St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-11-28
MEANING OF ADVENT.
Rev. William WiIkinson's Sermon
for the Season.

Rev. William WilkinSOn's Sermon
for the Season.
Yesterday morning at st. Andrews
church, Rev. William Wilkinson
preached on "The Meaning of Advent"
He said:
cit is not without plan of wise i'm
port, that for more than fourteen hun
dred historic years men have, in rever-
ent awe, and penitential fear, kept ad-
vent very much as we keep it now.
Those who do not Alright understand
the exquisite beauty of the Christian
year, or who do not prize the continuity
of Christiad thought and prac-
tice, may set little store by
times and seasons which have
have proved replete with many bless
ings; but to the sons and daughters of
the church, whose very souls have
learned to keep pace with the majestic
march Of events, it is thing above
price that we are not left to chance in
the calls duty may have to make upon
us. We hail, then, advent as one of the
times in which we may learn anew what
we all SO much need to hear, and which
God has ever been so anxious to teach.
sit is a self-evident truth to every
man and woman who lives in the light
and spirit Of this new day, that God has
been too often represented in a way
which has not made His character at
tractiVe or His service desirable. The
regal, the magiSterial, and the penal,
have had too large part in mems rep
RESERVATIONS of God. 1t is true, He is
kind OF a magistrate, but He is in
tinitely more. He is at once father,
frin 10
He Is love, and any portraya
in living light these relations
to men are not perfect; nay, they are
so faulty as to be perverslOns of fact. 1t
is in advent we ought to realize tn is
for it is in this realization we shall find
a solution of age-long veXlng questions
questions which the Wisest heathens
have felt press as heavily as men feel
their Incidence today yes, land questions
which enter the minds and do trouble
the hearts of persons who have better
culture and less of good character, and
to which no adequate answer has ever
yet been given by the worlds most
Sagacious men. 1t is not because these
questions are few or unimportant, for
they are many and vital, and are pres
ent in every age; in the wigWam of the
WIN 1nQtdl. III lllS pdldC6 VI GH6 lIOUiG,
with The Samaritan woman and the
woman atJacob's well, with the scientific
Huxley at the British association of
learned men. They have to do with
life. with duty, with death and
destiny, with the origin of things, with
God and with providence, with human
brotherhood, with the past, hoary with
age, and with the future, Respondent
with hope or black with despair. Out
side the things advent stands for. there
never has been and, it IS safe to say,
this side the grave. there never will be an
answer. Men of the most varied attain
ments have spent long weary years in
fruitless search for some salts
factory solution o these prob
lens. and in their hands confu-
sion has become worse COMPOUNDED.
The great heart of the world longs for
something philosophy, literature, art,
science, arms, pomp, pageant, power,
backed by hard law, can not give.
The more We read of the plan of Christ,
as He Himself unfolds it, and as in His
own person and like displays it, the
more we see the meaning of advent, for
here we see the universe with head,
man with a mission. Advent stands
forever, then, to express the love of God
to the children of men,"