The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1892-10-22

into self-abnegation before the all
searching, all-scrutinizing, all-trying
eye of God? The seraphs do. How
much more we. with twain he COW
cred the feet"
All this talk about the dignity of hui
man nature is braggadocio and a 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 twas stoutly
masoned with stone and brick; but
that well afterward 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
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 became the we'll
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 had fought around it,
and fought across it and been slain,
and it has become a well of skeletons.
Dead hopes, dead resolutions, dead OPP
portunities, dead ambitions. An aban-
doned well unless Christ shall reopen
and purify and fill it as the well of
Belgium never was. Unclean, I'M
clean.
Another seraphic posture in.th text:
That means reverence Godward. Never
so much irreverence abroad as to-day.
You see it in the defaced statuary, in
the cutting out of figures from fine
paintings, in the chipping of monu-
ments for memento in fact that mill
tary guard must stand at the grave of
Grant and Garfield, and that old shade
trees must be cut down for firewood,
though fifty George P. Morrises beg the
woodmen to spare the tree, and that
calls a corpse cadaver, and that speaks
of death as passing over to the majority,
and substitutes for the reverent terms
father and mother, 1.-THE old man"
and ''the old woman" and finds moth
ing impressive in the ruins of Baalbec
or the columns of Karnac. and sees no
difference 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 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 senti-
mentality and humantarianism and
impudence and imbecility, and call
it God. No wings of rever-
ence 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 diff
ference how bad man is here, he will
come in at the shining gate. They talk
of the love of God in such a way which
shows you they think it is a general
Jail delivery for all the abandoned and
the scoundrelism of the universe. No
punishment hereafter for any wrong
done here.
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 consum-
ing 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
mind and soul into Christs keeping.
NO" says Irreverence, 81 want no
atonement, want no pardon, I
want no Intervention; I will go
up and face God, and l will
challenge Him,an will defy Him, and
l will IS Him what He wants to do
with me- So the finite confronts the
infinite, SO tack-hammer tries to
break a thunderbolt, so the breath of
human nostrils defies the everlasting
God, while the hierarch of Heaven bow
the head and bend the knee as the
Kings chariot goes by, and the archan-
gel turns away because he can not en-
dure the splendor, and the chorus of all
the empires of Heaven comes in with
full diapson: "Holy. holy, holy!'
Reverence for sham, reverence for
the old merely because it is old, rever-
ence for stupidity however learned,
reverence for incapacity however fine
ly inaugurated, 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. 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 Ghirlan-
dijos. You study it in the architecture
of the Aholiabs and Christopher Wrens.
Do not be flippant about God Do not
joke about death. Do not make fun of
the Bible. Do not deride the Eternal.
The brightest and mightiest seraph
can not look unabashed upon Him. In
voluntarily the wings come up. "With
twain he covered hls face"
Who is this God before whom the ar
rogantand intractable refuse reverence?
There was an engineer by the name of
Subsidiaries who was in the employ of