The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1895-02-23

all around the lantern, SO that we shut
out the light from the multitudes who
are stumbling on the dark mountains
of sin and death. Twelve hundred
dead birds were found one morning
around Bartholdi's statue in New FORK
harbor. They had dashed their life out
against the lighthouse the night be-
fore. Poor things, And the great
lighthouse of the Gospel how many
high-soaring thinkers have beaten all
their religious life out against it. while
it was intended for only one thing, and
that was to show all nations the way
into the harbor Of Gods mercy. and to
the crystalline wharves of Heavenly
CITY, where the immortals are waiting
for new arrivals. Dead skylarks,
when they might have been flying
seraphs.
Here also come covering up the old
Gospel. some who think they can by
law and exposure of crime save the
world, and from Portland, Me, across
to San Francisco, and back again to
New Orleans and Savannah, many of
the ministers have gone into the detec-
tive business. Worldly reform. by all
means: but unless it DC also Gospel re-
form. it will be n dead failure. In New
York it's chief work has been to give
us a change of bosses. We had a dem
ocratic boss, and now it is to be q re-
publican boss, but the quarrel is, who
shall DC the republican? Politics will
save the cities the same day that Satan
evangelizes perdition.
Here comes another class of people
who in pulpit and outside Of It cover
up the Gospel with the theory that It
makes no final difference what you be-
lieve. or how you act-you are bound
for Heaven, anyhow. There they sit,
side by side, in Heaven: CART cid, and
Guiteau, who shot him; Lincoln, and
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated
him; Washington, and Thomas Paine,
who ~slandered him; Mana Sahib, and
the missionaries, whom he dubbed to
death at Cawnpore; Herod, and the
children whom he ~massacred; Paul,
and Nero, who beheaded him. As O
result of the promulgation of such
n mongrel and conglOmerate,
heaven there are millions of people
in Christendom who expect to
go straight to Heaven from their
seraglios, and their inebriation, and
their suicides, when among the loudest
thunders that break W. the basaltic
island to which st. John vas expatri-
ated, was the one in which God an
nounccd that 1.-THE abominable, and the
murderers, and whoremongers, and
sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars,
shall have their place in the lake
which burneth with fire and brin-
stone, which ia the second death" l
correct what / said when / declared
the Gospel was buried fifty feet deep;
it is buried O thousand feet deep. Had
the glorious Gospel been given full OPP
portunity, 1 think before this the
world would nave had no need Of pull
pit, or sermon, or prayer, or church,
but thanksgiving and hosannas would
have resounded In the temple
to which the mo antains would
have been pillars. aud the blue
skies the dome, and the rivers the
baptistery, and all nations the Worship
ers in the auditorium of the outspread
world. But so far from that, as l re-
marked In the opening sentence of this
sermon, the greatest novelty of our
time Is the Gospel. And let me say to
the hundreds and thousands of edu-
Gated and splendid young men about
to enter the Gospel ministry from the
theological seminaries of all denomina-
tions, on this and the other side Of the
seas, that there is no drawing power
like the glorious Gospel. Him hath
God lifted up to draw all men unto
Him." Get your souls charged and
surcharged with this Gospel, aud you
will have large audiences.
The glorious Gospel of the blessed
God as spoken Of in my text will have
more drawing POWER, and when that
Gospel gets full swing it will have a
momentum and a power mightier than
that of the Atlantic ocean, when under
the force of the September equinox, it
strikes the Highlands of the Navesink.
The meaning of the word Gospel" Is
good news" and my text says 1t is
glorious good news, and we must tell
it in our churches, and over our dry
goods counters, and in our faoto-
ries. and over our threshiug ma
chimes, and behind our plows. and
on our ships decks, and in our par
lors, our nurseries. and kitchens, as
though it were glorious good news, and
not with q dismal drawl In our voice,
and a dismal look on our faces, as
though religion were q rheumatic
twinge, or q dyspeptic pang, or q ma
larial chill, or an attack on nervous
prostration. With nine ''blesseds" or
''happys" Christ began his sermon on
the Mount: Blessed the poor; blessed
the mourner; blessed the meek;
blessed the hungry; blessed the merci.
full; blessed the pure; blessed the
peacemakers; blessed the prosecuted;
blessed the reviled; blessed, blessed;
happy, happy, happy. Glorious good
news for the young. as through Christ
they may have their coming years
ennobled, and for u lifetime all the
angels of God. their coadjutors aud
all the armies of Heaven. their allies.
Oh, my text is right when 1t speaks
of the glorious Gospel. 1t is an invita-.
ton from the most radiant Being that
ever trod tho earth, or assembled the
heavens, to you and me to come and be
made happy, and then take after that
y royal castle for everlasting residence,
the angels of God our cup=bearers: The
price was paid for all of this on the clif{
of limestone about as high a. this house,
about seven minutes walk FROM the
wall of Jerusalem, where with an
agony that with n hand ore down
the rocks, and with the other drew
a midnight blackness over the heav-
ems, our Lord set us forever free.
Making 10 apology for any one OF
the million sins of our life, but
eonfessing all of them, we eau point to
that cliff Of limestone and say: There
vas paid our Indebtedness, and God
never collects Q bill twice." Glad AM
l that oil the Christian poets have ex
erted their nen in extolling the match