The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-03-01

Won Kylsom, to draw water out of the well
for them, and il 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 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 a
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 resolutions,
dead opportunities. dead ambitions. An
abandoned well unless Christ shall reopen
and purify and fill it as tho well of Bel
GUM 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 defaced statu-
ary in the cutting out of figures from
line paintings, in the chipping OF monu-
ments 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 fire.
wood, though fifty George =. Morrises beg
the woodmen to spare the tree and that
calls a corpse a. CadaVer, and that speaks
of death as going over TO the majority
and substitutes for the reverent terms
father and mother, the old man" and
1.-THE old woman" and finds nothing i'm
pressiVe in the ruins of Baalbcc or the
columns Of Karnac, and sees no differ
encc in the Sabbath from other days eX-
cept 1t allows more dissipation. and reads
the Bible in what is called higher crti-
cism, making il not the Word of God, but
a 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 AL
m will IN nd 40
world, they roll up an idea of sentimen-
tality and humanitarianism and impu-
dence and imbecility, and call it God. No
wings of reverence over the face, no TAX
ing 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 propricty. They talk of the love
of God in "A way that shows you they be-
lieVe il does not make any difference 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. Mo 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 consuming 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 Christs keeping
No" says Irreverence, IT want no atone
ment l want no pardon, want no inter
vention; l viii so up and face God, and l
will challenge him, and 1 will defy him.
and / will ask Him what He wants to do
with me-" So the finite confronts the in
a.,34 s..Ix fritz In all a
thunderbolt so the breath of human nos
trils defies the everlasting God, while the
hierarchs of heaven bow the head and
bend the knee as the Kings chariot goes
by, and the archangel turns away because
he cannot 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, reverence for
stupidity however learned, reverence for
incapacity however finely inaugurated,
have none. But we want more reverence
for God more reverence for the sacra-
ments, more reverence for the Bible, more
reverence for the pure, more reverence for
the good. Reverence characteristic OF
all great natures. You hear 1t in the roll
of the master oratorios. You see it in the
Raphaes and Titians and Ghirlandajos
You study 1t in the architecture of the
Aholiabs and Christopher WTens. DO not
be Elephant about God. DO not joke about
death DO not make fun of the Bible
DO not deride the Eternal. The brightest
and mightiest seraph cannot look un-
abashed upon him. Involuntary the
wings come up. with twain he covered
his face"
Who is this God before whom the ar
rogant and intractable refuse reverence?
There was an engineer by the name of
Subsidiaries, who was in the employ of
Alexander the Great, and he offered to
hew a mountain in the shape of his mas
ter, the emperor, the enormous figure
to hold in the left hand a city of ten
thousand inhabitants. while with the right
hand it was to hold a basin large enough
to collect all the mountain torrents. Al
eXander applauded him for his ingenuity,
but forbade the enterprise because of
its costliness. Yet l have 10 tell you that
our King holds in one hand all the cities
of the earth. and all the oceans, while
he has the stars of heaven for his tiara.
Earthly power goes from hand to hand,
from Henry / to Henry il and Henry
III. from Charles / to Charles III, from
Louis l to Louis III and Louis III, but
from everlasting to everlasting is God.
God the first, God the last, God the
only. He has one telescope with which
he sees everything: His ompiscience, He
has one bridge with which he crosses
everything: His omnipresence. He has
one hammer with which he builds every
NilIEs Ills pilIllpOieHCSs ut Two ldDlt-
spoonfuls OF water in the palm of your
hand and It will overflow but Isaiah in
dicates that God puts the Atlantic and
the Pacific and the Arctic and the Ant
arctic and the Mediterranean and the
Black sea and all the waters of the earth
in the hollow Of his hand. The fingers the
beach on one side, the wrist the beach
on the other. "He holdeth the water in
the hollow OF his hand"
As you take a pinch of salt or powder
between your thumb and two fingers, so
Isaiah indicates God takes up the earth
He measures the dust of the earth. the
original there indicating that God takes
all the dust of all the continents between
the thumb and two fingers. You wrap
around your hand a blue ribbon five
times. ten times. You say IL is five hand
breadths, or Il is ten hsnd-breadths. So
indicates the prophet God winds the blae
ribbon of the sky around his hand. He
meteth ont the heavens with a span" You
know that balances are made of beam
suspended In the middle with two basins
at the extremity OF equal heft. In that