The Yale expositor., 1897-03-05

tnOu BOeSI 10 the HO0e Oi you.
Especial peril: Their feet shall slide
In due time" Connected with the
worlds dissolution: HE shall set one
foot on the sea and the other on the
earth"
Give me the history of your foot,
and will give you the history OF your
lifetime. Tell me up what steps IL
hath gone, down what declivities, and
in what roads and in what directions,
and l will know more about you than
want to know None of us could en-
dure the scrutiny. Our feet not always
in paths of God. Sometimes in paths
of worldliness. Our feet, divine and
glorious machinery for usefulness and
work, so often making missteps, so
often going in the wrong direction.
God knowing every step, the patriarch
saying, Thou settest a 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 or
humility to cover the feet. Ought we
not to 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
human nature is braggadocio and sin.
Our nature started at the hand of God
regal, but it has been pauperized.
There is we'll in Belgium which once
had very pure water, and it 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
we'll for them, and it was very pure
water. But the battle ragged, and three
hundred dead and half dead were flung
into the well for quick and easy burial;
so that the well of refreshment be-
came 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 it has become a
we'll of skeletons. Dead hopes, dead
resolutions, dead opportunities, dead
ambitions. An abandoned we'll unless
Christ shall reopen and purify and fill
it as the well of Belgium never was.
Unclean. unclean.
Another seraphic 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 de-
faced statuary, in the cutting out of
figures from fine paintings, in the chip
ping of monuments for a memento, in
the fact that military guard must
stand at the grave Of Lincoln and Gar
field, and that old shade trees must be
cut down for firewood, though fifty
George p. Morrises beg the woodmen
a cadaver, and that speaks of death as
going over to the majority, and sub
stitutes for the reverent terms father
and mother, "the old man" and "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 a good book with some fine
things in 1t. 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 human
itarianism and impudence and imbecil-
ity, and call ii God. No wings of rever-
ence 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 diff
ference how bad a 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 a 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 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 keeping.
NO" says Irreverence, 81 want no
atonement, want no pardon, l want
no Intervention; / will go up and face
God, and will challenge him, and l
will defy him. and l will ask him
what he wants to do with me-" So
the finite confronts the infinite. so a
tack hammer tries to break thunder
bolt, so the breath of human nostrils
defies the everlasting God, while the
hierarchs of heaven bow the head and
hand Tho lxuaa 90 tho KfuU,o chariot