The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1897-03-13

gone, down what declivities, and in
what roads and in what directions, and
will know more about you than
want to know. None of us could en-
dure the scrutiny. Our feet not al
ways in paths Of God. Sometimes in
paths of worldliness Our feet, a
Divine and glorious machinery for use
fulness and work, SO often making mis-
steps, so often going in the wrong di-
rection. God knowing every step, the
patriarch saying: "Thou settest
print on the heels of my feet" Crimes
of the hand, crimes of the tongue,
crimes of the eye, crimes of the ear not
worse than crimes of the foot. Oh, we
want the wings of humility to cover
the feet Ought we not to go into self
abhegation before the all-searching,
all-scrutinizing, all-trying eye of God?
The seraphs do. How much more we?
with twain He covered the feet"
All this talk about the dignity of hui
man nature is braggadocio and sin.
Our nature started at the hand of God
regal, but it has been pauperized.
There is a well in Belgium which once
had very pure water, and 1t was stoutly
masoned with stone and brick but that
well afterward became the center of
the battle of Waterloo. At the open
ing of the battle the soldiers with their
sabers compelled the gardener William
Won Kylsom, to draw water out of the
well for them, and it was very pure wa
ter. But the battle ragged, and 800
dead and half dead were flung into the
wall for T,tiolr nd L,,,. l.. hat
the well of refreshment became the
well of death. and long after, people
looked down into the well and they
saw the bleached skulls, but no water.
So the human soul was well of good,
but the armies of sin have fought
around it, and fought across it and been
slain, and 1T has become well of slxele-
tons. Dead hopes, dead resolutions,
dead opportunities. dead ambitions. An
abandoned well unless Christ shall re-
open and purify and fill it as the well
of Belgium never was. Unclean, un-
clean.
Another scraphic posture in the text:
with twain he covered the face" That
means reverence Godward. Never so
much irreverence abroad in the world
as to-day. You see it in the defaced
statuary, in the cutting out of figures
from fine paintings, in the fact that mil
itary guard must stand at the graves
of Lincoln and Garfield. and that old
shade trees must be cut down for fire.
wood, though so George T. Morrises
beg the woodcutter to spare the tree,
and that calls corpse cadaver, and
that speaks of death as going over to
the majority, and substitutes for the
reverent terms father and mother,
1.-The old IMAM" and 1.-The old
woman" and finds nothing i'm
pressive in the ruins of Baalbec or the
columns of Karnac, and sees no differ
ence in the Sabbath from other days
except it allows more dissipation, and
reads the Bible in what is called higher
criticism, making it not the Word of
God, but good book with some fine
things in it. Irreverence never so much
abroad. How many take the name of
God in vain; how many trivial things
said about the Almighty. Not willing
to have God in the world, they roll up
an idea Of sentimentality and humani-
tarianism and impudence and imbecil-
ity, and call it God. No wings of rev.
erence over the face, no taking off of
shoes on holy ground. You can tell
from the way they talk they
could have made a better world than
this, and that the God of the Bible
shocks every sense of propriety. They
talk of the love of God in a way that
shows you they believe it does not
make any difference how bad man is
here, he will come in at the shining
gate. They talk of the love of God in
a way which shows you they think it
is general Jail delivery for all the
abandoned and the scoundrelly of the
universe. No punishment hereafter
for any wrong done here.
The Bible gives two descriptions of
God, and they are just opposite, and
they are both true. In one place the |
Bible says God is love. In another |
place the Bible says God is a consum-
ing fire. The explanation is plain as |
plain can be. God through Christ is |
love. God out of Christ is fire. To win |
the one and to escape the other we |
have only to throw ourselves body,
mind and soul into Christ's keep |
ing. NO, says lTreVeTeucc, i WANT |
no atonement, l want no par
don, l want no Intervention; ] will |
go up and face God, and will challenge |
Him, and / will defy Him, and will ask
Him what He wants to do with me-" |
So the finite confronts the infinite, so |
a tack hammer tries to break thun-
derbolt, so the breath of human nos
trils defes the everlasting God, while |
the hierarches of Heaven bow the |
head and bend the knee as the Kings |
chariot goes by, and the archangel
turns away because he can not endure
the splendor, and the chorus of all the |
empires of Heaven comes in with full |
diapason, Holy, holy, holy"
Reverence for sham, reverence for |
the old merely because it is old, rever-
ence for stupidity, however learned,
reverence for incapacity, however fine
ly inaugurated, have none. But we
want more reverence for God, more
reverence for the sacrments, more
reverence for the Bible, more rever-
an for tha mira mora fDx-