St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-05
MAN MUST ACT
Before God Will Exert His Power
to Save.

to save.
God Waiting for Man" was the
theme of Rev. Robert Hammond Cot
tons morning sermon yesterday at St.
James church. His text was taken
from Exodus xiv, 10: "And the Lord
said unto Moses, wherefore criest thou
unto me? Speak unto the children
of Israel"
This was on the eve of that greatest
of all deliverances which the Lord
wrought for His people, when He
saved Israel out of the hands of the
Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyp-
tians dead upon the Red sea shore
There is a solemn pause. Pharaoh and
his host are behind them. They seem
to be entangled in the land, and the
wilderness was shutting them in.
There was the Red sea before What
are they to do? To retreat is to be
killed by the Egyptians. To rush for
ward is to be drowned in the sea
They ara hemmed in on either side
and the Lord said unto Moses,
Wherefore criest thou unto me-
How suddenly these words seem TO
break the solemn pause! Nothing has
besn said in the context about Moses
'crying unto the Lord" That is to
be understood. The whole life of Tie
great lawgiver was that of a priest
also. He ever stood before the lord
as the peoples intercessor. He
breathed the breath of prayer for
others. But now his prayer has cone
it's work. Moses has done his part
the people must do theirs. God is.
waiting for mans activity. There is
Mo
wanted is human action. The whole
thing is placed in the peoples hands.
Speak unto the children Of Israel,
that they go forward
Our subject is the self-lim't alton of
the divine power. We know that
God is all-powerful, or omnipotent, as
we say. God can do all things. He
is revealed to US as having entire
freedom of action, coupled with I'M
limited resources. Of course, He is
unable to do anything bad, o. ca
PRECIOUS, or irrational, or self-contra-
dictory. This is the limitation inl-
posed upon Him by the perfection of
His moral nature. There is another
limitation, however; namely, that
which places the exercise of tnis ON
impotence in human hands; that which
finds a place for prayer; that wlich
calls upon us to touch the but!on,"
so to speak, that God may do the rest.
Do we ever think of this as we ought
to do?
God waits for man. Were He ether
than He is, of course, He could work
His wonders straight away without
consulting or waiting for ANYBODY. He
could make US all good, we think,
without giving us any trouble. lie
could have prevented wars; He could
have stopped slavery; He could have
made us all well-to-do, so that there
should have never been any !.overty,
sorrow, sickness, or pain. This, clear
ly, He has not done. There is
sphere in which, however, this seems
to be the case. The laws of nature
are absolute, we think. The rlanets
revolve round the sun, and the earth
rotates; the tides ebband flow; seed
time and harvest, and cold and foat,
and summer and winter and day ard
night, do not cease" the apple falls
and the balloon rises; the winds How,
and the rain falls-so far as we can
see at present, according to invariable
law, by the mere fiat of the divine
unconditionally, without
depending on any other contingency.
God has never asked us whether these
things shall be so or not. They do
not depend on our prayer or our ac-
tons. OF course, if we knew more,
we might discover that even in the
physical sphere the divine activity is
not so absolutely unconditional as it
seems to us now.
Be that as it may, when We turn
to the spiritual sphere, we find a very
different state of things. Here God
makes His action depend on the do
ings and prayers of His human
creature, whom He has by grace en-
dowed for that purpose, making him
'fn His own likeness, after His own
image" The conversion Of the world,
for instance, depends on US, just as
the riches of fertile country are
left idle or opened out, according to
the energy and skill of its possessors.