Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-08-09

you would have put your arms around
his neck and said, Thou art altogether
lovely"
Jesus was wonderful in the opposites
and seeming antagonisms OF his nature.
You want things logical and consistent,
and you say, How could Christ be
God and man at the same timer" John
says Christ was the Creator "All
things were made by him, and without
him was not anything made" Matthew
says that he was omnipresent. ''Where
two or three are met together in my
name there am I in the midst Of them. !"
Christ declares his own eternity, 81
am Alpha and Omega. How can he be
a lion, under his foot crushing king
doms, and yet lamb licking the hand
that Stays him? At what point do the
throne and the manger touch? If Christ
was God, why flee into Egypt? Why
not stand his ground? Why, instead of
bearing the cross, not lift up his right
hand and crush his assassins? Why
stand and be spat upon? Why sleep on
the mountain, when he owned the pal
aces Of eternity? Why catch fish for his
breakfast OF the beach in the chill
are bis and all the vineyards his and
all the cattle his and all the cartridges
his? Why walk when weary and his
feet stone bruised, when ne might have
taken the splendors Of the sunset for his
equipage and moved with horses and
chariots of fire? Why beg a drink from
the wayside, when out of the crystal
ohalices of eternity he poured the Eu
pirates, the Mississippi and the ANA
zon, and dipping his hand in the foun
tains of heaven and shaking that hand
over the world. from the tips of his fin
gers dripping the great lakes and the
oceans? Why let the Roman regiment
put him to death, when he might have
ridden down the sky followed by all
the cavalry of heaven, mounted on
white horses of eternal victory?
Who Can Understand?
You cannot understand. Who can:
You try to confound me. I am con-
founded before you speak. Paul said it
was unsearchable. He went climbing
up from argument to argument and
from antithesis to antithesis and from
glory to glory and then sank down in
exhaustion as he saw far above him 9th
er heights Of divinity unscaled and ex-
claimed THAT in all things he might
have the pre- eminence. "
Again, Christ was wonderful in his
teaching. The people had been used to
formalities and technicalities Christ
upset all the notions as to how preach
ing ought to be done There was this
popularity about his preaching-the
people knew what he meant. His illus
trations were taken from the hen call
ing her chickens together, from salt,
from candles, from fishing tackle, from
q hard ere litor collaring debtor. How
few pulpits of this day would have al
lowed him entrance? He would have
been called undignifed and familiar in
his style Of preaching. And yet the
people went to hear him. Those old
Jewish rabbis might have preached on
the side of Olivet so years and never
got an audience. The philosophers
sneered at his ministrations and said,
'This will never do" The lawyers
caricatured, but the common people
heard him gladly. Suppose you that
there were any sleepy people i'll his
audiences? Suppose you that any wom-
an who ever mixed bread was ignorant
of what he meant when he compared
the kingdom of heaven with leaven or
yeast? Suppose you that the sunburned
fishermen, with the fish scales upon
their hands, were listless when he
spoke of the kingdom of heaven as
net? We spend three years in college
studying ancient mythology, and three
years in the theological seminary learn
ing how to make a sermon, and then
we go out to save the world, and if we
cannot do it according to Claude's
"Sermonizing, or Blair's Rhetoric, :"
or Kames CRITICISM, we will let
the world SO to perdition. If we save
nothing else, we will save Claude and
Blair. We see a wreck IN sight. We
must go out and save the crew and
passengers. We wait until we get on
our fine cap and coat and find our shin
ing oars, and then we push out methodi-
cally and scientifically, while some
plain shoresman, in rough fishing smack
and with broken oar lock goes out and
gets the crew and passengers and brings
them ashore in safety. We throw down
our delicate oars and say: ''What
ridiculous thing to save men in that
way! You ought TO have done it scien-
tifcally and beautifully. All" says
the shoresman, "if those sufferers had
waited until you got out your fine boat
they would have gone to the bottom. :"
The work of religious teacher is to
save men, and though every law of
grammar should be snapped in the I'M
and tInro no nothing hT1t
and laundering in the
mode, all hail to the man who saves a
soul.
Christ, in his preaching, was plain,
earnest and wonderfully sympathetic
We cannot dragon men into heaven.
We cannot drive them in with the butt