Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-11-20
night does not shoKe nis laughter or
hasten his step forward.


She has tried coaxing and kindness and
self sacrificing and all the ordinary pray
ers that mothers make for their children,
and all have failed. She is coming to-
ward the vivid and venturesome and ter
rife prayer of my text. She is going to
lift her own eternity and set it upon that
one eff by which she expects to decide
whether you will go up with her or she
down with you. She may be this mo-
ment looking heavenward and saying,
80 Lord. reclaim him by thy grace" and
then adding that heart rending eff of
my text, eff not, blot me, I pray thee,
out of thy book"
After three years Of absence son
wrote his mother in one of the New Eng
land whaling villages that he was COM
ing home in a certain ship. Motherlike,
she stood watching, and the ship was in
the offing, but fearful storm struck it
and dashed the ship on the rocks that
night. All that night the mother prayed
for the safety Of the son, and just at
dawn there was knock at the cottage
door, and the son entered, crying out,
Mother, knew you would pray me
homer If would ask all those in this
to God by pious mothers to stand up,
there would be scores that would stand,
and if I should ask them to give testi-
1nony it would be the testimony Of that
New England son coming ashore from
the split timbers of the whaling ship
my mother prayed me homer
THE IFS OF INCREDULITY.
Another Bible eff is the eff" of in
credulity. Satan used it when Christ,
vitality was depressed by 40 days absti-
nence from food and the tempter point
ed to some stones, in color and shape
like loaves of bread, and said, IF thou
be the Son of God, command that these
stones be made bread That was ap-
propriate, for Satan is the father of
that ''if'' of incredulity. Peter used that
same eff when, standing on the wet
and slippery deck of fishing smack on
Lake Galilee, he saw Christ walking on
the sea as though it were as solid as a
pavement of basalt from the adjoining
volcanic hills, and Peter cried out, eff
it be thou, let me come to thee on the
water"
What preposterous s'ifr' What hui
man foot was ever so constructed as to
earth did law of gravitation make excep-
ton to the rule that a man will sink to
the elbows when he touches a wave of
river or lake, and will sink still farther
unless he can swim? But here Peter looks
out upon the form in the shape of a man
defying the mightiest law of the uni
verse-the law of gravitation-and stand
ing erect on the top of the liquid. Yet
the incredulous Peter cries out to the
Lord, eff it be thou Alas, for that in
credulous ''if!'' It is working as power
fully IN the latter part of this nineteenth
Christian century as it did in the early
part of the first Christian century.
Though a small conjunction, it is the
biggest block today in the way of the
gospel chariot "If!' s'Ifr' We have
theological seninaries which spend most
of their time and employ their learning
and their genius in the manufacturing
of 'sifs." With that weaponry are as
sailed the Pentateuch, and the miracles
and the divinity Of Jesus Christ AL
most everybody is chewing on an eff"
When many man bows for prayer, he
puts his knee on an eff. The door
through which people pass into infdelity
and atheism and all immoralities has
two doorposts, and the one is made upof
the letter 'si'' and the other of the let
ter Of
There are only four steps between
strong faith and complete unbelief: First
surrender the idea of the verbal inspira-
ton of the Scriptures and adopt the idea
that they were all generally supervised
by the Lord. Second, surrender the idea
that they were all generally supervised
by the Lord and adopt the theory that
they were not all, but partly, supervised
by the Lord. Third, believe that they are
the gradual evolution Of the age, and
men wrote according to the wisdom OF
the times in which they lived. Fourth,
believe that the Bible is a bad book and
not only unworthy Of eredence, but per-
nicious and debaSing and cruel.
Only four steps from the stout faith in
which the martyrs died to the blatant
caricature of Christianity as the great
est sham of the centuries. But the door
to all that precipitation and horror is
made out of an eff" The mother of
unrests in the minds of Christian people
and in those who regard sacred things
is the eff of incredulity. In 1879, in
Scotland, | saw a letter which had been
written many years ago by Thomas Car
lyle to Thomas Chalmers. Carlyle, at
the time of writing the letter, was a
young man. The letter was not to be
published until after the death Of Car
lyle. His death having taken place, the
letter ought to be published.
It was a letter in which Thomas Car
lyle expresses the fortunes of his own
mind while relaxing his faith in Chris
tianity, while at the same time he ex-
presses his admiration for DR.. Chalmers,
and in which Carlyle wishes that he had
the same faith that the great Scotch min