Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1896-07-16
GODS ADOPTIONS.
A Vision That Leads the Spiritual Man In
to n New Restfulness and Courage.

A Vision That Leads the Spiritual Man In
to n New Restrulness and Courage.
There was apparently only one lux
ury to which the Apostle Paul treated
himself, and that was the belief that
things were coming out right. He part
ed with all other luxuries without COM
plant, but this he would not give up.
And luxury it certainly is, and thou
sands there are who do not dare to use
1t. There is widespread unconscious
feeling in the Christian world that
about the only way for things to turn
out right is for us to continually think
they are coming out wrong, and that
1t is almost q Christian duty to take
into account all the obstacles before we
dare enter into any great expectations.
1t seems to a great many good people
that there is nothing more pious than
to deplore the world and its ways and
its tendency, and there seems to them
something deceitful about that way OF
looking at life which reveals God at the
head of it, and leading it all for good.
1t has been for ages part of the worlds
confession of faith to speak slightingly
of this poor, beautiful, motherly and
misunderstood world. But Paul and
the poets who, as DR.. Munger says,
"have never given approval to any great
error" have always given themselves
the luxury of finding God at the heart
of his world. tH
Paul and the poets both are full OF
the idea of Gods adoptions, full of His
wonderful making the wrath Of men
to praise Him" Paul, sitting in prison,
unable to do the one thing that his
heart is most set on, preaching Christ,
and finding that the only way in which
his Gospel is getting abroad is through
the gossip of household servants, finds
too that this is turning out to the fur
therancc of the Gospel; so that every
way, whether in pretense or in truth,
Christ is preached. Great is the man
who can make his enemies do his work
for him when they most think they are
doing their own against him. We get
into n good part OF our trouble in this
world by trying too hard to get out OF
1t, and the man who can wait long
enough may come to find that his
troubles at the farther end turn out to
be very often the greatest conveniences.
1t has been n characteristic of great
minds like Pauls that they come at last
into the calm Of seeing that there were
ways out OF evil, even If they did not
find them; that just at this point where
they ought most logically to be most
worried, they were waiting with ro-
bust expectancy for something that
they had not seen. Mans education has
progressed just so far as his conception
of this world as a spiritual world. When
at last, after all his worries, all his
patching up Of trouble from day to day,
one comes to realize that the great
tides of life are working toward God,
working with Him, then comes rest ana
self-possession, he enjoys his work, and
it carries more impressiveness with it.
The world is full of movements which
started against the will and the law
of God, and, now that they are agoing,
God has adopted them for his own pur-
poses. There have been great CONNER
cial schemes whose inception was liz
greed, and whose development in dc.
fiance of the laws of men and of God.
They have swept in careless brutality
over the rights of citizens and COM
monwealths; they have, to compass
their ends, corrupted legislatures and
courts; they have crowded to the wall
thousands, and wrested away from men
their fortunes, and driven them to de-
SPAR. Their corporators have become
heirs to all the woes pronounced on
the oppressor Of the poor, and, after
having done all that their one-eynd
greed inspired them to do, at last the
scheme has been turned to blessing
God has converted their peryersions
back to the good of the world. 1t may
be in some commodity put more than
ever within the reach of men; it may
be through some great highway, opened
through fraud and oppression, but civ
liking at last some great region hitherto
shut off from the world. But the mar
against whom, and in spite of whom,
God establishes blessings is not blessed,
neither is he the author of the bless
ing. ,s
Many a sermon has been preached
from unworthy motives, the praise of
God being perhaps the last thought Of
the preacher. Mans logic would be to
send every soul that heard it empty
and hungry away. God MAY have adopt
ed it to do good to some souls. Atmany
an altar has the sacrament been admin
istered with defiled hands and unwor-
thy heart, but the communicate re-
ceived the blessing of the sacrament.
A notion gets set going in the minds of