The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1897-03-10

I will know more about yoa than L
want to know. None of us could en-
Sure the scrutiny Our feet not always
II paths of God, sometimes III paths OF
.;orldliness 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 say
ing, "Thou settest a print on the heels
of NV 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 CT humll-
itv to cover the feet! Ought we rot to
90 into self abnegation before the all
searching, all scrutiniZing, all trying
eve Of God? The seraphs do. How much
more we? with twain lie covered the
feet
All this talk about the dignity OF hu-
man nature is braggadcclo and SIN. Our
nature started at the hand OF God regal,
but it has been pauperizcd. There Is
well in Belgium which once had very
pure water and it was stoutly masoned
with stone and brick, but that we'll att
erward became the center Of the battle
of Waterloo At the opening OF the bat
tie the soldiers with their sahcrs COM
pelled the gardener, William Won Kyl-
som, to draw water cut OF the well Tor
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 we'll OF re-
freshment became the we'll 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, bat the armies of sin have
fought around it and fought across 1t
and been slain, and it has become
we'll of skeletons. Dead hopes, dead res
olutions, dead opportunities, dead am
bitiops. An abandoned we'll unless
Christ shall reopen and purify and fill
it as the we'll Of Belgium never was.
.Unclean, pnclean.
Irrevercnce.
Another seraphic posture in the text,
with twain he covered the face" That
means reverence Gcdward. Never so
much irreverence abroad in the world
as today. You see it in the defaced
statuary, in the cutting cut of figures
from fine paintings, in the chipping OF
monuments for 4 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 so George P. Morrises
beg the woodmen to spare the tree, and
that calls corpse a 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 cf Karnac, and sees no
difference in thu 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 III 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 humanitari-
anism and impudence and imbecility
and call it God. No wings of reverence
over the face, 10 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 cf God
in way that shows you they believe it
| does not make any differense how bad a
man is here he will Gomez he shin,
ing gate. frey Esilsej- talk lssf 81 = Of Gea
in away 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
Ged, Npd they are just opposite, and
they are both true In one place the
| Bible says God is love- In another place
the Bible says Gcd is 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 Christ's keeping. mo" says IL
reverence, Il want no atcnement; 1
want no pardon; want no interven-
tion; I will 90 up and face God, and I
will challenge him, and I will defy
him, and I will ask him what he wants
to dc with me-" So the finite confrOnts
the Infinite; so tack hammer tries to
break a thunderbolt; so the breath of
human nostrils defes the everlasting
God, while the hierarchs Of heaven bow
the head and bend the knee as the
Kings chariot goes by, and the arch
| angel turns away because he cannot Ell
dure the splendcr, and the chorus Of all
the empires of heaven comes in with
full diapascn, Holy, holy, holy!'
A Pressing Need.
Reverence for sham, reverence for the
old merely because it is old, reverence
for stupidity however learned, reverence
for incapacity however finely inaugu-
rated, have none. But we want more
reverence for God, more reverence for
the sacraments, more reverence for the
Bible, more reverence for the pure,
more reverence for the good. Reverence
q characteristic of all great natures.
You hear it in the roll of the master
oratorios. You see it III the Raphaels
and Titians and Ghirlandaios. You
study it in the architecture of the.Aho-
labs and Christopher Wrens. Donot be
fippant about God. Do not joke about
death. Do not make fun of the Bible.
Do not deride the Eternal. The bright
est and mightiest seraph cannot look
unabashed upon him. Involuntarily 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
Strasicrates who was in the employ Of
| b1oxop6ar tho Great and ba offered to