Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-09


swers
The Father himself loyeth you. The very
| hairs of your head are all numbered. In
| the world ye shall have tribulatiOn; the dis
| ciple shall be as his Master; and yet, peaes
I leave with you, let not your heart be
troubled. Come unto me and learn of me,
came from God to tell us what God is. "God
is love-" said one whom the Master taught.
"Who shall separate US from the love Of
Christi" asks another disciple, "shall trib-
ulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?'
And he answers his own question: "Nay, in
| all these things We are more than con-
| uuerors through Him that loved us. For
am persuaded that neither death, nor life,
| nor angels, nor principalities nor powers,
not things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love Of
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"
The disciple who said that knew the con-
ISOLATION of religion.
THE CONSOLATION OF HOPE.
Consider also the Christian revelation Of
the life to come. Everybody knows what
consolation there is in hope. We are
saved by hope, St. Paul says. All the doc
tors know how true that is. And all the
rest of us know, too, how hope brings
taking tired travellers by the hand leads
them to the end of their journey. The task
does not seem so hard if there is a reward
worth working for at the end of it. The
pain is not quite so bitter under the sur
geon's knife if health seems likely to come
after it. No i'll condition is quite unbear-
able if it is only tempered with hope. Hope
is universal consolation.
Human life is so lamentably out of bal
ance, full Of injustice, people so seldom get
their full deserts of good or i'll, the world is
such disordered tangle that another world
seems logical necessity. Or else God puts
us to intellectual and spiritual confusion.
A life to come is the best explanation We
can think of for a thousand strange condi-
tions. The truth of the very central asser-
tion of all religion the truth of the exist
ence of God, seems to demand, if we may so
say, for the justification Of God himself,
that there be
A WORLD BEYOND THE GRAVE.
Otherwise, God is not love, cares not
whether we serve Him or curse Him, dis
tributes benedictIons and maledictions
without regard to character, suffers the
saint to go miserable and the sinner to 90
happy into common grave, sets Cesar on a
throne and Christ on q cross, and answers
the defiance of the one and the love and
faith of the other with the same answer
the answer of impartial and unending death.
Even philosophy has guessed at hope.
But we know. ''In my Fathers house are
many mansions; if it were not so would
have told you. go to prepare a place for
you" There shall sin meet its merited
punishment, and love be rewarded with
love, and all the tangles Strengthened out at
last, all wrongs made right, ideal justice
done in the kingdom of heaven, in the city
of God. Look with hope into the blessed
future, o soul oppressed with the worlds
injustice, smitten with disappointment,
misunderstood, borne down with pain OF
body, laden with care, stricken with the
separation of bereavement. Only wait, and
there shall be an end, and a beginning.
Trust God, and He will bring it to pass.
RoBs DEATH OF ITS STING.
The dead are not dead. Death is but the
lifting of the veil which hangs between US
and the larger life. By and by there is a
meeting again, and no separation after that,
forever. For those who have served God
there will be no crying in that other coun-
try. Only keep heart and work on, in the
midst of tribulation. 81 will come again and
receive you unto myself" He said in whom
we put our hope And that will be the be-
ginning of life and joy eternal.
If the consolation of the love of God and
the consolation of the hope of life to come
are ever imperatively needed both together,
it is in the case of one who has his eyes open
to the fact of sin. A quick, impulsive, un-
expected passion sweeps away the reason Of
O man, and down he falls into some black,
shameful sin. He has encountered dis
grace. At the least, he has come into that
pitiable state in which he is despised BY his
own conscience. He has often said, follow
In haS he
able sinner. Now he says that over again
and means it. That is what he is-a miser-
able sinner. And what has a miserable
sinner to do with a righteous God? What
part or lot has he in any future happiness Of
the saints? The man is lost.
THE GREATEST POSSIBLE LOSS
That is something quite different from
losing money This man has lost his soul.
Where now shall he look for consolation?
Never man needed 1t more. Will phil
osophy console him? You know what sort
of consolation philosophy gives in such
case: philosophy says, you are fool You
have sown and you shall reap. There is no
love, no hope, no reconciliation with God,
no offer of forgiveness, in any of the ethical
PHILOSOPHERS. They are all intended for
wellbehaved people.
That, however, is an extreme case. The
majority of people do not lie-a great deal,
nor steal-a great deal, nor drink-a great
deal, nor offend God in any way. They do
not get away down into the depths. But
it happens sometimes in the life of every
body who learns the real meaning of re-
iglon, that there dawns upon the soul
great, strong consciousness of sin. The
ideal life is set before man; thus and thus
must he live whom God loves; and the man
looks at himself And he sees sin. He
sees that by temperament, by natural dis
position, that is, by nature, he is undeyout,
careless of spiritual things,
selfish, far removed, very far removed, from
the kind of life that God loves. And he
reads how without holiness no man shall see
the Lord, and he realizes that in him
dwelleth no good thing.
PHILOSOPHY OFFERS NO PARDON.
And death is coming, and judgment after
it, and this man must stand before the
righteous God; and what shall he say?
Miserable man that I am, he cries, as Q
better man than he cried before him, "who
shall deliver me from this dead body"
from this perpetually besetting sin? And
has philosophy any answer to make here,
any way of converting this man, of giving
nim a new heart, and new hope, of bring
ing him near to God, and setting him at
peace7 There is no such word in all the
as pardon, no such fact as
no taking away of the sin Of
.he world. 20 Lamb of God, that taketh
away the sin of the world, have mercS
upon usP' That is the only prayer that
has pardon and peace for an answer. There
Is no consolation for the sinner except tho
of religion.
People think sometimes that they can
yet along without religion. Philosophy 10
ust as good, and even better. So long as
here are lecture rooms and music halls and