The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-02
REV. .DR. DOUGLASS SERMON
lDELIVERED YEsTERDAY MORNING
 AT TRINITY CHURCH.

srho Passing Away of This world-why
 This Belief Is Universal to the Race-rhe
 Final Asslze-The Inner Controlling and Aotuating Motive, the Great Test.
 The day of the Lord will come as
 thief in the night, in the which the theavens shall pass away with great
 noise, and the elements shall melt with llfervent heat, the earth also and the : works that are therein shall be broken
 up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of sperson ought ye to be in all holy living
 and goodness. Peter, 8, 10, Il.
 \ This is the last Sunday of the secular
 year. It is time when our thoughts
 turn naturally to the tendency of all
 things earthly to pass away.
 l suppose that well informed men are to-day agreed that probably no human fact is more certain than that this world
 Is coming to an end. l do not say,
 twill come to an end" but lis coming"
 The process is actually going on. AL \ ready there is the beginning of the s end. There are three main lines of N thought whereby cautious thinkers N have arrived at this conclusion. First! A There is the natural foreboding of the
 human mind itself, manifested in all < ages, by all people. Secondly, there is
 the express statement of the Bible,
 echoed and attested by Jesus Christ. ' Thirdly, there is the scientific proof of X the geologists and astronomers. have
 stated these in their chronological
 order.
 There Is the natural foreboding of the human mind. Go where you will in the monuments and the literatures of the nations; everywhere you find the same provision of mems minds and hearts that this earth will not abide. This idea seems to have been first sug gested by the everyday phenomena of the earth-by the evident transitoriness of all things. The falling leaf, the fad ing flower, the setting sun, the dwind-
 ling stream; the encroachments of the ocean, the ravages of the earthquake and cyclone; the alteration of the whole face of nature of some quarters of this globe, with corresponding changes in the climate; the total disappearance of f dissolution of entire nations that once played great parts in history; the flux and flow of every phase of human ! learning and enterprise and specula- ton and achievement, and last of all,
 but nearest of all, the stealthy work ' ings of disease and age perceived by < each individual in his own form and ! frame--all these symptoms taken to- { gether have built up in the human soul 1 an irrefragable conviction that nothing { whatsoever on this earth can surely stay. Very few mem and women have reached middle age without having this conviction brought home to them in a { manner direct and personal. By a great Y trouble, bya loss of income, or of rep utation; by the death of a beloved re- lation or the breaking Of one's own health And the man who has under gone such experience insensibly but { naturally transfers his consciousness of insecurity from the interior world of N his personal being to the exterior earth on which he lives and moves. He is { ready to see signs everywhere that here we have no abiding place, for the fash ion of this world passeth away. And again and again in human history this private conviction in individuals has been manifested as the general convic- ! tton. Whenever there has been a par tial catyclasm or upheaval of the globe
 --such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, of Pompeii, of Lisbon, or E seventeen years ago at Bengal, when a tidal wave swept 215,0O0 human beings & into eternity; or again into the more strictly human convulsions, such as the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, or of the Roman empire by the barbarians, or as the French Revolu-
 tion--the instinctive disposition of the ' people to anticipate in these limited catastrophes the final and complete collapse of the whole earth has re- peatedly borne witness to the universal apprehension that sooner or later such \ collapse is bound to come.
 Secondly, the Bible contains repeated and explicit statements to the same \ effect. To be brief I will now quote but , two: The prophet Isaiah appeals to the people of Israel in Jehovah's name: 3Hearken unto me, o my people, and give ear unto me, o my nation. < Lift up your eyes to the heavens and
 look upon the earth beneath; for the
 heavens shall vanish away like smoke,
 and the earth shall wax old like a gar ment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner"
 Once again, taking long step for
 ward, we find almost at the end of the New Testament the passage in the sec
 ond epistle of St. Peter, from which my
 text is taken, ending with the striking
 words, Seeing then that all these
 things shall be dissolved, what manner
 of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of
 God" Zone day is with the Lord as a
 thousand years, and thousand years
 as one day"
 So much for what the Bible prophets
 of the Old and New Testaments have , said. Now see what He said of whom
 the prophets spake. Jesus Christ Him.
 self set to His seal that their prediction
 will come true. Behold, I have told
 you before,' He said. " Heaven and
 earth shall pass away, but My word
 shall not pass away. As the days of
 Noe were, so shall also the coming of
 the Son of Man be. Watch therefore,
 for .uo typou y,ot xryIaf bof1r yyoIIY T ord