The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1899-08-25
GOOD WILL
OF GOD
The Holy Spirit in the Church.
Past and Present.
Able Discourse by the Rev. DR..
Riggs in South Street Presby-
terian Church Last Sunday Morn
in0

| Kl&RS IN SOuCD SCreeC PreSDy-
terian Church Last Sunday Morn
ing.
The Rev. DR.. Riggs, pastor of the
Brick Presbyterian Church, East Orange
and great favorite with church-going
Presbyterians in Morristown, has very
acceptably occupied the pulpit of the
South Street Church the past two sab
baths, during the vacation of the pastor
the Rev. DR.. Erdman. DR.. Riggs preach
ed on Sunday morning last from the
clause, 1.-THE Goodwill of Him that Dwell
leth in the Bush" Deuteronomy XXX
III, 16.
AS the centuries roll on with all their
varied lights and shadows in human ex.
perience, the difference between the
natural and the supernatural ought to be
seen, felt and understood with increas-
ing clearness. Men ought to grasp more
and more firmly the vital difference be-
tween the temporal and the eternal, the
spiritual and the material. Not the
Christian only, but all men should learn
this great lesson. Is it SO, or is there a
| partial failure in the matter? Does not
each generation stumble over the same
obstacles? Do we not halt in painful
surprise at the same problems as those
at which our fathers halted? Surely the
answer is not far to seek. Even as each
generation must perform its own toll in
the harvest field, so it must solve its
own difficulties in the realm of the moral
and ethical relations of life. Each new
born infant learns to walk, though his
father may have been an athlete. So
each new born disciple must lean on a
higher wisdom in his own ignorance, and
so learn to think, pray and rejoice.
The church has always been an enigma
to the world. 1t has been an occasion
of wonder to the beholder that the church
persisted in living at all, or else, living,
that it persisted in maintaining the same
singular habits and usages. Predictions
of its downfall are very often made.
The outside critic tells us that it cannot
possibly survive many years more, be-
cause the church is not conducted ac-
cording to the maxims of accepted hu
man wisdom. Indeed the bulk of human
society frequently utters an exclamation
like that of Moses on Mount Sinai. He
saw the buSh and was amazed at the
spectacle. "And Moses said, will turn
aside now, and see this great sight, why
the bush is not burnt" If we do but
read church for bush we have the per-
petual allegory of ecclesiastical history
In the periods of church life and activity,
the world has gazed at the church in
wonder. Why is it not burned up by
its own zeal? Or else why does it not
sink down and perish of its own blunders
The incident on Mount Sinai was re-
markable, and the great principle of the
divine government which it set forth is
equally remarkable. What did Moses
see? And what are we to learn from
this narrative2
God made choice of bush (not CEDAR
in which to reveal Himself as fire to
Moses. The statements of the passage
are true as literal history, but they are
true also in the higher spiritual sense, as
the setting forth of lofty principle.
The bush burned and was not consumed,
and more vivid type of the Holy Spirit
| in the church it would be hard to find.
Modern science has given us a very
curious parallel, to which we need not
attach any doctrinal significance, ex-
cept as all the analogies of natural law
are valuable for illustrative purposes.
| We are very familiar with the idea of
burning in oxygen. Put stick of cord
wood in the fire, or snovel-full of coal
in the CRATE, and you expect to see it
burn, and perish 1t will be consumed,
and cease to exist in that form. But
the reason is plain. The oxygen is al
lowed to get access to it, and oxygen is
greedy, acrid, destructive gas that will
make havoc of anything which it is per-
mitted to attack. 1t corrodes the sub.
stance of wood or coal, disintegrates the
tissues, and works the total ruin of those
articles. But there is another sort of
burning, governed by laws entirely free
from this corrosive action. Look at the
slender filament of carbonized bamboo
in the Edison incandescent light. 1t is
protected from oxygen, enclosed in
glass bulb, and surrounded by cold nj
trogen only, or else in vacuum.
Through that filament of bamboo the
electric current is permitted to pass, and
it glows with wonderful brilliancy 1t
burns, but is not consumed because the
glow of the electric force is wholly apart
from the corroding power of oxygen.
That hair-like fiament of tissue that
would fall to powder at the touch of fin
ger, will yet shed strong light around it
for four hundred hours, we are told. 1t is
parable in chemistry, illustrative of
church life. Let the souls of men burn
with evil passions and they will perish.
But there is another sort of burning, un-
der the influence of that sacred flame
that comes from God, and indeed it is
God, for God is Love. Let the church
be protected by His indwelling from the
bitter, acrid and corrosive action of evil
passions, envy, jealousy, anger and
malice, and let it glow in the sacred cur
rent Of His love, and the result will be
as the text declares. The church burns
and yet is not consumed 1t is a holy
zeal, sacred glow, and the fire of the
divine indwelling instead of destroying
or disintegrating protects and unifies the
church And the world is forced at times
to admit as did Moses that it is great
sight
First:--''A lowly dwelling place. Not
a lofty palm nor stately cedar but
bush.
Inadequate instruments are often se-
lected by God to be His chosen agents
He dwells not in the soul of the proud,
but in the soul of the humble, and He
reminds us of this by many tokens In
the Old Testament and in the New we
are taught that His choice of means is
determined by sovereign authority, so
that men may see and feel that the ex-
cellency of the power is of God and not
Of man. The moral import of this is
observable in those acts of God which
determined the entire course of history