Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-02-20

among the most beautiful and suggest
i've of these worlds is the Genealogical
world. Take this lesson of a providen-
tial care. How does that old hymn go?
We may, like ships, by tempest be tossed
On perilous deeps. but cannot be lost
Though satan enrages the wind and the tide
The promise assures the Lord will provide
GODS CARE AND MANS FREEDOM.
But while you get this pointed lesson
of providential care from the shelled
creatures of the deep, notice in their
construction that God helps them to help
themselves. This house of stone in which
they live is not dropped Ga them and is
not built around them. The material
for it exudes from their own bodies and
is adorned with colored fluid from the
pores Of their own neck. 1t is a most
interesting thing to see these crustacean
animals fashion their own homes out of
carbonate of lime and membrane.
And all of this is a mighty lesson to
those who are waiting for others to build
their fortunes when they ought to go to
work and, like the mollusks, build their
own fortunes out of their own brain,
out of their own sweat, out of their own
industries. Not mOllusk on all the
beaches of all the seas would have
house of shell if it had not itself built
one. Do not wait for others to shelter
you or prosper you. All the crustaceous
creatures of the earth from every flake
of their covering and from every ridge
of their tiny castles on Atlantic and Fa-
cific and Mediterranean coasts say, ''Help
yourself, while God helps you to help
yourself.
Those people who are waiting for their
father OF. rich old uncle to die and leave
them a fortune are as silly as "a mOllusk
would be to wait for some other molluslz
to drop on it shell equipment. It would
kill the mollusk as in most cases it de-
stroys man. Not one person ont of a.
hundred ever was strong enough to stand
a large estate by inheritance dropped on
him in a chunk Have great expecta-
tons from only two persons-God and
yourself Let the onycha of my text be-
come your preceptor.
But the more | examine the shells the
more am impressed that God is a God
Of emotion. Many scott at emotion and
seem to think that God is God of cold
geometry and iron laws and eternal
apathy and enthroned stoicism No!
No! The shells with overpowering en-
phasis deny it. While law and order
reign in the universe. you have but to
see the lavishness of color on the crus-
tacea, all shades of crimson from faint
est blush to blood of battlefield, all
shades of blue, all shades of green, all
shades of all colors from deepest black
to whitest light, just called out on the
shells with no more order than mother
premeditates or calculates how many
kisses and hugs she shall give her babe
waking up in the morning sunlight.
Yes. my God is an emotional God,
and he says, I'VE must have colors and
let the sun paint all of them on the scroll
of that shell, and we must have music,
and here is a carol for the robin, and
psalm for man, and a doxology for the
seraphim, and Il resurrection call for the
archangel." Aye, he showed himself a
God of sublime emotion when he flung
himself on this world in the personality
of Christ to save it, without regard to
the tears it would take, or the blood il
would exhaust. or the agonies it would
crush out
When | see the LouvreS and the Lux
embourgs and the Vaticans of Divine
painting strewn along the 5000 miles of
coast, and hear in a forest on a summer
morning musical academies and Han
del's societies Of full orchestras, say
God is God of emotion, and if he OBJ
serves mathematics it is mathematics
set to music. and his figures are written
not in white chalk on blackboards, but |
written by a finger of sunlight on walls |
of jasmine and trumpet creeper.
WE HAVE A CLEAN RELIGION.
In my study of the conchology Of the |
Bible this onycha of the text also inn
presses me with the fact that religion is
perfumed. What else could God have |
meant when he said to Moses, ''Take |
unto thee sweet Spices stacte and ony
chap Moses took that shell of the ony-
cha, put it over the fire, and as it crum-
bled into ashes it eXhaled an odor that
hung in every curtain and filled the an
cient tabernacle, and its sweet smoke es-
capped from the sacred precincts and sat
urated the outside air.
Perfume! That is what religion is
But instead of that some make it mall
odor. They serve God in rough and
acerb way. They box their childs ears
because he does not properly keep Sun
day instead of making Sunday so attract
i've the child could not help but keep it.
They make him learn by heart difficult
chapter in the book of Exodus, with all
The hard names, because he has been
How many disagreeahle good
people there are! No one doubts their
oiety, and they will reach heaven but
hey will have to get fixed up before
hey go there or they will make trouble
by calling out to us: Keep off that
yrass!' What do you mean by pluck
ng that fower?' ''Show your ticketsr'
Oh, how many Christian people need
@ obey my text and take into their wor-
hip and their behavior and their conso-
cations and presbyteries and general as