Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-09-08

loo. At the opening Of the battle the sol
diers with their sabers compelled the
gardener, William Won Kylsom, to draw
water out Of the well for them, and IL was
very pure water But the battle ragged,
and three hundred dead and half dead
were flung into the well for quick and easy
burial, so that the well Of refreshment be-
came the well of death, and long after peo-
pie 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 il has
become a well of skeletons. Dead hopes,
dead resolutions, dead opportunities, dead
ambitions. An abandoned well unless
Christ shall reopen and purify and clean it
as the well of Belgium never was. Un-
clean, unclean!
Another seraphic posture in the text,
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 me-
mento, in the fact that military guard
must stand at the graves of Grant and Gar
field, 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 a cadaver, and
that speaks of death as going over to the
majority, and substitutes for the reverent
terms, father and mother, ''the old man"
and 1.-The old woman" and finds nothing
impressive in the ruins of Baalbec or the
Of anA
in the Sabbath from other days except it
allows more dissipation, and reads the
Bible in what is called higher criticism,
making it not the Word of God, but a
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 AL
mighty Not willing to have God in the
world, they roll up an idea of sentimental
ity and humanitarianism and impudence
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 a
better world than this, and that the God
of the Bible shocks every sense of propri-
ETY.. They talk of the love of God in a 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 gate
They talk of the love of God in such way
which shows you they think it is a general
jail delivery for all the abandoned and the
scoundrelism of the universe. No punish
ment hereafter for any wrong done here.
THE LOVE AND THE JUSTICE 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 explana-
tion 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, II want no atonement want
no pardon, l want no intervention; 1 will
go up and face God, and will challenge
him, and l will defy him, and will ask
him what he wants to do with me-" So
the finite confronts the infinite, SO a tack
hammer tries to break a thunderbolt, so
the breath of human nostrils defies the
everlasting God, while the hierarchs of
heaven bow the head and bend the knee as
the Kings chariot goes by, and the arch
angel turns away because he cannot endure
the splendor, and the chorus of all the em.
pires of heaven comes in with full diapa-
son, ''Holy, holy, holyp'
Reverence for sham, reverence for the
old merely because it is old, reverence for
stupidity however learned, reverence for
incapacity however finely inaugurated, I
have none. But we want more reverence
for God, more reverence for the sacra-
ments, more reverence for the Bible, more
reverence for the pure, more reverence for
the good. Reverence 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
Aholiabs and Christopher Wrens. Do not
be fippant about God. Do not joke about
death. Do not make fun of the Bible. Do
not deride the eternal. The brightest and
mightiest seraph cannot look unabashed
upon him. Involuntarily the wings come
up. with twain he covered his face"
Who is this God before whom the arro-
CANT and intractable refuse reverence2
There was an engineer of the name OF
Strasicrates who was in the employ of
Alexander the Great, and he offered to hew
a mountain In the shape OF his master, the
emperor, the enormous hgure to hold in
the left hand city OF ten Thousand lnhab-
itants, while with the right hand it was to
hold basin large enough to collect all the
mountain torrents. Alexander applauded
him for his ingenuity, but forbade the en-
terprise because OF It's costllness. Yet
have to tell you that our King holds in one
hand all the cities OF the earth and all the
oceans, while he has the stars OF heaven for
his tiara.
THE oMNlrotENr ONE;
EarInly power goes IRON qI manu- n 70 nanuI IT7
from aehry 10 henry II anu ne4ry -,
1rom Charles 10 onarles II, from LOUIS
lasting to everlasting is God, God the
first. God the last, God the only. He has
one telescope with which he sees every-
thing-his omniscience. He has one bridge
with which ba crossas evervthipp--his om-