtedness" So that which was
dark enough BEFORE Is bright enough now
| The stripes that we deserve are fallen upon
Christ. On His ouged and bleeding
shoulders He carries US up over the noun
tain Of our sins and over the hills of our
J iniquites. Christs good works accepted
| are sufficient for us but they who reject
them, depending upon their own, must per-
| ish- Traits OF character that may make us
| influential on earth will not necess Ir.ly
open TO US the gate Of heaven.
| The plank that will be strong
enough for a house floor would not do for a
ships hulk Mere morality might be
enough here but cannot take you through
deaths storm into heavens harbor. Christ
has announced for all ages, II am the way,
the truth and the life, him that cometh unto
me will in no wise cast out" Bat pitia-
| BILE in the day OF accounts will be the con-
ditiou of that man, though he may have
| given all his estate TO benevolent purposes
and passed his life in the visiting Of the
! distressed and done much to excite the adj
miration of the good and the great, IL he
have no intimate relation to Jesus Christ
There is pride and a depravity in
his soul that he has never dis.
| covered. A brilliant outside will be
no apology for a 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.
Howard is there, but he did not secure his
entrance by the dungeons he ilumined
and the laZzarettos into which he carried
the medicines. Paul is there, but he did
not earn his way in by the ship-wrecks and
| imprisonments ami sourgings. On a throne
overlapping perhaps all others, except
Christ's the old missionary exclaims: "By
the grace Of Col am what am."
Again: Exalted social position will be no
cloak for sin. Meu look through the wick.
ct door of prisons, and seeing the incar-
cerated 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 corruption they call them
| God -forsaken abodes. But you might
walk along the avenues through which the
opulent roll Ia their fourishing pomp and
into mansions elegant adorned, and find
that even in the admired walks of life
Satan works mischief and death. The
first temptation Satan wrought in garden,
and he understands yet most thorou ghly
how to insinuate himself into any door of
ease and splendor. Men frequently Judge
OF sin by the places in which IL is commit.
| ted, but iniquity In satin is TO God as loath-
some as iniquity in rags, and in the Day Of
Judgment the sins of Madison Avenue and
Elm Street will all be driven in one herd.
| Men cannot escape at last for being re-
specially sinful. You know Dives was
clothed in purple and fine linen and Jared
sumptuously every day, but his fine clothes
and good dim RS did not save him. He
might on earth have drunk something as
| aG oh hut ~ loo
he asked for one dropo OF w-ter. You cannot
trade off your attractive abodes here for
"A house of many mansions on high and
your elegant shade groves here VII not
warrant you a seat under the tree of life.
When Col drove Adam and Eve out Of
Eden, He showed that merely living in a
garden of delights and comforts will never
save "a man or womln. BY giving yoI so
much earthly luxury and refinement He
intimated that Ho would have you enjoy
yourselves but He wou not have you
wrap yourself up in them as a cloak to
hide your sins. God now walks in your
garden as He did in Eden, even in the cool
Of the day. aud tie st ,nds by your we'll as
He did by IA well il Samaria, and He
would make your comfort GA earth u typo
OF your .pture in heaven.
Furthermore: Mere soundness of re.
li9ious belief will not hide our iniquites.
There are men whose heads are as sound
as Jonathan Edwards or John Wesley,
whose hearts are as rotten as Tom PLine's
or Charles Gditeaus 1t is important that
we be theoretical Christians. IL is utter
folly in this day, for man to have no
preference for any one form OF faith, when
it is so easy to become conversant with the
faith OF the differeat sects. An intoxica ed
man staggered into my house one night
begging for lodging. He made great pre-
tensions to religion. l asked where he
went to church. He said: Nowhere;
ielong to liberal Christianity" But
there are those WAC never become Chris
tlans because their obstinacy prevents
them from ever taking fair view of what
religion is. They are like bruto beast
in tue fact that their greatest strength lies
in their horns. They are comb ttanL aud
all they are ever willing to do for their
souls is to enter an ecclesiastical fight l
have met men who would talk ell day up
on the ninth chapter OF Romans, who were
Thoroughly helpless before the fourteenth
chapter of job. But there are those who,
having escaped from this cond tion, are
|