The Press., 1894-09-27
Number 26.

spirits welfare. Surely there are needed all the weeds and worms and wild, ven omous powers that are in nature to make us feel that however the world may fiat ter there is principle therein radically hostile to our spirits. Earthquakes and cyclones, and famines and pestilences and such like disturbances, too, are need. ed to arouse us out of our fatal. lethargic, self-satisfied contentment with life as if is. God has not put us into the world to have good time, but for our moral edu- cation. Weeds and worms, therefore, and all else in nature that gives to it serious or hostile aspect are intended to disturb our self-content and to arouse us to accept the spiritual ends of life.
 One more phase of this subject invites our attention. What more fitting sym- bol of sin than the worm gnawing at the root Of the plant or eating out the heart of the flower? Concealed from our eyes the ravage is wrought that soon shows it. self in the curling up of the leaves of the plant and in the falling of the petals of the flower. So in the dark does sin com- init it's ravages. It feeds upon the heart. 1t undermines the foundations of life. Nor is it's presence suspected until it is outwardly manifested by unmistakable signs the vigor and strength of mrnhood decay. There is not that perfect beauty or innocency which charms us in the life of Jesus, but certain unsightliness that is repulsive. How awfully repulsive this may be when it supplies the brain, puts out the fire in the eye, seams the countenance with deep lines of sensuality, robs the frame of it's upright carriage and gives to the face n hang-dog aspect. We should have profounder feeling of re- vulsion from such unsightlineas than we have were we not so accustomed thereto and ourselves also so scanned by the rav- ages of sin. For where is there one who has not had the worm at the heart? Life at the best appears but an unhealthy, half-developed product. Even our mor- alities are not infrequently, though fair outwardly, like an unsound apple rotten at the core, Sin is the cause of this that active principle of evil at the heart of all life. Nor can life ever manifest all it's possibilities until this shall have been gotten rid of. Then there shall be world or men and women not degraded, or at the best, commonplace and uninteresting, as, with few exceptions, all men are. Society shall be conclave of the gods, each living in the realization of the mo- blest ends, and finding in the brotherhood | of his kind the compliment of his own | life. It is for these ends that God is working, working by the removal of the cause that makes life sickly aud unsight- ly. Shall we not, each of us, if we have not already done so, put ourselves active ly on his side? Shall we not seek fol ourselves that deliverance from the worn gnawing at the heart that shall make il possible for our lives to blossom forth iI all the beauty of ChIist-life? Shall we not take to heart the lesson that God | "ouAu us u bHOuSADu symbols of hostile power in nature, most dangerous when our spiritual senses have been drugged to sleep, upon which we are deliberately to turn our backs? Shall we not accept the dictum of the spiritual pur- pose of life and put ourselves steadfastly in that way, where, as we advance on- ward and upward, life will open out ever larger and more glorious? Shall we not turn away from this tieeting sense-world, this City of Destruction, to Christ, who will open to us infinite possibilities of thought and action, and an ever widening sphere of existence? God grant that not one of us, in such a choice, may long hes itate.
 IInrp Szs, H-A1 L