Connecticut western news., 1897-03-04

in paths of God, sometimes in paths oa worldliness Our feet, a divine ana 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 print on the heels of my feet" Grimes 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 feetl Ought we not to go into self abnegation before the all searching, all scrutinizing, all trying eye of Godf The seraphs do How much more wei 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 1t has been pauperized. There is well in~Belgium which once had very pure water, and it was stoutly masoned with stone and brick, but that we'll aft erward became the center of the battle of Waterloo. At the opening of the bat tie the soldiers with their sabers com pelled the gardener, William von Kyl- som, to draw water out of the we'll for them, and it was very pure water. But the battle ragged, and 800 dead and half dead were flung into the we'll for quick and easy burial, so that the we'll 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 a we'll of good, but the armies of sin have fought around it and fought across it and been slain, and it has become we'll of skeletons. Dead hopes, dead res olutions, dead opportunities, dead am- bitions. An abandoned we'll unless Christ shall reopen and purify and fill it as the we'll of Belgium never was. Unclean, unclean.
 Irreverence.
 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 today You see it in the defaced statuary, in the cutting out of figures from fine paintings, in the chipping of monuments 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 fol frewood, though 50 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 noth- 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 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 Almightyl Not willing to have God in the world, they roll up an idea of sentimentality and humanitari- anism and impotence and imbecility and call it God. No wings of reverence over the face, no taking of 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 way that shows you they believe it does not make any difference how bad a man is here he will come in at the shin ing gate They talk of the love of God 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 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 Christ's keeping. 'No," says ir- | reverence, 1T want no atonement; want no pardon; want no interven- tion; will go up and face God, and will challenge him, and I will defy him, and will ask him what he wants ] to do with me-" So the finite confronts the Infinite; so tack hammer tres tc break a thunderbolt; so the breath o1 human nostrils defies 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 en dure the splendor, and the chorus of al the empires of heaven comes in witf full diapason, Holy, holy, holy"
 A Pressing Need.
 Reverence for sham, reverence for thu old merely because it is old, reverence for stupidity however learned, reverence for incapacity however finely inaugu rated, have none. But we want mor' reverence for God, more reverence fol the sacraments, more reverence for tn, Bible, more reverence for the pure more reverence for the good. Reverence characteristic of all great natures You hear it in the roll of the maste, oratorios You see it in the Raphael and Titians and Ghirlandaios. Yo, study it in the architecture of the Aho iabs and Christopher Wrens Do not b. fippant about God. Do not joke abou death. Do not make fun of the Bible Do not deride the Eternal. The bright est and mightiest seraph cannot lool unabashed upon him. Involuntarily tn wings come up. With twain he coyeret his face"
 Who is this God before whom the ar rogant and intractable refuse reverence There was an engineer by the name o Strasicrates who was in the employ 0
 Alexander the Great, and he offered
 hew a mountain in the shape of hi
 master, the emperor, the enormous fig
 ure to hold in the left hand a city c
 10000 inhabitants, while with the righ
 hand it was to hold basin large enoug
 to collect all the mountain torrents
 Alexander applauded him for his ir