The Progress., 1893-02-18

has ll-The.: oUt, whose seasons he ha,
appointed. Every nations history is q
revelation Il God ants men.
lie has revealed himself in the past
This Bible is the history of Israel-tht
history Of nation for 500 years. with
all their SINS and wiCiodnCss and short
comings end rebellion; the history OF
their great men-of their saints, their
heroes, their martyrs and prophets; the
history of men VINO We're renegades and
belied their trust and were cast ont. 1t
IS the impartial record Of Gods dealing
with nation. Israel was n chosen ma
tion, and God inspired the nation as a
nation. We have Our Bible an infallible
Bible because God chose and inspired
and led nation, and out of that nation
brought the Son of Man.
There is no such thing as accounting
for the history of Israel, save that the
God of heaven and earth chose that ma
tion. 1t comes as a stream through all
history, with a history all its own, flow
ing down through empires that lowered
IN sublimity around it and yet un-
touched by them; flowing by the very
base of the Assyrian throne and yet on
ward and onward, through / 800 years,
until at last Jesus, the Son of Man,
emerged from that stream Of history.
and the race was scattered.
THE COMMONWEALTH OF ISRAEL.
God chose a nation as the vehicle of n
Divine revelation, and he chose the ma
tiOns around to bear a part in it. He
chose the Assyrian nation as his saw and
AK and flame, through which to free his
own chosen people, and when the king
of Assyria made his proud boast before
the prophet of God the prophet said:
"Nou have laid the city waste, but you
are nothing. You are the instrument of
Gods hand, and God is going to con
sumo his own people and uses you as the
flame with which to do it. But after
the scourSe a remnant will remain, and
that remnant will be his people, through
whom lie will work out his design and
purpose. But in the process you will be
ground to powder" SO Assyria played
her part in the role of nations, in that
grand drama God had planned for the
race.
The history of every empires rise and
fall is a divine chapter of the book of
Revelation. Go back and stand before
Tyre and Sidon, as in their pride and
glory they mastered the commerce of
world, and hear the prophet as he
speaks of them and their future. Go
now and hear the sad waves washing on
the shores of that sea, silent, deserted !
even the ruins covered by the sands of |
centuries, inhabited not even by bats and |
owls-a wild stretch of desolation. In |
the history of Tyre and Sidon you will |
find written the eternal law of the tri- |
umph of righteousness in the history of |
mankind.
Stand before Babylon in her pride and
glory, with her matchless army and her
monarch, master of the civilization of
the age, and hear the revelry within,
and then hear the shrieks of women and
children and men as their blood flows
like water and the city is swept with the
5assoon of destruction, and Babylonian
civilization falls never to rise again.
Hear the howl Of the wild beasts among
her palaces now, where kings and mobiles
once reveled, and you will find that the
plumb line of Gods righteousness fell
over those walls, and they were found
Read the story of Greece, of her rise
and progress and fall, of her brilliant
era of civilization, of her artists and
men of letters, and read the story of her
slavery and decline and the wrath of
God that abides on unrighteousness.
Read again the history of the seven hilled
city, in all her glory and pride, long
ages spent in her development, until it
was mistress of the world, and then con-
trast the introduction of the follies and
and sins and dispensation
# the age of slavery, and of gold, and
If power, and read again of Goth and
Vandal, who, from a foreign north,
'wept down and obliterated ancient
Rome. In every rise and fall of empire.
'ead the edict Of the Most High God, re-
Iealing himself unto man.
GOD WORKS BY MEANS.
Come down to modern history, and it
5 the same. God in nations? Yes. Read {
he history of the Arab in Africa and
ind there even God following the track l
f slave trader over that wild African 9
ointment. The language of the Arab a
lave trader is the only universal Ian I
uage there, and now they have trans
ated the Bible into 1.-THE only Ian I
uage that can penetrate the darkness $
I the continent. So God has chosen u
hesn as instruments through which He a
hight save a continent.
So through the history of the English Il
nd American nations. England in her a
reed and rapacity seizes empire after S
npire. But we look now on the shift
lg scenes, and out from it all there o
'ems to come Gods plan of language n
niversal, of an empire universal, on r,
hose soil his sun viii never set. and 4
hose men and women. reared in happy u
,mes, taught in reverence of the Most "
Ugh God, shall carry the cross of Christ p
the utmost limits of the earth. until u
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