Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-23

menus. Inere is no merit In De1ng mlseraOle.
There is no contradiction between smiling
face and the sermon on the Mount. Sadness
is not sanctity. The religion which the
Lord Christ came to teach us has place in it
for every good and worthy pleasure which
has ever entered into the heart of man. No
doubt but the rich mans life was a merry
and pleasant one. But it. was not that
which was the matter with him. It was not
for this that Dives failed.
III.
WHERE DIVES FAILED.
Dives had been a careless man, careless
about religion. Now we begin to discover
the real causes of his failure. He had some
brothers, we learn from the parable, VINO
were still alive upon the earth and who
were living just as he had lived, and so were
coming straight after him into that place of
torment. Evidently, from what he says
about them, they were men who gave no
thought whatever to the concerns of the un-
seen universe, to the soul and God. They
lived on the same street with the church,
and passed its open door at least once every
week, but they never went in. The ordi-
nary persuasions of religion, the common
opportunities had come in the wav of these
men and they had paid no heed. And they
were going on living in that suicidal
fashion.
Dives could think of only one thing
which could startle these careless brothers
of his into sense of the Importance of re-
ligion. He thought that possibly a ghost
might do it. If Lazarus could come to life
again, and look in at their windows; if they
could hear dead man speaking to them
the message which live men were every
Sabbath day reciting in the synagogues-
that might scare them into some sense of
the importance of religion. The request
was not granted, but the fact that it was
made is revelation of the kind of life this
rich man had been living-just the careless
life which his brothers were yet busy about.
A worldly, superficial, needless, goddess
life.
THE SIN OF OMISSION.
We get closer here to the reason for the
rich mans failure. Everybody must ineY-
itably fail who follows in that path. If there
is any spiritual and righteous and heavenly
world after this, what can they do in it who
have never had a spiritual thought, nor
done righteous deed ?. Dives was very
quick to claim klnship with Abraham
Father Abraham" to be worried
about the state of his brothers soul; very
quick indeed,-after he was dead
And yet, is there not here the beginning
of better things for Dives7 Can you not
read between the lines promise that even
Dives set amidst the torments, may some
time win his way out of the torments, and
get across that great gulf? Do you think
that anybody is going to be lost whom God
endeavor after the better, even among the
bad, will find God blind and deaf, and
corresponding? Who can tell?
Anyway, it is better not to get into the
torments. 1t is better to keep on the right
side OF that steep gulf. Here and to-day is
the place and the time to claim kinship with
the saints, with greater than Abraham.
Here and now we ought to be caring for the
welfare OF our brethren.
".
NEGLECTED HIS OPPORTUNITIES.
At last we touch the very heart of the rich
mans offending. He was maE careless of
God, yes, that is what the introduction of
the brothers into the parable teaches US. But
he was careless too about the welfare of his
brethren, that is what Lazarus is In the story
for. Dives was an unhelptul man. 1t was
not that he had done any very bad things
nothing of that is brought against him. 1t
was that having daily opportunity to do a
good thing, he failed to do it. With a
chance TO help brother man, daily presented
to him, he had passed on and left the man un-
helped. Thepoint OF the parable is this es-
sential duty of being helpful.
Nobody can miss the emphasis which
Christ laid upon the supreme Christian
duty of helping. You read it in His par
ables; you find it in His description of the
final judgment. This it is which will set
that tragic separation between men. On
one side, the helpers who have min1stered to
the hungry and the needy; on the other side,
the unhelplul who in the presence of their
brothers trouble have turned away. To be
helpful is to meet the supreme duty of our
religion. 1t is to be like Christ. To be un-
helpful is to tall into the failure of failures.
GEORGE HODGES