The Newtown bee., 1895-07-19

ly that no sledge-hammcr blow could beat these atoms apart. So it is in society: my life is as separate and dis tinct from your life as if lived in Siberia and you in Patagonia; and yet my life is bound to your life, and touches it, and sheds forth influence upon it as surely as one grain of sand touches another in a great sand-heap and helps to hold the
 whole sand-heap together.
 That is one reason why do not be-
 lieve in the realization of perfection here.
 Why? Because it never could be that any
 one could attain to that degree of purity
 in his thoughts, of sincerity in his mo-
 tives, of stainessness in his life, that it
 might be truly said of him that he was
 perfect in Gods sight? No, not exactly
 that. That state might be possible, II
 one could go to some far-away island ln
 the sea, where he would never hear a
 profane word spoken or see wrong | deed committed or read of criminality in it's thousand and-one forms. A man
 might then be perfect, for there
 would be so little temptation to sin but the trouble is, our lives are so wrapped up in and interfolded with
 each other that we must see impurity
 and hear obscenity and think of villainy,
 because it is everywhere paraded before
 our eyes and dinned in our ears; and all
 these influences must drag us down.
 I believe that was the great thing that
 made Christ's humiliation complete, that
 made the sacrifice of Himself for you
 and me so wonderful, that made His
 condescension 80 sublime. Don't think
 of Christ's life as made up of so much
 suffering and so much weariness and so
 much loneliness and so much miscon-
 ception of His words; don't think that CHRIsT's LIFE CAN BE MEASURED
 by the plus sign of quantity or ex- pressed through the multiplication table.
 What made Christ's sacrifice so sublime
 was that He could not reach perfection
 here. Mark closely, or you will misin-
 terpret my meaning. I do not for
 one moment mean to say that Christ was not entirely free from sin and His mind from harboring any thought of sin but His joy never could be perfect, for He fain would have lovingly lgathered His
 chosen people unto Him, but they
 would not come; His satisfaction with
 His work never could be complete, for
 His work was to save the lost, and some would, through their own perverseness,
 persist in being lost; His quietness of soul never could be entire, for the pas sions of wicked men ever dashed against Him like the waves of an angry sea- Chrst's lack of perfection came not from Himself at all, but from the glaring i'm a perfections of men, whose lives He = touched, whose words He heard, the in. :. duence of whose thought rolled upon = Him. He had to collide with hypoc risy, and run afoul of the worst sort of . self-seeking, and come in daily contact ; with minds whose ideals were low; anC = all that meant failure in reaching the IT. Heaven bidden appointment of peace or . earth and good will among men. His e chief suffering came because He wht a was God, whose purity was more immac :. ulate than seraph's wing, had to tab ernacle> with men, to take on Himself ' human form, and therefore to mak, ~ Himself part of the human race ant
 be touched by all it's influences of wo, and of sin.
 :, Two Salvation Army lassies go dowl ,f into the slums on the Eas Q Side of New York (and, i f you can find slums in any corner of th' n world, it is on the East Side of Nev V York); they go to the lowest of th' low-or they want to-they put off thei q Salvation Army dress, they put ol # clothing like that of the people around them; they buy fourth-hand cooking r stove and procure three-legged tabl ', and some broken chairs; they mak themselves like their neighbors, excep D that they keep clean. What is the
 l. MEASURE OF THEIR SACRIFICE? > Is it how much they give up and wha It they deny themselves of? Oh, no; bu }. it is that all this filth and impurity ant tt uncleanliness is about them and throws .- it's baleful influence over them. Thi,
 is what makes it so hard for young mer
 and youg women to go out of beautiful
 American houses, to go away from tn, h refinement and culture of their associ ) ations on these New England hillsides f to mission stations in Africa, there te J. mingle with heather who are cast dowr e by centuries of the most appalling de - gradation. 1t is not, then, so much oul e concern about the new people who 8 move into our town, who settle as '- our neighbors, how much money j. they have, how fine livery they e keep, who their ancestors were - how much they are likely to spend ! at the local stores or in laying out theil - grounds, all that is upon the surface k all that goes toward giving the place a t big name as an aristocratic centre, and : that amounts to very little. But what T is of great concern to us is how much 5 character they bring into the place,
 how much of real worth they have in a 3 calculation that does not take in the r dollars and cents, but that does not take F in the Ten Commandments and the Col , den Rule. Every individual of poor } character who moves into town makes that whole town poorer than it was be- | fore, for he at once joins himself to the Z already large class in the town whose 7 standard of morality is low, and whose