The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1897-03-05

| UQ6 Gallt.
Wings of Humility.
Give ire the history of your foot, anC
I will give yea tie history Of your life
time. Tell me up what steps it hail
gone, down what dCclivities and il
what rrGGs ard in NLat directions, anC
1 will know more about you than
want to know. Meme Of us could Ell
dure the scrutiny. Our feet not always
in paths Ct God, sometimes in paths Of
worldliness. Our feet, a divine ant
glorious machinery for usefulness ano
work, so often making missteps, so Otter
going i'll the wrong direction. Goo
knowing every step, the patriarch say
ing, "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 humil-
ity to cover the feet Ought we not tC
go into self abnegatiOn 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 hu-
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 it was stoutly masoned
with stone and brick, but that well aft
erward became the center of the battle
of Waterloo AT the opening Of the bat
tie the soldiers with their sabers COM
PEELED the gardener, William Won Kyl-
som, to draw water out of the well for
them, and it was very pure water. But
the battle ragged, and 800 dead and half
dead were flung into the well for quick
and easy burial, so that the well of re-
freshment became the well of death, and
long after people looked down into the
we'll 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 it has become a
well of skeletons. Dead hopes, dead res
olutions, dead opportunities, dead am
billions. An abandoned we'll unless
Christ shall reopen and purify and fill
it as the well of Belgium never was.
Unclean, unclean.
Irreverence.
Another seraphic posture in the text,
with twain be covered the face" That
means reverence Godward. Never SO
much irreverence abroad i'll the world
as today. You see it in the defaced
Of t,,arv in tbo c1,ttiDp ont Of e cr1,roc
from fine paintings, in the chipping of
for memento, in the fact
that military guard must stand at the
grave of Lincoln and Garfield, and that
old shade trees must be cut down for
firewood, though 80 George P Morrises
beg the woodmen to spare the tree, and
that calls corpse cadaver, and that
speaks of death at going over to the ma
jority, and substitutes for the reverent
terms father and mother the old man"
and "the old woman" and finds moth
ing impressive in the ruins of Baalbec
or the columns of Karnac, and sees no
difference 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 a good book with some fine
things III it.
ITreverence never so much abroad. |
How many take the name Of God in
vain, how many trivial things said |
about the Almighty Not willing to
1ave God in the world, they roll up an
dea of sentimentality and humanitari-
anism and impudence and imbecility |
md call it God. No wings of reverence
)ver the face, no taking off Of shoes on
holy ground. You can tell from the
way they talk they could have made
better world than this, and that the
God of the Bible shocks every sense of
They talk of the love of God
n way that shows you they believe it
loes not make any difference how bad
nan is here he will come in at the shin
ng gate. They talk of the love of God
n way which shows you they think it
S a general Jail delivery for all the
bandoned and the scoundrelly of the
No punishment hereafter for
ny wrong done here.
The Bible gives two descriptions of
iod, and they are just opposite, and
hey are both true. In one place the
Bible says God is love. In another place
he Bible says God is consuming fire.
he explanation is plain as plain can
e. God through Christ is love. God
ut of Christ is fire. To win the one
nd to escape the other we have only to
brow ourselves, body, mind and soul,
lto Christ's keeping. "No, says ir-
everence, II want no atonement;
yant no pardon; want no interven-
ion; 1 will go up and face God, and l
ill challenge him, and l will defy
i'm, and will ask him what he wants
D do with me. " So the finite confronts
he Infinite; so a tack hammer tries to {
reak a thunderbolt; so the breath of
uman nostrils defes the everlasting
+od, while the hierarchs of heaven bow /
le head and bend the knee as the
-ing's chariot goes by, and the arch
ngel turns away because he cannot en- {
ure the splendor, and the chorus of all
lie empires of heaven comes in with
Ill diapason, 'Holy, holy, holyp' {
Pressing Need.
Reverence for sham, reverence for the {
ID merely because it is old, reverence
III cf1 mid ~ boxuox-o,. 1ao,,,ol