Connecticut western news., 1892-09-01

not to go into self abegnation before the all searching, all scrutinizing, all try ing eye of God? The seraphs do. How much more we. "With twain he cov- cred the feet"
 THE BONDAGE OF SIN.
 All this talk about the dignity of hu- man nature is braggadocio and sin. Our nature started at the hand of God regal, but it has been pauperized. There is well in Belgium which once had very pure water, and it was stoutly masoned with stone and brick; but that well aftorward became the center of the battle of Waterloo. At the opening of the battle the soldiers with their sabers compelled the gardener, William Won Kylsom, to draw water out of the we'll for them, and it was very pure water.
 But the battle ragged, and three hun dred dead and half dead were flung into the we'll for quick and easy burial, so that the we'll of refreshment became the well of death, and long after people looked down into the well, and they saw the bleached skulls, but no water. So the human soul was well of good, but the armies of sin have fought around it, and fought across it and been slain, and it has become well of skeletons. Dead hopes, dead resolutions, dead opportuni- ties, dead ambitions. An abandoned well unless Christ shall reopen and pu- rify and fill it as the we'll of Belgium never was. Unclean, uncleani
 s,,R Rla fax "With twain he covered the face" That means reverence Godward. Never so much irreverence abroad in the world as today You see it in the defaced statuary, in the cutting out of figures from fine paintings, in the chipping of monuments for memento, in the fact that military guard must stand at the graves of Grant and Garfield, and that old shade trees must be cut down for frewood, though fifty George P. Morrises beg the woodmen to spare the tree, and that calls corpse 8 cadaver, and that speaks of death as going over to the ma- jority, and substitutes for the reverent terms, father and mother, ''the old man" and ''the old woman," and finds nothing impressive in the ruins of Baal- bee or the columns of Karnac, and sees no difference in the Sabbath from any other days except it allows more dis sipation, and reads the Bible in what is called higher criticism, making it not the Word of God, but good book with some fine things in it. Irreverence never so much abroad. How many take the name of God in vain, how many trivial things said about the Almighty. Not willing to have God in the world, \ they roll up an idea of sentimentality and humanitarianism and impotence and imbecility and call it God. No wings of reverence over the face, no taking off of shoes on holy ground. You can tell from the way they talk they could have made better world than this, and that the God of the Bible shocks every sense of propriety. They talk of the love of God in way that shows you they believe it does not make any difference how bad a man is here, he will come in at the shining gste. They talk of the love of God in such 8 way which shows you they think it is a general jail delivery for all the aban- doned and the scoundrelism of the uni verse. punishment hereafter for any wrong done here.
 THE LOVE OF GOD.
 The Bible gives us two descriptions of God, and they are just opposite, and they are both true. In one place the Bible says God is love. In another place the Bible says God is consuming fire. The explanation is plain as plain can be. God through Christ is love- God out of Christ is fire. To win the one and to escape the other we have only to throw ourselves body, mind and soul into Christ's keeping. "No," says Irreverence, "I want no atonement, I want no pardon, want no intervention; I will go up and face God, and will challenge him, and I will defy him, and I will ask him what he wants to do with me-" So the finite confronts the inf mite, so tack hammer tries to break a thunderbolt, so the breath of human nostrils defes the everlasting God, while the hierarchs of heaven bow the head and bend the knee as the Kings chariot goes by, and the archangel turns away because he cannot endure the splendor, and the chorus of all the empires of heaven comes in with full diapason, "Holy, holy, holyp'
 Reverence for sham, reverence for the ! old merely because it is old, reverence for stupidity however learned, rever- ence for incapacity, however finely in augurated, have none. But we want | more reverence for God, more reverence | for the sacraments, more reverence for | the Bible, more reverence for the pure, more reverence for the good. Rever- ence a characteristic of all great natures. You hear it in the roll of the master oratorios. You see it in the Raphaels and Titians and Ghirlandijos. You study it in the architecture of the Aholi. abs and Christopher Wrens. Do not be fippant about God. Do not joke about death. Do not make fun of the Bible. l Do not deride the Eternal. The brightest and mightiest seraph cannot look un- abashed upon him. Involuntarily the wings come up. .tWith twain he GOV. cred his face"
 Who is this God before whom the ar. rogant and intractable refuse reverencei There was an engineer of the name oi Strasicrates, who was in the employ o1 Alexander the Great, and he offered te hew a mountain in the shape of his master, the emperor, the enormous fig
 ure to hold in the left hand city oi
 10000 inhabitants, while with the right hand it was to hold basin large
 enough to collect all the mountain tor
 rents. Alexander applauded him fol
 his ingenuity, but forbade the enter
 prise because of it's costliness. Yet
 have to tell you that our King holds ir
 one hand all the cities of the earth ant
 all the oceans, while he has the stars o1
 heaven for his tiara.
 Earthly power goes from hand tt
 hand-from Henry to Henry II ant